What if the biggest defenders of “synodality” are actually misrepresenting the Second Vatican Council?

Using an unexpected analogy from YouTube copyright enforcement, Father McTeigue, SJ explores a growing claim within the Church: that modern synodality is the inevitable “full flowering” of Second Vatican Council. But is that really what the Council Fathers intended?

Less than a year after the Council closed, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani—one of the central figures tasked with defending and implementing the Council—issued warnings about errors and distortions already emerging from interpretations of Vatican II.

That raises an uncomfortable question: if confusion and misapplication began almost immediately, who actually has the legitimate claim to the Council’s meaning?

This conversation examines the tension between Vatican II, synodality, and the struggle over who gets to define the Council in the Church today.