By David Carlin

But first, a note: Be sure to tune in tonight, Thursday, April 11th, at 8 PM Eastern to EWTN for a new episode of 'The World Over.' The Papal Posse - TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal, contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray, and host Raymond Arroyo - will discuss the new Vatican 'Declaration on Human Dignity,' as well as other recent developments in the Church, Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column...

In the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, many Catholics, especially young priests and seminarians, were imbued with the so-called "spirit of Vatican II" - a spirit that hoped to carry reforms and improvements of the Church well beyond the reforms and improvements actually designated by the Council.

I remember a young priest telling us from the pulpit one Sunday that the Church, despite having been in existence for more than 1,900 years, had never really understood the meaning of Catholicism until the arrival of Vatican II.

Now, this was a good priest, and he still is a good priest (even though he is now a rather old man), and he has been of considerable benefit to me personally. I think very highly of him. All the same, I have never heard a sermon more foolish than the one in which he told us that Vatican II first revealed the meaning of Catholicism - and I assure you, I have heard hundreds, if not thousands, of foolish sermons.

If he was correct, among those who failed to understand Catholicism were the Fathers of the Church, the Doctors of the Church, and a few hundred popes, not to mention the Apostles themselves.

Among the things that earlier Catholics had failed to understand (according to the typical spirit-of-Vatican-II Catholic) was that the virtue of chastity, though a fine thing, was not nearly as fine a thing as we used to think it was. Prior to the Council, we thought that chastity was a virtue of supreme importance, possibly on par with the virtue of charity itself. But under the new dispensation, now we post-Vatican II Catholics know better.

We see that chastity is a minor virtue in comparison to love of neighbor. And minor too in comparison with charity's sister virtue, justice, especially social justice.

It's good (according to such progressive Catholics) for Catholics, perhaps even others, to shun bedroom partners who are not their spouses. But it is better - far better - to remember poor people and racial minorities, not to mention other minorities, including those sexual minorities, especially homosexuals. There are traces of that attitude in the Declaration "Infinite Dignity," just issued earlier this week by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith

Where (according to post-Conciliar wisdom) did this undue emphasis on chastity come from? Not from Jesus certainly, who spoke frequently of love of neighbor, but only rarely of chastity. And on the most memorable occasion when He did speak of unchastity, He refused to join the puritans of his day in punishing a woman caught in adultery.

And when He spoke directly to her, he reprimanded Her, but only mildly. If He was that temperate in responding to adultery, imagine how mild His attitude must have been toward the lesser sin of fornication. As for homosexuality, well, He never addressed that issue at all.

Why then have we erroneously imagined that unchastity is a deadly serious sin? The spirit-of-Vatican-II folks had an explanation. American Catholicism has been unduly influenced by Irish Catholicism, which was perversely shaped by the heresy of Jansenism.

Jansenism was the prevailing theology at the French and Belgian seminaries attended by would-be priests from Ireland, who, for 200 years prior to 1795 (the year of the founding of Maynooth Seminary), could not study for the priesthood at home because their Anglo-Protestant oppressors would not allow a Catholic seminary in Ireland.

And who were the Jansenists? They were ...