Clarifying the Council
by JOHN GRONDELSKI
08/01/2010
At the start of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI called for a “rereading of the Second Vatican Council.” Kenneth Whitehead does just that.
The Renewed Church presents readers with the content of the three major conciliar documents on the Church —
Lumen Gentium,
Gaudium et Spes and
Orientalium Ecclesiarum.
The cover photo is a rarity: one that shows Paul VI and the future John Paul II together!
Whitehead, former assistant secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan, confronts readers with
what the Council said, not what some people think it said or want it to say.
Philippe Delhaye, a French moral theologian active during Vatican II, observed that the Council has been replaced by a “meta-Council,” in whose name various deviations were justified.
When one considers what has been done in the name of the “spirit of Vatican II,” one would at least demand an Ignatian testing of spirits if not an outright exorcism.
Whitehead wants readers first and foremost to see what the documents of Vatican II actually do (and do not) say.
“This brings us to the question of what the Council really did do — as contrasted to what many people think ‘the spirit of Vatican II’ stood for,” Whitehead writes. “For, as everybody knows, there has been a good deal of confusion following the Council, not to speak of a number of false starts, and so it is especially important to understand and keep in mind what the Council did do that remains permanently valid.”
Admitting that “there is no good contemporary history of the Council in English,” Whitehead carefully situates what the Council says in historical context, both in terms of what was afoot in the Church as well as how the text itself acquired its final shape. He also notes how conciliar teaching was subsequently implemented and developed by the post-conciliar Popes, especially John Paul II.
The author’s survey of the Council’s documents on the Church hits all the lightning rods:
- how Christ’s Church “subsists” in the Catholic Church (and why the formulation does not mean the Church surrenders her claim to be the true Church); the meaning of “People of God” (which does not exclude the hierarchy);
- the Church’s teaching authority and the duty of the faithful to adhere to it;
- the significance of the universal call to holiness;
- contemporary Mariology;
- episcopal collegiality;
- what
Gaudium et Spes really said about marriage and sexuality (and why it is compatible with
Humanae Vitae);
- atheism, and
- the doctrinal component of personalism in
Gaudium et Spes.
Whitehead also shows
how continuous and consistent Church teaching really is.
For that is the nub of the problem:
As Pope Benedict XVI points out, interpreting Vatican II properly requires a “hermeneutic of continuity,” a method of reading the conciliar magisterium that allows it to be seen within the organic whole of the rest of the Church’s teaching.
Although the book is comprehensive and solid, I would dispute some of Whitehead’s perspectives. His dismissal of
Gaudium et Spes on culture (“quite pedestrian”) ignores the fact that Vatican II was the first truly worldwide (as opposed to European) Council, whose teaching on “the right to culture” remains to be assimilated.
The focus of his last chapter is a bit off-balance: He spends too much time convincing traditional Catholics to embrace Vatican II.
The problem is not so much a few “conservative” Catholics who wish Vatican II might go away like a “bad dream,” but that
most Catholics — including “conservatives” — have yet to learn what Vatican II really taught and put it into action.
That last task is especially pressing now: Ever fewer bishops lived through the Council, and Benedict is
likely the last Pope to have been a Council Father.
[Not just 'likely to have been' - but is! By reason of age alone, even an expert (not a bishop, because bishops would have been older) who was as young as 25 in 1965 - unlikely as that may be - when the council ended, would be 70 years old by now. No one in the 70-80 age range in today's hierarchy (and therefore papabile if only by age) took part in Vatican II.]
Appropriating the Council’s teaching is especially germane today. This book answers that call.
Benedict XVI actually has a double catechetical task as Pope. Not only must he reiterate and reaffirm the essentials of the faith that many Catholics have strayed from, neglected or failed to learn as they should. He must also restate clearly what Vatican-II really said and in what way it renewed aspects of the Church Magisterium in continuity with Tradition, because this has never really been made clear, at least not in catechetical terms to the great majority of Catholics.
It seems as though in the past 50 years, the field was largely left to the the purveyors of the spurious 'spirit of Vatican II' - who have been consistently and stridently aggressive about pushing their interpretation. And so, the general impression about Vatican II is that it brought the 'fun Mass', priests without cassocks, nuns in weird halfway costumes devoid of the dignity that comes with long robes and wimples - nothing but the external signs of an attempt to 'belong' to the world rather than to the Church. Hardly anything about the substantive renewal that it is supposed to mean.
Even John Paul II's attempt to lay down the context for the corect reception of Vatican II in the special synod of 1985 was never translated into a focused presentation of what Vatican II really said.
It did result in the Catechism of the Catholic Church - but that is such a large and formidable document that does not lend itself to easy study, or even easy reading. It almost requires that it be be studied like a text, under the guidance of a teacher. As far as I have seen, it has served mainly like a technical reference book used by authors when they wish to illustrate or cite authority for specific arguments they are making.
The fact that the CDF perceived a need to republish it in a more handy form as a Compendium was a recognition that it has to be much more accessible to the faithful.
And yet, the average Catholic is not likely to have the Compendium as home reading, not even Sunday reading. I have never been a Bible reader, but I never cease to be surprised by the number of Christians who are devoted to Bible reading - and somehow, if they had to choose between reading the Bible as against the Catechism or its Compendium, most would probably choose the Bible.
I wish someone would take the initiative of putting together the highlights of the Magisterium from Vatican II - including its most controversial (because deliberately stated ambiguously) points - in a form similar to the Baltimore Catechism [of venerated memory to Catholic schoolchildren of my generation and earlier ones, few of whom may still be living]. Presented in Q&A format, its simple but beautiful language was guaranteed to imprint the answers in your mind to your dying day.
What could be more simple and beautiful than one of its opening questions:
Why did God make you?
God made me to know him, to love him and to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him for ever in heaven.
When you imbibe that as a six-year-old, it stays with you forever.
'A Vatican Catechism on What Vatican II Teaches Us' is really something one could look forward to. Unless, of course, Benedict XVI decides to undertake a book on the topic, a consummation devoutly to be wished! Only he is capable of it today with the kind of authoritativeness that can and should trump the entire 'Bologna school' version of Vatican II.
P.S. Even better, for maxium impact: a catechetical cycle at the GA to discuss each of the 16 Vatican II documents! The catecheses could then be put together into a book... Without precluding that Papino could still be writing a more scholarly version of it...
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/08/2010 13:47]