It is inevitable that the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council this year has attracted less interest and controversy than the 50th. As the generation that participated in the Council has passed away (Pope Emeritus Benedict being a welcome exception), the sense of what the Council actually entailed is diminishing.
For many Catholics of a conservative bent, the Council meant above all the introduction of Mass in the vernacular and the loss of a sense of reverence in the liturgy that has not been recovered. But it was, of course, a much larger undertaking: an ecumenical council that addressed the place of the Church in the scheme of salvation; the Church’s relationship with non-Catholics, Jews and unbelievers; familiarity with holy scripture; and the place of the Church in a rapidly changing world. For the world the Council engaged with was both more volatile (the threat of nuclear war was more immediate then) and more stable (in its understanding of human relations) than our own.
The Council was inspired by the Holy Ghost and has left a valuable legacy which has in many ways shaped the Church for the good. Who does not now welcome the closer relationship with Jews that the Council encouraged in Nostra Aetate; who does not now appreciate its wisdom in encouraging Catholics to engage more closely with Scripture as Dei Verbum exhorted us to do? Indeed, if there is unfinished business from the Council it is in Catholics’ relationship with the Word of God. It is arguable that most young people who leave Catholic schools now are, if anything, rather less familiar with the narratives of the Bible – Old as well as New Testaments – than the generations prior to the Council. That is a scandal.
But although the documents of the Council remain impressive for their fundamental orthodoxy and fidelity to tradition – which is not to say that they said nothing new – we are entitled to feel very differently about the cultural revolution that followed the Council. Dom Hugh Somerville Knapman pertinently argues in this magazine that while the documents of the Council have dated, “its ‘spirit’ endures as a totem to legitimise each and every change, and to which every knee must bow. The bitter fruit is that not only has the Church’s method changed, but also her message. We have become a Church of perpetual initiatives, built not on rock but shifting sands.”
Where did the Council validate the purging of the calendar of beloved saints – St Christopher, say? Where did it validate the wholesale and philistine reordering of churches, notionally to enable priests to face the congregation rather than both facing Jerusalem together? Where did it oblige nuns and religious to discard their habits? Tom Lehrer’s genius satire “The Vatican Rag” gives us an idea of how all this played to those outside the Church as well as inside it – and it’s still funny.
On the fundamental issue of liturgical change, are those who cherish the so-called Tridentine rite hostile to the letter or “spirit” of the Council? For it seems that the reason for Pope Francis’s recent and unwelcome restrictions on the celebration of the rite is that he regards those who wish to do so as somehow schismatic. This is simply not true, especially in Britain. Rather, it is the draconian and illiberal suppression of the celebration of this rite that is hard to reconcile with Vatican II.
Right now, it is the Synodal Process that Pope Francis plainly sees as a continuation of the work of the Council. The principle of consulting the faithful was, of course, articulated by Newman, who never, however, envisaged a “synodal process”. Yet as we are seeing, as the process is extended for two more years, there are dangers as well as benefits. Many of those who participated are not representative of their local church; the findings are filtered through a selective diocesan prism; no one seems entirely sure of the direction of travel – respecting which, we are already meant to be journeying towards Jesus. As Cardinal Walter Kasper said recently, one experiment – the German Church’s related synodal “path” – is actually at odds with the Second Vatican Council in that “it gives the impression it has to discover a new Church”.
Yet there are some consistent strands emerging from the synods which the Church should heed. For instance, the laity’s insistence on transparency on the part of the hierarchy and accountability for their failings; there would have been fewer egregious child abuse scandals if that principle had been upheld. But as Dom Hugh points out, the danger of perpetual synodal consultation is that “the Church seems set to be as changeable, unstable, and insecure as the world it is meant to convert”.
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