Last week saw the celebration of the feast of St John XXIII as well as the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, which he convened.
The (by all accounts) humorous Pope spoke of “opening the windows to the world” and speaking in a “modern vernacular”.
While the sentiment espoused by the Pontiff is admirable, the legacy of the council remains a vexed question in the Church. Is it to blame for the decrease in Mass attendance and the dwindling number of vocations? Or was it a change of direction which led the Church to a much-needed closer interaction with the world?
At face value, the idea of speaking in the “modern vernacular” strikes me as rather self-evident. People can’t communicate easily if they don’t speak the same language, and language – for better or worse – changes. There is an entire academic field founded in Germany called “Begriffsgeshichte,” and known in the English-speaking world as “Conceptual History”, devoted to the changing nature of concepts.
Nevertheless, the idea that Vatican II spoke to modernity is a double lie. Firstly, Vatican II spoke to its age, which has long since passed. Today’s youth are not the youth of the ‘60s whom the Church was attempting to reach.
Secondly, no council has been more “Thomist” than the Second Vatican Council. While it was the First Vatican Council that declared it an article of faith that God can be known by reason alone, and it was Pope Leo XIII who later spoke of a need to study St Thomas, it was the generation of Council Fathers attending Vatican II who were steeped in the speculations of the Angelic Doctor. A belief that a return to St Thomas would somehow be the answer to all of the Church’s problems is simply posturing.
There is, however, a larger problem. Once the Church had decided to speak the language of the times, the times had already decided that they wouldn’t listen.
The Church has always been in dialogue with its times, hence the common saying, Ecclesia semper reformanda est (“the church is always reforming”). But the reform, in this context, is not to be equated with change.
As the great statesman and father of conservatism Edmund Burke suggested: one must change in order to preserve. Burke himself hailed from Catholic stock and knew of Catholic natural law teaching, even taking to the streets to defend Catholics in the Gordon Riots.
The Church reforms itself when it finds new ways of accurately explaining the mysteries of which it is the steward. Revelation ended with the death of St John the Apostle, but theologians are tasked with unfolding and explaining the full meaning of the mysteries. In this sense, there is no new revelation, but we come to a more intimate knowledge of the mysteries when we reflect on them. Yet, behind the theologising, there is a philosophical framework that needs to be addressed, and the contemporary framework of the world is one that refuses the questions that theology can answer. That is a problem Vatican II seems to have ignored entirely.
The answer to the question of what the full legacy of Vatican II is remains too early to tell. Many are angered by the “spirit” of the Council which is blamed for bringing in guitars, extraordinarily ordinary extraordinary ministers distributing communion, and polyester chasubles. Others welcome change and hope the Church will not only change externally but somehow adapt its internal core to the message of the world.
The fact is that the Church cannot change, at least not fundamentally. If it were to change fundamentally, it would no longer be the Church – it would be merely one amongst many other Christian institutions. This is not what Burke would’ve meant by changing in order to preserve. What he meant was that a revolution presents a fundamental change, while evolution is a law of nature.
The question for many today is whether Vatican II was a revolution or an evolution. Perhaps the more pressing question, given the Council’s aim, is: did anyone outside of the Church really care?
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.