Rome – On January 30, Pope Francis urged those accused of imparting the principles of the Catholic faith to regard the teachings of the Second Vatican Council as sacred, saying that in order to be Catholic, they must adhere to the reforms brought about by the important event.
“You can be at church and therefore follow the advice, or you can not follow the advice or interpret it in your own way as you wish, and you are not at the church,” the pope said in a meeting with ” a group said. catechists attached to the Italian Bishops’ Conference.
“The council is the magisterium of the church,” the pope said. “At this point we need to be demanding. The council cannot be negotiated.”
“Please, no concession to those who want to present a catechism that does not correspond to the magisterium of the church,” he told the catechist.
The Second Vatican Council, convened by Pope John XXIII and held in Rome from 1962 to 1965, brought about a number of reforms for the worldwide Catholic Church, including the use of vernacular during liturgies and the redefinition of the church as the ” People of God. “
The effect of the council has been strongly debated by Catholics over the decades since the event, and some movements have now even chosen to go back to a Latin celebration of the Mass.
Francis told the catechists that the church is experiencing a problem of “selectivity” with respect to the doctrines of the council and said that it is a similar problem to one previously experienced by the church councils.
The pope names a group of Catholic bishops who decided to establish their own church due to differences of opinion after the First Vatican Council, held in Rome from 1869 to 1870, in an apparent reference to what is now known as the Old Catholic Church.
“I often think of a group of bishops who left for Vatican I to continue the ‘true doctrine’ that was not that of Vatican I,” the pope said.
“Today they order women,” the pope continued, adding: “The strictest attitude, to protect the faith without the magisterium of the church, brings you to ruin.”