There is a need for the Church to have a root and branch, no holds barred, overall reappraisal, to acknowledge where lack of knowledge at the time made it wrong and where it set in concrete definitions that were intrinsically beyond its competence. This should have happened at Vatican II, but there was never any likelihood that the aged cardinals – most born around the turn of the 19th/20th century or even earlier - would do it. If de Chardin had not been prohibited by his superiors from publishing ‘The Phenomenon of Man’ when he wrote it in the 1930s (his works were published by friends after his death in 1956) things might have been different, but there was insufficient time for his vision to be disseminated and assimilated.

For a few thoughts about subjects that need to be addressed by Vatican III and do more than just scratch the surface visit http://www.VaticanIII.Aggiornamento.

In Asia and Africa, there is less call for the mass, because the cultures are different. I prefer mass in Tagalog and so I doubt we’ll change.

The irony is that the middle management yuppies who claim to represent “vatican II” never read the actual articles, and merely infused 1970’s fads into the church. The JPII generation of kids see them as “out of date”.