Vatican II...Overrated!

"The Council is the most important event in the last seventeen hundred years of the Church..."

 This casual, silly statement came in a text this week from my dear college friend Tim R. who is reliably  intelligent, informed, and theologically sound. (Full disclosure: Tim thinks like me most of the time. For some reason, people who think like me, such as yourself dear Fleckinstein-Reader, are always unusually intelligent.😊) This statement reflects an error more common on the theological left wing of our generation: an exaggerated importance attributed to the Council.  We Boomers...privileged, indulged, entitled, narcissistic...coming of age in the 1960s,  view reality through the narrow lens of our pampered youth. And so, our decadent generation, now aging but clinging to power and wealth, vastly exaggerates the importance of the Council. 

In our own lifetime (born 1947) I would identify at least ten events (including the negative) as more important for our Church: 

1. - The Cultural Revolution of the West: sexual liberation, breakdown of family, Godlessness, isolation of the individual, deconstruction of gender, contraception/abortion, collapse of a Christian West.

2. - The Communist triumph in China and North Korea.

3. - Collapse of the Soviet Empire.

4. - Spread of Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism (mostly non-Catholic) especially in the global South.

5. - The malignant growth globally of big tech, state, corporation, bureaucracy..."the machine"..."the matrix."

6. - The rise of Jihadist Islam in various forms.

7. - Reception of the Divine Mercy as revealed to Saint Faustina and proclaimed by St. John Paul.

8. - Lay renewal movements in the Catholic Church.

9. - Dual pontificate of John Paul and Benedict, their authoritative interpretation (continuity) of the Council, and the "Communio" school of theology they share with Balthasar, DeLubac and others.

10. -Priest sex scandal and episcopal negligence; crisis in the priesthood. 

What if There Had Been No Council?

Fleckinstein's interpretation of the Council is well known to you dear Reader: it was a work of the Holy Spirit but is best understood, not as the start of a new Church, but as the culmination, completion, synthesis of  at least ten movements growing fiercely in the previous half century:  

1. ecumenism, 

2. religious freedom, 

3. liturgy, 

4. Bible, 

5. positive if critical engagement with modernity, 

6. "Resourcement" that implicitly retains Thomas in light of all the fathers and doctors, 

7. the holiness and mission of the layman, 

8. reconciliation with the Jews, 

9. acceptance of historicity without abandoning foundational ontology, 

10. recentering of Catholicism in the person/event of Jesus Christ.

If we understand, by "The Council" the sum of these nine movements, we might conclude that it is the defining event of our time. But the Council is itself a singular, discrete event; and these are nine clear movements. 

If there was no Council? These movements would have continued to percolate powerfully within the Church without such a clear, punctuating synthesis. In large part, we might well have the same Church we have today. It is possible to imagine a scenario in which a figure such as John Paul or Benedict could have integrated them, gradually and gently,  without the rupture and chaos that ensued in the 1970s and following. The stunning unanimity of the bishops in accepting the documents and the widespread enthusiastic reception by priests and laity both indicate that these changes were already widely operative and accepted. The Council did not so much change the Church; rather, it validated what was already real.

My friend Tim's comment triggered me to ask:  What are the most important events of the last 1700 years, since Constantine? But first a preface.

The Real Life of the Church: Bride and Body of Christ, Our Mother

More important than any and all events in the life of the Church, since Pentecost, is the underlying continuity of a love affair between Groom and Bride:

- Lives of holiness: that of the great saints, but also the quiet, humble, hidden lives in families, priesthood and the religious life.

- Sacramental encounter with Christ in ordinary Church life.

- Preaching and catechesis of the faith in a million mundane venues.

Granting that primal continuity, the Church is a pilgrim in history and so events do matter.

Most Important Events Since 326  (In addition to the ten above in our lifetime and the ten that birthed the Council.)

1. Evangelization of the globe out of Europe from 1500 -1900.

2. Protestant Reformation: fracture of Christianity.

3. Counter Reformation of Trent and all that followed of Baroque Catholicism.

4. Muslim conquest of about half of Western civilization: across north Africa, into Spain and Turkey and eastward into India.

5. Foundation of religious orders, starting with Ignatius of Loyola, from 1500, which evangelized the globe and structured modern Catholicism. 

6. Fall of the Roman Empire and plunge of Europe into civilizational chaos.

7. Monastic movement, starting with Benedict, as the basis for medieval Christendom. This was preceded by the hermits and monks of the deserts.

8. Defeat of Islam in the Spanish Reconquista, Lepanto, Vienna and other.

9. Defeat of the Axis powers in World War II. 

10. Theology of Thomas, Augustine and the doctors/fathers.

Honorable mention: Schism between West and East, the mendicant  orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites), Medieval Universities,  Renaissance, Enlightenment, World War I, Industrial and Scientific revolutions. 

Fleckinstein concludes in a state of delectation and "com-placentia"...not the lethargy, self-indulgence and ungenerosity of our "complacency" but the deeper Latin-rooted state of "delight with" as interior serenity and gratitude. In this essay, we have not one, not two, but three "top ten lists!" It doesn't get any better than that!

Afterthought: the compulsion to produce "top ten lists" is a subcategory of OCD, a highly masculine preoccupation with hierarchy, order, ranking and dominance. Particularly afflicts firstborn sons. As you know, dear Reader, among Fleckinstein's interests are disorders and therapies that elude the protocols of professional psychology.