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POPE BENEDICT XVI is today marking the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council — the church meetings he attended as a young priest that brought the Catholic Church into the modern world but whose true meaning is still hotly debated.
Benedict celebrated Mass in St Peter’s Square, attended by patriarchs, cardinals, bishops and a dozen elderly churchmen who participated in the council, and later will greet the faithful re-enacting the great procession into St Peter’s that launched the council in 1962.
In his homily, Benedict urged the faithful to return to the “letter” and “authentic spirit” of the council found in the Vatican II documents themselves, rather than rely on the distorted spirit promoted by those who saw in Vatican II a radical reform away from the church’s tradition.
“The council did not formulate anything new in matters of faith, nor did it wish to replace what was ancient,” Benedict said from the steps of St Peter’s.
Rather, it concerned itself with seeing that the same faith might continue to be lived in the present day, that it might remain a living faith in a world of change.
The anniversary comes as the church is fighting what it sees as a wave of secularism erasing the Christian heritage of the West and competition for souls from rival evangelical churches in Latin America and Africa. Clerical sex abuse scandals, debates over celibacy for priests, open dissent among some priests in Europe and a recent Vatican crackdown on liberal nuns in the United States have also contributed to erode the church’s place in the world.
The pope has spent much of his pontificate seeking to correct what he considers the misinterpretation of Vatican II, insisting that it wasn’t a revolutionary break from the past, as liberal Catholics paint it, but rather a renewal and reawakening of the best traditions of the ancient church.
In that vein, he decided to mark the 50th anniversary of the council with the launch of a “Year of Faith,” precisely to remind Christians of what the council truly taught and seek to “re-evangelize” those Catholics who have fallen away from their faith in the decades since.
“People think they can live without God”
He lamented Thursday that a “spiritual desertification” had advanced where people think they can live without God.
“In the council’s time it was already possible from a few tragic pages of history to know what a life or a world without God looked like, but now we see it every day around us,” he said, referring to the totalitarian, atheistic regimes of the 20th century. “But it is in starting from the experience of this desert, from this void, that we can again discover the joy of believing, its vital importance for us, men and women.”
Benedict was the Rev Joseph Ratzinger, a young priest and theological consultant to German Cardinal Joseph Frings when Vatican II began, and he has recently reminisced about what the council sought to accomplish, where it succeeded and where it erred.
“It was a splendid day on 11 October, 1962,” Benedict wrote in a forward to a commemorative book about the anniversary published this week by the Vatican newspaper. “It was a moment of extraordinary expectation. Great things were about to happen.”
Indeed, by its conclusion in 1965, the council had approved documents allowing for the celebration of Mass in the vernacular rather than Latin, and revolutionizing the church’s relations with Jews, Muslims and people of other faiths.
Yet as great as that document on relations with other faiths was, Benedict wrote, a “weakness” has emerged in the ensuing years in that “it speaks of religion solely in a positive way and it disregards the sick and distorted forms of religion” that have become all too apparent.
“Kueng has become one of Benedict’s greatest critics”
Ratzinger was joined at Vatican II by another young theologian, Hans Kueng, who subsequently brought him to Tuebingen University in southern Germany as professor of dogmatic theology, helping promote an academic career that resulted in a papacy.
In the years since, Kueng has become one of Benedict’s greatest critics, complaining that there has been no progress in reforming the church since Vatican II and calling for a grassroots revolt against the church hierarchy to carry it out.
“The council was unable to guarantee that the reforms would be implemented,” primarily because the Vatican bureaucracy was and still is opposed, he said in an interview with German news website ntv-de this week.
Kueng, who lost his official license to teach Catholic theology but continues to teach, has opposed Benedict’s outreach to traditionalist Catholics and his reintroduction of the old, pre-Vatican II Latin Mass.
“Ratzinger and his peers spiritually live in the Middle Ages,” Kueng told n-tv.
A similar complaint was made recently by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, one of the last liberals in the College of Cardinals, who died Aug. 31. Martini was quoted as saying in his final interview that the church was in need of radical reform and was “200 years behind the times.”
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“The church meetings he attended as a child that brought the Catholic Church into the modern world”Jesus I’d hate to have seen what it was like before that,filthy organisation
“…where people think they can live without God.” Can people really not live without an imaginary friend?
Whatever a person’s views on living without God, I think it is safe to say that we can live without the Catholic Church …
‘that brought the Catholic Church into the modern world’ what a joke!
Holding to the “letter”. Canon Law, child abuse, non reporting, mental reservations. That is not what we want from any organisation.
Very coincidental the date of this meeting 50 years ago… Meditrinalia… A roman feast day celebrating the end of the wine harvest. Old and new wine was mixed and tasted in order to be healed. The church plagiarise most of their celebrations as the ddates they hold events and meetings are very symbolic in ancient times
“People think they can live without God”, which god? there have been thousands of them :/
I don’t think I can live without God ! I know I can ! Stopped believing in God in my early teens when I learnt how think critically. I’ve lived well over thirty years without believing in god and will continue to do so until the day I die.
Such a distorted and incomplete understanding of the role of religion in history.. Everyone else is to blame foe the demise of morality … Such utter nonsense… Religious fan statism, often with official approval is at the core of so much violence.
The Pope looks like an evil version of Michael D.
I am sure Pope John 23rd would be turning in his grave at how all the progress he and his successor Paul 6th did at Vatican II slowly be rescinded by John Paul 2nd and Benedict himself. Vatican II should have revitalised and modernised the Church as it was intended to, instead all the proposed changes were virtually abolished. Sad.
I say he would be turning in his grave, except for the fact this body was exhumed and is now in a macabre display inside St. Peters.
Conor – which parts of the documents of Vatican II do you think have been rescinded?
Its a huge series of documents and changes to church structures. Vatican II created the framework for the implementation and most of them were never implemented. It is unfortunate that Paul VI didnt live longer to implement the changes he helped construct alongside his preedecessor John XXIII. For example, John XXIII proposed the College of Bishops to take over the day to day running of the Chruch so that less power would reside with the Holy See. The College of Bishops would then implement the changes approved at Vatican II on a country by country basis and convene at regular intervals to discuss progress and propose further adjustments.
The College of Bishops convened once, at Vatican II and not once since.
The laiety were also to be given new roles within the Church so that as priest numbers declined, members of the laiety could administer certain sacraments, and take on roles within the Church hierarchy, never got off the ground after Paul VI died.
You would have to go through all the documentation and the process of Vatican II to understand what was fully proposed to see what actually hasnt been done. It was almost a decade long process guided by two popes. The last act of Vatican II was for Paul VI to place his triple tiara on the altar of St. Peters and declared to the world that the pursuit of temporal power would be outside the remit of the Holy See and the Church. Yet the Church still has distinct temporal powers and an iron grip on many aspects of life across the globe, particularly in developing nations.
Conor: You say: “You would have to go through all the documentation and the process of Vatican II to understand what was fully proposed”.
With respect, that seems to be something that you have not, in fact, done. The things you mention exist nowhere in those documents. For example, please show me where there was any mention of lay people administering sacraments in the documents of Vatican II? Indeed, in the 1960′s there was not the slightest sign of priest numbers declining, quite the opposite in fact. Giving new roles to the laity to cope with declining vocations was nowhere on the agenda.
However, I can tell you two things that were in the documents of Vatican II that have not been followed: the primacy of Latin in the life and liturgy of the Church, and the importance of Gregorian Chant in Catholic liturgy. Vatican II was a lot more traditional than most people would care to admit.
Actually Almar I have read the 4 constitutions, 9 decrees and 3 declarations and studied the processes involved in each out of pure interest. You need to review the decree on the apostolate of the laity which the College of Bishops were meant to implement. And your referal to the latin liturgy and gregorian chant has to do with what the sedevancists want and no decision was actually made upon.
I notice you say nothing about what Paul VI said at the end of it.
Conor – Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the liturgy, is very clear on both Latin (S. 36.1) and Gregorian Chant (S. 116).
Your comment about sedevacantists is frankly bizarre. They are a disparate and unorganised grouping who want to remake the Church in their own image and likeness. Oddly enough, they are like many of those so-called “liberal” dissenters who also wish to recreate the Church in their own likeness as well. A liking for Latin has essentially nothing to do with sedevacantism. They may prefer Latin, but that is not their main gripe.
Even more bizarre is your reference to the Church having an iron grip on power. That is the stuff of fantasy to be honest. Apart from its own tiny jurisdiction, the Church neither has nor seeks temporal power – the Church’s concern with temporal power ended (thankfully) with the Lateran Treaty.
As for the apostolate of the laity and our supposed role in administering the sacraments, I invite you to tell us where this is outlined in the documents of Vatican II.
You never see himself and Darth Sidious in the same room together do you?
One sits at the heart of a soulless empire intent on crushing the spirit and removing all freedom, joy and individuality from all known intelligent life forms. And the other built the Death Star. But can Benny shoot lightning bolts from his fingertips?
And??
Dave
My thoughts exactly !
As Miley Byrne would say…Well Holy God!!!
The argument for the existence of god is irrelevant . What is relevant is that the victims of agents of the organisation known as the Vatican/holy see aka Roman Catholic Church get justice for the crimes committed against them as young children . No justice will come from an imaginary God but from the hand of man alone. The Vatican is responsible for crimes against humanity. In this country alone they committed crimes such as the facilitation and cover up of child rape , torture both physical and mental and enslavement . Many who committed these crimes are still among us and many more hold high office in the Vatican state. These people must be brought to justice.
I agree with your comment. It is interesting that the popes helper who leaked a bit of info got five or six years in prison. Most un-Christian of the pope there! While pedos roam free unpunished !
Where is my post
Probably at home in your post-box I guess ;-)
It’s nice to see former Hitler youth doing well for themselves
“the Creation speaketh a universal language, independent of human speech or human language multiplied and various as they might be. It can not be forged;it cannot be counterfeited;it can not be lost; it cannot be altered, it can not be suppressed. It does not depend on the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of god reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know god. ” Mr Thomas Paine
If all of the freaks in the world spent less time reading and writing clap trap about gods supposed revelations and instructions to man ( via cave meetings etc)and more time looking at the detail and infinite beauty that is creation the world would be a safer and more beautiful place. God is in nature. He,she or it wouldn’t pop up in the dessert to sun stroked Kabbalist fanatics and give instruction. Don’t belittle creation with Vatican pooh pooh and mind control games. Open your eyes and your senses.
So its official, boys ‘n’ girls..his infallible pontificatious holiness hath decreed it thus that ye desist from ye’re diaphragms and calendrical methodism and return to the condomonious french letters.
Get ye to it with a will, lest ye multiply.
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