TESTIMONIES ABOUT VATICAN II

As a student in Europe in the early 1960's I had the privilege of visiting Rome several times during those exciting years. But, when I arrived at Rome in 1960, I was disappointed with Blessed John XXIII's dry run for the upcoming council, that is, with the pope's First Diocesan Synod of Rome which was a disheartening event for anyone looking for aggiornamento in the church. Pope John had announced the upcoming council on January 25, 1959, but there was no hint of aggiornamento in the Roman Synod.

Yet, constant surprises emerged from the Second Vatican Council as, in session after session, word of the robust dialogues among the Fathers of the council spread quickly from Rome throughout the world. The good news emerging from the Council is best expressed in the title of one of its most significant Constitutions, Gaudium et spes, Joy and Hope. Catholics wanted desperately to minister in a church where the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth could be proclaimed in terms that would speak credibly to a world hungry for wisdom about God and the human community. The word from Rome was encouraged those who harbored theses desires.

The joys and hopes of the Vatican II era made me appreciate the example of those who worked so dedicatedly at the council, theologians like Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger, Henri de Lubac, and John Courtney Murray, hierarchy like Joseph Cardinal Suenens, Albert Cardinal Meyer and John Cardinal Dearden and the still living Bishop Remi de Roo, who brought Vatican II's teachings so fully to his diocese of Victoria. These participants and many more continue to inspire countless Christians for whom Vatican II was such a momentous event.

Yet, amid the joy and hope of this Vatican II era there abides a certain sadness for the inheritors of the wisdom of this council. Is there not too little willingness in many quarters to engage in respectful and prayerful dialogue about how to interpret, in the light of the signs of the times, the teachings of a council that so many of us have been fortunate enough to live through it and its aftermath?
Keith J. Egan - kegan@saintmarys.edu
Saint Mary's College and the University of Notre Dame

I remember Vat II very well and followed it avidly while attending Calvin College and Princeton Theological Seminary. It looked as if the liberalising inclusive socially sensitive theological devleopments of the 1950s would crest forward among catholics. There was much excitment. A whole new world was opening up to us younger theologians and hope abounded.

It broke my heart but confirmed my views of the church as a feeble human institution occasionally used by God to advance the Kingdom of God. How quickly the windows were closed and the new life absorbed in the blotter paper of bureaucracy.

When I got to Australia in 1979, I teamed up with many Catholic scholars and teachers who had been very much shaped in the hope of Vat II. They now of course as old as I am look back with dismay at dashed hopes and the pain of dealing with an organisation in decline and now disrepute.

We will never know what would have happened if the windows had been kept open and fresh ways of being faithful allowed to emerge. Now so far from being open there is little hope so in Advent we say, Come Lord come Quickly.
Gary D. Bouma - gary.bouma@monash.edu
Monach University, Australia          

The responses so far have been fascinating and helpful. Two research projects I am undertaking are relevant to your discussion of Vatican II.

(1) For February, I am preparing a presentation at a local symposium on Vatican II here at Saint Joseph's College. At first, I was working with trying to better name the post-Council polarity that so many have tried to name: integriste vs progressive, conservative vs progressive, neo-Augustinian vs neo-Thomist, ressourcement vs. aggiornamento, etc. I think it is important to understand that this polarity and many of the tensions noted in the Council's conflicted aftermath flow from divergences within the temporary "majority" at the Council, not from the continued influence, or control of the levers of power, by the so-called "minority." I had settled on the last polarity [ressourcement vs aggiornamento] until I realized the vastness of the topic and its hermeneutical subtlety. It cannot be explained on personal character, ambition, power, etc. It centers on profound theological divergences. So instead I will offer at the symposium a more modest sketch of significant theological personalities in relation to Vatican Ii. But I continue to work on the bigger set of issues.

For the February symposium, in "Like Paul and Barnabas, Vatican II and the Parting of Friends," I will do a sketch of theological friendship/colleagueship as they converge and diverge in connection with the Council, both before and after: Teilhard and de Lubac, de Lubac and von Balthasar, von Balthasar and Rahner, von Balthasar and Kung, Kung and Ratzinger, Ratzinger and Kasper, Montini and Maritain, Montini and Guitton, etc. Beyond the much-discussed von Balthasar-Rahner tension, I think an interesting case can be made for the particular significance of the von Balthasar-Kung-Ratzinger nexus as illustrative of the conflicted Church of the past four decades. I also allude to a superb book by Newsome describing the parting of friends in the Wilberforce/Manning circle at the time of the Oxford movement. I have enough anecdotal material to illustrate some important points about the convergence and divergence of the so-called "majority" at Vatican II, emphasis of course on the theologians and their sometimes temporary alliances. If any readers of this listserv have material in connection with this theme I would appreciate hearing about it.

But this brings me back to the bigger set of issues. Why did some of the most significant theologians of the majority at the Council [Danielou, de Lubac, Ratzinger] and others who did not attend [von Balthasar, Maritain, Bouyer] so quickly express themselves "negatively—sometimes sharply so—about the changes after Vatican II, even though these would have been unthinkable without the impact of nouvelle theologie"? Negative assessments of these theologians, although common, are unwarranted and misleading. For example, it has been said of de Lubac that "After 1970, he found some post-conciliar developments unsettling and became increasingly fearful and even reactionary." I find this interpretation incredible. Around this of course is the split between Concillium and Communio.

In Hans Boersma's speculation on the "sensibility" of the "analogy of truth" or "sacramental epistemology", these "rebel" theologians form neither a middle group between the Modernists and neo-Thomists nor a transitional theology on the way to a post-Council theology a la Kung. This "analogy of truth" demands an eschatological turn. This "analogy of truth", so much at the heart of von Balthasar's life work, explains his influence after the Council. It also explains his unexpected patience with Kung. Much more could be said here.

(2) I am also working on a much larger study of the theology of orders which resonates throughout with the themes of the hermeneutics of Vatican II and its aftermath. I look for a theology of orders that is coherent with the scriptures, with the whole Catholic tradition in time [especially the third century!] and in space [inclusive of high church Anglicans], and in the light of the texts of Vatican II. Particularly I want to situate the re-emergence of the diaconate at the Council into a "re-sourced" theology of orders. An important source that I have discovered for doing this are the writings of high church Anglicans from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Tavard has been a guide here. The high church Anglicans distinguished the esse of the Church from its bene esse. The bene esse is the tripartite form of the orders of bishop, presbyter, deacon which Vatican II brought back into prominence for contemporary Catholic theology of the Church. However, the Church's esse is still stretching to reach for and find its bene.

I have adopted for my own guidance a quote from Bishop Stephen Gardiner, Thomas Cranmer's primary theological sparring partner: "A Catholic faith is a universal faith taught and preached through all ages and so received and believed agreeably and consonant to the Scripture, testified by such as in all ages have in their writings given knowledge thereof, which be the tokens of and marks of true Catholic Faith."

This is useful for assessing contemporary theology and its long-run viability/reception. It also resonates with the thought of Yves Congar on true and false reform and on tradition and traditions. I also take note of the ecclesiological work of Christopher Ruddy and Nicholas M. Healy as they relate to catholicity through time. If we are going to understand Vatican II, we must relate it to the entire history of the Church. Teilhard said somewhere that you don't understand anything until the story is over. But our story is not over, thus all judgments about Vatican II must be tentative.

One last comment in this vein. In volume one of Rahner's Theological Investigations, in an article on the future form of the course of study of theology, which was based on a conversation Rahner had with von Balthasar in the 30's, Rahner laments the lack of a theology of the actual history of the Church, warts and all, the way it actually happened or the way it can be found to have happened. Isn't it the lack of such a theology, connected with a lack of a theology of history, that helps explain our quandaries with understanding Vatican II and its aftermath? Don't all things human go badly in the end [Gustav Weigel, S.J.]? Why did we expect otherwise? Should we have? Taylor's views on the secular help here. Tracey Rowland's on culture also help. Maybe we need to be followers of Augustine after all!
Dan Sheridan - dsherida@sjcme.edu
Saint Joseph’s College of Maine, 278 Whites Bridge Road, STANDISH, ME 04084

I have a somewhat unique experience of Vatican II. I did not become Catholic until 1998, and before that was only dimly aware of the Council. My first impression of Vatican II, which still continues, is that the conflict and concern over the Council is out of proportion to the substance of its teachings. There is nothing in the teachings themselves that justified or even envisioned the kind of experimentation, disruption and disaffection that roiled the postconciliar American Catholic Church. The more I study the Church, in fact, the more I tend to agree with Greeley's contention that it was not Vatican II so much but Humanae Vitae that has had an enduring effect on American Catholics. The effect of the Council is not an effect of the council, you might say, but of something else.

The most far-reaching idea coming out of Vatican II was the recognition of religious liberty and the rights of conscience, but its effect was not direct or substantive but sociological and institutional. This dramatically lowered the boundary between Catholic and Protestant, and the Church and the secular world more generally. Protestants were no longer headed for hell in rebellion to the truth, but became our separated brethren, in churches that had true elements of sanctity and salvation. As a Protestant convert, I am immensely grateful for this recognition, which helped to draw me into the Catholic faith. But lowering the boundary to Protestantism had unforeseen consequences on the internal character of Catholicism, because the rights of conscience now had to apply to Catholics as well. If Protestants can disagree with the Church magisterium and not be condemned, then so can Catholics. To be sure, this creates an enduring problem of authority, since if Catholics can disagree with the magisterium and not be condemned, then they can disagree when the magisterium proscribes them for disagreeing. But the effect is even deeper, because the presence of multiple, mutually tolerant stances on religious questions creates a situation of uncertainty about the true source of religious truth.

The "real" Catholic faith becomes, to a certain extent, a matter of contest between left and right, academic and bishop, or even bishop and bishop. The unity of the Catholic Church begins to look a lot like the diversity of Protestant churches. I was certainly surprised, as one who followed Newman into the Church attracted by its truth claims, to find that some Catholic intellectuals and many religious espoused the same dissenting ideas as the liberal Protestants. The unintended result of asserting religious liberty, in other words, is that the Catholic Church internalized, to a certain extent, the Protestant reformation. It is not surprising, therefore, and is certainly healthy, that the magisterium has strongly reasserted centralized authority and structures since that time. But the enduring effect of this change in Catholic self-understanding--the problem of how to engage the counterplay of assent and dissent while valuing both the freedom of conscience and the infallible teaching of the magisterium--will not be solved by social control, and is something we have only begun to work out.
Paul Sullivan - sullins@cua.edu
Georgetown University, Washington, DC

I was with a group of people in Rome, this Fall, on a Vatican II study trip that included attendance at the papal mass announcing the Year of Faith. The group was struggling with many of the same questions that have been posted here and are often heard. As a group we were invited to a conclusion that was heartening and which coincides with my own research.

As we are all busy watching the theologians and magesterium follow - or not follow - the teachings of the Council, it occurred to me that at the mass the pope was not looking at the magisterium. From his vantage point, he was looking at the gathered faithful, most of whom were laity. It is to the laity, I believe, that we must look to see the unfolding of the theology of the Council.

One of the major findings of the "Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership Project," which I directed, was that pastoral leaders are operating out of a strong Vatican II theology. In our parishes we see multiple lay ministries, often 60, 70, 80 different active ministries. When we stop to look, each of these is rooted in one of the conciliar documents. Our approach to communal life in our parishes is highly invested in communio, so much so that I recently did a workshop on the four Constitutions that focused entirely in the role of the laity in the documents and how that has been lived out since.

So, all I want to say is that fifty years later, while theologians are doing the very necessary work of interpreting the intentions of the Council, the laity have brought Vatican II to life in a way in which there is simply no going back.
Marti R. Jewell - mjewell@udallas.edu University of Dallas

I was a theology student at the Université de Fribourg (Switzerland) during the latter sessions of the Council. During Council breaks, we often had Bishops stay with us in Fribourg for a brief get-away, and often invited them to reflect upon the Council. It was fascinating and engaging to have that kind of proximity to some of the Conciliar conversations.

About the Second Vatican Council, there are three pieces that stand out in my idiosyncratic reckoning—and a fourth of a different kind:

First, in Lumen gentium, there was the move to treat the entire People of God before treating the hierarchy. This is not minor. Infallibility could even be the mark of understandings arrived at by the entire People of God. The Church is the People who are served (led and guided) by the hierarchy. In any social structure there are ways in which the leaders are moved by the community as well community moved by its leaders—and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in the case of the Church. That reciprocity is crucial to healthy institutionality! It is still under construction.

Second, there is the understanding that the entire Catholic community is the celebrant of the Eucharist, and the presbyter is the presider over the community's celebration [Sacrosanctum concilium]. The recent translations of the Eucharistic prayers (the formality and return to the Latin grammatical structure of very long periodic sentences) do not help a community to pray with its words. And the up-and-down movements of the gathered community, rather than co-standing with the presider, make it quite difficult for the gathered community to understand that it is celebrating Eucharist, not just watching the presbyter be the celebrant.

Third, in Nostra Aetate there is the stunning confession that God had never abrogated the Covenant he made with the Jews. That Covenant is still in place. Are there, then, two Covenants, or one Covenant whose connectedness has yet to be accurately understood? [There is an interesting proposal in Michael S. Kogan's book, Opening the Covenant: A Jewish Theology of Christianity, that in Christianity the Covenant God made with the Hebrew world is now extended to the whole world, without replacing his Covenant with the Hebrews.]

Fourth, here's a memory different in character. During the Council (fall semester of 1964) I took a course in Church History, taught by the renowned Dominican Church historian, Pere Marie-Herve Vicaire. Our Conciliar excitement was running very high. That continued to be the case when I returned to St. Louis and relocated after that for three years at GTU in Berkeley. I had forgotten Pere Vicaire's reserve. But it soon returned!

Pere Vicaire noted that there was a very small number of Church Councils called not to address specific problems, but to move the Church forward in changing times. He said that the immediate responses to those few Councils were filled with excitement and prophetic newness. But, he continued, the Ecclesia's establishment was soon deeply wary of the changes, and some strong reserve and active resistance set in.

Someone asked: "Did that end, or did it postpone the Conciliar reforms?" "Postpone," he said. "How long did it take to resume configuring Church for a new age?" "Until," he said. "the majority of ecclesial leaders were born after the Council, and had not experienced the pre-Conciliar Church."

With that in mind, I note the new organizations of priests, largely in that age group, now in five countries: Austria, Germany, Ireland, Australia, and the United States. There is some prophetic energy emerging. Prophetic energy is, of course, never completely unambiguous. Some of it is arising in the United States in support of religious women.

I, for one, await the full implementation of the Second Vatican Council. I know that I shall not live to see its more complete realization. I hope to applaud from some other very good Place!
Bernard J. Lee - bleesm@stmarytx.edu
St. Mary's University, San Antonio, Texas

What follows are two observations regarding the reception of Vatican II, neither of which is particularly theological or scholarly. They are simply reflections on my own experience, which may or may not be typical of the rest of the church.

After finishing the semester and grading exams from the 100-level introductory course that most students have to take in order to graduate, I wonder once again whether Vatican II is relevant to young people. It seems as if, in their minds, it is already ancient history, one of those councils like Chalcedon or Trent whose dates and issues and pronouncements they can't seem to keep straight. These young people have known only the church that has evolved since the Council – a church where nearly everyone who attends Mass receives communion, where there are lay people performing all sorts of ministerial roles in parishes, where there is a sort of personality-cult surrounding the pope, where people do disagree publicly with bishops and priests, where "commerce" with non-Catholics is no longer described as a mortal danger to one's soul. "The world changes," they say, "so why all the fuss about something that happened 50 years ago? Even if it was a major event then, it's history now."

At the same time as the attitude of young people makes me wonder about the relevance of Vatican II, the creeping clericalism that seems to be infecting the church points to the danger of forgetting it. Lumen gentium describes the church as the People of God – lay and ordained together – who make concrete the mystery of Christ's continued salvific presence in the world. Other documents promote the essential role of the laity in the life of the Church. Lay people have taken up the charge to be active participants, and that active participation in ministry has definitely helped fill in the gaps left by the shortage of clergy. Still, there seems to be an ever-stronger push to reassert the authority and the privilege of the clergy over against the laity. That push manifests itself in the pomp and circumstance added to liturgies that exalts the person of the minister rather than the sacramental action. It manifests itself in the actions of pastors who dissolve parish councils and reduce or remove lay leadership of RCIA programs. It manifests itself in disdain for the wisdom and the practical experience of the poorer members of the church even as the wealthy are courted with special attention.

This is not a blanket accusation against clergy; there are many men in orders who welcome and encourage collaboration with the laity in the task of being church. It is simply an observation that some clergy seem to be very concerned with re-establishing a strong distinction between themselves and the laity and with re-establishing the "father knows best" mentality that was prevalent before the council.
Linda S. Harrington - Linda.Harrington@briarcliff.edu
Briar Cliff University, Sioux City IA 51104

Despite the views and research of one of our contributors, as a member of an international Roman Catholic Congregation of apostolic women religious, I can tell you that Vatican II has profoundly shaped and continues to shape my life. It all began when I was a senior in high school. My lay history teacher had us read Pacem in Terris and watch any available TV pieces on the Council. We saw a new Church being born before our eyes and we wanted to be part of it. I recall that after seeing the Council attendees on TV and studying about ecumenism in class , a few of us organized a day of ecumenical dialogue at our high school for over 150 youth from surrounding public high schools. To this day I recall how that dialogue called us to see one another in new ways and I know the spirit and vision of the Council prepared me in years to come to teach and love graduate students from many Christian denominations, from other religious traditions, and from no religious affiliation at all.

I entered my Congregation right after my senior year of high school 1963 - right in the middle of the Council. I know firsthand about the rapidity of liturgical change which issued from the time of Vatican II - for example I was received as a Novice in 1964 in Latin and professed the following year in English! With all my community members I did read and study the documents of Vatican II and we searched for what we as apostolic religious were called to live "in the world" and as "the people of God." Because of the Council, I got to study theology and to spend my life calling others to the universal vision of holiness in Lumen Gentium . With others I got to read and study the bible for the first time and to come to know the good news of Jesus Christ in ways that my parents and their parents never had the chance. I got to study theology in ways women never had before and to discover treasures long hidden from women and other laity. New visions of sacramental theology, ethics and incarnational spirituality from the theologians of Vatican II nourish my faith to this day.

Most of all, three principles of Vatican II live deeply in my heart amid the overwhelmingly bleak political times in our world and church today. I pray and hope that someday we will live in communities and countries of true dialogue, collegiality and subsidiarity.
Mary Heather MacKinnon - mhmssnd@gmail.com
Burlington, Ontario, CA

This past week (December 11) at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus there was a panel on American women religious entitled: "Call and Response: How American Catholic Sisters Shaped the Church Since Vatican II." I stayed home. As I expected, it got some press coverage and I read exactly what I thought I might hear. In an article in US Catholic, the speakers extolled American nuns as having "literally lived their lives on the front lines of issues and debates" in church and society since Vatican II. That may be so for some, but it is simply not the case that all sisters lived their lives in this way. To buy into that image of nuns on the ramparts is neither accurate nor worthy of women religious, who tend to be lumped together as if they were all cut from the same cloth. Perhaps the most truthful statement made that night was by Sister Doris Gottemoeller--a one time superior of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. She cautioned that often women religious inspire a temptation to nostalgia or selective memory, which does not reflect a complete picture of the kind of "response" to church and world that people sometimes have in mind.

I was born in 1966 and educated in parochial schools by Sisters of St. Joseph of Springfield. I grew up to be a teacher and church historian. Today I work for a religious order of men as an archivist. When I was in academe I did a small research project with my students over the years. I asked them to engage in an oral history project with women religious to obtain their views of Catholic life before, during and after Vatican II. We cast a wide net. A few sisters spoke with my students from overseas. Some spoke to small groups of two or three. Most spoke to individual sisters from various parts of the United States and from a number of different religious institutes. I also did some interviews myself. Together, we collected about a hundred testimonies. Here's what we found:

Recollections of Vatican II for many women religious is sketchy at best. Some never read the documents. Some read a few; others were invited by their congregations to delve more deeply into the texts. This usually occurred several years after the Council closed.

The impact of Vatican II on their lives was given almost universal affirmation. When asked what that might look like in practice, sisters were often hard pressed to come up with a specific example.

Typically those communities of sisters who thought their lives were somehow influenced--even transformed--by Vatican II had positive things to say about the leadership in their communities at the time of the Council. It was the leadership that urged sisters to study and make the conciliar documents part of what it meant to be a sister.

Typically, those who claimed that the Council had limited or no influence on their daily lives did not report favorably on (or were at least indifferent to) the leadership in their communities at the time.

Often those sisters who were in teaching sisterhoods remarked that they were too busy to follow the conciliar proceedings. There was no TV in the convent. There was a diocesan newspaper shared between a dozen or more people. One sister said: I rose early and went to daily Mass, then taught until three in the afternoon. Then I taught the public school kids for CCD until 4, did errands, and was home by five for supper. I corrected papers until eight when it was time for me to go to sleep. On the weekends, I held catechism classes (or did some other pastoral work), went to church, and made visitations to the sick. I had no time for Vatican II or anything else!

Other times sisters reported that their leadership or immediate superiors chided the conciliar proceedings and the bishops in Rome. "That's for men in Rome, not us here." "Whatever they decide won't really touch us here; besides, our work is more important!"

Two women religious who I interviewed (SSJ's) once described how the whole community of some 900 sisters was gathered for a meeting with the bishop. His job was to try and explain what it was that was happening during Vatican II. He spoke to a blue dot at the back of the room. Afterward the two sisters--both of whom recalled this event vividly--looked at one another and said in unison: what did he just say?

Needless to say, these interviews changed my perspective on Vatican II and its implementation and absorption by the Catholic community in the United States. Initially I, too, thought nuns were on the front lines of getting the word on Vatican II into the consciousness of lay people. But I am re-evaluating that as I broaden my knowledge of the history of Vatican II.

A few conclusions: Firstly, no nun is the same when it comes to Vatican II. In this respect, Sister Doris Gottemoeller's remark is spot on. We have to differentiate between religious communities and not think of nuns as walking in lockstep. 'To do otherwise, it seems to me, does these very diverse groups of women a dis-service by erasing their unique charisms, outlooks, actions, etc. Secondly, we must be careful in assuming nuns were on the front lines of implementing Vatican II in this country. Some were, but not all. And lastly, making nuns out to be gate keepers of tradition is perilous because it forces them to shoulder blame for some pretty dramatic failings in understanding the meaning of Vatican II, both in its immediate aftermath as well as today. Granted, some are responsible for these failings (as well as successes), but others are not. We have to be particular in our discourse about that.
Patrick Hayes - pjhayesphd@gmail.com
Redemptorist Archives, Brooklyn, NY

Here's my take on what many describe as a kind of retreating going on in today's church from the spirit of Vatican II. I want to avoid the simplistic bromides where the "left" says to the "right" that you never accepted the Council's spirit, and the latter say to the former, "your innovations" go well beyond the texts.

I perceive that the hermeneutic of communio that is offered as the key to the Council's spirit (the 1985 Synod of Bishops, the 1992 CDF document to the bishops) is an echo of the Theological Commission's original position, when S. Tromp was its unique Secretarius, to simply reformulate the Mystici Corporis encyclical into a working schema. Both the encyclical and the defense of "communio" indeed ensure unity within a heterogeneous group such as a world-wide church, but the only manner to achieve it is the exercise of a unifying principle of authority.

But was this the final intention of Lumen Gentium? So whom can we ask? Ask the person who orchestrated the document into existence? Ask the person who joined Tromp as a co-Secretarius but in fact replaced him, even to the extent of eventually gaining Octaviani's trust. Ask Msgr. Gérard Philips of Louvain. Check Congar's exhaustive behind-the-scenes Mon journal du Concile I et II to determine how Philips, this Fleming from Limburg who taught on the francophone side of Louvain, wrote a schema that got out of Committee and into the hands of bishops who voted it. And what did Philips say was his own hermeneutic in drafting Lumen Gentium? His lecture notes, upon returning to Louvain after the Council, are in his L'Église et son mystère au deuxième Concile du Vatican, and the answer is clear and unprejudiced—his aim being "sans supplement de vues personnelles."

It was necessary to counterbalance the thrust of Mystici Corporis with People of God, and more than counterbalance, to move People of God into chapter two of the schema, immediately after Church-as-Trinitarian-mystery. Chapters I and II are the two shutters of a dyptic, les volets du dyptique, he calls them. (There's an altar dyptic in Sint-Pieters Kerk in Leuven that was likely his inspiration for the image.)

The mystery of the church, lodged within the Trinitarian mystery (chap. 1) requires a complimentary exposé that is absolutely indispensible. The Church's mystery is not an abstraction but a concrete historical reality. So Chapter II is not simply the next idea in Lumen Gentium, coming after Mystery; rather, it is the same thing in concrete description. Inner and outer realities are one. The Church is between the times, entre-temps, between the Lord's Ascension and His Parousia. And his definition of church: le peuple de Dieu en marche. He never used the word communio as the hermeneutic. It's People of God.
Edward Jeremy Miller - miller.e@gmc.edu
Gwynedd Mercy College, Gwynedd Valley, PA 19437-0901

Three sets of comments echo some of my own sentiments - those of Marti Jewell, E. Jeremy Miller and Gary Bouma. Let me start with the last.

Vatican II sought a greater unity of Christians. Rome's control of the most recent translation of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal transgresses the achievements of the previous translations and the common lectionary. This is to say nothing of its violation of the principle that the conferences of Bishops hold a primary role in translation and inculturation - and to quote from Sacrosantum concilium, Rome "does not wish to impose a rigid uniformity." Come, Lord quickly come!

On a more positive note in my ministry as teacher over presider. I just completed an ongoing adult education series on the Council. We are reviewing all of the critical documents - eventually perhaps all sixteen. We have considered Revelation, Liturgy and the Church. Over the years of addressing many of the same people, I have made reference to these documents. The people remain engaged, excited and hopeful about the possibilities for the Church in the world today - in light of the documents, often not in light of the hierarchy or some parish experiences, particularly with priests born after the Council.

Again, as teacher, I have witnessed the same kind of engagement from Honors undergraduate students and graduate students. While their's is the "Church of Vatican II" the documents, and the history of the Council, engender in them a deeper commitment to be the kind of church they find in the documents.

While I find it frustrating that the process of change can seem to be derailed, a conviction about the Council as the work of God's Spirit, and the continued enthusiastic reception of the Council by those who actually study its teachings, gives me great hope.
Frank Berna - berna@lasalle.edu
La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA

When Vatican II began I was a seminarian studying theology at Catholic University in Washington, DC. Pope John XXIII's announcement of a council several years earlier had a minor impact on us: what could possibly change? In our eyes the Church was perfect, everywhere the same forever and ever, amen. But that all began to change as the council opened, along with the eyes of my heart and mind. Old voices and new voices in the theology department reflected the changing face of this Church in need of "reform and renewal." There was Msgr. Joseph "Butch" Fenton, our ultra-conservative fundamental theology professor ("Extra ecclesia nulla salus, lads"), who was also a peritus at the Council ("There was this beady-eyed theologian sitting across from me: Yves Congar"). And there was Roland Murphy, Patrick Granfield, Sean Freyne representing a breath of fresh air coming in through the theological/scriptural windows. (Sean Freyne, a visiting professor for one semester, would read us Xavier Rynne-style letters in class from a friend of his at the Council.)

I remember it as an electric time, exciting, rich with the possibilities of newness and change. This was, of course, a combination of youth, cultural change, social conflict along with a renewing church. We found ourselves well outside the seminary walls as we joined civil rights demonstrations and became involved in peace and justice work (with Protestants and Jews!)--anticipating the message of the Church in the Modern World. We greeted progressive theologians like rock stars. (I remember crowding into a huge auditorium--was it the gymnasium?--with hundreds of others at Georgetown University to hear Hans Kung reiterate his call for reform and renewal in the Church to the continued cheers and applause of the crowd.)

By the time the Council closed I had left the seminary, spent time working in Mexico, and would soon be married--choosing to be involved in both the church and the modern world as a lay person (the early years of what would become a trend in the post-Vatican II Church). The excitement of the Council continued as I began graduate studies in the Religious Education Department at Catholic U. with Gerard Sloyan, Berard Marthaler, Kevin Seasoltz and others. The decades of work in biblical studies, the liturgical movement, and social justice had come to a fruition in the Council and began to be a reality for the wider church--a church centered, not upon itself, but upon its service to the world, especially the poor and marginalized.

That vision of the Church as a People of God, a Pilgrim People open to "the signs of the times" has been a life-preserver in the stormy seas of recent years. The Msgr. Fentons of the pre-Vatican II Church seem to have won out with an entrenched "outside-the-church-no-salvation" mentality, refusing to see or hear the working of the Spirit in society. Will we ever see the real fruits of Vatican II again--such as the 1968 Medellin Conference, the Challenge of Peace and Economic Justice For All consultative process and letters? Will prophetic priests such as Roy Bourgeois be affirmed by a prophetic church rather than excommunicated? And there is much more to say. I know that the enthusiasms of youth cannot be repeated, but a more open and attentive church is still possible. (My wife sees the enthusiasms and disappointments of the Council as parallel to the euphoria of Barack Obama's election followed by the disappointments of his first term. Will the second term bring new opportunities? Will Vatican II have a "second term"?) We need to open those windows again and let in the fresh air.
Art Kubick - akubick@gmail.com
Providence, Rhode Island

I would like to put the issue of Vatican II and a crisis of authority into a broader context as suggested by Charles Taylor in his magnum opus, A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007). He notes that the Church in the West, like the surrounding society, was just coming out of an "Age of Mobilization" (into an "Age of Authenticity") in the middle of the twentieth century, when Vatican II was announced. In the best mobilized sectors during the Age of Mobilization, Catholics had emphasized the "rechristianization of society." Underway in the 1950s was a search for more realistic alternatives, although the overall stance was still fearful of and opposed to modernity. In Catholic thinking at large, a "Christendom" model still prevailed as the hope for the future. This was represented also at the Second Vatican Council, but the Council brought the contradictions of authoritarianism in the Christian life to the surface, irreversibly (Taylor, 466). Its open, non-condemnatory attitude toward the world inhabited by modern men and women was a sharp turn from trying to restore "a previously established . . . Church order" (ibid. 765).

Taylor also notes the ironic timing of Humanae vitae just as the sexual revolution of the Sixties was taking place and how it was emblematic of a "fit of clerical nerves" re authority that followed Vatican II (ibid. 503). But he does not suggest that wise and prudent managing of the transition by Catholics could have accommodated "a secular age" victoriously for the Church. Rather, he counsels patient dialogue between progressivists and traditionalists, without either side supposing it has "the answer" and discrediting the whole of what the other side has to say. And he supplies an understanding, a partial but widely applicable interpretation, of where we have come from, so we can better deal with the present situation.
Paul Misner - paul.misner@marquette.edu
Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI

Comment:
In response to Paul Misner and Charles Taylor, the difficulty with dialogue between progressives and traditionalists is often that the progressives are willing to change their minds when discussing with others (you can't be progressive without being willing to change your mind), but traditionalists too often are not. I was once invited to dialogue with a conservative priest, and before we got to the topic at hand, I said that I would be willing to change my mind if he could prove me wrong, and I asked if he would be willing to do the same. He said he would not, which quickly put an end to that discussion.
Joe Martos jmartos@bellarmine.edu
Bellarmine University

14. The secularization age
Lluis Oviedo

I too feel that the Vatican II is part of history, that 50 years is a long time in our culture, and that many things have changed since then.

This is quite obvious for somebody who was a theology student in the seventies and has experienced the full reception of the Council but more than 30 years later feels an almost epochal distance with all of it. It is relatively easy to extend a list of 'what has changed' and how the Council documents could not cope or even foresee all this. Starting with secularization. Perhaps this is not much a problem for many colleagues in USA, but it's a critical issue in Western Europe. The Council time was a time of splendor for the Church: full seminaries and parishes... Now it's like having gone through a geological age in wich emptiness is the main trait. We need a very different orientation and ideas to cope with all this. And what about the impact of science? What about the awareness of scandals and bad management in the Church? What about the very critical conscience of most of the faithful? All of this was almost completely absent in the sixties!

I find it right to celebrate the memory of the Vatican II, at the condition of not staying fixed there, and try to move on: do not look at the finger pointing to the stars, when we could look to a much brighter view!
Lluis Oviedo - loviedo@antonianum.eu, loviedo2@hotmail.com
Pontificia Universita Antonianum, 00185 Roma - Italia

15. Let us not lose heart
Elsie Miranda

My contribution following a wonderful thread of commentaries invites us all to reflect on the impact that Vatican II has had on the Global Church, particularly south of the equator. For example without Vatican II, particularly Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humane there would not have been a Medellin, and without Medellin, the "preferential option for the poor" may not have generated the liberating theologies that call the Church, as People of God, to claim their common humanity, and inherent dignity regardless of their socio-economic and political realities. For this call to justice, men and women were martyred, in solidarity with the poor. And the poor rose up to be leaven, and to recognize the corporate responsibility we all share to live one commandment: Love of God, through love of neighbor and self.

In in the wake of Vatican II may we not lose heart in our common ground as a diverse and pluralistic People of God and remember that after Pius XII came John XXIII.
Elsie Miranda - emiranda@mail.barry.edu
Barry University

I've read through the contributions three times and confess that I am deeply moved by them, informed by them and illuminated by people who know the council far better than I do. Nearly half the contributors I know and have read for years, and many I do not, but one and all, thanks.

I am especially happy to see the Council taken so seriously intellectually, pastorally and personally. In connection with a course I have been teaching entitled "Catholicism Today," I have been reading againthe documents that I found and still find ground breaking: Dignitatis humanae, Nostra aetate and the decree on ecumenism. I've also been reading the section on the episcopacy in Lumen gentium [#18-25] and sections on the papacy in that and other documents. The documents are as fresh today as they were when I read them forty five years ago, and as challenging. Vatican II was certainly the ecclesial "event" and "experience" of my Catholic lifetime as it seems to have been of yours.

Like several of you I have been disappointed by the aftermath of the Council and especially by the papal undermining of some key elements of its teaching. I am not disappointed with the church but I am with the leadership since the end of the Council in 1965. Thank God Catholics go about leading their Christian lives no matter what foollshness the pope and bishops may be up to. Starting with that disappointment I read the documents with an eye to understanding both its success and failure. Its success is its definitive recognition that the church is the Catholic people. Its [i.e. the Council's) failure has led to the perilous state in which the church continues its journey today, gaining thousands and losing millions: the Council insisted that the pope is infallible, is the church's head, its chief executive with universal jurisdiction over all Catholics and, in the absurd proposition of Innocent and Benedict, over every creature. The pope, in mythic terms, is Peter redivivus. Alas, the papal monarchy was celebrated by Vatican II rather than curbed by it.

So far as I can see, at this late date in my work and life, the pope isn't Peter or even a semblance. And the bishops are not successors to the Twelve. Neither Jesus nor the Christ established the hierarchy; it is in my view a perfectly natural development from the egg laid by Constantine and Theodosius. The Council, in other words, failed to reform the Church, digging its own grave with its repetition of ultramontane doctrines which were likely seen to be untrue by many of the bishops who voted for them. The Council quite deliberately left us in the quagmire of hierarchical Christendom in order to slip in the redefinition of the church. No genuine and thorough reform of the church will be accomplished until parishes and dioceses become communities, the bishops become in fact a collegium and the bishop of Rome becomes a servant of the church rather than its master. Many of the council fathers could, perhaps only on alternate days, see that the church is a horizontal reality, a community of communities, but, God forgive them, they clung to the Church as a vertical reality. Please don't tell me that it's both. It isn't both either in ideal or in hard, cold reality.

The fathers made a crippling mistake, the same mistake made by the great Leo and his successors, repeated inexcusably by the recent popes (they ought to have known better) who have with varying degrees of intensity espoused the by now inexcusable "tradition" of Leo the Great, Gregory, Innocent, Boniface and the whole row of imperial popes. As admirable as each of these men were in other respects, as soon as they are elected they cease to be in the mix with the rest of us. Verticality. They are bred to it. I fondly hope that the cause of this is a viral ingredient in the Vatican water system. There are wonderful filter systems these days! I certainly hope the papal monarchy has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, and should it, I'm hopeful that She has learned Her lesson by now. So let us keep an eye on the horizon. Maybe these times will have signs after all, and there may be a thorough reform in spite of the water problem.

And, yes, I should be more respectful and appreciative of those who sit on the chair of Moses but I am too old and let down to manage it.
William M. Shea wshea@holycross.edu
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 01610