An Italian online news-clipping service has posted four articles from Avvenire's April 15th special on the Pope's birthday and papal anniversary. This is one of them, written by someone who has firsthand recollection of the episode he recounts and containing his summary of four main arguments for the Church to confront the reality of the postwar secular and ideologized world in a 1961 paper prepared by the then 24-year-old Prof. Joseph Ratzinger...
Joseph Ratzinger and his prophetic words
about Vatican-II back in 1961
by Mons. Loris Capovilla
Private Secretary to John XXIII
Translated from
April 15, 2012
Left, Mons. Capovilla, now 96, in a photo from 2005; and right, with John XXIII.
Months before the second Vatican Council was scheduled to open, Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, Archbishop of Genoa, invited Cardinal Josef Frings, Archbishop of Cologne, to give a lecture on "Vatican II in the face of modern thought".
Thus the elderly Bishop of Cologne came to Genoa and gave the lecture on November 20, 1961. But with all his work load as bishop, he had asked the help of Prof. Joseph Ratzinger, a young theologian in whom he had confidence, who practically wrote the entire text which was later published under the cardinal's name.
A text which came to the attention of Pope John XXIII who read it, and in a subsequent audience with Cardinal Frings, embraced him and said about the lecture,"These were exactly my intentions in convoking the Council". Cardinal Frings then had to tell him who was the real author of that lecture.
In brief, the text reviewed the profound changes that had taken place in the Church and the world since the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), which showed the need for a new Council that would be shaped by four factors:
1. The experience of unity among men, as influenced by the shrinking of distances by travel, and a standard of living that was now widespread around the world, giving mankind a new physiognomy, that bore the stamp of the technological progress achieved by the Europeans and Americans.
This facilitates the universal 'catholic' mission of the Church, but imposed on her the duty to speak to this new technological civilization with its language in order to be understood.
The negative experience of the two world wars introduced to the non-Christian countries a distrust of Western - and therefore, Christian - civilization. But this would also be anopportunity for the Church to show greater respect for the indigenous spiritual culture of missionary countries, and to manifest its universality.
Not being tied to any particular country or people, the Church could carry out her message of peace more effectively, in that she sees all men as one big family, while still being aware of the particular needs of each people.
This could give rise to interesting applications, as in the liturgy to be better understood by everyone, as well as in episcopal authority, which universalizes the specifics of each diocese into the reality of the universal Church under the leadership of the Bishop of Rome.
2. A second element is the power of technology, which had profoundly changed man's relationship to Nature, the work of God, had had given the world a secular character that was being manifested as a new paganism. It would be the task of the Church to remind the world anew of man's fundamental rights and to explain this in new and understandable way.
3. A third related element is the new faith in science, in which it is sought to explain everything scientifically, even the most intimate of human relations (e.g., the Kinsey Report), and brings a 'modern' attitude towards the very concept of sin (psychoanalysis to explain it away).
Despite all this, man remains the great abyss that no scientific probe can truly plumb, with all his pain and his love and his infinite longing for God. Man continues to feel alone, and needs more than ever those who can teach him anew to understand the reasons for his loneliness.
In this formidable task, the Church must lead men to that rediscovery by updating many of its practices to be more moderate in substance and in form.
4. The last characteristic of the modern world are the ideologies - systems of thought, such as liberalism and Marxism, which seem to have taken the place of faith and religion among the peoples of the West because they offer an explanation of the world that does not
demand any adherence to transcendent realities.
Yet, with all their errors, the apparent triumph of ideologies has also led men to aspire to something concrete and valid. It is the task of the Church to uncover the eternal values stifled by all these ideologies and to place them in the right context so that men can once more acknowledge these values and, at the same time, regain trust in the Church.
And because Marxism is an ideology of hope and of social justice on earth,ch must be able to present in new ways the salvation that Christ represents and offers mankind, not just for eternal life, but even on the order of earthly concerns.
On the other hand, liberalism zealously respects and defends freedom, and has sensitized man today to an awareness of freedom, including individual freedom. The Church must therefore find ways to convince men day to adhere to the Christian faith, which does not mean losing his autonomy, and that in the Church, his search for truth can be guided and potentiated.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/04/2012 16:46]