Popes of the Post Conciliar Era

Much confusion arose in the Church after Vatican II. Ultraconservatives openly expressed reservations while progressives felt reforms weren’t enough. Consequently, the recalcitrant misconstrued the Council’s reforms and spread misconceptions.

- Ed de Vera

The Council convened in the 1960s during an era of angst and rebellion against authority. It was a time when moral norms and conventions were challenged by a spirit of nonconformity fueled by the Cold War, Communism, Vietnam War, social unrest, fratricidal and territorial wars, drugs, student power, sexual revolution, New Age, etc. The spirit of Vatican II was lost on critics influenced by a psyche of nonconformity.

“You are Peter . . . upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)

For the voyeuristic media, ecclesial polemics was hot news: dissenting clergy and theologians granted interviews and guested in talk shows. Opinionated dissenters who misrepresented Church teachings with brazen ideas regurgitated in media over and over again. Beleaguered, the steadfast Pope Paul VI, especially maligned for his encyclical Humanae Vitae, sadly noted, “The smoke of Satan has entered into the Church.”

John Paul the Great