Vatican II Opened up the Bible

Today is Bible Sunday. To mark the day and the upcoming 50th anniversary of the closing of Vatican II, Fr BONAVENTURE HINWOOD OFM looks at how the Council opened up the Bible, and how this was set in motion by Pope Pius XII.

When people speak about the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and the changes in the Churchs approach to the Bible, they often pick on two issues.

The first is the opening of the study of the Bible to new ways of investigating the real meaning of the text, among these particularly what is known as the critical historical method.

The second issue is making the Bible available to lay people, encouraging them to read, study, and pray with it.

About the first issue, as part of its encouraging biblical scholars work, the Councils words in the dogmatic constitution on revelation, Dei Verbum (DV) were:

Since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wants to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by their words.

The first thing to which attention must be given is what scripture scholars call literary forms. Does the text represent history, prophecy, poetry, a religious novel, wise norms for practical living, or some other way of thinking and speaking? What was the writer saying to people of his own time and culture?

The interpreter must remember that God reveals God in the Bible as a whole, so each part must be read in terms of this one revelation and not taken in isolation. The Bible is also the book of the Church, and the interpreter must also keep in mind the complete official teaching of the whole Church, as Dei Verbum reminds us.

It is in the light of this that the Council in Dei Verbum gave its blessing to translation work from original languages undertaken together with other Christian biblical scholars.

In connection with the second issuemaking the Bible available to lay peoplethe Council in Dei Verbum says simply: Easy access to Sacred Scripture should be provided for all the Christian faithful. This will help develop a warm and living love for Scripture, as the Council Fathers put it in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Among the means for making this possible the Council mentions translations, about which it says: Since the word of God should be available at all times, the Church with maternal concern sees to it that suitable and correct translations are made into different languages, especially from the original texts.

In Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican II called for more reading from holy Scripture in the Churchs public worship. To achieve this, the Council decreed that the liturgy should open up the treasures of the Bible by having more and a greater variety of Scripture read to the people over a set cycle of years and having homilies that should be Bible-based. It also encourages Bible services.

The clergy, Vatican II noted, need to have a good biblical education, so that they are equipped to stimulate and guide their people in reading and living out the Scriptures.

Bishops in particular have the responsibility of seeing that the people entrusted to them are properly taught how to use the Bible, especially the New Testament, and particularly the gospels. This they can do by promoting editions in which the biblical text is supplemented by comments which help towards a correct understanding.

Vatican II gave one paragraph to the legitimate use of modern methods of research into the texts of the Bible. Two decades earlier, in 1943, Pope Pius XII devoted nine paragraphs to the subject in his masterly encyclical on biblical studies, Divino afflante Spiritu.

His enthusiastic words of encouragement were:

All these are benefits granted by divine Providence to our age, and they serve also as a stimulus and an encouragement to interpreters of Holy Scripture to make eager use of the great light afforded for a closer examination, a clearer explanation, and a more lucid exposition of Sacred Scripture.

This concluding sentence of his treatment of all the historical and cultural information and documents from recent excavations tells of one of the tools available to the interpreter.

Another is the techniques developed in the editing of ancient secular writings, which Pius XII said must be applied likewise to the original texts of the books of the Bible in their ancient languages to secure an accurate texts on which to work.

For a correct understanding of the books of the Bible ,full account must be taken of what we know of their human writer and his culture.

Pope Pius wrote: It is absolutely necessary for the interpreter to go back in spirit to those remote centuries of the East…in order to discover what literary forms the writers of that early age…did in fact employ, which differ from the way we think and speak today, and have been extensively researched in recent times.

For just as the divine Word of God became like humans in all things except sin, so Gods revealed word was expressed in human language of the time, though free from error.

The Catholic scripture scholar must make use of these modern means of understanding the Bible if he is to give an accurate interpretation free from error, Pius XII said.

In encouraging Catholics  clergy and laity  to make greater use of the Bible, to read and meditate on it, Pope Pius saw himself in line with the encouragement given by Pope Leo XIII at the end of the 19th century, and followed up by successive popes after him. To this end he spoke highly of the work of translating the Bible into the different languages of people.

Pope Pius also made special mention of periodicals which popularise the scientific study of the Bible treated above, for the sake of ordinary Catholics.

He understood that especially bishops have a responsibility for stimulating and encouraging Catholics to know and love the books of the Bible. Pius suggested that they do this by supporting the efforts of people already trying to do it, by helping Catholic organisations which distribute Bibles, (particularly the gospels), by encouraging families to read them every day, and by themselves or through experts arranging for public talks on biblical topics.

Bishops, he added, also have the responsibility of seeing that a full course of Scripture is taught to students for the priesthood in seminaries, by competent lecturers who will inspire enthusiasm and love for the Bible in their students, so that they can serve the people well in the future.

His call to priests was that they carefully study the Bible and absorb it into themselves by prayer and meditation. The fruit of this must then be passed on to the people in sermons, homilies, and other forms of communication, so that they illustrate Catholic doctrine by quotations and the lives of the people, events and stories from the Bible, especially from the gospels.

For all the children of the Church, therefore, and particularly for teachers of Sacred Scripture, for the young clergy, and for preachers of the Gospel, we make fervent prayer that with persevering meditation on the word of God they may taste how good and sweet is the Spirit of the Lord, Pope Pius wrote.

By comparing what was outlined earlier about the teaching of Vatican II with the thought of Pope Pius XII, it is easy to see how the Council carried further the issues which he had treated at greater length.

Pius XII prepared the way for Vatican II not only in connection with the Bible, but also in many other areas, such as the Church, her liturgy, the spiritual life of religious, the pastoral involvement and holiness of lay people, and the variety of issues in modern society, including the authority of the state and the inequality between rich and poor, economics, science and technology, treated in his writings, talks and radio broadcasts.

All this formed the basis of Vatican IIs Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes.

He prepared the way not only in his teaching. He also realised that some general meeting of the bishops was necessary to bring the Church up to date. For this reason he had nominated a commission to study the matter. His age, ill health, and the realisation that his days as pope were numbered prevented him from taking this further.

So when Pope John XXIII became pope, all this was waiting for him. He had merely to develop what Pope Pius XII had begun.

If John XXIII fathered the Council, then Pius XII could rightly be given the title of Grandfather of Vatican II.