MISSING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES

What is hard today is to censor one's own thoughts --/ To sit by and see the blind man/ On the sightless horse, riding into the bottomless abyss. Waley

The February MHT Newsletter finally appeared with the rector’s promised exposure of the “errors” of Msgr. Ocáriz Braña. As it turns out, the goof was Ocáriz Braña’s failure to acknowledge that, in the eyes of Montini and Wojtyła, Vatican II was intended to bind the faithful by its infallible magisterium and, therefore, cannot be so easily explained away.

Whatever the historical or juridical value of the rector’s point, the truth is, he misses completely the political and strategic significance of Ocáriz Braña’s article. A more insightful analyst than the Flushing Rat would have seen the piece as a sure sign of an inchoate revisionist campaign within the Novus Ordo, which will surely lead to a face-saving repudiation of Vatican II.

Ocáriz Braña’s argument was not meant to be a formal reconciliation of Conciliar teaching with tradition. Let's remember that his low-keyed article was printed in a periodical and by no means took the form of an academic thesis. It is, rather, a trial balloon, launched under the radar to gauge the “atmospherics”of a shrinking, embattled, and disgusted Catholic world grown weary of the effects of the Council-wrought disaster.

The article’s real purpose was to test how far the newly emerging reaction can go, how much revisionism will be permitted, and how the rank-and-file as well as the establishment leadership will react to what will amount to be a drastic reversal of a half century of policy. Simply put, attitude-shapers like Ocáriz Braña don’t care whether their interpretation squares with the party line of the past. What they’re interested in is whether they can concoct a palatable argument to “save appearances,” i.e., whether they can come up with something that will be accepted by large numbers of people as a tolerable explanation for the dislocation of the Council and tradition. If their first attempt doesn’t pass muster in its present form, they’ll go back, tweak it a little, and then float it anew. Eventually they’ll hit on the right formulation and go on to the next step (perhaps touching upon validity of post-Conciliar holy orders). The marginalized rector's two-cents' worth will count for nothing because he is not a player.

Whether all this is merely a sophisticated public-relations gambit or the beginning of the Restoration, only time will tell. Whatever it is, the rector has, as usual, misread what the tea leaves are telling him. The truth is that some influential members of the Novus Ordo are trying to find the path of least resistance so as to reject the Council’s teachings without causing too great an uproar. All they need to do is to find the just-right argument that will allow them to backtrack without actually having to condemn the Council formally. They know the benefits of such a move will extend into Traddieland.

The Novus Ordo’s intention is obvious. It means to steal the thunder of the likes of the rector and “One-Hand Dan.” All it may take is a carefully wordsmithed statement that Vatican II somehow lies outside tradition. Then many of the traddie young, who are sickened by the bad behavior of their traditional clergy, will be induced to abandon the un-Catholic cultism their parents have long endured in favor of something that appears normal.

The efforts of Ocáriz Braña, Gherardini, and the other Novus-Ordo revisionists should serve as a warning to the Terrible Trio and other grasping clergy that, unless they mend their ways, they stand to lose everything within a few years. Their egos and acquisitiveness, however, won’t let them see this threat to their already grossly diminished influence. Yet, if they want to withstand the whirlwind they will face when the Novus Ordo announces its nuanced rejection of Vatican II, they should stop all these amateur polemics now and refocus on serving the faithful.

But they won't. That’s why the rector and his kind, like primitives suddenly confronted with an advanced civilization, can only shout madly in anguished wonderment at a spectacle beyond their understanding -- and their reach.