Reflections on Vatican II

The first chapter of American Catholics in Transition is titled “The Legacy of Pre-Vatican II Catholics” and the authors refer to Catholics born in 1940 and earlier as “the pre-Vatican II generation.”

 They go on to say, “Prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Catholics were known for their willingness "to kneel, pray, pay, and obey.”

 Although I was not a Catholic, that is the age bracket I am in and that was the Catholic Church I grew up knowing only a little bit about.

 I finished my undergraduate theology degree in 1962. Since it was a Baptist seminary I attended, there was not a lot of study about Catholics. But of course there was some—and much of what I learned was very soon out of date.

As indicated above, the Second Vatican Council, often called Vatican II, began in 1962 and ended fifty years ago this week, on December 8, 1965.

Many significant changes were made in the Catholic Church at that Council. Consequently, much of what I had learned by 1962 about contemporary Catholic faith and practice was out of date by 1965.

Vatican II was the 21^st so-called Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church, and the first one since Vatican I in 1869-70. It was called by John XXIII, the remarkable Pope who was canonized in April of last year. Already 76 years old when he was elected Pope in October 1958, he surprised most people, who expected him to be nothing more than a “caretaker pope.”

One of the most significant changes made at Vatican II was the position of the Catholic Church’s relationship to non-Catholic Christians as well as its relationships with other religious faiths. The “Decree on Ecumenism” was passed in late 1964, more than a year after Pope John had died (in June 1963), but it was very much in keeping with his stated desire.

That Decree declared that other Christians were “separated brethren,” a remarkable shift from prior church teaching that regarded them (us Protestants) as “heretics.”

Vatican II also greatly changed the relationship between the Catholic Church and Jews. The “Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions” was passed in October 1965, about six weeks before the close of Vatican II.

The fourth part of that Declaration speaks of the bond that ties the people of the “New Covenant”' (Christians) to Abraham’s stock (Jews).

It states that even though some Jewish authorities and those who followed them called for Jesus’s death, the blame for this cannot be laid at the door of all those Jews present at that time, nor can the Jews in our time be held as guilty.

Accordingly, the Jews “should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God.”

The Declaration also decries all displays of antisemitism made at any time by anyone. This repudiated the abuse heaped on Jewish people through the years because they were considered “Christ killers.”

There were also many changes in Catholic worship and practice. For example, there was a new emphasis on lay people reading the Bible. Also, Mass began to be conducted with the priest facing the congregation, and the language spoken by the congregants was used in worship rather than Latin.

Of course some things didn’t change, to the disappointment of some of the more progressive clergy and lay people: priests still couldn’t marry, women still couldn’t become priests, and contraceptives continued to be banned.

Some Catholics are now hoping Pope Francis will call for “Vatican III,” but that is not likely to happen.

But thank God for Vatican II!

Commemorating a Golden Anniversary

It was 50 years ago this month, on October 11, 1962, that the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) opened in St. Peter’s Basilica. Convoked by Pope John XXIII, it closed in December 1965 under Pope Paul VI.

Vatican II was the 21st Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church, and only the second to be held since the highly significant Council of Trent in the 16th century. Vatican I, the 20th Council, was convened in 1869-70 at a time of great turmoil. The primary result, however, was the (questionable) defining of papal infallibility as a dogma of the Church.

By contrast to Vatican I, which failed to deal substantively with the contemporary problems of the rising influence of rationalism, liberalism, and materialism, Vatican II made many momentous decisions and greatly changed the Roman Catholic Church.

The second volume of Reclaiming Our Roots: An Inclusive Introduction to Church History (1999) by Mark Ellingsen is the textbook I am currently using in the course I teach at Rockhurst University. Here are three of Vatican II’s “progressive decisions” according to Dr. Ellingsen:

    ** Recognizing members of Protestant churches as “separated brethren.” Thus, it was “no longer official Catholic teaching that all Protestants are damned as heretics.”

   ** A countenancing of the use of the vernacular, instead of Latin, in worship.

    ** A recognition of non-Christians sincerely seeking to do God’s Will with their actions . . . as numbered among the people of God (pp. 336).

As a Protestant, it seems to me that the above changes, and the several others that Ellingsen lists, are good and important, beneficial for the Catholic Church and for Christianity as a whole. But not all agree.

I have not yet finished reading Ross Douthat’s book Bad Religion (2012), but I am finding it quite interesting—and problematic in places. Douthat (b. 1979), a New York Times columnist (and the youngest regular op-ed writer in the paper's history), is a Catholic who is quite conservative both religiously and politically.

Douthat sees Vatican II as “the marriage of orthodoxy and American liberalism” that eased the Church “toward ever greater accommodation with the modern world” (pp. 94, 95). And he sees the decline in Catholicism since the mid-1960s at least partly due to the negative influence of Vatican II.

Conservatives can always find ways to link present problems to liberal ideas. (Of course, the same may be true for liberals, who tend to see contemporary problems being due to the conservatism of the past.) But it is hard for me to think that Vatican II was anything but a positive course-correction for the Roman Catholic Church.

There are some (many?) who now think the time has come for “Vatican III” to be convoked. Quite certainly that will not happen under the present Pope, but who can tell who Benedict XVI’s successor will be or what will happen then.

Many of my Catholic students, among many other young American Catholics, strongly think the Church ought to make at least these three important changes: (1) approve the use of contraceptives, (2) allow priests to marry, and (3) allow women to become priests.

If, or when, “Vatican III” is convened those will likely be key issues discussed. Some Catholic theologians, such as Hans Küng, thought that such changes should have been made at Vatican II.

Still, the changes that were made at Vatican II were many and important, so I am happy to use this posting to commemorate its golden anniversary.