Quote from: Pepsuber

I'm afraid this commentary is one reason why some don't take the bishops of the SSPX seriously when they talk about the errors of Vatican II. Without getting into the matter of religious liberty in general and whether Vatican II erred on the subject, I submit that Vatican II does not teach that the State does not need to profess or protect the Catholic religion. One could argue that it does not explicitly teach that the State must profess and protect the Catholic religion, but I don't think one can argue that it actually teaches the opposite.

Yes, one could say that the Church hierarchy as well as most laymen do not believe that it is necessary for the State to profess Catholicism and protect the Church. But that is a separate issue.

Pepsuber admits here that Vatican II taught ambiguously. JP2 also admitted as much in 1988 (emphasis added):

"the extent and depth of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council call for a renewed commitment to deeper study in order to reveal clearly the Council's continuity with Tradition, especially in points of DOCTRINE which, perhaps BECAUSE THEY ARE NEW, have not yet been well understood by some sections of the Church."

Holy Mother Church has taught that the Church cannot teach ambiguously (Mortalium Animos, 1928):

"The teaching authority of the Church in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that the revealed doctrines might remain for ever intact and might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men."

With "ease and security" is not ambiguous, nor controversial. In fact, the Church has condemned writing in the past merely because they taught doctrine ambiguously.  Ambiguous doctrine is dangerous, and the Church being "Holy" cannot teach dangerous things.

STATE RELIGION? III

To claim that States need not profess or protect the Catholic religion is a classic liberal error, and one of the major errors of Vatican II. Liberalism said, so to speak, "Let us not attack Catholicism head on, but let us divide and rule. Let us divide the individual man from society by pretending that man is not a social animal, and then we can pretend that religion is purely an individual affair. This will enable us to take over society, and once we have made it liberal, we can turn it back on the individual as a mighty weapon to liberalize him too, because of course man is a social animal! If any individual then wants not to be liberal, he will have great difficulty in resisting his society that we have liberalized." Not so? Look around! Then let us answer three more objections to the doctrine that, for the salvation of souls, every State should be Catholic.
Your Excellency, Our Lord himself said, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Mt. XXII, 21). Here Our Lord is clearly separating Church from State. Therefore no State should get involved in Catholicism or any other religion Answer, no, Our Lord is not here separating Church from State! He is making the common sense distinction between what the individual owes to the State (taxes, etc.) and what he owes to God (worship). Our Lord is absolutely not saying that the temporal State owes nothing to the eternal God. In fact the State, as being the collective temporal authority of a collection of human beings, owes to God in its acts of authority what they owe to him as social beings, namely the social observance of his natural law, and to that Church which natural reason on its own can see to be true, as much social recognition and promotion as will not get in the way of the salvation of souls.
But discerning which is the true religion is something for the individual to do. How then can the State as State be obliged in principle to be Catholic? Answer, the State is nothing but the moral (i.e. non-material) association in a political body of a greater or lesser number of physical (i.e. material) human beings. But every one of these human beings, merely by the upright use of his natural reason, whether or not he has the supernatural virtue of the Faith, is capable of discerning that God exists, that Jesus Christ is God, and that the Catholic Church is the one Church founded by Jesus Christ. If then any given State does not discern which is the true religion, that is not because its citizens cannot discern, but because for a variety of reasons they will not, or do not want to do so, by making an upright use of their God-given reason. In fact they can discern, and before God they will all bear a greater or lesser responsibility, perfectly measured by him according to their circuмstances, for failing to do so.
But, your Excellency, if you insist on every State's obligation to be Catholic, you are merely going to make a lot of martyrs for evil. It is for the glory of God and the eternal salvation of souls that every State should be Catholic. To men therefore too ignorant or corrupt for this truth to do anything but alienate them, one may, without minimising the principle, hesitate to proclaim it, but that does not make it any less true. True principles are no less true for sometimes requiring in practice a measure of prudence in the way they are to be told. Surely readers of this "Commentary" can be told the whole truth!
Kyrie eleison.