Understanding Vatican II

When Pope John XXIII announced his intention to hold an ecumenical Church council in 1959, he changed the Church’s course irreversibly. Bl Pope John, the supposed caretaker pope, lived just long enough to preside over the opening and first session of the Second Vatican Council in 1962.

Under his successor, Pope Paul VI, the Council held three more sessions until it closed in December 1965. In that time, the Council produced 16 landmark documents.

These documents – four constitutions, nine decrees and three declarations – introduced  profound reforms, especially in areas such as the liturgy, the role of lay Catholics, dialogue with other churches and non-Christians, the way the Church relates to the world, and the way the Church sees itself as the “People of God”.

The Council created a new consciousness of the Church’s mission, even if it was, and remains, subject to diverse interpretations (or hermeneutics).

There are some who see the Council as a rupture with the past – a liberation “from a long night of oppression”, as the Jesuit theologian Cardinal Avery Dulles once put it – and a return to a vision which they believe reflects the practices of the early Church. Key to that is the on-going reform of teachings and disciplines that reflect the circumstances in which the faithful live.

Traditionalists within the Church and outside also perceive a rupture, albeit one they do not welcome. They reject much of Vatican II, seeing the Council as having repudiated the historic Catholic faith, especially on questions such as liturgy and religious freedom. In their view, according to Cardinal Dulles, the Council had the effect of “shattering the unity and order of the Church and introducing an era of contestation and doubt”.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have proposed a vision of the Council as a point of reform, but with reference to the past. That so-called “hermeneutic of continuity” has defined the Holy See’s methodology.

Cardinal Dulles explained the “hermeneutics of continuity” like this: “Progress must be made, but progress always depends upon an acceptance of prior achievements so that it is not necessary to begin each time from the beginning.”

It is a flexible approach which has frustrated the proponents of both radical renewal and radical tradition.

The renewalists discern in the Holy See’s governance a retrogression to the pre-Vatican II era which neutralises the perceived gains of the Council. They point to areas such as a hegemony of the Roman curia which impairs free theological inquiry and episcopal collegiality, a return to what they regard as anachronistic pomp and ceremony, the imposition of unpopular liturgical texts, an unwillingness to engage with reform, and so on.

The traditionalists, especially the schismatic Society of St Pius X, cannot acquiesce in some central conciliar teachings, such as liturgy, ecumenism and the path to salvation. That most of the conciliar teachings they object to are, for now, quite irrevocable represents an obstacle to dialogue and eventual unity.

Clearly there can be no consensus on how to interpret the Second Vatican Council. It would be a mistake, however, to pit the various strands of understanding the Council against one another, as though our faith was a terrain of ideological warfare.

It is quite possible for proponents of the “hermeneutics of continuity” to sympathise with those who see Vatican II as a point of reform, and vice versa. These positions can even overlap, as the late Cardinal Carlo Martini demonstrated so eloquently.

As the People of God seek to understand the Second Vatican Council, which we are called to do especially in the Year of Faith, we must acknowledge the content as well as the tone of the conciliar documents, and not descend into vitriol and condescension. And there is one concept that appears in these documents again and again, and also, prophetically, in Pope Paul VI’s 1964 encyclical Ecclesiam Suam – Dialogue.

Dialogue, respectful and without fear, for the love of our Church, must serve as our guiding light now, just as it did for the Council Fathers half a century ago.