Vatican II as Cause of Cultural Revolution: Questioning the Victim Narrative

Was the Council “hijacked” by a hostile culture—or was it a “sine qua non” for that culture’s emergence?

Frederick Franck, Bishops entering the aula of St Peter’s at the Council (source)

It has been fashionable to present the Church’s leaders in the 1960s and ’70s as victims of that period’s tremendous cultural change, especially insofar as it prevented the realization of the Council’s putative promise. The standard conservative account is that Vatican II i…