These are some notes I took on the Introduction of “What Happened at Vatican II” for our discussion tomorrow. I hope the material is helpful in this form and for those of you who were not able to get through those initial pages or do not have the book yet.
Feel free to join. If you can't make it tomorrow, come next week.
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What happened at Vatican II?
(At some point over these next weeks, we will discuss the Texas 6-week abortion ruling and the Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the case. We can’t let an important event remain unattended by us.)
The Introduction
Vatican II stokes hopes and fears, curiosity and speculation.
Parts of the Council were televised. It was the first time the Church was brought into our homes through the television. People could see the church in operation for the first time. The windows of the church were indeed opened.
The Council took four years (with much work done before and during.)
- This book aims to provide an essential story line.
- It places the emerging issues into context. (large/small, historical/theological)
- It provides the keys to understand what the Council hoped to accomplish.
The Council met for four periods, each lasting four weeks. The important work was done before the Council and in its intersessions by bishops and periti (experts.)
It produced 16 documents that are authoritative (in a good sense) and accessible. There is a ranking to these documents, and though they appear in harmony, they were hotly contested.
Highest in Rank: - The Constitutions
On the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium)
On the Church (Lumen Gentium)
On Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum)
On the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes)
Next in Rank – the Decrees. (First time many of these were mentioned.)
On the Mass Media
On the Catholic Eastern Churches
On Ecumenism
On Bishops
On the Renewal of Religious Life
On the Training of Priests
On the Apostolate of the Laity
On Missionary Activity
On the Ministry and the Life of Priests
Then Followed – The Declarations
On Christian Education
On Non-Christian Religions
On Religious Liberty
All sixteen documents are interconnected in ways; they form a coherent corpus.
We will not get a detailed theological commentary of these documents in this book. These documents will be put into context – a before and after snapshot. These documents will be located in their contexts.
The Contexts:
- What happened centuries ago that led to this point? These are deep roots of church-state issues. Constantine and Trent make huge appearances in these proceedings. We need to see Vatican II as a progression of the first ecumenical council – Nicaea.
- How does modernity shape the church? (the long 19th century in which the French Revolution had a lasting effect on the role of church officials.) It was an attempt at healing.
- Biblical, liturgical, patristic, philosophical scholarship.
- Competition with Protestants in foreign missions, socialism, communism.
- The end of World War II. Political and cultural changes. Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, end of colonialism, Christian Democracies arose from Fascist dictatorships, confront the Holocaust.
The Issues:
- Use of organ in church service, place of Aquinas in curriculum of seminaries, legitimacy of stocking nuclear weapons, blessing of water used for baptisms, role of laity in church ministries, relationship of bishops to the pope, purposes of marriage, priests’ salaries, role of conscience in moral decision-making, habits for nuns, church’s relationship to the arts, marriage among deacons, translations of the Bible, boundaries of dioceses, legitimacy of worshiping with non-Catholics, and so forth…
Most important issues?:
- A desire to recognize the dignity of lay men and women and to empower them to fulfill their vocation in the church
- Three issues were not brought up – deliberately:
- Clerical celibacy
- Birth control
- Reform of the Roman Curia
i. Creation of the Synod of Bishops by Paul VI.
These, though not brought up, were issues at the Council.
Bitter disputes
- over the relationship of the church to the Jews, and to other non-Christians
- Religious liberty, forms of separation of church and state, primacy of conscience over obedience to ecclesial authority.
- Sprawling scope of Church in the Modern World
“Collegiality” was used to address the relationship of council members to each other.
“Conciliarism” is supremacy of council over the pope.
Ten to fifteen percent of bishops vehemently opposed the trends. (Same as today.)
New bishops were added; some retired. Majority-minority remains the same throughout.
Under the Surface Issues:
- The circumstances under which change in the church is appropriate and justified.
- How authority is properly distributed between papacy, Congregations of the Curia, and the rest of the church.
- The style or model according to which each authority should be exercised.
This is about church identity – how to maintain it while dealing with change.
John Courtney Murray, S.J., the development of doctrine is the issue under the issue. The elaborations of teaching they went beyond or even contravened previous teaching.
Aggiornamento injected the problem of change into the council in an unavoidable way, though it is very likely the relationship of the present to the past would have been front and center.
At the heart of many teachings was the debate about two venerable traditions – the special leadership of the role of the bishop of Rome and the leadership of other bishops, especially when assembled in local or provincial synods.
The leadership role of the papacy began in the Middle Ages and became explicit in 19th century.
Problems:
Distribution of authority in the church.
proximity to the Bishop of Rome’s church.
What was the role of a pope when a council was in session?
Paul VI removed four problems from the agenda.
Resentment of the Curia for their methods.
Vatican Congregations where steamrolled by the Curia.
What to do now that lay people are involved?
For the life of the church to be healthy, two aspects need to be in equilibrium:
Relationship of the center (law)
Relationship to the periphery (inspiration and initiative)
Most felt that central administration of the church was too predominant up until the Council.
Charism, for the first time, enters into the vocabulary of a council.
Listen to the new words:
Charism, dialogue, partnership, cooperation, friendship – a new style to exercise authority and to implicitly advocate a conversing to a new style of thinking, speaking, and behaving. This is a change from the more authoritarian and unidirectional style to a more reciprocal and responsive model.
Vatican II modified the legislative and judicial model that had been in place since Nicaea in 325, that it virtually abandoned it. BIG. BIG. BIG.
Vatican II based upon persuasion and invitation. It uses pastoral language. The Spirit of the Council is put forward. Style is important.
It was a language-event that introduced a shift in values or priorities. It was an inner conversion with outward manifestations. “The call to holiness.”
The church must deal with tension, not deny it. It must maintain and exploit the dialectic between continuity and change, between the center and periphery, between firmness and flexibility, between the law and mercy.
Karl Rahner, SJ in 1979
1st epoch: Jewish Christianity, and Paul’s preaching to the Gentiles
2nd epoch: Period of Hellenism and the European Church
3rd epoch: Post-Vatican II council, the period of the world church
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