“In the rest of the article we can easily see the point: the author seems to bang his fist on the table and insist, ‘But, yes! Vatican II really did change everything! Nothing can be the same anymore! You can’t believe like they did before the Council and you can’t worship like they did before the Council!‘“—an anonymous essay (full text below) signed by “A Concerned Priest,” published on August 27 on the Rorate Caeli website, which defends Pope Benedict, and sets forth a powerful critique of an August 9 article on the (increasingly progressive) La Croix website by Professor Martin Mader entitled “Pope Francis should correct his predecessor [that is, Pope Benedict] on another point”
“Those who believe… are one community not only or mainly because they subjectively believe but because what they believe is objectively true, indeed is the Truth that became man and dwelled among us. Against this background, it is easier to see what universal agreement among the faithful must mean. They are faithful insofar as they are agreed on the truth, where the source of their agreement is not a semantic use of the name ‘Christian’ or ‘Catholic,’ but the deeply interior adherence to what God has revealed..” —the late Fr. John Hardon, on the meaning of “sensus fidelium,” the common “sense” of “the faithful” concerning the teaching, the doctrine, of the Church
“The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One (cf. Jn 2:20, 27), cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole people’s supernatural discernment in matters of faith when ‘from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful’ they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals.”—The Vatican II document Lumen Gentium, No. 12; citing St. Augustine, De Praed. Sanct. 14, 27:PL 44, 980), affirming the infallibility of the doctrinal “sense of the faithful” (“sensus fidelium“)