BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

50 years since Vatican II:
Pius XII's ground-breaking preparations and
a decades-long movement within the Church
preceded John XXIII's historic decision
by Salvatore Izzo


VATICAN CITY, Oct. 8 (Translated from AGI) - With the 1966 film "E venne un'uomo" (And there came a man), Italian director Ermanno Olmi celebrated the novelty of the Second Vatican Council (whose opening 50 years ago will be marked on Oct. 11) and John XXIII who had convoked the Council to the surprise of everyone in January 1959, just three months after he was elected Pope.

An announcement that the Pope himself said, he made "with some trembling and emotion, but also with humble resolution in this regard".

"That film," says Mondo Voc, the online journal of the protal vocazione.net, "contributed to change the idea of a prophetic as well as sudden intuition by John XXIII, who must certainly be credited with the great merit of such a courageous and important initiative. But, in truth, convoking the Council was a response to an expectation that had been building for quite some time throughout the Church".

That is why, to present the Council as an 'absolute discontinuity' with the past history of the Church - as did the late historian Giuseppe Alberigo, leader of the so-called Bologna school which imposed its ideas of Vatican II simply by beating everyone to publication of a 'history' of the Council - probably contributed a great deal to a series of negative fallouts that have nonetheless failed to obscure the magnitude and importance of the event.

Romano Guardini, the great Italo-German theologian who might be considered one of Joseph Ratzinger's spiritual mentors, said back in 1922: "A process of incalculable significance has started - the reawakening ot the Church in the souls of the faithful".

Indeed, the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), which was necessarily conditioned by the so-called Roman Question arising from the loss of temporal power by the Popes after the unification of Italy (a 'providential' event, Paul VI would say one century later), opened what theologian Yves Congar, a Council Father at Vatican-II, would call 'the century of the Church'.

Starting in the 1920s, the reawakening of the sense of Church [including what was then called 'the new liturgical movement'] referred to by Guardini also called attention to the inadequacy of the teachings of the Church, which seemed so static and closed to sociological and juridical modifications.

New experiences in the world and a new recourse to Biblical sources led to developing the idea that the Church was not a perfect society, obliging theological reflection to come up with new perceptions.

Thus the urgent need for a new ecumenical council was very much felt within the Catholic Church hierarchy in the early part of the 20th century, but two world wars got in the way of its convocation.

The idea was taken up after World War II, when Pius XII carefully and diligently undertook preparations for a Vatican-II, as attested to by the Vatican II final documents, which contain 20 citations to 92 magisterial acts during Pius XII's Pontificate. In itself, the dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, contains 58 citations of Pius XII. [Yet another important aspect for which this great Pope has been greatly ignored or under-estimated].

"If one looks at the indexes and footnotes of Vatican II documents," noted Cardinal Giuseppe Siri at the 1983 Synodal Assembly in the presence of John Paul II, "the most numerous citations after the Bible are from Pius XII".

For his part, John Paul II commented: "We cannot forget how much Pius XII contributed to the theological preparation for Vatican-II, especially with regard to the doctrine on the Church, the first liturgical reforms, the new impulse given to Biblical studies, and his great attention to the problems of the contemporary world". [Joseph Ratzinger must feel enormous kinship with this Pope who shared his primary concerns to this degree, and who was, like him, a superior intellect greatly misrepresented and under-estimated by critics of the Church. I must revise my own mindset to include Pius XII among the 'Conciliar Popes'.]

That extraordinary assembly of bishops from around the world (almost 3000 of them took part), inaugurated by John XXIII on October 11, 1962 (a year before he died), was brought to a close after four annual two-month sessions by Paul VI on December 7, 1965.

Paul VI underscored that the Council had "turned the attention of the Church towards the anthropocentric orientation of modern culture" [I'm confused - I thought that Christian humanism, by definition, was always anthropocentric, i.e., man-centered, with man as the object of God's grace and God's salvation, as well as his fellowman's care and concern.], but without turning away "from the most authentic religious interest, especially because of the link between human and temporal values and those that are properly spiritual, religious and eternal: the Church yields on [the problems facing] man and the earth but raises herself to the Kingdom fo God".

An openness to the contemporary world that was manifested in his itinerant Papacy by John Paul II. And today by Benedict XVI, who, the day after being elected Pope, reaffirmed forcefully 'his determined intention' to continue with the implementation of the Second Vatican Council "in the wake of my predecessors and in faithful continuity with the bimillennial tradition of the Church".

A similarly strong appeal was addressed by him last July 15, addressing the youth of Frascati, and advising them that their journey of faith should bring them to study the documents of Vatican II, which have been mostly consigned to the archives even by those who claim most loudly to be the defenders of the Council and who have accused the Pope of having betrayed Vatican II, for instance, by holding out a hand to the Lefebvrians who oppose the 'openings' of Vatican II.

The Council textx, he said in his homily at the Mass in Frascati, "contain an enormous wealth for the formation of tne new Christian generations, for the formation of Christian conscience".

According to the Pope, studying the Vatican II documents must be seen as an indispensable stage towards a mature commitment, both on the ecclesial and civliian levels, because "they make us rediscover the beauty of being Christian, of being the Church, of living the great 'we' that Jesus has gathered around him, in order to evangelize the world".

"Faithfulness to tradition, openness to the future" - for the theologian Pope, this is the most correct interpreetation of Vatican II, which, according to Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, "remains the Magna Carta of the Church even in the Third Millennium".

Some Council 'survivors'
look back at Vatican II
by Salvatore Izzo


VATICAN CITY, Oct. 8 (Translated from AGI) - Benedict XVI, who decreed a Year of Faith to commemorate, among other things, the 50th year since the Second Vatican Council opened, is also one of the surviving Council participants, having been one of its official theological consultants as a college professor in his early 30s.

"I was a young theologian of no importance who happened to be invited," (he was brought on originally as theological consultant to Cardinal Josef Frings, then Archbishop of Cologne, who then moved to have him appointed by John XXIII as an official consultant to the Council so he could sit in on all the sessions), he recalled when he visited the Servites' center in Nemi, where a bishops' commission had met in 1965 to finalize the Council decree on the Missio ad gentes.

"I found myself in the company of so many great personages," he said, exprssing something that seemed to have been the feeling of the surviving Council Fathers, speaking half a century after the event.

Mondo Voc has ascertained hat of the almost 3000 persons who took part in Vatican II, 96 are still alive. Papa Ratzinger's impression is confirmed by Mons. Salvatore Nicolosi, emeritus Bishop of Noto, who is now 90 and took part in the Council starting with the second session on September 29, 1963.

"I entered the hall with trepidation, aware of the greatness of the gift and the responsibility of being among the Council Fathers," he says.

Inside St. Peter's Basilica, which had been converted into the Council Hall, participants were struck, said Mons. Nicolosi, by the image of a Church seeking to 'reach into the heart of Christian life' while 'undertaking a dialog with the rest of mankind', as well as the climate of openness that was manifest in "the symphony of voices of such a great number of bishops gathered from around the world".

It was an atmosphere, he said, "in which we were able to experience effective and enriching collegiality... the presence of major theologians who largely spurred reflection... and the first ecumenical contacts".

He believes that "the richness of the Council derived from the fact that everyone was listening attentively", and that "we should continue to implement the Council in that way - remaining open to the Holy Spirit through an intelligent and calm study of realities, far-reaching vision and lucid diligence".

Says Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, 93, vice-dean of the College of Cardinals, who took part in Vatican II, like Joseph Ratzinger, as a consultant: "What struck me msot was the universal sense of the Church, with the impressive participation of nearly 3000 bishops, but also the presence, for the first time at a Catholic council, of some 20 observers from the separated churches. Even now, the figures from Vatican II remain amazing. The public debates for instance consisted of more than 1,500 hours all registered on audio tape. I was also impressed by the masterly diplomatic ability of the Secretary-General, Mons. Perocle Felici, who kept the Council on track for four years".

The cardinal concluded: "For me, however, the Council represented an extraordinary spiritual experience".

Cardinal George Cottier, now 90, emeritus theologian of teh Pontifical Household, and a Council consultant as a young Dominican priest, was impressed by the inherent greatness of the event and the humility of its participants.

"Of course, I was struck by the amazing diligence of Yves-Marie Congar, but also by his different theological and ecclesiological viewpoint compared to Jean Danielou. And I was greatly impressed by the editing efforts put in by the Belgian priest Gerard Philips in preparing the drafts and schema for Lumen gentium".

"Then, there was the intelligence and volcanic interventions of Karl Rahner, who already had, at the time, I believe, all the criticisms of the Church that he would concretize after the Council. And I have beautiful memories of Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti, in whom I found a very spiritual man who was greatly helped by his experience in the Italian constitutent assembly". [Dossetti was a jurist-politician who was a leading Christian Democrat in post-war Italy, but decided to become a priest afterwards. In Vatican-II, he was the closest adviser to Cardinal Lercaro, one of the influential progressive voices in the Council. Afterwards, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi said of Dossetti that he "contributed to making the Council less conservative and traditional than what was originally planned". Most importantly, porhaps, Dossetti inspired historian-followers like Giuseppe Alberigo in the Bologna school's dratsic interpretation of Vatican II as an 'absolute discontinuity' with the past of the Catholic Church.]

For his part, Jesuit Cardinal Roberto Tucci, also 90, who covered Vatican II as the young editor of La Civilta Cattolica, said, "I do not deny that it was a great help to me that I studied in the University of Louvain (Belgium) where I breathed a theological perspective that was so remote from that which was being taught in the Roman pontifical universities like the Gregorian, the Lateran and the Angelicum at the time. My Francophone formation helped me a great deal as an expert consultant named by John XXIII to be accepted by the French and Belgian bishops who made me feel I was one of them. We were jokingly called the Lovaniense secundum{.

Cardinal Tucci names as one of the great Council figures his fellow Jesuit, Fr. Agostino Bea, Biblicist and former rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute of Rome (and was soon named cardinal by Paul VI), whom he described as "an excellent man who was never ruffled" despite the great resistance to his proposals, which were nonetheless "largely adopted in the declaration on religious freedom, Nostra aetate, and in the decree on ecumenism".

Both documents are still opposed today by traditionalists, but Mons. Luigi Bettazzi, emeritus bishop of Ivrea, who at 88, is one of the youngest Council survivors, says "they remain epochal documents".

He also thinks that an important development was "the re-emergence of the Biblical and Patristic viewpoints which preceded all the theological impostations that subsedquently developed over the centuries".

he believes that the greatest 'intuition' by the Council was "the rediscovery of the centrality of the Word of God as nourishment for a living faith, as the basis for a personal and communitarian face-to-face with God".

He would also undersocre the Council's "view of the Church in its dimension of communion and co-responsibility of all Christians, even if the last word is still that of the hierarchy".

"I arrived at the second session of the Council in 1963," he says, "to discover the Catholic Church, namely, the universal church, in its multiplicity and variety of bishops reporesenting all the peoples and cultures of the world who could finally express themselves in an ecumenical council".

"I believe," he concludes, "that Pope John truly intended a Council that was pastoral rather than dogmatic, which means, to start from the person more than from abstract doctrine".