John O’Malley has written “A Spirit of Affirmation” which details the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, which not only modernized the Roman Catholic Church but had a profound effect on how churches of other traditions responded to the modern world and to each other.
The Washington Post reviewed the book.
Over the last two or three decades, a huge argument has erupted among theologians, journalists and intellectuals about what “Vatican II” actually did. Conservatives tend to argue that the council took several false and damaging turns, leading unintentionally from the confident Roman Catholic Church of the 1950s to the empty churches (in Western Europe) today. As the great progressive Jesuit Gustave Weigel, who loved irony, once predicted during the council, swirling a splash of scotch in a plastic cup at a party: “All good things, given enough time, go badly.”
Progressives tend to argue that the council reaffirmed ancient traditions even as it made significant reforms: clearing the way for the Mass to be said in native languages, endorsing the search for heartfelt cooperation and doctrinal dialogue with other Christians and, above all, encouraging deeper self-understanding and warm relations with Jews. In other words, progressives say now (as some did then) that the council’s essential purpose was conservative in nature, rooted in lessons from the pre-medieval church. They wanted, for instance, to resume the ancient tradition of speaking of the church as a “people” — the “people of God” — and of bishops and priests as “servants” of the people of God. They argued that celebrating Masses in vernacular languages and small, informal settings was more in keeping with the practices of the early church. Well, then, what was really new?
O’Malley says that the Council was fundamentally different that past ecumenical councils because the Second Vatican Council attempted to listen to and respond to the world, rather than reacting negatively to current trends.
His main point is that Vatican II differed in its way of thinking from every other doctrine-setting gathering in the church’s history, from the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. to the First Vatican Council in 1869. His preferred word for this is “style,” though sometimes he says “method,” “approach” or “language.” Vatican II was distinctive, he contends, in its attention to the liberty of the human person and to the connectedness of the human community. The new spirit was to affirm, not condemn; to be open, not closed; to focus on ideals to live by, not things forbidden.
“Vatican II was unprecedented,” he writes, “for the notice it took of changes in society at large and for its refusal to see them in globally negative terms as devolutions from an older and happier era.” He says the council underscored the authority of bishops while, at the same time, trying to make them “less authoritarian.” For bishops, priests and everybody in authority, it recommended the ideal of the servant-leader. It upheld the legitimacy of modern methods in the study of the Bible. It condemned anti-Semitism and discrimination “on the basis of race, color, condition in life, or religion.” It called on Catholics to cooperate with people of all faiths, or no faith, in projects aimed at the common good. And it supplied “the impetus,” O’Malley writes, “for later official dialogues of the Catholic Church with other churches.”
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