Customer Reviews

Rhine Flows into the Tiber

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This is an unparalleled eyewitness account of just what transpired at the Second Vatican Council. The author's integrity and objectivity won him exclusive interviews with a great number of the Cardinal and Bishops, whatever their allegiance within the Council. The title neatly sums up the fact that Vatican II, and the documents of Vatican II, were shaped largely by the liberal ideas of the Fathers from the Rhine lands. In The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, the strategies of the liberals in promoting their ideas come through on every page. Father Wiltgen's journalistic masterpiece shows clearly the two main theological forces that were at work in the church before the Council, during the Council, and after the Council, and which remain very much at work in the Church today. Here are the actions and actual words of the famous personalities of the Council, including Cardinals Ottaviani, Frings, and Suenens; Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre; Fathers Karl Rahner, Joseph Rarringer, and Hans Kung - and of course, Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. This book is essential for anyone who would understand the new orientations which came to the fore with Vatican Council II - including the famous "Spirit of Vatican II" orientations which have led to momentous destruction and unprecedented changes in the entire Roman Catholic Church. Important reading! 304pp. PB. Imprimatur.

This book explains the division , so close and yet so far away, that
separates Christians East and West. As a former Protestant who "went home to Rome" for
twenty years before ending up as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I have some thoughts.
Not long after converting to Catholicism in 1969 I realized that something was liturgically
amiss. There were ominous shades of what I thought I had just left behind in
Protestantism. Like innumerable older Catholics, I found elements of the novus ordo to be
not only smacking of Lutheranism but simply banal in comparison to the numinosity of the
Tridentine mass. Even when said in the vernacular ("Oh," remarked my older Catholic
neighbor, "If only the 'liturgical experts' had merely forced us switch to the English
translation on the left sided pages of our paperback Roman missels...") the Tridentine mass,
despite its shortcomings (even Archbishop Lefebvre admitted that it needed fine tuning),
conveyed the numinosity (a vital concept for those who turn to the Orient for their worship!)
that I was only able to find 20 frustrating years later in St John Chrysostom's and St. Basil's
Divine Liturgy. One ex-Catholic, Orthodox priest had dryly observed that the Orthodox
Church was the church you thought you were joining when you joined the Roman Catholic
Church.
Years later when reading Monsignor Ralph Wiltgens' The Rhine Flows into the Tiber I was
able to make sense of my confusion. In the book, Father Wiltgens, a self-proclaimed liberal
who attended the Council, triumphantly maps the manner in which the northern European
theologians were able to hijack the direction, and thus the product, of the committee
dealing with the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. With an authority that only an insider
could document, he showed how these renowned scholars proudly returned to their Western
protestant neighbors with a sparkling, new, and truly "ecumenical" liturgy. Over forty years
later their optimism would be balanced in First Things by Father Neuhaus' observation
regarding the "receding hope" of dialogue with Lutherans and Anglicans. Tragically, it was
Cardinal Bugnini's modernized rite that totally ignored the older Eastern Orthodox brothers.
Indeed, it seemed that the rush to ecumenically embrace the Protestants of northern
Europe was equally a shunning of the ancient rites, art and music of Orthodox worship. In
retrospect, this preoccupation with things Western seems surreal when one remembers that
the Orthodox are nothing if not liturgical Christians! In the ensuing years the painful
liturgical chaos among Roman Catholics was viewed by Othodox with something that
fluctuated between concern and a "you made your bed now sleep in it" coolness. It appears
to me that both poles of reaction resulted in a reluctance by Orthodox to dialogue with a
confused Rome so bent on radically overhauling Holy Tradition.
Perhaps we shall have to await a third Vatican council wherein still yet another liturgical
document will address the liturgical insights of Rome's ancient Eastern brothers in the faith.
Sadly, until that happens I fear there will be no "rush to embrace" among large blocks of
Orthodox Christians.

If you want an impartial, professional, insightful, concise and "almost" authoritive book on Second Vatican Council you need to buy this. It clearly depicts the factions, the drama and the motives moving within, around and behind the Council Hall of Vatican Two. Fr. Wiltgen will give you the big picture of how certain members of the heirarchy from Europe and those who are trained in their seminaries direct and orientate the Council and the Pope himself into their own brand of Catholic theology. This book will give every reader the understanding of how the Church was being ambushed from within to change some of her fundamental doctrines. But in no way will you caught the author favoring either camps! Truly, Fr. Wiltgen is the best journalist to cover this momentous event in the life of the Church!

If you sit in your pew on Sunday and think, "Ugh, this is the worst...where did they come up with this stuff?" you will want to read this book.

In this well written volume, Mr. Wiltgen lifts the rock and lets the light shine on the factions responsible for twisting and redirecting the the Second Vatican Council away from it's original schemata.

Well indexed.

A very good book explaining the liberlism of vatican II that has destroyed the reverence and mystery of catholicism and turned it into kumbayah, hand holding, p.c. garbage.

This book is a detailed (sometimes overly detailed) account of the Second Vatican Council. It introduces you to the names and politics surrounding the council and how certain decisions were reached. If you want to know who said what, then this is the book for you.

Interesting to note, the priest who wrote this book was a liberal. Nevertheless one can see that the Council was hijacked by the "Progressivists" (ie the Masonic Communist Non-Catholics who wanted the "New Church").

Detailed analysis well worth the read no matter where your alliances may fall.