In church's dreams, Vatican II never happened

Catholic New Times, March 8, 2005 by Andrew Greeley

The American TV networks spent huge sums of money and sent scores of people to Rome two weeks ago. Characteristically, they spent little time or energy on research, and hence provided weak and stereotypical journalism, limited to questions about married priests, female priests, gays and sexual abuse. They missed completely the most critical issue for the church in the 21st century--Vatican Council II and the changes it created.

Many, if not most, of the cardinal electors would tell you that the council was an incident, a bump in the road.

The council fathers wrote some useful documents. There was misguided enthusiasm after the council, but Pope John Paul II sternly re-imposed order on the church. The council is interesting mainly now as historical matter.

They could not be more wrong. The council was a revolutionary event that had a profound impact on Catholics who lived through it and indirectly on their children, who have barely heard about it. It's still the green dragon lurking in the Sistine Chapel, even if the electors can't quite see it.

The model of unchanging Catholicism in response to the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution assumed that the church would not change, should not change, could not change.

Suddenly the laity and lower clergy experienced changes in liturgy, in Scripture interpretation, in theories of religious liberty, in attitudes toward other Christians and Jews, in trust of the modern world. The structures--patterns of behaviour and supporting motivations--that had supported the church for several centuries collapsed.

The council fathers may not have foreseen this collapse, but they did vote for the changes (in overwhelming numbers) and hence the documents themselves, and the action of the fathers, presumably in Catholic theology guided by the Holy Spirit, were responsible for the destabilization.

It was, as it seemed then, a new spring for the church, now flexible, joyful and confidently open to the world. However, the ferment frightened some of the leaders, who lost their nerve and responded in the only way they knew--repression. They issued new orders without any serious attempt to explain the reasons for them. They silenced some theologians.

They appointed reactionary bishops, who were not always the brightest or most humane. They investigated seminaries. Their mood changed from optimism to grim warnings and solemn denunciations. The church, for a few years a bright light on the mountaintop, had once again become an embattled fortress afraid of the modern world.

The leaders confidently expected that the laity would do what they were told. They could not have been more wrong, nor their strategy more counterproductive. The laity and the lower clergy for the most part simply ignored them and went about creating new structures in which Catholics could affiliate with the church on their own terms.

Resignations from the priesthood and the collapse of priestly vocations, began only after desperate attempts to slow down change soured the mood of the council. The present crisis of the credibility of church leadership arose precisely from mistaken attempts to re-assert the old leadership style. The problem is not so much the council as restorationist attempts to undo it.

To be fair, no one realized how potentially frail was the so-called confident church of 1950, both in America and around the world. A push from a handful of conciliar documents and the whole house of cards collapsed. For many leaders who had known the seeming serenity of the pre-conciliar church, it was unthinkable that the structures had disappeared overnight and with them, their own credibility. So they fell back on them to prevent a disappearance that had already occurred.

The restorationist style continues in Rome, though it should be clear that it doesn't work. Despite the late pope's efforts to reassert the church's traditional sexual ethic, acceptance of it has declined everywhere.

In the pre-conclave atmosphere, it was necessary to pretend that this is not true. Or if there is a bit of truth in it, the proper response of the new pope should be yet tougher repression, more vigorous restoration. Almost no one is willing to admit even to themselves that the leadership strategy since 1970 has caused most of the problems in the church--the decline of vocations and church attendance and the alienation of the young.

Vatican II is the dragon in their midst that they cannot see and they wish would go away. Unfortunately they have not and will not learn that you cannot repeal an Ecumenical Council and cancel its effects.