"We believed that after the Council would come a day of sunshine in the history of the Church. But instead there has come a day of clouds and storms, and of darkness ... And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the devil. It is as if from some mysterious crack, no, it is not mysterious, from some crack the smoke of satan has entered the temple of God."
Pope Paul VI
June 29 1972

I don't recall that this man ever pulled the rug out from under his own feet in this way ("... may be unfounded...") when he rhapsodized about the blessings ushered in by the New Pentecost of Vatican II. It could be unfounded, and it's mysterious, and it's the devil, but it's not mysterious, though of course it is still unfounded, though it is not mysterious... I once saw a clip from an old movie which showed a man in a wheelchair having a fight to the finish with his own arm.

The irony is that Paul VI was the one who with all his tortured dithering provided the Satanic smokescreen in which more extreme Modernists set their Satanic bonfires, pushing their blasphemies and vices as the latest in Renewal.

The Modernists said quite openly that the Virgin Birth was a silly legend and that all God-ideas were a waste of time and made their apostasy the basis of all catechesis and priestly training.  In response, the supposedly orthodox Holy Father in Rome dithered that some, perhaps, in their admirable zeal for much-needed Change, which zeal is, perhaps, underappreciated by those who could learn a lot about zeal for much-needed Change from them, were going beyond the norms of Change as advanced by lawful authorities and causing some concern for doctrinal purity in the ecclesial community.

Even in his harangues against progressives, Paul VI always stacked the deck against orthodoxy and the authentic spirit of faith. Two nice things about the Modernists, one indication that his criticisms could be totally wrongheaded, and one slap on the integralists's wrists for every all too mild criticism of possible Modernist missteps. This was a great mystery to those Loyal to the Papal Magisterium who held that he himself was orthodox. It was no mystery to the few who realized that he was not. That he was just less extreme in his heresies and errors than those whom he sometimes criticized in this absurdly self-defeating way.