Loss of the Supernatural

One of the worst aspects of the Spirit of Vatican II, not the Council itself, is that it tends to breed horizantalism, it stresses a "theology from below" and downplays the supernatural.

What Gaudium et Spes calls the "modern world" tends by its very nature to want to shake of the supernatural. 

I think it is significant that the various Protestant superstitions that sprang up in the 16th century all seemed to want to seperate God from Man, they are a form of Arianism. They all deny the significance of the Blessed Virgin, deny, or at least minmise the Real Presence, the play down the importance of miracles, the intercession of the Saints and the Church Militant. They deny the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church (until somehow we have his outpouring on Luther, Calvin, Zwingli et al). It is no surprise that by early  20th century so many Protestants denied even the veracity of scripture and began suggesting that it was not God who created Man in his image and likeness but Man created God.

To be honest it is what I love about the Mass of Ages, it emphasises the supernatural. To conteract the various Protestant heresies the Counter Reformation emphasised its more Catholic elements: that human beings could approach God in prayer, that God did come and change our lives in the regular use of the sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance. Devotions like the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts took the place of Christ the Terrible Judge, which dominated pre-Reformation Catholic church decor, I find it fascinating that that dissappeared almost over night despite being the major western iconography for almost 500 hundred years.

Protestantism emphasised scripture read in one's "personal lights" whilst Catholicism emphasised an intimate relationship with Christ and his mother understood whilst "submitting all to our Mother the Church. 

If one reads publications such as The Tablet or listens to their Rome Corespondent or reads the demands of various "Priests Initiatives" from Austria, Ireland or even this country, Catholics like me are left wondering whether there is any sense of the supernatural behind their thought. Do these people really believe that God has been made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary and that Christ rose on the third day in the flesh and that we too will rise again and be judged by God and go to Heaven or Hell? Do they really believe God rests in the hands of a priest under the form of bread at Mass? Are they left in open mouthed wonder at the sight of the Lord in a monstrance?

It strikes me that at the heart of Pope Benedict's Papacy is an attempt to restore the supernatural, that's the purpose Summorum Pontificum and everything else he has written on the liturgy, of his writings, especially his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy (there is a good review by William Oddie), as well as both the Year for Priests and the Year of Faith. Past Popes have condemned Modernism and Liberalism, Pope John called a Council to address it. John Paul wrote encyclical after encyclical against it, but it strikes me it is Benedict (and the John Paul/Benedict generation of young priests) who is making the most impact.