Even though Catholicism deteriorated rapidly after Vatican II, it wasn't exactly V-II that was the problem, it was the previous theology. It left the Church structure without a proper foundation, because the theology was not built upon Christ's words but human synthesis.

Theological synthesis took off with the formation of Scholasticism at the end of the dark ages.

Historians haven't been able to quite explain why the dark ages exist. The cause was an inability to heat buildings, which prevented intellectual activities from developing in the Northern European environment, after the Visigoths sacked Rome. Since the northern climate was cold much of the year, outdoor activities replaced indoor activities. It was warmer on a horse than in the dwellings.

Once heated buildings came into existence, scholasticism was the first product. It consisted of theologians getting together in groups and formulating an intellectual analysis of Christianity. Few books were available to them, so they studied Greek logic and used it as a pattern in synthesizing concepts.

Naively but inevitably, they started synthesizing. If the dark ages had not created a break in intellectual activity, there would have been a more cautious and self-critical evolution of theology. But it was like someone finding candy who had never seen candy before. And it was a closed circle of theologians without outside criticism. So the weaknesses and corruptions of the theologians flourished like weeds in a newly plowed field.

Authoritarianism is always the primary consequence of experts evaluating reality, and it became the primary product of scholasticism. I define authoritarianism here as misused authority. Valid authority is aligned upon a necessary purpose. Misused authority involves reality control and domination. Metaphorically, it is saying one and one equals three, because authorities say so.

The most significant synthesis in promoting authoritarianism by Scholastics was the concept of "Natural Law." It reduces morality to subjectivity which has to be arbitrated by authorities.

Natural Law says God implanted moral awareness in minds when people were created, but it became nonfunctional and has to be "awakened" by religion. Being supposedly implanted, it was subjectively created by God, not something objective like one and one equaling two. Since it is subjective and needs to be awakened, it can only be handled by religious authorities who must arbitrate morality.

Elsewhere, I describe the objectivity of morality, which means sin would be the same whether or not there was a God to judge it and teach it. Therefore, morality can be evaluated independently by individuals, which Christ said people are supposed to do. The point here is the theological consequence of subjectivizing morality.

Authoritarianism is a manifestation of the basic force that drives all significant sin, which is the desire to dominate. Traditionally, pride is said to be the source of all sin. It is the attitude of the basic subconscious force, while domination is the result and goal of the same force. Pride is an attempt to elevate oneself, so domination is possible.

Once a structure is created for domination (All social structures and power sources are used by corrupted persons to promote domination.), all corruptions follow, just as all sin follows pride.

History shows that the first consequence of the authoritarianism created by Scholasticism in theology was hedonism within the clergy. The hedonism was the primary concern of Martin Luther and other Protestants in trying to create a corrective process.

The relationship between authoritarianism and hedonism may not be readily apparent. The way it happens is that authoritarianism replaces personal responsibilities and objective reality with a controlling influence from authority. The result is a moral vacuum which breeds corruption.

No one has ever succeeded in creating a uniformly acceptable state of corruption. Therefore, Protestantism took form as a reaction to the corruption in Catholicism. To cope with the reactions, a militarization mentality developed within Catholicism resulting in the Inquisitions.

Apologists for the Inquisitions claim that however much pain the Inquisitions might have produced, they were successful in preventing an overthrow of Catholicism by several different forces, some of which were extremely heretical and evil. Anyone who takes such a position has never learned the truth about religion and morality. Nothing spiritual can be destroyed through an external force but only through internal corruption.

After secular governments developed, and Protestants instilled systems of justice within them, the need for militarized Christianity disappeared. Catholics saw no trace of the Inquisitions in their history and assumed that the Mass and sacraments represented the meaning of the religion. But as they became more educated, and their world became more socialized, the theology based on Thomas Aquinas became more visible and problematic.

During the Nineteen Fifties, it became totally incredible for kids in catechism class to be told that their Protestant friends were not going to get saved, because only Catholics get saved. At higher levels of education, concepts of objective evaluation developed, and they conflicted with the Greek logic of Thomistic theology.

The Greek logic of Thomas Aquinas consisted of asking a question and then stating a few points of evidence to indicate the answer. Syllogisms were used as points of evidence. For example, in asking whether there are more angels than humans, the points of logic were a) God prefers that which is perfect to that which is imperfect. b) Angels are perfect and humans are imperfect. Therefore, God created more angels than humans.

Imagine what this sort of logic would do in biology. If flowers are beautiful, and weeds are a problem, then God must have created more flowers than weeds. But we don't see more flowers than weeds. So modern logic evaluates all points of evidence, which requires a never ending study of objective reality, and conclusions are tentative.

So pressure developed to realign Catholic theology in a more credible manner, and the Second Vatican Council (1963-65) was the result. It was called an "ecumenical council," because it would reach out to nonCatholics and attempt to correct relationships.

The documents of Vatican II did just that. They said nonCatholics cold get saved, and they attempted to redescribe theology in terms which were more compatible with modern ways of thinking. But the result was an unexpected devastation of the religion.

Conservatives claim that the problem is modernists who are trying to hijack the religion. Modernists are succeeding in doing that. But heretics have been trying to do that for two thousand years and have never succeeded.

The reason why the religion has been disintegrating is because the theology was misdirected for eight hundred years, and there was nothing to replace it with, because it suppressed a correct analysis based upon Christ's teaching of moral responsibilities aligned upon the objective realities of life.