Vatican-II as a living memory
Translated from
July 8, 2012
"As I prepare myself for the service that is proper to the Successor of Peter, I wish to confirm my determination to continue to put the Second Vatican Council into practice, following in the footsteps of my Predecessors and in faithful continuity with the 2,000-year tradition of the Church", Benedict XVI said during the first mass he celebrated as Pope on April 20, 2005, in the Sistine Chapel. It is a determination that he has confirmed forcefully in the seven years of his Pontificate so far. Let us listen to the editorial this week of Fr. Federico Lombardi for the weekly newsmagzine Octava Dies for CTV:
On Monday, July 9, the Pope will make a brief visit to the motherhouse of the Verbites (Society of the Divine Word) in Nemi, not just to greet the superiors and participants in the annual chapter meeting of this famous missionary society, but also because in that place, in 1985, he - as a young theological consultant to the Second Vatican Council - had taken part in a retreat to study and draft texts
[specifically, the declaration on missions, Ad Gentes],in a lively and fruitful atmosphere of study, debate and prayer that accompanied and preceded the plenary Council sessions in St. Peter's Basilica.
Recently, in a beautiful inrerview, Jesuit Cardinal Roberto Tucci evoked the similar work carried out in Ariccia
[like Nemi and Castel Gandolfo, another of the ancient towns and cities making up the Castelli Romani in the hills south of Rome] to prepare the dogmatic Constitution
Gaudium et spes on the Church in the contemporary world, with the active participation of the young Bishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyla, who contributed to the formulation of the famous sentence, "The mystery of man finds true light only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word" (No. 22), which not by chance, would be most frequently cited by John Paul II.
It seems that Council participants who are still alive are now down to about 30, including Council Fathers (i.e., bishop-participants) and consultants - and their testimonials can only stir up a wave of emotion among us, who although not directly oinvolved, remember that extraordinary time of fervor, enthusiasm and hope.
We hope that the 50th anniversary of the Council opening that we are preparing to celebrate in October may be an occasion to reconnect ourselves, in a vital manner, to that atmosphere of listening to the Spirit, so that any re-reading of the Conciliar texts today is made "according to the heremeneutic of reform, of renewal in continuity of the one subject Church which the Lord has given us, which grows in time and develops, but remains the same - the one subject of the pilgrim People of God" (Benedict XVI, Address to the Roman Curia, Dec. 22, 2005).
Thus we are wisely exhorted by Joseph Ratzinger, a privileged and more than authoritative witness of Vatican II, then a conciliar expert, and now Pope.
Since the OR is not coming out again till Tuesday, its issue today, Sunday, 7/8/12, has a feature on Benedict XVI's visit to Nemi tomorrow which brings out one of the rare available pictures of Joseph Ratzinger during the four years he attended Vatican II (annual sessions from October-December from 1962-1965.
At right, the best I can do with a blow-up from the photo. Most interesting is that the center figure standing in front of Fr. Ratzinger is the now Venerable Fulton Sheen, at the time an auxiliary bishop of New York and in charge of the US Society for Propagating the Faith, and therefore, directly involved in the conciliar document that they worked on in Nemi. [I had not realized till now that Bishop Sheen had a chance to work with Fr. Ratzinger at the time, though his working with Mons. Karol Wojtyla at the Council became known when John Paul II first visited New York in 1979 and publicly embraced Mons. Sheen in St. Patrick's Cathedral; Sheen died of long-standing heart disease two months later..]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/07/2012 22:47]