Why the Second Vatican Council Failed

The Second Vatican Council - a true and valid ecumenical council of the universal Church - failed spectacularly because it was convened on a false premise.

This premise - that 'modern man' had somehow attained a stature or condition that required an aggiornamento or 'updating' of the Church's methods of communicating that which God has revealed to man - is demonstrably false.

Two assumptions are provided by the document styled Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes) that betray this false premise. The first rejects the stability and essences of nature, requiring a new way of reasoning (philosophy) about the natural order:

Thus, the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one. In consequence there has arisen a new series of problems, a series as numerous as can be, calling for efforts of analysis and synthesis. (GS #5)

This is in effect, a concession to Darwin and Marx. It needs to be mentioned that the Church lacks competence to make such an observation as well - but aside from that, the premise is a rejection of the preconciliar philosophical system required by Pope St. Pius X to combat the super-error of Modernism.

The second assumption is based on the council's preoccupation with man:

 According to the almost unanimous opinion of believers and unbelievers alike, all things on earth should be related to man as their center and crown. (GS #12)

This anthropocentric focus is likewise a concession to modern philosophy which rejects external authority and objective reality. For the Church, only God can be the center and crown of reality. The concord with unbelieving man in this passage should immediately startle the Catholic; what can we have in common with unbelieving man but only the essences and accidents of nature, which for the unbeliever comprise the Marxist dialectical system?

Which brings us to the Council's most glaring failure of all: it refused to confront 'modern man's' most intimidating foe: global communism. Younger readers may not recall the world before 1990 when the USSR dominated half the planet in a bi-polar security environment. This communist world - erected on the false philosophies of materialism, evolution, and socialism - was deliberately avoided by Pope John XXIII as a subject for the council, even though it menaced the entire human race with its aims of global empire as it ruthlessly persecuted the Church.

In the little known clandestine agreement referred to as the Metz Pact, the Pope's envoy met in August 1962 with delegates from the Russian Orthodox Church to ensure the council would not condemn communism as a condition for the Russians to send observers.  Although a petition was circulated by nearly 500 council Fathers to draft a statement condemning the scourge of communism, the petition was 'lost' and never reached the point of a vote.

Ostensibly this pact was struck to support the conciliar aim of ecumenical relations with the Eastern Churches; however, it appears to have set aside the supernatural method required by the Fatima apparitions in preference for mere human means of political rapprochement. And what better opportunity could there have been to consecrate Russia to Our Lady's Immaculate Heart in a public act of religion in concert with all the bishops in the world than at the Second Vatican Council? This general tendency of muting or denuding the supernatural order permeates the Council's sixteen constitutions, decrees, and declarations.

And that is why the Second Vatican Council failed. It was convened by men and for men; it jettisoned the perennial philosphical framework of St. Thomas Aquinas in favor personalist, subjectivist philosophy; and it refused to confront 'modern man's most pressing concern: communism. The very premise of the council was false; there is no 'modern man' dissociated from the man created by almighty God in the Garden of Eden; the truth of revelation is still external to man and must come to him from without, by the vehicle of preaching (Romans 10,13-15).

From Dietrich Von Hildebrand's Trojan Horse in the City of God:

"Altar girls" and Democracy in the Church

How did the Catholic Church find its way into the radical effeminization of its liturgy, once the most manly and commanding of all Christian liturgies? Travel almost anywhere in the US today and you will find the ubiquitous employment of young women as 'altar girls' (or as I like to say, alter-boys) in Novus Ordo liturgy. Is this a symptom, or a cause of this effeminization?

At the center of this situation (surprise!) is the Apostle of Vatican II, Pope John Paul II, who early on in his pontificate laid down the law in support of the traditional practice:

INAESTIMABILE DONUM
Instruction Concerning Worship Of The Eucharistic Mystery
James R. Cardinal Knox
Prefect Virgilio Noe Assistant Secretary
Prepared by the Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship
Approved and Confirmed by His Holiness Pope John Paul II 17 April 1980:

18. There are, of course, various roles that women can perform in the liturgical assembly: these include reading the Word of God and proclaiming the intentions of the Prayer of the Faithful. Women are not, however, permitted to act as altar servers.

John Paul II, Apostle of the Second Vatican Council and the New Consciousness in the Church however, knew that the old days of Papal command and episcopal obedience ended when Pope John XXIII was overwhelmed at the first session of Vatican II by the demands of the Rhine Fathers. Pope Paul VI similarly took no action at all against openly dissenting episcopal conferences when they refused to teach Humanae vitae after its promulgation in 1968. Democracy having been firmly established in the Church thanks to the theory of collegiality explained in Vatican II's Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium, the US Council of Catholic Bishops easily obtained an indult for distributing holy communion in the hand on 29 May, 1969 - contrary to canon law.

The democratization of the hierarchy could only lead to the democratization of the sacred liturgy, especially under the rubrics of the modular, tailorable Missale Romanum promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969. The Novus Ordo offers the celebrant multiple options, so who can be surprised that it fell prey to the whims of each individual liturgist shortly after it's promulgation?

It was in fact, democracy that led to the acceptance of 'altar girls.' The reality is, just as with communion-in-the-hand, the abuse - then condemned by canon law - of employing 'altar girls' became a norm later affirmed by the episcopal conferences. So abuses can become new norms in the People's Republic of Catholicism! Capitulating to 'popular demand' Rome proclaimed:

3) If in some diocese, on the basis of Canon 230 #2, the Bishop permits that, for particular reasons, women may also serve at the altar, this decision must be clearly explained to the faithful, in the light of the above-mentioned norm. It shall also be made clear that the norm is already being widely applied, by the fact that women frequently serve as lectors in the Liturgy and can also be called upon to distribute Holy Communion as Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist and to carry out other functions, according to the provisions of the same Canon 230 #3.

VATICAN COMMUNICATION ON FEMALE ALTAR SERVERS

Congregation for Divine Worship, 15 March 1994

Anything that originates as an abuse and then later receives official permission should be suspect. Why after two millennia of consistent praxis should this abuse become a permitted norm in the Church? What changed? The Second Vatican Council changed everything, including the Church's self-consciousness:

"Entrusting myself fully to the Spirit of truth, therefore, I am entering into the rich inheritance of the recent pontificates. This inheritance has struck deep roots in the awareness of the Church in an utterly new way, quite unknown previously, thanks to the Second Vatican Council..."
Pope John Paul II, Redemptor hominis (1979)

Ah, democracy! The vox populi! The consciousness of the faithful, the new standard for transforming abuses into the Lex Orandi of the Church!

Pope Benedict XIV, in his Encyclical Allatae Sunt, July 26, 1755, n. 29, writes

Pope Gelasius (+496) in his ninth letter (chap. 26) to the bishops of Lucania condemned the evil practice which had been introduced of women serving the priest at the celebration of Mass. Since this abuse had spread to the Greeks, Innocent IV strictly forbade it in his letter to the bishop of Tusculum: 

"Women should not dare to serve at the altar; they should be altogether refused this ministry." We too have forbidden this practice in the same words in Our oft-repeated constitution Etsi Pastoralis, sect. 6, no. 21."

It's obvious that old Papa Gelasius didn't have the advantages of democracy in his benighted epoch. The effeminization of the Church is a direct result of Pope John XXIII's aggiornamento - adapting to fit the so-called modern world and its obsession with human rights and popular democracy. The democracies which now overwhelmingly favor radical feminism and sodomy can only be expected to bring the same into the new democratized Catholic Church.

 I would like to give Saint Pius X the last word:

For in the same way [say the Modernists] as the Church is a vital emanation of the collectivity of consciences, so too authority emanates vitally from the Church itself. Authority therefore, like the Church, has its origin in the religious conscience, and, that being so, is subject to it. Should it disown this dependence it becomes a tyranny. For we are living in an age when the sense of liberty has reached its fullest development, and when the public conscience has in the civil order introduced popular government. Now there are not two consciences in man, any more than there are two lives. It is for the ecclesiastical authority, therefore, to shape itself to democratic forms, unless it wishes to provoke and foment an intestine conflict in the consciences of mankind. The penalty of refusal is disaster. For it is madness to think that the sentiment of liberty, as it is now spread abroad, can surrender. Were it forcibly confined and held in bonds, terrible would be its outburst, sweeping away at once both Church and religion. (Pascendi gregis #23)

 Forward!

The 1966 Peoples' Mass Book
with it's creepy graphics and socialist
styled title helped cement the idea of
popular democracy in the American
Catholic Church.

Mary the Mother of God, obstacle to ecumenism

Those who have studied the history of the Second Vatican Council will doubtless be familiar with the abrupt and unforeseen rejection of the Council's meticulously prepared schemata.  The European episcopal conferences, primarily those of Germany, France, and the Low countries refused the 72 documents prepared three years in advance and demanded the right to determine the orientation of the Council, to which astonishingly, Pope John agreed. What few may know is that the hasty effort marshaled by Pope John XXIII in the early months of 1963 to get new drafts approved and sent out to the Council Fathers included a schema on the Blessed Virgin Mary.

About this draft, Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, S.V.D. writes,

The proposal officially submitted by the Fulda Conference to the General Secretariat of the Council also quoted from Protestant writings. Bishop Dibelius, of the German Evangelical Church, was quoted as saying in 1962 that the Catholic Church’s teaching on Mary was one of the major impediments to union. Other German Protestant authorities, such as Hampe and Kunneth, were quoted as saying that the Council Fathers in Rome should remember that they would be erecting a new wall of division by approving a schema on Mary.
According to Father [Karl] Rahner [S.J.], whose written comments were distributed to all participants in the conference, the schema as then drafted was “a source of the greatest concern” for himself and for Fathers Grillmeier, Semmelroth, and Ratzinger, who had also examined it from a theological point of view. Were the text to be accepted as it stood, he contended, “unimaginable harm would result from an ecumenical point of view, in relation to both Orientals and Protestants.” It could not be too strongly stressed, he said, “that all the success achieved in the field of ecumenism through the Council and in connection with the Council will be rendered worthless by the by the retention of the schema as it stands.”
- Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, S.V.D., The Inside Story of Vatican II (formerly titled the Rhine Flows into the Tiber), © 2014 Tan Books

Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J., and his protege Fr. Josef Ratzinger
at the Second Vatican Council as theological advisors.

It is not this author's intent to inflame emotion against the architects of the Second Vatican Council.  However, fifty years later as seen in the light of the prophecy of Our Lady of Fatima, this effort to set her aside in the interest of man-made agreements with theological dissidents appears eminently blameworthy.
The Fatima prophecy warned that unless the Pope and all the Bishops of the world in a united act of public religion consecrated Russia to her Immaculate Heart, that country would flood the world with errors and war. 

Not only did the two Popes conducting the Council avoid the best opportunity since the prophecy was given to obey our Lady of Fatima, not a word against communism was included in the Council's sixteen constitutions, decrees, and declarations. 

It is important to understand the reasons and motivations for downplaying the Mother Of God at Vatican II. Ecumenism was one of its primary goals, as well as a new orientation towards serving the world as laid out by John XXIII in his last encyclical Pacem in terris.

The new orientation was summarized by Fr. Marie Dominique Chenu as follows:

"The text to be put forward in the council was approved by John XXIII, and by Cardinals Liénart, Garrone, Frings, Dopfner, Alfrink, Montini and Léger. It emphasized the following points: that the modern world desires the Gospel, that all civilizations contain a hidden urge towards Christ, that the human race constitutes a single fraternal whole beyond the bounds of frontiers, governments and religions, and that the Church struggles for peace, development and human dignity. The text, which was entrusted to Cardinal Lienart, was subsequently altered in some parts, without relieving it of its original anthropocentric and worldly character, but the alterations were not liked by those who had promoted the document in the first place. It was passed by two thousand five hundred Fathers on 20 October." (Iota Unum, Romano Amerio, ch. 42)

The listing of errors and assumptions listed above are too numerous to address in this brief summary. Let it suffice to say that if the 'modern world' desired the Gospel, something went terribly wrong in the decades following the council. Not only did the world (as it has always done) continue to reject the Gospel, but the Catholic Church herself entered a period of steep decline which continues unabated to this very day.

If explaining the Catholic doctrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a separate document seemed risky to many of the theological advisors at Vatican II who considered ecumenism to be prioritized above the Message of Fatima, then surely enough time has elapsed to recognize the results of their chosen course. There is still no union with the Oriental Churches; no agreement with the multitude of Protestant denominations and sects, and certainly no peace on earth.

To be fair to the Council Fathers, a short section of Lumen gentium, styled the Constitution on the Church does address the Blessed Virgin Mary in a salutary way, with this caveat:

"...those decrees, which have been given in the early days regarding the cult of images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the saints, be religiously observed.(22*) But it exhorts theologians and preachers of the divine word to abstain zealously both from all gross exaggerations as well as from petty narrow-mindedness in considering the singular dignity of the Mother of God.(23*) Following the study of Sacred Scripture, the Holy Fathers, the doctors and liturgy of the Church, and under the guidance of the Church's magisterium, let them rightly illustrate the duties and privileges of the Blessed Virgin which always look to Christ, the source of all truth, sanctity and piety. Let them assiduously keep away from whatever, either by word or deed, could lead separated brethren or any other into error regarding the true doctrine of the Church." (LG, ch. VIII)

One need not stretch their imagination too far to ponder whether the Fatima apparition was itself an occasion of scandal not only to Protestants, but to certain churchmen whose decisions are now chronicled for the world to see and judge.

The "disobedience" of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Good and devout men of sincere faith and piety can and do disagree about the course of action selected by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. What few understand in depth is that disobedient clergy in the Church achieved a theological and liturgical coup at the Second Vatican Council making what was forbidden just a half-decade prior now the law of the Church. It is absolutely necessary to see the disobedience of these men as suddenly not only accepted, but promoted in the Church. So the "disobedience" of Monsignor Lefebvre isn't really disobedience to the Tradition and perennial magisterium of the Church, but a disobedience to the prudential judgment of two Popes who tried to bury Tradition. In the case of Paul VI, it turns out his suppression of the TLM was not only illicit, but a grave crime against the faith. John Paul II's motu proprio accusing Monsignor Lefebvre of self-excommunication was nullified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.

As time goes by and the Catholic Church continues to plummet downward in a death-spiral of crisis, Archbishop Lefebvre is not only justified in his actions but it becomes clearer that he more than any other single priest helped to save the Church from even worse degrees of apostasy.

[editor's update: the German Diocese of Trier is consolidating 172 parishes into 35 and the Diocese of Pittsburgh, PA is consolidating 188 parishes into 48 while 34 priests are caught in a disgusting scandal of sodomy in the Diocese of Naples, Italy.]

It is also worth noting that Pope Benedict XVI's position is that the crisis in the Church was caused by the collapse of the liturgy. This is why Catholics can so confidently rally behind the action of Archbishop Lefebvre; he, more than any individual in the Catholic Church helped preserve the sacred liturgy in all its purity, mystery, integrity, and beauty.

Its Time to Face It

Its time to face it.

According to Pope John Paul II, the Prayer Meeting of All Religions at Assisi in 1986 is the TRUE hermeneutic of the Second Vatican Council:

Assisi Prayer is a "visible illustration, an exegesis of the events, a catechesis, intelligible to all, of what is presupposed and signified by the commitment to ecumenism and to the interreligious dialogue which was recommended and provided by the Second Vatican Council."
(Christmas address of the Pope to the Cardinals and members of the Curia on 22 December, 1986, L'Osservatore Romano, 5 January 1987, page 7)

"Look at Assisi in the light of the Council!"
(Papal address in the General Audience of 22 October, 1986)

So the ultimate message of Vatican II is that all religions are legitimate ways to pray to the one God (although some are polytheist and others atheist) to achieve Vatican II's ultimate goal: peace in this present world, not the salvation of individual souls from sin and damnation.

Moreover, every single person that holds Pope John Paul II to be a real Saint currently beholding the beatific vision is compelled by sacred duty to spread his message that by His incarnation, Jesus Christ, divine Second Person of the holy Trinity united Himself to each and every man forever.

You need to engage in dialogue with all religions, encourage them to practice their hideous errors as authentic prayer to the one true God, and work for the goal that is supreme, even above salvation: peace in this present world.

"If you see me traveling the length and breadth of the whole world in my efforts to meet with people of all civilizations and religions, it is because I have faith in the seeds of wisdom which the Spirit has planted in the conscience of all these various peoples, tribes and clans; from these hidden grains will come the true resource for the future of mankind in this world of ours" (John Paul II's speech to youth in Ravenna, May 11, 1986, quoted in Tutte le encicliche dei Sommi Pontefici, ed. dall'Oglio, p.1821).

And please preach that the Third Person of the holy Trinity is the author and inspiration of all the religions in the world:

"It must first be kept in mind that every quest of the human spirit for truth and goodness, and in the last analysis for God, is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The various religions arose precisely from this primordial human openness to God. At their origins we often find founders who, with the help of God’s Spirit, achieved a deeper religious experience. Handed on to others, this experience took form in the doctrines, rites and precepts of the various religions.
In every authentic religious experience, the most characteristic expression is prayer. Because of the human spirit’s constitutive openness to God’s action of urging it to self-transcendence, we can hold that “every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person.” (Address to the Members of the Roman Curia, 22 Dec. 1986, n. 11; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 5 Jan. 1987, p. 7).

I tremble to even paste these quotes because of what they suggest - no, what they proclaim:

"We experienced an eloquent manifestation of this truth at the World Day of Prayer for Peace on 27 October 1986 in Assisi, and on other similar occasions of great spiritual intensity.
The Holy Spirit is not only present in other religions through authentic expressions of prayer. “The Spirit’s presence and activity”, as I wrote in the Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, “affect not only individuals but also society and history, peoples, cultures and religions.” (n. 28).
JOHN PAUL II GENERAL AUDIENCE Wednesday 9 September 1998

This "Saint" whom many proclaim as a "John Paul the Great" (Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J.) and others want honored with the title "Doctor of the Catholic Church" (Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf) either needs to be followed as an example of heroic virtue, exceptional sanctity, and prophetic significance or denounced as a promulgator of strange and alien doctrines condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi gregis.

God help me. I never wanted to come to any such conclusion.

John Paul II the Revolutionary?

“The real revolution there happened under John Paul II, not Francis, which hasn’t really yet been understood,” said [Archbishop Vincenzo] Paglia.

Apologists for recently canonized Pope John Paul II scrambled to defend the late Pontiff for the apparent exploitation of the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family that bears his name. A closer look at the rationale utilized by the current leadership of the Institute may raise eyebrows. However, the stunned reaction might not be at the audacity of their claims, but the coherence of their explanations.

Let’s unpack this.

Archbishop Paglia taps into one of Pope John Paul II’s most ubiquitous themes: consciousness, or “awareness” of the Church:

The Institute “couldn’t just stay like it was,” Paglia said, because of changes “both in the awareness of the Church and also the social, cultural and anthropological conditions of the world.”

About which awareness Pope John Paul II taught in his inaugural and programmatic encyclical:

   "Entrusting myself fully to the Spirit of truth, therefore, I am entering into the rich inheritance of the recent pontificates. This inheritance has struck deep roots in the awareness of the Church in an utterly new way, quite unknown previously, thanks to the Second Vatican Council..."   Redemptor hominis

It couldn't stay like it was because in the Wojtylian universe, all things are evolving. Who could forget the way the international media leaped upon his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on 22 October 1996 when he affirmed

“…some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.  In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.”

Surely this is at least ‘an’ explanation of the Pope’s reliance on the novel theory of a “living Tradition” from which he found the missionary Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre wanting in his ‘deficient’ understanding of Tradition (see: motu proprio Ecclesia Dei Adflicta).

Next, Archbishop Paglia explains that John Paul II’s revolution “hasn’t really yet been understood.”

This is evident in the two ways to perceive the pontificate of Karol Wojtyla. The overwhelmingly popular vision of John Paul II is the crusading evangelist, traversing the globe to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to all men while collaborating with world leaders to bring down the Iron Curtain. The other way is to actually examine his words and deeds against the backdrop of Catholic Tradition, which yields some unwelcome if not disturbing conclusions.

The dominant theme of John Paul II’s long pontificate was that by His incarnation, Christ has united Himself to each man forever. He found this novel understanding of the Gospel in Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) #22, which is erstwhile known as “the mystery of man.” Through this mystery – completely unknown in Catholic Tradition before 1965 – Christ "reveals man to man himself.” This revelation is that each and every man is formally, ontologically, and eternally united to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Thus, Archbishop Paglia can also wink,

“You have to remember that before [Familiaris Consortio], it wasn’t that the divorced and remarried just couldn’t get Communion, it was they were practically excommunicated and expelled. They were outsiders. After John Paul, everybody was inside the house … I can’t just send them out on the terrace!”

“Everybody was inside the house” of course refers to the new ecclesiology of Vatican II’s Lumen gentium where the Church and mankind are dangerously conflated in ambiguous language. This idea is buttressed by the Pope's doctrine of universal union of each man with Christ via the Incarnation.

Now, if everybody is inside the house, who can be excluded from the supper table? Thus, Pope Francis is announced as the authoritative interlocutor of this revolution of John Paul II’s that hasn’t really been understood yet:

He [Paglia] said that Pope St. John Paul II began the “revolution” in the Church for Communion for the divorced and remarried, and that Pope Francis is carrying this on as the saint’s “best interpreter.”

In the vision of an evolving cosmos in which each man is united to Christ forever, the very idea of church is in flux.  How can we mere laymen ever hope to apprehend such exalted ideas without Pope Francis pulling away the veil that the consciousness of the Church was not ready for prior to his Pontificate?

Nor are we to set aside Pope Wojtyla’s bizarre understanding of each religion being a vehicle for union with God and inspired by the Holy Spirit:

It must first be kept in mind that every quest of the human spirit for truth and goodness, and in the last analysis for God, is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The various religions arose precisely from this primordial human openness to God. At their origins we often find founders who, with the help of God’s Spirit, achieved a deeper religious experience. Handed on to others, this experience took form in the doctrines, rites and precepts of the various religions. In every authentic religious experience, the most characteristic expression is prayer. Because of the human spirit’s constitutive openness to God’s action of urging it to self-transcendence, we can hold that “every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person” (Address to the Members of the Roman Curia, 22 Dec. 1986, n. 11; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 5 Jan. 1987, p. 7).

Perhaps it is overlooked by Pope John Paul II that St. Pius X condemned this idea 80 years earlier:

“Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with the other doctrine of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being met within every religion? In fact that they are to be found is asserted by not a few. And with what right will Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? With what right can they claim true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed Modernists do not deny but actually admit, some confusedly, others in the most open manner, that all religions are true."    Pascendi Dominici gregis

This vision of all men, in all religions united eternally with Christ in an evolving cosmos has of course, certain implications about which the Pope draws very specific conclusions:

Assisi Prayer is a "visible illustration, an exegesis of the events, a catechesis, intelligible to all, of what is presupposed and signified by the commitment to ecumenism and to the interreligious dialogue which was recommended and provided by the Second Vatican Council."
(Christmas address of the Pope to the Cardinals and members of the Curia on 22 December, 1986, L'Osservatore Romano, 5 January 1987, page 7)

But can we draw such a conclusion as Archbishop Paglia’s based simply on the general themes of Pope John Paul II’s theology and praxis? Has he really done anything revolutionary in the field of Catholic doctrine pertaining to the sacrament of matrimony? If you ask those who studied his novel ‘Theology of the Body’, the answer will be a profound yes:

George Weigel has described Theology of the Body as "one of the boldest reconfigurations of Catholic theology in centuries." He goes on to say it is a "kind of theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences, sometime in the third millennium of the Church." Weigel believes that it has barely begun to "shape the Church's theology, preaching, and religious education" but when it does "it will compel a dramatic development of thinking about virtually every major theme in the Creed."  [Weigel, George (October 1999). Witness to Hope (First ed.). Harper Perennial. pp. 336, 343, 853. ISBN 0-06-018793-X.]

Those taking offense at Pope Francis’ teaching in Amoris laetitia because of a perceived opposition to the doctrine laid down by John Paul II in Familiaris consortio should take a deep breath and a long look at the late Pope’s entire body of doctrine. While others trifle with rearranging the furniture inside the house, John Paul II set in motion the wholesale replacement of the entire foundation. 

Teilhard's Cosmic Christ: Not the Christ of Catholic Faith

"Christ saves. But must we not hasten to add that Christ, too, is saved by Evolution?" (Pere Teilhard de Chardin, Le Christique, 1955)

The Cosmic Christ of Teilhard de Chardin is an evolving being. He is currently advancing to the status of a super-Christ in whom all souls, all creatures, and all matter will be united in a single organism. This is called Point Omega. The cosmic Christ is not concerned with sin, redemption, or salvation as the church understands these things. He is concerned with the consciousness of mankind.

Allegedly (so the theory purports) man is now consciously aware of his stage of development in the evolutionary process, and is uniquely postured to manipulate the evolutionary process through social and political reform and “progressivism” in religion, philosophy, and ethical norms. The consciousness desired is that all men obtain the awareness that they are already formally, ontologically (simply by their being and existing) united to the Cosmic Christ whether they know it or not or want it.

Pope John Paul II taught that each man was united to Christ forever by the Incarnation. When the Incarnation of the God-man is viewed as a stage in evolutionary development, we see the choicest human being ever in the person of Jesus Christ - and His incarnation effects a change in the nature of all mankind. All that is lacking is the consciousness of this formal union with the God-man. Therefore missionary evangelism is abolished and ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue is ordered. This is intended to arouse within each man the consciousness of his union with the cosmic Christ.

Pope Francis appears to echo not only the universalism of John Paul II but the Teilhardian theory of Omega Point:

83. ...all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things. Human beings, endowed with intelligence and love, and drawn by the fullness of Christ, are called to lead all creatures back to their Creator."
Pope Francis, Laudato si

These ideas have been long condemned, particularly during the period when modern philosophy first infiltrated the Catholic Church during the turn of the last century:

Therefore the religious sentiment, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in any religion. The sentiment, which was at first only rudimentary and almost formless, gradually matured, under the influence of that mysterious principle from which it originated, with the progress of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a form. This, then, is the origin of all religion, even supernatural religion; it is only a development of this religious sentiment. Nor is the Catholic religion an exception; it is quite on a level with the rest; for it was engendered, by the process of vital immanence, in the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature, whose like has never been, nor will be. - Those who hear these audacious, these sacrilegious assertions, are simply shocked! And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of infidels. There are many Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these things openly; and they boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings! There is no question now of the old error, by which a sort of right to the supernatural order was claimed for the human nature. We have gone far beyond that: we have reached the point when it is affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man Christ as in us, emanated from nature spontaneously and entirely. Than this there is surely nothing more destructive of the whole supernatural order.

Pope St. Pius X, ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS 

This brings us to Fr. Henri de Lubac’s definition of “living Tradition” invoked by John Paul II in the excommunication of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988:

The advocates of the new theology follow the same current when, with Blondel, they define the truth as the mind's correspondence with infinitely variable and progressive life. And since truth is life and Tradition should transmit the truth, de Lubac concludes at the existence of a living Tradition. According to him, then, the ulterior beliefs of the Church need not necessarily be logically bound to what she has always explicitly believed from the earliest centuries."
Father Dominic Bourmaud, One Hundred Years of Modernism, Angelus Press, 2006, pages 248-249

The tree of Modernism grew up in the following way: Fr. George Tyrell, S.J. had for a pupil in England young Teilhard de Chardin. Tyrell was excommunicated by St. Pius X for the heresy of Modernism condemned in Pascendi gregis. Teilhard was also ordained a Jesuit and was suppressed by his order to avoid the censorship of Rome. He was not allowed to teach or publish until his death in 1955. Fr. Henri de Lubac, S.J. defended Teilhard's theories very publicly until he too was suppressed by the Jesuits. His book Surnaturel was suppressed by his Superior General because of its heterodox teaching on the relationship between the natural and supernatural orders. De Lubac's (and by way of association, Teilhard's) theories are condemned in Pope Pius XII's encyclical Humani generis. When Pius XII died, John XXIII made de Lubac a peritus or theological expert at the Second Vatican Council. The theological coup de etat was completed when John Paul II made Henri de Lubac a Cardinal. It is believed that the theory of the "mystery of man" as mentioned in Gaudium et spes #22 is de Lubac's. It forms the foundation of John Paul II's doctrine of a Christ united to every man forever by the Incarnation.

The theory of Evolution as championed by Tyrell, Teilhard, de Lubac, Pope Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now Pope Francis is incompatible with Catholic dogma.

We’ll give Saint Pius X the last word on Teilhard’s 'theology-fiction’and de Lubac's 'living Tradition':

"To finish with this whole question of faith and its shoots, it remains to be seen, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about their development. First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must change, and in this way they pass to what may be said to be, among the chief of their doctrines, that of Evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject - dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself, and the penalty of disobedience is death.
... Consequently, the formulae too, which we call dogmas, must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. An immense collection of sophisms this, that ruins and destroys all religion. Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and as clearly flows from their principles."
Pope St. Pius X, ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS