The proposed Roman Missal
It is now forty-five years since the Second Vatican Council promulgated the ground-breaking and liberating document on the sacred liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. The conciliar document transcended ecclesiastical politics. It was not just the pet project of a party, but the overwhelming consensus of the bishops of the world. Its adoption passed overwhelmingly: 2,147 to 4. In our wildest dreams could we ever have imagined that we would live to witness what seems more and more like the systematic dismantling of the great vision of the Council's decree? But we have. What if we just said wait ?
The influence of Vatican II
This is a recollection received from a religious sister who does not wish to be identified.
“I am now in my eighties. Looking back over that long period of time, I can say without hesitation that Vatican II was the most powerfully formative influence in my life.
In the late 1960s I lived in Cape Coast, Ghana, in a religious community of 8 sisters, mixed European and American. The local leader was an American, forward looking and keen to implement the directives of Perfectae Carittatis. With one exception (later won over) we set about rediscovering the essentials of religious life, exemplified in the life of our founder and the particular spirit she embodied.
Foremost among the change we needed to work on was the art of discussion. This especially affected our understanding of obedience. Hitherto we had been drilled to obey without a word! The letter of Ignatius on obedience (with its passive image of an old mans tick) was read publically once a month. Now we had to learn how to enter into discernment, a new word in our vocabulary. To help us out, the leader invited a professor of psychology from the University of Dublin to come and stay with us for a few weeks, which he did. He showed us the{jcomments on} art of creative listening in group discussion.
Another area profoundly changed for me by Vatican II was prayer. Hitherto we the Latin Mass daily, preceded by an hours meditation in the early morning; in the evening half an hours ‘adoration’, half an hours spiritual reading in common, the various hours of the Little Office of Our Lady (in Latin) – all squeezed into a full days teaching. After Vatican II we were able to let go of the drudgery. Instead, through shared prayer, we began to open up to one another at a deep level. The changes which met with some resistance at first, proved to be liberating and a source of growth.
Finally, I praise Vatican II for the changes in the liturgy. Specialised groups suffered pain with the loss of Gregorian Chant, especially in Holy Week, but this was offset by great gains, chief among them the use of a living language and the turning of the altar to face the people. Recognition of the equality of the sexes is yet to come: for the present the liturgy still endorses a macho culture. It belongs to God’s nature not to abandon ‘his people – above all the 'leitourgia' – the work of the laity’, enabling men and women to play their rightful role in the act of worship.”
Vatican II Voice of the Church
Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council in 1959. As a General Council it is the most solemn expression of the mind of the Church. What has been the impact of Vatican II since it ended in 1965? What progress have we made? Go to www.vatican2voice.org The website promotes the teachings of Vatican II, with authoritative contributions and easy access to the Documents. It furthers the ongoing renewal of the Roman Catholic Church. Two Council fathers feature prominently: Abbot, later Bishop Christopher Butler OSB; and Franz, Cardinal König, Archbishop emeritus of Vienna. Both had great regard for The Tablet. In 1968 Butler called it “that great journal”. In 2003 König dedicated his final book to The Tablet. Please download and print this advert from The Tablet promoting this web site Vatican II Voice of the Church. Please advertise wherever you can - lest we forget !
In Memory of Vatican II
A few weeks after writing this piece I shall celebrate my seventy-sixth birthday. Since the invention of the custom that bishops tender their resignation on reaching seventy-five (a custom from which the bishops of Rome seem curiously exempt), I am therefore older than almost all the active bishops in the Catholic Church. There are, therefore, very few bishops still in office who were adults during Vatican II. For almost all of them, Vatican II is, like Nicea and Trent, merely an historical event – an event of which they read in books. It follows that, if the programme of renewal and reform which the Council initiated is to be prosecuted with success, it is of paramount importance that what it did and aimed to do is accurately remembered. And here we have a problem.
Between 1995 and 2006, the English edition appeared of the five volume History of Vatican II, edited by the late Giuseppe Alberigo of Bologna, and written by an outstanding team of twenty-seven scholars, including Roger Aubert, Henry Chadwick, Cardinal Avery Dulles, Cardinal Roberto Tucci and Joseph Komonchak. It has been generally agreed to be an outstanding work of sound historical scholarship.
Agreed: except by the Roman Curia. A curial official named Agostino Marchetto has made it his business to discredit and denounce the Alberigo History as “ideological” and as purporting to claim (in a lecture which he gave in 2007) that the Council marked the emergence of a “new Church”, a transition to “another Catholicism”, “un altro cattolicesimo”. Marchetto’s book-length attempt to destroy the reputation of the Alberigo volumes - The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: A Counterpoint for the History of the Council – was launched in Rome in 2005 in the presence of Cardinal Ruini, the Vicar General of Rome. A news agency present at the launch described the book as giving “the Holy See’s point of view on that milestone event” (for details, see my Theology for Pilgrims, pp. 245-263).
“The Holy See’s point of view”. From the moment that John XXIII first announced his calling of a Council, throughout the years of its duration, and in its aftermath, the handful of Catholic bishops strenuously resisting the conciliar programme of reform has been led by, and largely consisted of, officials of the Roman Curia. To describe the Curia’s resolute opposition to the conciliar programme as “the Holy See’s point of view” may cloak it with apparent papal approval, but this does nothing to improve its thoroughly “ideological” lack of historical justification.
The struggle for the decentralisation of power in the Church, for the restoration of appropriate authority to bishops and to bishops’ conferences, for liturgical reform, for lay ministries, and for so much else is, amongst other things, a struggle for the memory of what was said and done and dreamed between 1962 and 1965.
