Pope John’s Council

Pope John XXIII, whose wisdom, benignity and fatherly warmth, like a green oasis in the deserts of modern fear and hostility, gave hope to Catholic and non-Catholic alike, intended that the spirit of the Second Vatican Council should be pastoral rather than severely legalistic. He seemed to have in mind equally a spring-cleaning within the Church (for example, a free use of the vernacular in the liturgy where the people would benefit by it) and the restatement of Catholic doctrine in forms acceptable to the minds of modern men, with the special aim of facilitating a further dialogue with Christian believers outside the Church.

Several commentators have cast the Roman Curia in the role of villain in this progressive drama. Yet I suspect that Pope John would not have wished them out of his way – the ecclesiastical bureaucrats represent that curbing, limiting, inhibiting factor, so repugnant to the idealist, the cold breath of the status quo which turns poets into fat, old bibliophiles, lovers into sagging husbands, and revolutionary mystics into fund-raising parish priests. Without the Curia the Council would have lacked its full human dimension.

The particular issues which were discussed between 2 October and 8 December, 1962, were respectively the renovation of the liturgy, the sources of revelation, the meaning of unity, and the nature of the Church. The lively debates on these issues have been reported by the author of this book in great detail. Cardinals, Bishops and patriarchs presented forcibly opposing points of view. There was no lack of the yeast of fresh ideas. Observer-delegates from non-Catholic churches were impressed by the warmth of their welcome and the freedom of controversy in the Council.

Behind the scenes Pope John kept a light hand on the tiller, intervening only when it was strictly necessary. Plainly Xavier Rynne favours the progressive, modernising school of Catholic theology, which desires, for example, a greater administrative autonomy for Bishops. He presents in anpage 675 unfavourable light those ecclesiastics who wished to further centralise and petrify (the pun is intentional) the structure of Church Government. These days they appear to be losing ground.

Apart from the evident value of the Second Vatican Council in its work to purify and strengthen the Catholic Church, there is a secondary value in the picture it presents to the non-Catholic world of the old tree, the mother oak, putting out new branches and renewing herself after the winter. Not without reason, non-Catholics often doubt the power of Catholic thinkers to make honest judgments on the basis of research, observation and experience; Catholics themselves have at times doubted the existence of their own liberty. This book should help to clear the air.

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