The multiple views of Vatican II

 

Vatican II was and is a point of tension between Catholics. Some Catholics abuse its teaching and use it to justify poor religious practice. George Lindbeck wrote progressive Catholics “appealed to the Council to justify their own loss of faith, their mindless capitulation to modernitas, their devious and unacknowledged departures from what is essential, not only to the Roman tradition, but to Christianity itself.”¹ On the other side conservative Catholics brushed Vatican II under the rug or blamed it for the evil rising in the Church. The issues Vatican II faced were ambiguity and that it, according to Maritain “had unleashed vast, pent-up longings both inside and outside the Church. Some of these were forces for great good, but in others lay the potential for great evil.² However, while there were two sides of Vatican II, one far to the left and the other far to the right, there was a middle. The middle road was accepting Vatican II and thanking God for it. St. John Paul II would comment on Vatican II as a “sure compass in our time.” Though Vatican II has been abused and hated, it was called, it happened, and it was not only good but necessary.

We will first consider the bad that came out of Vatican II. How could so much bad come from a council that sought good? Alan Schreck gives an answer, “Many of the difficulties in the Catholic Church since Vatican II have nothing to do with the council but were problems created by the increasingly secular and godless culture of the world in which the Church lives.”³ Bruce Marshall comes to a similar conclusion, “the astonishing readiness of some Catholics, in the name of being up to date, to “kneel before the world.’”⁴ Marshall, however, makes a further observation; most theologians of the day were priests and religious. The shepherds were the first to abuse Vatican II, Maritain wrote of priests, “they who boast of no longer genuflecting before the tabernacle, but happily bend the knee to the manifold spirits of this passing world.”⁵ This would be the cause of concern of the Church and an issue with Vatican II. Vatican II would have its reputation sullied by priests permitting offences or by being permissive, letting their congregation think what they want to think. The many experiments to make the Mass more enjoyable for the laity caused a loss of faith, Schreck writes, “Related to this was a general loss of understanding of the Church as a mystery of God’s work and presence in the world. Some Catholics began to look at the Church as just another human organization.”⁶ This is not just the opinion of Schreck. Taking from a progressive, who implored Vatican II for ridding The Catholic Church of its salvific identity, we read, “The official Catholic position now is that one can fulfill the "meaning of life" extra ecclesiam, outside the Church.”⁷ While Vatican II did say this, the author of the statement is not considering the whole statement. He discusses the Decree of Ecumenism which also said, “the Catholic Church possesses the fullness of the means of grace and salvation brought to mankind by Jesus Christ.”⁸  This mentality was real and post Vatican II saw Catholics leaving the Church to join Protestant denominations that were more enthusiastic or easier to practice. The issues that Vatican II faced were over enthusiasm on bad interpretation. Schreck, Maritain, and Marshall wrote along the same lines, when Vatican II opened the window the Holy Spirit came in but, as often happens when windows are opened, unwanted things, evil things, crept in as well. 
          
  

        On the conservative side of things Vatican II was stripping away the Church’s only defense to a modernist world, anti-modernism. St. John XXIII believed that anti-modernism, the Church’s present response to modernism, was ineffective and even destructive for Catholics. Marshall writes about the opinion of Congar, a theologian of Vatican II, “this anti-modernist discipline had become ineffective at coping with the flood of social, cultural, and intellectual forces that confronted the Church.”⁹ The fear of St. John XXIII and several bishops and theologians was that modernism would overtake the Church. Defenses had to be put in place. St. John XXIII and the members of Vatican II knew that any actions taken would cause trouble. Marshall sums the decision of Vatican II as, “A true reckoning with modernity, the banal and the destructive as well as the good, meant deliberately steering the barque of Peter for a long sail on turbulent seas.”¹⁰ Conservatives criticized Vatican II for opening the window too quickly. They had suggested that the window should be open then shut, only a small breeze or glimpse of modernity was all that was needed.

           

While Vatican II produced problems many good things came from it. Despina Prassas, a theologian, came from an Orthodox background. Her opinion of Vatican II is that it was necessary and a fruitful council. One point from her essay on the legacy of Vatican II was that it allowed the Catholic Church to reach out to Orthodoxy and Protestantism in a way it could not before. The Decree of Ecumenism, which was abused by some, helped to bring unity between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. In December of 1965, at the closing of Vatican II, there was a joint declaration between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church lifting the anathemas on each other. We can further read along the lines of Schreck, Marshall, Maritain, and Prassas, and see that the errors that came with Vatican II were already festering within the Church. The 180⁰ seen in churches or the mass evacuation of priests after Vatican II did not come from something Vatican II allowed but rather the opposite. Vatican II worked to establish the sanctity of marriage and the life of laity. What bad came from teachings on laity? Priests and religious, brothers and nuns, left their posts by the thousands to be a part of the lay sanctity. They disregarded the Decrees on Religious, which stressed the importance of those who take vows for the sake of God. Schreck writes, “Many priests and religious apparently did not understand all that Vatican II had to say about their spiritual identity and mission and their continued need to be guided by those in authority over them in the Church.”¹¹ Here we can see the backlash as a necessary commentary on the Church. Vatican II saw that it was necessary to speak to the laity, to remind the laity that they are active members of the Church and called to holiness. Before Vatican II the laity were treated as second rate citizens and given little respect in the Church. Yet upon speaking to the lay, priests abandoned their churches or nuns left their convents. A point Schreck, Marshall, and Maritain make is that those who were willing to violate the decrees of Vatican II or all together leave the Church were likely to do so on their own regardless. Vatican II forced their hands. Marshall goes so far as to say that if Vatican II never happened there could have been a schism similar to the Protestant Reformation.

           

Vatican II saw a change in the Church. It seems that for every Decree there was some good and some bad. It was not the intention of Pope St. John XXIII and Pope St. Paul VI to cause trouble in the Church. They were two strong figures that steered the Church through some of the most difficult times. Further, the effects of Vatican II have only just begun to truly show. Fr. John Vidmar writes against the criticism of Vatican II causing a drastic decrease in vocations, “In the early twenty-first century, vocations are on the rise again and have proven wrong the sociologists’ predictions of the end of the priesthood and religious life.”¹² Vatican II was a necessary step the Church had to take to enter the world and evangelize.

1 Marshall, Bruce, Reckoning with Modernity, First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion & Public Life. Dec2015, Issue 258, p23-30.

2 Ibid

3 Alan Schreck, The Compact History of the Catholic Church, Rev. ed., (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2009), 149.

4 Marshal, Bruce, Reckoning with Modernity.

5 Ibid

6 Alan Schreck, The Compact History of the Catholic Church,151.

7 Swidler, Leonard, Vatican II: The Catholic Revolution from Damnation to Dialogue, Journal of Ecumenical Studies. Fall2015, Vol. 50 Issue 4, p511-524.

8 Alan Schreck, The Compact History of the Catholic Church,141.

9 Marshal, Bruce, Reckoning with Modernity.

10 Marshal, Bruce, Reckoning with Modernity.

11 Alan Schreck, The Compact History of the Catholic Church,150.

12 John Vidmar, OP The Catholic Church Through the Ages: A History; Second Edition,( New York / Mahwah NJ, Paulist Press, 2014)