Rolling Vatican II Forward

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - May 20, 2005

One month ago today, on the day after his election as the successor of St. Peter, Pope Benedict XVI re-assembled the Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, celebrated together with them the "source and summit" of the Church's life, and mentioned what he saw as the agenda God has given the Church during his Pontificate.

In an address he spent much of the night writing in Latin, he started off by praising his predecessor and describing what John Paul II saw as the guiding principle of his twenty-six year Pontificate:

Before my eyes is, in particular, the witness of Pope John Paul II. … With the Great Jubilee the Church was introduced into the new millennium carrying in her hands the Gospel, applied to the world through the authoritative re-reading of Vatican Council II. Pope John Paul II justly indicated the Council as a 'compass' with which to orient ourselves in the vast ocean of the third millennium."

As he assumed the helm of Peter's barque on that vast ocean, Benedict XVI affirmed that Vatican II would likewise be his compass:

I too, as I start in the service that is proper to the Successor of Peter, wish to affirm with force my decided will to pursue the commitment to enact Vatican Council II, in the wake of my predecessors and in faithful continuity with the millennia-old tradition of the Church. … With the passing of time, the conciliar documents have not lost their timeliness; their teachings have shown themselves to be especially pertinent to the new exigencies of the Church and the present globalized society.

Our new Holy Father said so much in so few words. But to understand them fully, we need to understand what he was saying between the lines.

Since the Second Vatican Council, there has been a sizeable movement of Catholic intellectuals, primarily in Europe and in the U.S., who have interpreted the Second Vatican Council as an almost open-ended mandate for changing whatever they didn't like.

These intellectuals have often justified these proposed changes — focusing our liturgies less on God and more on the worshiping community, liberalizing the Church's sexual teachings, eliminating priestly celibacy, opening the priesthood to women, reducing the binding doctrinal and governing authority of the Pope and the bishops in favor of a 'democratization' of Church teaching and structure — by appealing to the "spirit of Vatican II."

The notable thing, though, is that none is warranted by the letter of Vatican II, the documents of which often affirm precisely the opposite. And to talk about the Council without the documents is no longer to talk about the Council.

Many of these same intellectuals — aging and numerically shrinking — used the occasion of John Paul's death and Benedict's election to accuse both of trying to "roll back Vatican II." But such comments show, frankly, how little those who make them really know about Vatican II.

During Vatican II, Archbishop Wojtyla of Krakow was instrumental in the formulation of the Council's two most "progressive" documents, the Church's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) and the Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae).

And then Father Joseph Ratzinger, only in his mid 30s, played an even greater role. He was the theological expert to very influential Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne, Germany, and composed for him the powerful interventions that most Council historians recognize changed the entire path of the Council, leading to the reworking of all of the documents.

Wojtyla and Ratzinger both are embodiments of the Council and its true spirit, which is found in the Council documents. Since the Council, both have labored for its authentic implementation.

This is why in presenting his pontifical program, our new Pope pointed to John Paul II's "authoritative re-reading" of Vatican II against all false readings.

It's why he said his "decided will" is to "enact Vatican II… in faithful continuity with the millennia-old tradition of the Church." Vatican II was not a "rupture with the past," as many intellectuals have claimed, but a full flourishing of traditional Catholic teaching in modern language.

And it's why he called the whole Church to focus on the Council's documents, stressing that "they have not lost their timeliness."

In a 1997 interview, Cardinal Ratzinger said:

"There was quite a significant difference between what the Fathers wanted and what was conveyed to the public and then became fixed in the general consciousness. The Fathers wanted to update the faith — but this was precisely in order to present it with its full impact. Instead, the impression increasingly gained hold that reform consisted in simply jettisoning ballast, in making it easier for ourselves. Reform thus seemed really to consist, not in a deeper rooting of the faith, but in any kind of dilution of the faith.

"The true inheritance of the Council lies in the texts. When one interprets them soundly and thoroughly, then one is preserved from extremisms in both directions; and then there really is a path that still has a long future ahead."

That path is the path of his pontificate, compassed by the documents for the eternal shore.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.