The Renewal of Vatican II: Distractions and Distortions | Douglas
Bushman, S.T.L. | Ignatius Insight
The Renewal of Vatican II: Distractions and Distortions | Douglas Bushman, S.T.L. | Ignatius Insight
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2008/dbushman_vat2renew1_apr08.asp
Years of teaching courses on
Vatican II and Ecclesiology have provided me the data of an ongoing survey that
continues to produce amazingly consistent results. The question is simple:
"What is the first word that comes to mind when I say, 'Vatican II'?"
Invariably the response is "renewal" and "change." The same answer comes from
countless groups of adults with whom I have reflected on the Council that Pope
John Paul II described as "the gift of the Holy Spirit" to the Church of our
time.
The follow-up question produces
similarly consistent results, though it may be difficult to discern at first.
To the question, "What kind of change?" people point first to the liturgy: Mass
said in English, priest facing the assembly, laity serving as extraordinary
ministers of the Eucharist, communion received in the hand. Often mentioned is
the adaptation of the discipline of abstinence from meat on Friday. Others
point to participation on parish or diocesan pastoral or finance councils,
while some refer to institutional innovations such as the synod of bishops, the
International Theological Commission, and the many new pontifical councils.
Seemingly widely diverse, these
examples have something in common; they are visible and institutional changes.
Observable changes such as these naturally draw our attention; they are the
first things we notice. The Council, however, did not see changes as ends in
themselves, but as means to something higher. The challenge is to look beyond
them, or through them, to discover that more profound reality. Such a "looking
beyond" is natural for Catholic faith, which perceives the Son of God in Jesus
of Nazareth, and the bestowal of grace in the visible signs we call sacraments.
What is that more profound
reality? It is holiness, as unchanging in its nature as doctrine, the essence
of the sacraments, and the hierarchical constitution of the Church. Holiness,
that is, life in communion with God in faith, hope and charity lived in the
ongoing conversion that is an unending task for the Church, is fundamentally
the same in all ages. The real challenge of Vatican II is the change or renewal
of hearts that in the Gospels is called metanoia.
It is possible to get distracted,
caught up in the liturgical and institutional dimension of renewal, and lose
sight of the fact that these are at the service of making the Church's mission
more effective. That mission is identical to Christ's own: the reconciliation
of men with God through the forgiveness of sins and justifying grace that makes
those who receive it sharers in God's own life. All the liturgical adaptations
are intended to bring about that "fully conscious and active participation" [1]
in the liturgy that is fundamentally a matter of the heart. Similarly, the new
expressions of the Church's ages-old faith [2] is intended to arouse faith and
to convey the salvific value of what God has revealed so that modern man may
discover the "meaning for life" of what the Church teaches. And the
reorganization of institutions and the establishment of new ones have as their
goal to facilitate the living out of the Christian life and a more effective
realization of the Church's mission [3] in which all share and for which all
are responsible.
In other words, the Council's aim
is to perfect the inner man, to be the agent of the conversion of the heart
that produces the fruit of those immanent activities that are the very essence
of religion. "[T]he exercise of religion, of its very nature, consists before
all else in those internal, voluntary and free acts whereby man sets the course
of his life directly toward God" (Dignitatis Humanae, no. 3). This is reflected in the very first words of the
first text promulgated by the Council:
This sacred Council has several
aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian
life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times
those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote
union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call
the whole of mankind into the household of the Church" (Sacrosanctum
Concilium, no. 1).
The immanent acts, which Pope John
Paul II calls "consciousness" and "attitudes," [4] are the source of the
visible actions of engagement in the Church's life and mission. Faithful to
this vision, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II have underscored that the call
to holiness is the chief teaching of the Council. "This strong invitation to holiness
could be regarded as the most characteristic element in the whole Magisterium
of the Council, and so to say, its ultimate purpose." [5] "It is possible to
say that this call to holiness is precisely the basic charge entrusted to all
the sons and daughters of the Church by a Council which intended to bring a
renewal of Christian life based on the Gospel." [6] Yet the message is only now
beginning to resound among the faithful.
The following reflections are an
attempt to identify and analyze some of factors that have contributed to
muffling the message, and to point out the balance required in order to be
faithful to the Council's teaching.
The Need for Balance Between
Holiness and Action
The new ecclesial awareness
brought by the Council produced a kind of giddiness of activity. The Council
stressed that everyone participates in the Church's mission, and there was no
lack of energy for translating that into a whirlwind of activity. Cardinal
Ratzinger identified the problem:
There is a popular idea
today, which can also be found among the hierarchy, that a person is only a
Christian insofar as he is committed to ecclesiastical activities. The trend is
a type of ecclesiastical therapy of getting up and doing; the idea is to assign
a committee to everyone or in any case, at least some commitment within the
Church. It is thought that there must always be some sort of ecclesiastical
activity, the Church must be spoken about or something must be done for it or
within it. But a mirror which only reflects itself is no longer a mirror . . .
.
It can happen that a person
is continually active in ecclesiastical associations and activities but he may
not be a Christian at all. It can also happen that a person simply lives only
by the Word and the Sacrament and puts the love that comes from faith into
practice, without ever sitting on an ecclesiastical committee, without ever
bothering about the latest in ecclesiastical politics, without ever
participating in synods or voting at them. And yet, he is a true Christian. We
do not need a more human Church but a more divine one; only then will it be
really human. And for this reason all that is man-made within the Church must
reflect its pure character of service and withdraw in the face of what counts,
the essential. [7]
Activity is necessary, but it
needs to be seen as the fruit of spiritual renewal. The implementation of the
Council will be based on a proper understanding of the relation between being
and action, captured in the principle operatio sequitur esse: action follows upon being. Though the perception has been
widely diffused that one must select one or the other, prayer or activism,
sacramental worship or being really engaged, in the texts of Vatican II the two
stand together and cannot be separated. There always has been and always will
be a priority of contemplation over action, of sacramental worship over
mission, because contemplation and the liturgy are the sources of the grace
that transforms our being into Christ, and it is from this renewed being that
actions flow. Thus, the priority of contemplation and worship poses no threat
to action and mission, but rather assures their integrity. The Council itself
offers us the necessary balance:
It is of the essence of the Church
that she be both human and divine, visible and yet invisibly equipped, eager to
act and yet intent on contemplation, present in this world and yet not at home
in it; and she is all these things in such wise that in her the human is
directed and subordinated to the divine, the visible likewise to the invisible,
action to contemplation, and this present world to that city yet to come, which
we seek (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no.
2).
It can be tempting to think that
all we need in order to make the Church's mission complete is better
organization, more efficient institutions, more professional conduct, the
latest methods. Recognizing the validity of a concern for effectiveness, Henri
de Lubac sensed a troubling spirit that can accompany it. Is it motivated by "a
pure overflowing of charity," or is it based on "this illusion . . . that it is
enough to make a change of method . . . to obtain results which primarily
suppose a change of heart?" [8] Without vigilance, even a justifiable concern
for efficiency can lead one to regard all elements of the Church as subject to
revision based on the criterion of greatest productiveness. Doctrine and
sacramental worship are then judged by their power to elicit the active
participation that supposedly defines the Council's intention. This produces a
new kind of hierarchy of truths that has nothing to do with the Council's
understanding of the phrase. [9]
How would this affect the theology
of the Eucharist, and its role in the renewal of Vatican II? A renewal in
keeping with the conciliar magisterium must recognize the Eucharist as "the
summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it
is the font from which all her power flows" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 10). The Church is not built up without our activity,
but that activity is essentially a cooperation with God. For this reason the
edification of the Church is not solely proportioned to our labors. The fruits
of our labors exceed what we can rightfully expect because the Church is built
up by the Eucharist, [10] and this reminds us that its unity and mission are a
gift that must be constantly received anew.
This is where the teaching of the
Council on Mary takes on great pastoral significance for the Council's
implementation. Mary is the model of how we must receive in order actively to
take our place in God's plan. Both the plan itself and the grace that
transformed her being are God's. Her being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit in
order to bear fruit for salvation, and the overshadowing of the entire Church
on Pentecost in order to engage in its saving mission, indicate that all of the
Church's activity must be seen as presupposing an epiclesis. "If there is to be
spiritual fruit actualizing the mystery of Christ in our lives, there must be
an invocation of the Holy Spirit, epiclesis." [11]
In all these actions and for all
these actions, the necessary role of an intervention of the Holy Spirit, of
epiclesis, is to assure that neither the 'earthly means' nor the institution
produce these actions by themselves. It is a matter of a work which is
absolutely supernatural, divine and divinizing. [12]
A major casualty in this
enthusiasm of activity has been a genuine apostolate and spirituality of the
laity. The risk is real that the model for an active lay man or woman is
holding a stable and often salaried position in the Church. The model can
include the highly visible functions of sitting on the parish council and
serving as an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist or performing the
function of lector. The greatly increased numbers of laity involved in such
functions is indeed a fruit of the Council. Nevertheless, the vast majority of
the lay faithful engages in those "voluntary and free acts whereby man sets the
course of his life directly toward God," and thereby strives for holiness and
builds up the kingdom of God, in relative obscurity, amidst the daily
activities of family and job, social, political, economic and cultural life.
The implementation of the Council
with respect to the renewal of the temporal order through the laity will
require a spirituality for the laity that does full justice to the primacy of
the immanent activities that animate the lay apostolate. The Council stresses
those inner activities in texts such as the following:
For all their works, prayers and
apostolic endeavors, their ordinary married and family life, their daily
occupations, their physical and mental relaxation, if carried out in the
Spirit, and even the hardships of life, if patiently borne-all these become
"spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (Lumen Gentium, no. 34).
Finally all Christ's faithful,
whatever be the conditions, duties and circumstances of their lives — and
indeed through all these, will daily increase in holiness, if they receive all
things with faith from the hand of their heavenly Father and if they cooperate
with the divine will. In this temporal service, they will manifest to all men
the love with which God loved the world (Lumen Gentium, no. 41).
A distillation of the Council's
teaching will provide the necessary balance between contemplation and action,
sacraments and mission, and will look to Mary as the model of all ecclesial
activity.
Balance of truth and love: on
liberal and conservative
Back to word association. Students
and audiences attending talks unfailingly associate a strong emphasis on the
social gospel and the preferential love for the poor with the word "liberal,"
and a strong concern for doctrinal integrity with "conservative." To
demonstrate the inadequacy of these categories to embrace the Christian
mystery, consider how it would make Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Pope John
Paul II simultaneously arch-liberals and arch-conservatives. In the two
arguably most widely recognized Catholics of the last half of the last century,
love for the poor and love for the truth coexist in harmony and simplicity. In
them the social gospel and doctrinal integrity do not exist in tension, but as
necessary complements, even as truth and love are one in God, and the meaning
of Christ's death is captured in terms of both love (Jn 15:13) and truth (Jn
18:37). To choose one at the expense of the other undermines the integrity of
the one that is chosen.
Of course no Christian, let us
hope, explicitly rejects either truth or love. This renders difficult the
following consideration of other dichotomies between the liberal and
conservative mindsets or tendencies. [13] Notwithstanding that aligning various
positions with liberal or conservative inclinations has its limitations, my
informal surveys lead me to think that the general correlations retain a
certain validity. My main point is to show that both the liberal and
conservative dispositions, when allowed to cross certain lines, present
obstacles to the interpretation of Vatican II and to the renewal-through-conversion
envisioned by it.
Triumphalism, Criticism and
Renewal
Vatican II was an ecclesiological
council. Because ecclesiology reflects Christology, errors about Christ recur
as errors about the Church. The most fundamental errors about Christ regard the
unity of his divine and human natures. Paralleling this there are two
tendencies in ecclesiology. One emphasizes the divine dimension to the point of
obscuring the human dimension, while the other obscures the divine dimension by
over-emphasizing the human.
Though the Church is both human
and divine, the distinction between the two is absolutely necessary as a
condition for renewal. An overemphasis on the Church's divine element produces
the pre-Vatican II reality known as triumphalism, which aligns with a
conservative stance. How can there be renewal if it is thought that virtually
everything is of divine institution? Further, if the four notes of the Church
are to serve as signs pointing to this divine dimension, then how can account be
made of the sins of its members? Vatican II met this question head on, always
distinguishing between the divine and human aspects of the Church, and between
the Church as such and the individuals that she embraces. This fundamental
distinction is also the critical principle for understanding John Paul II's
candid recognition, in conjunction with the Jubilee, of the sins of the sons
and daughters of the Church. This has consternated some who espouse a kind of
hyper-apologia of the Church's divine constitution.
The liberal tendency is to place
strong accent on the human element of the Church. In the extreme, it can be
difficult to see the presence of God or the fulfillment of his promises, and it
can degrade into a hyper-critical attitude toward the Church. This too makes
conversion impossible, for there must be hope of a future based on God's
promises and grace if conversion is to be genuinely Christian. [14]
The Council was a great
examination of conscience for the Church, [15] and thus a call to conversion.
Conversion presupposes the identification of sin—a judgment,
self-criticism in the light of God's word. Paul VI's great vision for the
Council was that it would engage in this self-criticism in order to embrace the
call to conversion. It would deepen its awareness of its own mystery by
reflecting on what God has revealed about the Church. Then it would "compare
the ideal image of the Church just as Christ sees it . . . with the actual
image which the Church projects today," recognizing that "the actual image of
the Church is never as perfect, as lovely, as holy or as brilliant as that
formative Divine Idea would wish it to be." This would prompt conversion,
prompted by "an almost impatient need for renewal, for correction of the
defects which this conscience denounces and rejects." [16] And this renewal
would yield the fruit of renewed missionary activity through dialogue. As the
Church deepens its being in Christ, the result will be Christ-like activity: operatio
sequitur esse. Like the Lord, the Church will
become more and more the one who comes to serve.
After the Council it became
fashionable to criticize the Church and, for some, the process of
self-criticism became an end in itself. It drifted beyond criticism of the
human dimension alone, [17] and called into question elements long considered
pertaining to the divine dimension. Such criticism removes the very possibility
of conversion, since it makes certitude about the truth impossible. There is no
longer any measure for judgment or criticism. [18] Rather than humbly present
the Church for remolding according to the divine vision for her, this tendency
resulted in remolding the Church to make her conform to the expectations of
modern man, a danger about which Pope Paul VI had given sufficient warning.
[19]
Criticism of the Church is a
delicate matter. It might be likened to the uncomfortable position in which
middle-aged adults find themselves with respect to their parents. How does one
balance the respect due to one's parents with the desire to assist them in
dealing with their imperfections? On the one hand, there is the objective norm
of human happiness that one desires for his parents. On the other, there is the
love they deserve because life itself and much more was their gift.
Conscience, Authority, and Obedience
Unrestrained, the liberal stance
stresses the individual and conscience to the point that authority is viewed
with suspicion and seen as a threat. This removes the very possibility of
conversion. By its own inner logic it tends toward a separation between Christ
and the Church, holding at least implicitly that it is possible to be faithful
to Christ without being faithful to his Church. It is even claimed that one can
be a good Catholic without adhering to what the Church teaches.
Because the claim is seldom made
outright, it might be helpful to see what this stance really is when analyzed.
Let's give the name "ecclesial agnosticism" to the product of the analysis. It
is a disincarnate ecclesiology. If agnostics don't deny God, they deny that he
can be known, certainly that he became a man and can be identified with Jesus
of Nazareth. Similarly, without denying the existence of the Church, without
even denying that the Church possesses apostolic authority to teach, one can
deny that this Church can be concretely identified, or that the conditions for
infallible teaching are ever realized. But an unverifiable God cannot make
demands on anyone, nor can a Church that possesses a charism of infallibility
that can never be verified. The very condition of conversion, knowledge of
absolute truth, becomes impossible to ascertain.
On the conservative side is the
tendency to see in sound doctrine the answer to all problems. If the liberal
spirit greeted the Catechism of the Catholic Church with reticence, reservation and resentment, the
conservative spirit saw it as confirmation of its conviction and the perfect
instrument for exposing erroneous teaching. But before it is an instrument for
judging others, it is a sure guide for one's own faith. Neither liberals nor
conservatives outdo the other when it comes to personal attacks and presumption
about motives. Liberals see conservatives as afraid of change, clinging to old
traditions and institutions, while conservatives see liberals as insufficiently
grounded in tradition and too ready to compromise with the spirit of the day.
Each can express exasperation and intolerance with respect to the other.
But the first form of intolerance
should be intolerance of the sin within, which is just another way to describe
conversion. The truth is certainly worth fighting for, but the first battle is
within oneself. This is the authentic renewal, and it can be obscured or put
off for later when one's energies are directed towards checking the errors of
others. Furthermore, Jesus teaches us that those who know the truth are called
to suffer for those who do not. While it is true that the truth is greater than
any relationship, it is also a fact that the family divided two against three
and three against two is not a goal but only a predictable outcome of bringing
truth into a world marked by sin. If conservatives are to be a real force for
renewal in the Church, they must reinvent Christ-like service and suffering
precisely for those who are in need of it.
For the liberally minded,
obedience is difficult to reconcile with human dignity and can even pose a
threat to it, while for the conservatively minded obedience is one of the
highest virtues and reasoning can be seen as a threat to it. Vatican II's
teaching on dignity, conscience and obedience transcends these opposing
tendencies, and the realization of the Council's teaching in the life of the
Church will require a discovery by both parties of its balanced synthesis of
these notions.
The Dialogue Between Faith and Reason
Liberals and conservatives are
mistaken about the dialogue between faith and reason. Liberals tend to side
with reason because this is thought to be the province of the individual and
guarantee of autonomy, while conservatives side with faith. The contrast
between the caricature of the Church before Vatican II and the actual state of
affairs today is striking, if not to say lamentable. If the windows were shut
because dialogue with world was a dangerous affair, running the risk of error
corrupting the faith, today people are open to dialogue with every religion and
philosophy, including those blatantly antithetical to Catholicism, yet they
retain a suspicion of just one institution—the hierarchical Church. We
have gone from believing that truth exists only in the Church to being disposed
to finding it just about anywhere except in the Church.
Conservatives are suspicious of
the dialogue. They have seen how it can corrupt the faith, and they tend toward
fideism. Henri de Lubac has described this inclination as "an orthodoxy so
complete and so easy of decision that it looks rather like indifference . . ."
This produces a way of "submitting to dogma . . . in principle and in advance."
[20] But assent and obedience given in advance can only be to what one thinks
the Church teaches. In this case, faith cannot be the light for their living.
It can be venerated as from a distance, it can serve to distinguish one group
from another, but it cannot put down roots in daily life. This deficient
adherence of faith "establishes its own lists of what is suspect—in the
fashion of religious authority itself–and is ready to call the authority
to order, if need be . . . it brands as 'liberalism' or 'modernism' every
effort made to disentangle Christianity in its real purity and its perpetual
youth, as if this were an abandonment of doctrine." [21]
People of this mindset can learn
from Mary, who is the model of this dialogue. Her assent to the One who spoke
through the angel Gabriel did not eliminate questions; rather, it gave rise to
them. And she continued to ponder what she experienced. In Mary, God's word "is
not taken up rashly to be locked into a superficial first impression and then
forgotten." Rather, it "is given a place of permanent abiding in which it can
gradually unfold its depth." Treasuring all that God said to her, "Mary held a
conversation with the Word. She entered interiorly into a dialogue with the
Word. She addressed the Word and allowed herself to be addressed by it in order
to arrive at its basic meaning." [22] The dialogue between faith and reason is
born of the humility that asks if one has accurately understood what God has
revealed. It is not an invitation to question the veracity of what God has
revealed.
If there is good reason to be wary
of this dialogue because it has produced questionable fruit since the Council,
as too often the findings of the human sciences seem to have greater authority
than the Church's teachings, [23] the dialogue is no less necessary. Gaudium
et Spes provides the fundamental
principles that must guide this dialogue, without which both faith and reason
are impoverished.
On Truth and Love, Unity and
Holiness
For liberals the emphasis is on
relationships and tolerance as the formula for unity. For conservatives it is
on truth, doctrinal purity and visible unity that is correspondingly pure. The
conservative stance disposes people to sacrifice relationships for the sake of
purity of truth and unity, while the liberal inclination is toward compromising
on the latter for the sake of the former. Neither measures well against the
Gospel, or against Vatican II, where truth, love and unity, as well as
patience, forgiveness and reconciliation are recognized as pertaining to the
Church's life and mystery.
The Church is indeed one and holy,
and her unity and holiness are essentially the same as God's, since they are
nothing other than a participation in the unity and holiness of God through
Christ. However, while Christ is totally without sin, the Council considers the
Church's holiness "real although imperfect" (Lumen Gentium, no. 48) since "the Church, embracing in its bosom
sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always
follows the way of penance and renewal" (Lumen Gentium, no 8). The Council's approach to unity is similar. On the
one hand it is a gift from God that cannot fail, on the other hand there is a
humble acknowledgement of the actual historical situation of division among
Christians.
It is the task of theologians to
wrestle with this conciliar teaching and do full justice to it. A one-sided
emphasis on how the human element in the Church affects the realization of
holiness and unity cannot deplete them of content. Nor should a one-sided
emphasis on their reality obscure how sin affects their realization in the
Church. The Church is a sign of salvation inseparable but distinct from the
sign that is Christ. If the Church's self-testimony is to be accurate and
credible, she has no alternative but to speak about her unity and holiness as
"real though imperfect." [24]
Full justice to the Council's
teaching is also missing in ecclesiologies that place the realization of unity
and holiness in the future, as if they are not real attributes and supernatural
gifts that are properties of the Church. The reason is that the Church of
Christ subsists in the Catholic Church already, and thus so do all her
properties. [25]
The relationship between truth and
unity brings out tendencies of both liberals and conservatives. For liberals
unity is a given, and it can be preserved by being accepting of others. Truth
can be the enemy of unity because truth divides. If we are free to hold our own
opinions, then we can be one in that freedom that we grant one another, and the
purpose of authority is above all to safeguard that freedom. Liberals tend to
see the apostolic teaching office as divisive, as a threat to unity, while
conservatives see it as the guarantee of unity, since they see that there can
be no unity without truth. For conservatives, authority serves unity by drawing
firm lines that cannot be crossed and by expelling those who cross them, while
for liberals silence on issues claimed to be controverted is the wisest use of
authority.
Liberal unity is more the absence
of hostility than it is a genuine bond based on commonly held principles.
Stressing truth risks melting and dissolving unity. There is no room for
conversion because the objective content of unity is so underplayed.
Conservative unity, in contrast, leaves little room for conversion by wanting a
perfect unity. But if perfection comes by way of expulsion of all who are not
yet perfect, there is no conversion.
These tendencies produce a set of
impossible expectations for our bishops and priests. The subject requires an
entirely different article, even a book. Here it suffices to observe that for
both liberals and conservatives the post-Vatican II experience of pastoral
leadership, and of the apostolic teaching office in particular, has been one of
frustration. For liberals, it is the frustration of interference, of
close-minded and rigid adherence to and outmoded tradition that stultifies the
free-blowing Holy Spirit. For conservatives, it is the frustration of perceived
compromises on the truth in favor of not creating hostilities. Liberals would
remind the bishops of the compassionate, patient, forgiving Jesus, the Good
Shepherd who goes in search of the lost sheep, while conservatives are
impressed by the fact that he boldly admonished those in error and had the
courage to watch the rich young man and many followers walk away from him
rather than compromise on his teaching. All would do well to remember that
Christ is the source of both truth and unity, and so are our bishops.
Since Vatican II, the tendency to
elevate unity above the truth is certainly one of the more serious betrayals of
the Council, and of the entire Catholic Tradition. If unity is the highest good
and the function of every pastor is to keep as many sheep in the fold as
possible, then truth risks being reduced to a means, and subject to
manipulation for the sake of unity. In this case, every group and every
individual possesses a kind of power of veto over what they consider offensive
and unacceptable. The resulting unity is no longer the unity for which Christ
prayed and for which he died. Only when we see his death in terms of both truth
and love do we arrive at the theological depth of the mystery of their unity.
Conclusion
The Council, it has been claimed,
was an unresolved juxtaposition of liberal and conservative elements, of old
and new ecclesiologies. Consequently, the claim goes, Catholics must choose
between the two. But this is a false dilemma. The Church's tradition is
simultaneously conservatizing and progressive. Its law is conversion. That
conversion is the underlying gift of Christ to the Church, and it is in its
essence irrevocable, both on the part of God, who ceaselessly provides the
graces of fidelity, and on the part of the Church, who in Mary is the faithful
handmaid of the Lord. "The same motive that induces one endowed with continuity
to cling imperturbably to truth will compel him also to be open to every new
truth. The ability to remain constant in the Yes once given requires an
unremitting readiness to change." [26] Conversion is a mystery of continuity
and growth.
Like the Church itself, the
Council falls into the category of mystery, because it is an action of the
Church and an expression of its mystery of being both divine and human. The
same tendency to reduce the Church to one element of its mystery has been
applied to the Council, with the result of reducing it to a merely human clash
between liberal and conservative forces. The assertion that we must choose one
or the other has been one of the most significant weaknesses of post-Vatican II
theology, and this has presented a significant obstacle to the renewal that the
Council began.
It would be more correct to see
the Council in the same light in which the apostles saw their first assembly in
Jerusalem after the Lord ascended. "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit
and to us . . ." (Acts 15:28). At this first council, human action and divine
agency combined, and new teaching arose out of the old. That new teaching, and
the entire body of doctrine of which it was a part, was the fruit of Peter's
conversion in understanding the mysterious ways of God. It constituted a call
to conversion on the part of those who would see the Church as a radical break
with Judaism, as well as those who saw it as simply reduced to Judaism. No less
a conversion is required today of those who see Vatican II as a departure from
the Tradition or as a completely new beginning.
ENDNOTES:
[1] This is the well-known phrase
of Sacrosanctum Concilium, 14.
[2] On the new formulae of faith,
see Pope Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, nos.
41, 83, 85.
[3] This is essentially the reason
given by Pope John Paul II for the revision of the Code of Canon Law in Sacrae
Disciplinae Leges (January 25, 1983).
[4] See Sources of Renewal. On
the Implementation of Vatican II (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980).
[5] Motu proprio, Sanctitatis
Clarior, March 19, 1969; AAS 61(1969),
p.149.
[6] Christifideles Laici, no. 16.
[7] "Reform from the Beginnings,"
article in 30 Days, November 1990, pp.
66-67. The same theme is taken up in The
Ratzinger Report (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), pp. 45-53.
[8] The Splendor of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), pp. 293-294.
[9] On the hierarchy of truths,
see the article, "The Hierarchy of Truths" in The Catholic Faith, Vol. 6, No. 1 (January/ February, 2000).
[10] On this see Dominicae
Cenae, no. 4.
[11] Je Crois en l'Esprit
Saint, III. Le Fleuve de Vie coule en Orient et en Occident (Paris: Cerf, 1980), p. 348.
[12] Je Crois en l'Esprit
Saint, III, p. 350.
[13] Some of what follows agrees
with and was inspired by the article of Cardinal Francis George, "How
Liberalism Fails the Church," in Commonweal, November 19, 1999.
[14] Cardinal Ratzinger gives a profound analysis of this in his book, Principles of Catholic Theology.
Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 372-373.
[15] Ibid., p.
[16] Ecclesiam Suam, nos. 10-11.
[17] See the judicious discussion
of the limits of criticism by Pope John Paul II in Redemptor Hominis, no. 4.
[18] Cardinal Ratzinger made a
similar remark in his Intervention on the Occasion of the Presentation of
the Declaration, Dominus Iesus: "missing
the question of truth, the essence of religion does not differ from its
'non-essence,' faith is not distinguished from superstition, experience from
illusion. Finally, without a serious apprehension of the truth, the
appreciation of other religions becomes absurd and contradictory, since there
are no criteria for ascertaining what is positive in a religion."
[19] In Ecclesiam Suam, nos. 48-49.
[20] The Splendor of the Church
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), pp. 100-101.
[21] Ibid., p. 283. All of chapter
8 of this remarkable book could be read with great profit with respect to our
subject.
[22] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "'You
are Full of Grace': Elements of Biblical Devotion to Mary," in Communio, XVI (1989), N. 1, p. 61.
[23] See Pope John Paul II's
remarks on the uncritical acceptance of the findings of the human sciences as
an obstacle to conversion in Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, no. 18.
[24] The best treatment of this
subject of which I know is by Rene Latourelle in Christ and the Church,
Signs of Salvation (Staten Island, New
York: Alba House, 1972).
[25] This is one of the assertions
of the Declaration, Mysterium Ecclesiae,
of June 24, 1973.
[26] From Transformation in Christ by Dietrich von Hildebrand, as quoted by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in
Principles of Catholic Theology.
Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 63-64.
This article was originally published in a slightly different form in the November/December 2000 issue of Catholic
Dossier.
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Douglas Bushman holds a licentiate in sacred theology from the University
of Friebourg. He is Director of the Institute for Pastoral
Theology at Ave Maria University,
and author of the adult faith enrichment program, In
His Image, published by Ignatius Press. Professor Bushman and his
wife, JoAnn, home school their six children in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
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