As a young Catholic in the 1970s I was repeatedly told that the Second Vatican Council was at best a tragic mistake fuelled by a naïve enthusiasm rooted in the euphoria of the 1960s, or, more likely, a series of interwoven plots orchestrated by sinister forces within the Vatican.
As things developed, a mantra often repeated was that no new discussion about anything much in the Church needed to take place: “What’s wrong with the old Penny Catechism?” I remember repeating this in good faith until discovering that there were some gaps in the Catechism which certainly merited attention: it was an inadequate document, for example, when affirming the wrongfulness of contraception in discussions with waverers – more and stronger material was needed.
When I finally read the documents of the Council, I discovered they were quite different from what I had been led to believe – and also significantly failed to mention, let alone affirm, things that I had been told were “all part of Vatican II” including the abandonment of Benediction, Mass in a church hall or conference room with a coffee-table instead of an altar, and (a particular horror which I think kept many people away from approaching the Sacrament of Penance) the increasing emphasis on a face-to-face chat instead of the use of a confessional with a screen.
Today, we recognise that Vatican II did not change any doctrine and there is a continuity with all that the Church has always taught. We see a growth in authentic Catholic practice. Young people flock in increasing numbers to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction – its revival a notable fact of Catholic life. Confessionals – not least because of sensitivity to the need to protect priests from allegations of abuse – are back, and the sacrament has been noticeably revived through events such as World Youth Day, New Dawn, and similar. And coffee-table Masses have given way to a revived understanding of the significance of the sanctuary and of structure and dignity in the Mass.
It’s a cliché – but cliches often contain truths, which is why they get embedded as cliches – that a great deal of rubbish and mess has occurred through people invoking the “spirit of Vatican II” instead of the Council’s actual message and teachings. We can all immediately name particularly irritating instances of this – secular material replacing Scripture readings at Mass, affirmations about the possibility or even nececcesity of priestesses, or simple nonsense about all religions being essentially just aspects of an unknowable truth. But such things are easier to tackle now, given the reality of the leadership given by two figures who played major roles at the Second Vatican Council, St John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
It is to St John Paul II, the Council Father who went on to take the Church across the threshold of the new century, that we can look for very direct guidance. Through his leadership, and at the hands of the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, we got the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, the badly needed document that should be in the hands of every Catholic and with which today’s young people can be equipped against the continuing and savage attacks on the Church’s teaching on human sexuality.
The Church has grown massively since the 1960s – today Africa is the most Christian continent, and in Europe the picture is one of decline. Africa’s evangelisation has flourished post-Vatican II, and Europe and America and the West generally has been the source of the distortions and abandonment of the Council’s authentic message. The parts of the Church that are flourishing, even in our bleak and secularised West, are the parts that have taken to heart the Council’s message and responded to its call to evangelise.
“But didn’t Vatican II say that contraception is OK? I am sure I read about that somewhere…” When I was younger, I might not have known how to answer that: but in a recent discussion a young Catholic spoke up firmly “Rubbish. Paul VI gave us Humanae Vitae, while Vatican II was still sitting, and it explains just why contraception is wrong. It destroys the unitive as well as the procreative in sex”. Where did she learn that? “Oh – I went to a Theology of the Body thing. The message is all there: it’s just up to us to get it and teach it.” Which was essentially what Vatican II was about. It equipped young Catholics to tackle the issues facing the world of today and tomorrow, the world that needs to be evangelised.
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