He answered papal summons to journalism: Italian writer tracked evolution of John XXIII's council - Vatican II: 40 years later - Giancarlo Zizola - Column

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 4, 2002 by Giancarlo Zizola

Theology school for journalists

The most important innovation in the press office of the council was that the summaries of the debates, prepared by employees in various language groups, were accompanied by explanations from theological experts on the points under discussion, so that the briefings were transformed into an authentic theological school for the journalists of my generation. It was a dynamic theology, also moving forward. I recall well the impression made upon-me by the bishop of Vittorio Veneto, Albino Luciani (the future John Paul I), a friend of the family, when I went to see him in his room at an institute of sisters in Rome. He spent the afternoons studying, he said to me, because "everything I learned at the Gregorian is useless now. I have to become a student again. Fortunately I have an African bishop as a neighbor in the bleachers in the council hall, who gives me the texts of the experts of the German bishops. That way I can better prepare myself."

The bishops studied, but we journalists also had to become students of theology. It is a bit of good fortune that Vatican correspondents who came after us have not had, and it seems to me that the Vatican doesn't do enough to try to reduce this cultural difference.

I would like to conclude by saying that the council was a decisive moment, but it must have a development, a future. It unfolded in Western Catholic culture, but that culture no longer dominates society. History shows that councils have had their effect, if not slowly, at least over a long period of time, with difficult phases of reception, and also with rejections. The case of Vatican II is unique: It was followed by a mutation in society, the events of 1968, without historic precedent, at least in terms of radicality, rapidity and universality. This anthropological turn has already displaced the language and the philosophical categories in which the council expressed itself.

We therefore have to ask if the council can still "speak" to the church, or if there's need of a new excavation in the deep. In certain areas the process of renewal launched by the council has gone beyond expectations: for example, in dialogue with the Jews, religious liberty, peace, inter-religious dialogue. The development undertaken by John Paul II of a self-critical consciousness in the church, especially his mea culpa during the Jubilee Year, is in the best spirit of the council. But this has not been enough to defeat the old temptation of the church to make itself powerful in the midst of the world.

Also on other fronts, it must be recognized that powerful groups have succeeded in holding in check the hope of a church of communion, with a collegial government, a deliberative synod, a proactive laity, a reform of the papacy, greater faith in the local churches and decentralization, and a coherent effort to exit from a Western mono-culturalization of the faith in order to meet the Asian and African cultures.

This lack of reform is what renders the movement of the church once again heavy and slow. The pope tours the world in an airplane, but the church is again traveling with its brakes on.