Ecclesia adest!... Spiritus adest! "The church is present! The Spirit is present!" I heard these refrains repeated throughout Pope Paul VI's twenty-minute Latin address opening the third session of Vatican II on September 14, 1964. I saw the enthusiasm down the length of St. Peter's as two thousand mitered heads bobbed together before undertaking what would be ten weeks of intense debate. Everything in my Catholic upbringing led me to open my heart and soul to the historic turning point that I would witness--and even take a tiny part in. For during my sophomore year at Loyola (Chicago) University's Rome Center, 1964 to 1965, I attended many functions at the council and numerous other Vatican events, both solemn and simple: a half-dozen general audiences with the pope; personal encounters with fifteen cardinals; the proclamation of a new title for Mary; Paul VI's first and most colorful canonization; his creation of twenty-seven new and, as it turned out, unruly cardinals; his attendance at a theater performance (the first by a pope in centuries) honoring Shakespeare's four-hundredth birthday; and papal Masses, some of moving simplicity. I even gained a baciamano ("hand kiss") ticket to one audience, allowing me to kiss the pope's hand as he reached the altar.
* Chris Mietlowski, pastor of Dobbs Ferry [N.Y.] Lutheran, not only finished the Philadelphia Marathon Nov. 21, he raised more than $10,000 for the congregation's preschool and the Kibeta English Medium Primary School in Tanzania. He presented his "Run for the Children" idea to the preschool board just weeks before this, his first marathon. Thanks to publicity and a T-shirt his son designed (with the names of children from both schools written on it), the money poured in. "As I promoted the race, I kept asking one person to step up and make a commitment to be my '$100-a-milecompanion.'That never happened. But on the eve of the race, as I looked through the long list of names who made pledges, it occurred to me that I was seeking the wrong thing. Instead of one amazing companion pledging $100 a mile, I received hundreds of companions for each mile. That meant more," Mietlowski says.That optimism fed our generation, yet it carried a negative note. When I spoke with staunch opponents of the council, prelates such as Cardinal Cento, they would beam with confidence and say, Concilium magna operat ("The council is doing great things"). Similarly, Archbishop D'Souza of Bhopal, India, an outspoken liberal who frequently dined at our school, would glow about the changes in store. These two prelates spoke from opposite poles of the church. Even if they were only saying the diplomatic thing, later critics agreed that the council fostered an unsustainable optimism that affirmed almost everything and condemned almost nothing. While the council called for renewal, it rarely named what it clearly intended to repudiate. This gave the conciliar documents a kind of buoyant vagueness.* St. Paul Lutheran Church, Ironton, Ohio, in December held a Holiday Gift Giveaway for needy families. Ironton is an Appalachian community where 23.1 percent of the 11,000 population lives below the poverty line-32 percent of them under the age of 18. Gifts were sorted and arranged, and both children and parents could "shop" for each other and wrap their gifts. Musicians from St. Paul and other congregations provided entertainment.* What was once soup became bread and wine at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Des Moines, Iowa. As at many other congregations, Lenten services were routinely preceded by a light supper. In 1998 that expanded to include a Wednesday noon meal followed by prayer and communion. That practice grew in numbers of attendees and days, says Sara Downs, pastoral assistant. It burst from the Lenten season to throughout the year, and from Wednesdays only to Sundays as well. "We learned that while we, like many Lutheran churches, offered communion every other Sunday... we were getting feedback -some from parishioners such as hospital and retail employees whose work schedules included Sundays and Wednesday evenings-that it would be nice if communion were offered the Sundays they could attend. Thus, Good Shepherd now has communion (nearly) every time there is a worship service." Downs says she still encounters members who say communion at every service "is too Roman Catholic" or that its frequency will "lose its meaning." She counters with: "We do it to serve our members and visitors and because Jesus said, 'Do this often in remembrance of me.'"That vagueness also grew out of the way the council brokered deep differences by including conflicting language and theologies in its documents. Angel Anton, SJ, has noted that on the most controversial themes, the conciliar texts present a mosaic of interpolations from opposed parties, trying to satisfy sometimes wildly divergent theologies. Furthermore, Vatican II fully endorsed the principle of "not deciding questions still being debated among theologians." This has made it easy later to manipulate the council's meaning.* Through their participation in the Angel Tree ministry of Prison Fellowship, Shepherd King Lutheran Church, San Antonio, supports 56 children from 26 incarcerated parents. The ministry makes sure children have Christmas presents but also tends to family needs year round.Later, on the way back to my seat, it seemed to me the council fathers were taking quite a noisy break. (Xavier Rynne would write that "pandemonium broke loose.") Just then I saw my own archbishop, Cardinal Albert Meyer of Chicago, who was one of the council presidents. I bounded over to greet him but he was jotting down some notes and had a sour expression. Although we had met on many occasions back home, that morning he gave me such a look of pained distraction that I ducked away.The vast majority of the council's documents, eleven of sixteen, were not passed until the final weeks of the closing session (1965). That is because the Roman curia did all in its power to prevent some documents from reaching a vote, and in the meantime, the so-called progressive bishops kept sending the documents back to committee for revision. Only three documents were officially adopted during the autumn I was there. Two bore great importance: the decree on ecumenism and the constitution on the church, Lumen gentium. Yet the 1964 session became known as the "Session of Great Pain," from a complaint several bishops sent to the pope at a critical point which opened with the words Magno cum dolore.My point is that the tensions at the heart of the council not only were real, but that they have not been resolved. The great peritus, later cardinal, Yves Congar, OP, declared in the 1980s that the council's compromise solutions made Vatican II stop halfway.Let me give three examples of these debated theologies. First, there is the conflict between a theology of church as laity and bishops in a universal communion (as "the people of God"), and one that describes the church as a juridical hierarchy. Second, the council left the church with a clumsy balancing act, trying to maintain both the primacy of the pope and the collegiality of all the bishops. This set the stage for struggles throughout the 1970s and 1980s between Rome and national bodies of bishops. Third, the council both allowed for an insistence on growth through dialogue with other Christian bodies, but also seemed to say that the Roman Church can be self-sufficient without ecumenical dialogue.* One thing John Williams wants while serving in Iraq isn't for himself or fellow Marines-it's for the Iraqi children. "Soccer balls are gold to them," Williams told Peter Muschinske, pastor of Faith Lutheran Church, Marshfield, Wis. The two served together in the Navy Reserve unit and have kept in touch via e-mail since Williams went abroad. Muschinske's wife, Katie, organized a drive for soccer balls. When the Marshfield News-Herald interviewed her, she had just sent the first box that cost about $50 to mail. Rather than asking people to buy a ball and bring it to her, she told them they could sponsor a ball for $10, the average price. Within two days of starting the drive, Katie had $1,000 from 70 sponsors, had cleaned out local store shelves and received eight from the recreation department's lost-and-found-91 soccer balls in all.
Later, on the way back to my seat, it seemed to me the council fathers were taking quite a noisy break. (Xavier Rynne would write that "pandemonium broke loose.") Just then I saw my own archbishop, Cardinal Albert Meyer of Chicago, who was one of the council presidents. I bounded over to greet him but he was jotting down some notes and had a sour expression. Although we had met on many occasions back home, that morning he gave me such a look of pained distraction that I ducked away.
Author: James M. Weiss
