Especially for our generation who came of age in the 1960s, Vatican II has been the dominating event of the Church in our age. Progressives and Traditionalists agree that it was a rupture, the start of a new Church; the former view this providentially, the later catastrophically. John Paul and Benedict rightly insisted upon a "hermeneutic of continuity." Many of us who ascribe to this later interpretation continue to see it as uniquely defining of our time. Now, 60 years after the council and 25 years into a new century, we can locate the event in a sober, balanced way within the overall life of the Church. Regarding it as a significant work of the Holy Spirit, we do well to lessen its importance in relation to the overall workings of Providence in that era. It is important; but not dominant.
The Primary, Substantial Reality of the Church
The Church is a person, who subsists in identity even as she changes and develops in change. She is the Bride of the Groom who unceasingly, steadily, reliably, passionately, ineffably, efficaciously "makes love" to her every day, everywhere, in an infinitude of manners. This "affair" finds ultimate expression in the Eucharist, offered every day on every altar by every priest in every mass, and in the abiding, stable, physical presence in every tabernacle in the world. No event or development is as important as the mystical union Christ has with the entire Church and every single soul. The mystical body, the communion of saints, the spousal communion of groom/bride is the abiding, fluid, creative, fruitful identity of the Church.
This reality finds its living expression in the lives of the saints, the canonized and the unknown, in the radiance of sanctity in all its brilliance, fascination, fecundity and eternity. And so, historical events and developments are secondary to the abiding communion in holiness. It finds dramatic expression in the death of martyrs, notably across the Islamic and Communist worlds in our time: a reality too little attended to in the West, which has its own subtle forms of persecution. Additionally, we cannot fail to recognize the hidden life of prayer of countless vowed, cloistered, hermits and monks.
Personal Change: Accidental, Substantial, and Significant
Since the Church is best understood as a person, the bride of Christ, with Mary and the saints at the center and all of us joined in a "communio" of persons, we can understand change in the Church as analogous to personal change. Identity subsists throughout a person's life, along with change, rupture, growth, and decline.
Accidental change is more trivial, transitory, passing: a hair cut, broken arm, gaining a million or a billion dollars, receiving a doctorate from an Ivy, a Nobel or an Oscar.
Substantial change is absolute, interior, formal change; the replacement of one reality for another: death, possession by a body snatcher, fall from grace into depravity, conversion from state of mortal sin to a life of holiness. Baptism is arguably a substantial change.
Significant change here is understood as more than accidental but less than fully substantial: falling in love, starting a new career, marrying, having children, suffering a severe trauma or a disabling event/condition, ordination, confirmation.
The Church will not change substantially until Christ returns. Her stability and continuity is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit which moves freely, serendipitously; as it infuses a dense institutional network of scriptures, sacraments, teachings, practices.
The tripartite model suggested here entails a spectrum of the significant: many changes are more than accidental but less than substantial. This calls to mind our classic Catholic view of actual sin as venial and mortal. This model has always seemed inadequate to me: the "venial" category suggests minor, trivial, excusable; the mortal is total spiritual death and eternal damnation. Actual sin seems to me to be always significant, but on a spectrum; perhaps not often fully mortal (including full deliberation and consent as well as grave matter); never trivial; but worst of all dynamic as it leads powerfully to deeper depths of depravity, moving towards the mortal.
The argument here will be that the Council was a super-significant event, less than substantial. It was not the defining event of the century. There are several developments that rival and may exceed it in importance.
Super-Significant Events in the Catholic and Broader Church
The Church subsists fully in the Catholic Church but exists in varying degrees, intensity and depth in many ecclesial bodies. Surveying both the Catholic and broader Church, three events or dramas, in addition to the Council, stand out.
1. Ecumenical Movement, largely among Protestant denominations, has been a move toward the unity Christ desired for the Church. This overcomes (in some degree) past hostility and condemnation by focus upon the essentials that unite us: Jesus Christ as our savior and lord, his redemptive suffering and resurrection, the Bible, the creeds and early teaching, prayer, and the life of charity. Our Vatican II was the Catholic expression of this move of the Spirit that has been active for decades.
2. Pentecostal Movement. Exploding into our world in 1900, it has spread like wildfire within and outside of all denominations. It is extremely powerful in the Southern hemisphere. It came into Catholicism in 1967, immediately after the Council. It has attracted many non-practicing or lukewarm Catholics. From a more parochial, counter-reformation perspective, this departure from the Catholic institutions is a loss. But from a more ecumenical/evangelical/charismatic view, it is a gain as many draw close to Christ, the Word, the Holy Spirit and local fellowship. Happily, many later revert and recognize the intimacy of the Groom with his concrete, historical, sinful, institutional Church.
3. Mercy of Jesus. The revelations to St. Faustina, later integrated into Catholic practice by St. John Paul, are the most significant work of the Spirit in the Catholic Church in the 20th century. These are not a change, but an organic, fluid growth of what is at the very heart of the Gospel and our faith but has not always been received with such clarity and depth.
Vatican Council as Culmination of 20th Century Renewal Movements
That 1962-5 event in Rome is best understood not as the beginning of a new Church, but as the culmination, the finale, the climax of the early 20th century. It comingled, finalized, clarified, situated, authenticated and institutionalized movements of the Holy Spirit that had been flaming for the entire century, quite intensely in the two decades since the war. These include:
1. Ecumenical movement mentioned above but now embraced by the institutional Catholic Church.
2. "Resourcement" theology: a return to the sources including the fathers and a refocusing upon the fundamentals of the Gospel.
3. Engagement with modern thought. Positive and yet critical, the Church moved away from an anxious and angry defensiveness toward modernity and opened up a dialogue, eager to embrace the good and renounce the bad. This embraced theology but also philosophy (personalism, phenomenology, dialogue with existentialism and Marxism), social science, the hard sciences, literature and culture in general.
4. Biblical Movement. This included a correct acceptance of the academic, literary-historical study of the Scriptures, but more importantly a renewed emphasis on the Word as the substance of our faith.
5. Liturgical Movement: intended to draw the laity closer to the Eucharistic mysteries.
6. Judaeo-Christian Studies. In part grief at the Holocaust and contrition about our history of anti-Judaism and antisemitism, this has been more deeply a recovery of our roots and recognition of our continued fraternity with Rabbinic Judaism.
7. Church/State relationships were reconsidered with primacy upon religious liberty and awareness of the USA model of separation of Church and state.
8.World Religions were seen with more positivity and openness to dialogue. There emerged recognition that God is at work in them even as they prepare for and crave fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
9. Thomism. The Council is properly seen as a liberation from a narrow, closed, restrictive scholasticism. Such categories of thought were avoided in the final documents. Nevertheless, the bishops and theologians were all thoroughly formed by St. Thomas. The Thomistic revival, including Gilson and Maritain, had been widely influential. The more contemporary transcendental Thomism of Rahner/Lonergan was a presence. Monsignor Tom Guarino has pointed out that underlying all the documents are fundamental thomistic concepts such as analogy. So St. Thomas was an influence.
This list is hardly exclusive. By gathering these currents and directing them to flow into and out of the heart of our faith, the person/event of Jesus Christ, the Council Fathers gave a fresh, creative expression that was loyal to our legacy. An authentic advance that was continuous and loyal as it was fresh, creative and fecund.
Renewal Movement Later in the 20th Century.
1. Lay Renewal Movements: Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, Charismatic, Neocatechumenate, Communion and Liberation, Focolare, Saint Egidio, L'Arche and others,
2. Classic, Conservative Movements: Opus Dei, Regnum Christi, and other.
3. Social Justice and Option for the Poor: First and foremost in classic corporal/spiritual works of mercy intimately with the poor in St. Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Madaleine DelBrel, Catherine Doherty. More systematically in the Theology of Liberation, the "Option for the Poor," and other.
4. Culture War: Particularly in the USA, but across the globe, and ecumenical alliance between Catholics, Evangelicals and other defenders of the natural order rallied against the sexual liberationists.
5. New Religious Orders: Sisters of Life, Franciscan Friars of the Renewal and many small orders across the globe.
6. Intensive, Alternative, Catholic Colleges: In the USA, an alternative to the largely accommodating mainline universities (Land of Lakes Conference 1967 when they divorced from the Church under the leadership of Fr. Hesburg and the Jesuit schools) developed: Franciscan, Benedictine, Ave Maria, and perhaps a total of 20.
7. Home Schooling: As motivated by the faith in reaction to parochial and public schools in decline.
8. Expansion of the Church of the Global South: Demographically the center of gravity of the global Church, Catholic and Evangelical, has shifted south of the equator. We in the north are now more and more missionary areas for those of the south.
9. John Paul's catechesis and anthropology of the sexed, gendered human person: Almost entirely ignored by the Catholic academy, he communicated directly to those receptive, assisted by the John Paul Institutes, Christopher West, Jason Everett, Paul Houlis and others.
10. Theology of Benedict, Balthasar/Speyr, and Communio School: Numerically small, spiritually great.
11. The Latin Mass: Significant move to retrieve reverence and formality in worship.
12. Marian Movements: Fatima, Medjugorie, Legion of Mary, Priests for Mary, and other.
Realistic Evaluation of Vatican II
The suggestion here is that the Council was not the singularly decisive event as our generation has assumed. It is one of the most significant of multiple movements of the Holy Spirit in the 20th century. It authoritatively articulated many of these renewal currents; even as it prepared for those to follow. Like the Church, it is an act of the Holy Spirit even as it is a human creation...limited, flawed, situated in a particular time/place with associated limits as well as strengths. Three realities impress:
1. It suffered the misfortune of happening just as the Cultural (sexual) Revolution was about to explode in the West. It did not anticipate or prepare us for this explosion of an earthquake of a tsunami. Its "spirit" was one of unbalanced optimism which made us gullible and vulnerable. Concluding after two decades of unprecedented prosperity and peace in the West (excluding the Cold War which it ignored), it exuded a humanistic, scientific confidence just as our culture was about to collapse. It inclined, even among us moderate non-progressives, an attitude of superiority to the past, a loss of filial gratitude.
2. As a result, the implementation after 1965 was in good part highjacked by sympathizers with the Cultural Revolution. Reform of the liturgy was especially problematic. This was recognized by Benedict but denied by Francis.
3. There is no mention of our primary antagonist, then and arguably now, communism. Another sign of a positivity unleavened by realism about the world, the flesh and the devil.
Conclusion
This essay reflects a familiarity with American Catholicism since 1945 but ignorance about the myriad workings of the Holy Spirit beyond the Catholic world and on the other continents. It is, therefore, a mere sample of the broader workings of Divine Providence. We have identified about 25 initiatives from heaven, with the Council being one of the most important.
Imagine the Church as a magnificent garden, bursting life: flowers, fruit, vegetation, birds and gentle animal life. The master gardener, Jesus himself of course, protects and nourishes but needs to carefully monitor and mentor his assistants who are often dysfunctional and incompetent. There are perennials which abide as well as annuals which are always new and fresh. Dirt of the earth is rich with endowment from the Creator who also provides perfect temperature, sunlight and shade. The garden is watered, mysteriously and miraculously, but underlying springs of water (the Holy Spirit) which surge serendipitously wherever needed, in perfect proportion to need. Surrounding the garden is a world that is part garden and part wilderness and in constant combat. The boundaries between the two are clear, but porous. The garden gushes out bringing order, nutrition, all kinds of good seed and animal life. Likewise, the wilderness invades the garden with toxic plant life and predatory animals. The garden is in a constant state of war: defensively, and offensively as it attacks malicious forms of life and allies itself with all forms of order and beauty in the world beyond its clear borders.
And so we were so blessed in 20th century Catholicism to live in a stability and safety, with rich soil, perfect warmth/sunlight/shade, ever new fresh surges of life within stability and safety. The Council was among the greatest, but hardly THE defining event of the century.
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