The gloom and doom crowd in the Church makes its presence known often. Another quote from Bl. John XXIII’s opening address to Vatican II reminds us that this crowd pre-dates most of the things about which they currently grumble:

In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen,
much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are
not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern
times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our
era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as
though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the
teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils
everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper
religious liberty.

We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always
forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.

In the present order of things, Divine Providence is leading us to a new
order of human relations which, by men's own efforts and even beyond their
very expectations, are directed toward the fulfillment of God's superior and
inscrutable designs. And everything, even human differences, leads to the
greater good of the Church.

It is easy to discern this reality if we consider attentively the world of
today, which is so busy with politics and controversies in the economic
order that it does not find time to attend to the care of spiritual reality,
with which the Church's magisterium is concerned. Such a way of acting is
certainly not right, and must justly be disapproved. It cannot be denied,
however, that these new conditions of modern life have at least the
advantage of having eliminated those innumerable obstacles by which, at one
time, the sons of this world impeded the free action of the Church. In fact,
it suffices to leaf even cursorily through the pages of ecclesiastical
history to note clearly how the Ecumenical Councils themselves, while
constituting a series of true glories for the Catholic Church, were often
held to the accompaniment of most serious difficulties and sufferings
because of the undue interference of civil authorities. The princes of this
world, indeed, sometimes in all sincerity, intended thus to protect the
Church. But more frequently this occurred not without spiritual damage and
danger, since their interest therein was guided by the views of a selfish
and perilous policy.

I was thinking a bit about the difference between the Tridentine and Vatican II attitudes toward Protestants. The real turning point wasn’t in 1962. It was in 1648. The Treaty of Westphalia gave diplomatic and legal recognition to the ongoing existence of Protestantism. If that upsets you, you should take it up with the architect of the treaty, Cardinal Mazarin.

The segregation implicit in the original settlement (cuius regio, eius religio) didn’t allow for Catholics and Protestants to have much to do with each other on a day-to-day basis, but it clearly envisioned the eventual peaceful interaction that would develop between Catholic and Protestant communities, in contrast to the devastation wrought by the wars of the early 17th century. Over time, the separation of the communities broke down so that individuals of both backgrounds encountered each other.

In short, Vatican II doesn’t represent something particularly new – it expressed in an explicit fashion developments that had been centuries in the making. It isn’t surprising, then, that even the most ardent traditionalists have little quibble with the documents of Vatican II.

I agree with many, though, that the implementation of the council was generally disastrous. The comments by Hans Urs von Balthasar (usually not a big friend of the traditionalist crowd) recorded at Gerard Serafin’s site sum it up nicely.