The Mystery of the Church: 50 Years of Vatican II

The Interpretation and Implementation of the Council Continues to Produce Both Shadows and Light

The Second Vatican Council was arguably the most important religious event in the 20th century. The Council closed on Dec. 8, 1965 — as such, this year marks the 50th anniversary of its closure.

John XXIII stated the text of 1 Thessalonians 4:3 — “This is the will of God, your sanctification” — should be written over the doors of the Council. Academic reflection on the nature of the Council has termed it: “The Council of the Church.” And John Paul II opined that the purpose of the Council was to answer the question: “Ecclesia, quid dicis de teipsa?” (Church, what do you have to say for yourself?)

The answer to John Paul II’s question was that the Church is a mystery — which is the Greek term for “sacrament” and means a physical sign joining us to eternity. This fact is made clear in the dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium (Light to the Nations), which quotes an ancient Father of the Church, St. Cyprian: “The Church is seen to be ‘a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’”

The Council’s hope was that a vigorous and sober examination of the means used by the Church to proclaim the Gospel would lead to a deeper and more spiritual appreciation of the Church as an institution which transcends time and space.

When the Second Vatican Council was convened, St. John XXIII basically regarded it as the prolongation of the First Vatican Council (1864-1870), which was adjourned but never closed, due to the political situation in Europe. The bishops meant to discuss many issues at Vatican I, yet they were able to discuss and define only two. It wasn’t formally closed, however, until the day before Vatican II opened.

Some of the chief goals of the Second Vatican Council included: making Catholicism more accessible to the contemporary world; addressing the distressful disunity of Christians (largely in response to the totalitarian and secular threats to religion); and assiduously studying and implementing the richness of the Catholic Tradition in a setting that wouldn’t simply be an apologetic reaction to Protestantism and secularism.

The third goal included a systematic return to the Church’s rich patristic theology that was sometimes eclipsed by the ossification of Neo-Scholasticism (a revival of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas). And it included, as well, a desire to address the already-burgeoning attempt to renew the sacred liturgy, especially in response to a watering down in the 19th century of music and spirituality. One must include in this movement toward renewal the efforts to recover Gregorian chant that began under Pius X and were finally coming to fruition in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

These goals have always been generally categorized under two terms dear to the Council: aggiornamento (updating) and resourcement (return to the sources). Return to the sources, for example, would include addressing the influence of the Enlightenment on Neo-Scholasticism by actually reading the texts of Aquinas. Ecumenism also became a prominent theme because of an optimism about a return to the unity of the Christian churches.

An immense literature, both critical and uncritical, has accompanied the attempt to implement the documents of Vatican II since its closure. Controversy and misinterpretation began even while the Council was going on. It’s difficult in the face of all that has gone on since to maintain a completely objective perspective, free from all agendas.

Nevertheless, some important points need to be stressed in our evaluation of the life of the post-Vatican II Church.

First, very few people have actually read and studied the documents. One bishop gave a particularly poignant example of this problem. Upon returning home from the Council and bringing the actual documents back with him, the bishop discovered the following vexing situation: Certain theologians and experts — preceding him by six months — had already campaigned for their interpretation of the Council’s teaching and won over the press and an all-too-receptive Catholic education establishment. The texts themselves were then subsequently viewed only through that prism, or simply ignored if they disagreed with the interpretation of these so-called experts.

All too often — then and now — such interpretations bore little resemblance to what the Council documents actually taught. Many theologians after Vatican II have referred to this as the “spirit of the Council,” which contradicted the text. This contradiction between the “spirit of the Council” and the authentic teaching of the Council was so pervasive that when the Synod of Bishops met in Rome in 1986 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Council, they mandated a new Catechism to clear up teaching that had been hijacked by an agenda of certain theologians who wanted the Council to say one thing when the bishops clearly said something else.

One priest-theologian friend of mine recently commented to me that if all of us had only read the footnotes, much of this misunderstanding would have been cleared up. While still a cardinal, Pope Benedict went so far in the debate about the renewed liturgy to maintain that the Council teachings had never been truly implemented as late as 1986.

Second, it is impossible to understand the optimism of the bishops at Vatican II divorced from the general optimism of the late 1950s and early 1960s in Europe and America. The world had just survived two disastrous world wars and the Great Depression. The wars had brought people together in a quest for spiritual meaning in the world. The Church was growing by leaps and bounds. Religious communities and Catholic colleges and universities were overflowing with vocations. The missionary effort of Catholicism was bearing much fruit.

Theologians were engaging in new and interesting disputes, such as were characterized in the so-called Nouvelle Theologie (New Theology) in Europe. Liturgical piety was on the increase. For example, I was taught to sing the complete Mass of the Angels in Latin in the middle ’50s in my grammar school by the sisters, so that even schoolchildren would participate in a punctiliously correct liturgy. All seemed poised for a new springtime in religion with no shadows. Exaggerated faith in progress was everywhere.

Unfortunately, for those who lived through that time, shadows descended on this rosy picture, because it was quite superficial and founded on a rapidly-growing materialism. The political peace which Europe enjoyed largely through Christian democracies proved short-lived. Philosophy in Europe was permeated by a nihilism that stressed the meaninglessness of modern existence, and this entered the culture influenced by European thought.

All of this was demonstrated by an unpleasant subculture at the Council, which was further nurtured by the media and then burst into full light after it ended — culminating in the rejection of Humanae Vitae (The Regulation of Birth) and chaos in the liturgy.

The chaos in the teaching on contraception and liturgy, where priests and people were making it up as they went along, led to a complete breakdown of authority on the part of the papacy, and in many cases the diocesan bishop, and led to a hastily-put-together reform of the Mass and sacraments on a scale unknown in the history of the Church.

Third, it must be stressed that the destruction of authority and the “shadows” in liturgical practice were very far from the intention of most of the bishops who met and produced the documents at Vatican II. This fact is testified to by the statement of Pope Paul VI that there were no new doctrines taught in Vatican II — and if there were a question as to how to interpret a given teaching, the interpretive device should be the “hermeneutic of continuity” with past Church teaching. Though a liturgical reform was and is necessary and desirable, and there are many good points to the new missal, as opposed to the old, this is still a work in progress — a fact expressed by Pope Benedict XVI in his phrase “the reform of the reform.” The use of the terms “ordinary” and “extraordinary” demonstrate the desire of the papacy to maintain that there was only one Roman rite.

The Church is still recovering from the broken catechesis of the three decades following the Council. As is well known, this is what led John Paul II to proclaim the New Evangelization based on the fact that there are no more Catholic countries: Every country is a mission country now.

On the great anniversary of this most important religious event, each Catholic should thank God for the courage of the Pope and the bishops in subjecting our Church to such an institutional examination. Very few institutions as large as the Church (at last count, more than 1 billion people) could survive such an institutional critique successfully. The purpose of the Pope was primarily a spiritual one. As a “Council of the Church,” the stated intention was that, by thorough self-examination, each Catholic should not regard the Church as a corporation or just a legal or political society. Rather, the intention was to clarify the Church, her mission and her liturgy as a mystery — which means a physical society that has its origins in the Trinity and leads each member to a communion on earth with that Trinity.

Though the Church is a perfect society in the sense that she has all the means necessary to accomplish the goal of arriving at heaven and living the life of grace on earth, she is in a struggle here, and her members are far from perfect people. Vatican II challenges each member of the Church to seek perfection: “For this is the will of God, our sanctification.”

Dominican Father Brian Mullady, the author of

 Light of the Nations, is a mission preacher and

adjunct professor at Holy

Apostles College and Seminary

in Cromwell, Connecticut.

CNA photo

 

 

Second Vatican Council Documents

1963

Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), Dec. 4, 1963

Inter Mirifica (Decree on the Means of Social Communication), Dec. 4, 1963

1964

Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), Nov. 21, 1964

Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism), Nov. 21, 1964

Orientalium Ecclesiarum (Decree on the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite), Nov. 21, 1964

1965

Constitutions

Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation), promulgated Nov. 18, 1965

Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), Dec. 7, 1965

Declarations

Gravissimum Educationis (Declaration on Christian Education), Oct. 28, 1965

Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions), Oct. 28, 1965

Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Freedom), Dec. 7, 1965

Decrees

Optatam Totius (Decree on Priestly Training), Oct. 28, 1965

Perfectae Caritatis (Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life), Oct. 28, 1965

Apostolicam Actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity), Nov. 18, 1965

Ad Gentes (Decree on the Mission Activity of the Church), Dec. 7 1965

Presbyterorum Ordinis (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests), Dec. 7, 1965

Christus Dominus (Decree Concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church), Oct. 28, 1965

               Source: Vatican.va