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Conservative Catholics dare not to say this in public, but the role of Pope Paul VI is today more controversial than it was immediately after his pontificate. This is due to the fact that Paul is the main target of traditionalist Catholics as the symbol of the Second Vatican Council's liturgical reform. Paradoxically, Paul VI is much more alive (in a negative way) in the memory of those who are desperately trying to go back to the pre- Vatican ? era, than in minds and murmurs of those who try to keep the council's message alive.
The role of the various papacies is crucial to understanding the post- Vatican II period:
* The Catholic church has never been as centralized as it is today;
* The council fathers failed in their attempt to change the direction of Catholicism's organizational model because of the opposition (now historiographicaUy well-documented) of the advocates of the status quo;
* The popes of this past halfcentury have supported diverting one of the most important organizational trajectories of Vatican II, that is, decentralization. The first pope in this diversionary series was Giovanni Battista Montini, Pope Paul VI (1963-78).
Paul's pontificate coincides with the first backlash against the council reforms, and the council fathers did not always find the pope willing to defend the decisions and the intentions.
He was Cardinal Montini, archbishop of Milan, Italy, when he received the news of Pope John XXIII's decision to call the council. Montini was almost in a state of shock, and wondered whether it would not have been better to organize a small symposium of bishops near Milan instead of a general council of the Catholic church. During the first session, Montini voted with the bishops of the reformist majority, but without declaring with much clamor his reformist views.
Following the death of John ????, the conclave that elected Montini on June 21, 1963, was an expression of a council that clearly had in mind its intent: electing a pope willing to continue the council.
Paul VI resumed the council without hesitation, but as his pontificate began he chose...