Shaun Blanchard reflects on the ‘Very Short Introduction’ to Vatican II.
A few years ago, in those halcyon days before the pandemic, I sat down in an Oxfordshire pub with Stephen Bullivant to draft a prop-osal for a volume on Vatican II for OUP’s Very Short Introduction (VSI) series. Much of that day saw pitched battle between the angels and devils perched on our shoulders (the celestial took the form of unlimited esp-ressos; the diabolic, pints and fried chicken burgers). I am not English, though despite my best efforts and the fervent prayers of my Irish grandmother, I have become something of an Anglophile. I attribute this primarily to the unfettered joys of reading, writing and good conversations in English pubs. Stephen and I made good progress on our propos-al fairly quickly. We then turned to remin-iscing on the need for such a volume, and the importance of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) in our lives as academics, teachers, converts, and practising Catholics.
We agreed that a VSI on Vatican II would fill a teaching need in undergrad, postgrad and seminary contexts. It could also be of use for parish staff, clergy, academics and really any interested non-specialist. As university professors, we both struggled to find a good, brief overview of the Council in English for total beginners. John O’Malley’s What Happened at Vatican II (2008) was excellent, but it was too lengthy for our undergrads (or my deacon candidates) to effectively tackle in a week or two. Having both taught in many different environments and published books based on Vatican II research, we felt we were at a stage in our careers where we could simply rectify the problem ourselves.
While the practical benefit of a short but comprehensive introduction to Vatican II was a strong motivation, wrestling with the Council and its legacy has become a central preoccupation for Stephen and me as academics and as practising believers. We were both born in the 1980s, during the long reign of Pope John Paul II. Stephen, a convert from atheism, discovered the Catholic faith as an undergrad at Oxford in the mid-2000s. Stephen’s energy is as limitless as his intellectual and spiritual curiosity. He has thus found himself in a fascinating variety of Catholic contexts all around the English-speaking world – from chaplaincies and student groups, to charismatic circles, to “normie” parishes, to the Traditional Latin Mass community. In all these environments, receptions of Vatican II shape expressions of Catholic faith and life. Sometimes these different receptions are explicit and out in the open. More often they are implicit, rising to the surface in times of conflict and crisis.
At Oxford, Stephen’s interest in atheism and modern secularism led him to a deep dive into article 16 of Lumen Gentium (the Council’s document “on the Church”). As he likes to say, he wrote a book about a mere two sentences in a Vatican II document. Researching the question of the salvation of atheists in contemporary Catholic theology led Stephen deeper into the roots of the Council’s teaching, the event itself and its complex reception. After monograph studies of Catholic “disaffiliation” in Britain and North America (mass exodus) and the problem of modern secularisation (“nonverts”), Stephen has circled back to Vatican II directly. He brings to the VSI a keen understanding of the multifaceted social, political and theological dynamics at play in the production and reception of the landmark documents on the liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) and on “the Church in the World of Today” (a better translation of Gaudium et Spes’ subtitle). Stephen adds the zest of a unique and inviting writing style – what I call the “Bullivantising” of a chapter or article.
For my part, I have been fascinated with Vatican II since hearing older people intensely argue about it. As a new Catholic in the mid-2000s (a southern American from a staunchly Protestant background), I had absolutely no opinion about Vatican II at all. For all I knew, “the Council” was Nicea. As a refugee from vapid megachurch-style worship, I was just thrilled to recite the Creed every Sunday, feeling I had entered some ancient conventicle of my Early-Church ancestors. But I soon discovered that, despite the spin I had received from well-meaning but unsophisticated apologists, the Catholic Church had changed, and contin-ues to do so. The existence of a pope and the Magisterium does not, in fact, end all dissen-sion in the ranks, nor does it enable us to neatly separate the “orthodox” wheat from the “dissenting” chaff. At the centre of so many of the debates in my new Christian community was Vatican II, and I wanted to understand why.
While I (initially) maintained a silence res-pectueux, many of my mentors in church and academy had passionate takes on Vatican II. Some said the Council radically changed ev-erything, it “sang a new church into being”, to quote the cringiest of cringey postconciliar hymns. Others said this “pastoral” Council changed nothing at all, and don’t listen to people who tell you it did. Many believed the Council texts were great, but its “spirit” was a fictive cloak for (progressive) ideology. Finally, a good many told me Vatican II was wonderful, but had never really been implemented, or had been reversed under John Paul II (or even Paul VI). I tried to sort through all this conflicting information, for academic reasons but also personal religious ones.
I set to work reading and writing about as many conciliar and postconciliar debates as I could. When researching the controversy over Jacques Dupuis’s work at Oxford, I was surp-rised to see stark, public disagreement between two cardinals, Franz König (Vienna) and Joseph Ratzinger, who was then CDF Prefect (the Tablet hosted this tense exchange). The fact that both of these men were veterans of the Council’s reformist “majority” forced me to push past simplistic narratives of “pro” and “anti” Vatican II, or a polemical and artificial division into a party of “continuity” and one of “discontinuity”. But how could I explain the complex resulting picture to students? I developed four paradigms of conciliar reception. They are broad and general – further taxonomies within them can certainly be made. But students have found them useful, and I present them as tools to try to help shed light on the reception of the Council in our Very Short Introduction. The first is a Traditionalist Para-digm that is suspicious of or rejects the Council. Second, from a progressive direction, the Failure Paradigm is suspicious of or rejects Vatic-an II as an unsuccessful or betrayed reform attempt. The third and fourth paradigms en-compass more mainstream responses. The Spirit-Event Paradigm accepts or celebrates the Council, but with a prioritisation of the spirit of Vatican II, an insistence on doctrinal change and innovation and an understanding of the Council as primarily an “event”. Finally, the Text-Continuity Paradigm accepts or celeb-rates Vatican II, but with a prioritisation of the final texts, an emphasis on doctrinal continu-ity and an understanding of the Council as pri-marily the promulgation of a body of teaching.
Stephen and I are far too young to have experienced the exciting and at times unsettling first few decades of conciliar reception. But as we prepared to write this book, we realised that we need not just rely on the vivid accounts of those older than us (printed or oral; academic or not), many of whom have now passed on. We ourselves had lived through very significant events and trends in the reception of Vatican II: the Dupuis controversy and Dominus Iesus, the election of Cardinal Ratzinger as Benedict XVI, the increasing shift in Catholic population and vitality to the Global South, Pope Francis’s project of synodality, and, tragically but most consequentially, the successive waves of the clerical sex abuse revelations. Additionally, unbeknownst to us, Tradit-ionis Custodes (2021) lay just around the corner – a reversal of Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum (2007) and a vigorous assertion of papal prerogatives regarding the interpretation and implementation of ecumenical councils.
Since this reflection is not co-written, I can unreservedly praise Stephen. He refuses to partition himself into one corner of the Church. His “acknowledgements” section at the beginning of our short book spans the id-eological spectrum: Stephen thanks conversation partners ranging from Fr Philip Kennedy, a progressive theologian and Schillebeeckx expert, to Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society. Stephen’s spirit of openness and generosity is unfortunately rare in our polarised times. It is this spirit that allows him to tackle successfully one of the most neuralgic issues in contemporary Catholicism – the liturgical reforms of Vatican II and their implementation – while producing conclusions and suggestions that challenge everyone. Most importantly, Stephen’s work nudges us towards deeper spiritual and intellectual reflection rather than triumphalism or cynicism. It is in this “spirit” – if you will – that I hope our book on Vatican II is received.
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