The Word in the Church Tradition

Francis J Moloney

Those of us, now into our 60s, who had lived contented Roman Catholic lives in Australia across the 40s and 50s of last century, had no idea of what is nowadays meant by “the Word of God”. We lived by the words of the Church: the rare but important Encyclicals that came from the Holy Father, the instructions of our Australian Bishops, and especially of our local Bishop. This was particularly the case if, like me, you lived in Melbourne, and the local Bishop was the much-revered Daniel Mannix. However, our day-to-day Catholic lives were ultimately determined by local authorities: our teachers, almost always Religious women and men, and our local Priest. We learnt our Catechism by heart, and I do not think there was a serious citation from the Scriptures anywhere in the so-called “Penny Catechism”. The Mass was in Latin, all the readings were in Latin, and the same cycle of readings was read year in and year out.

There were some major difficulties in our time, of course, most importantly the split in the Australian Labour Party, which divided the Australian Church, especially along lines which either supported Dr Mannix and B. A. Santamaria, or the softer position taken by other Australian Bishops, especially Cardinal Gilroy in Sydney. But living in the Catholic enclave of Moonee Ponds, Melbourne, Victoria, there were no doubts about where we stood!

Just these few references to that not-too-distant past begin to make us aware of how our Catholic life, and that which nourishes this life, have changed. The agent of such change was the Second Vatican Council. This Council did not “creep up” on us gradually. It fell upon us like a thunderbolt, called by a charismatic Pope, John XXIII, in a moment of extraordinary insight. As the sessions unfolded from 1962-65, it gathered energy of its own. It was a heady experience to live in Rome as the Council concluded, listening to all the famous theologians, gathered there as experts. Vatican II left all concerned from Paul VI and the Fathers of the Council itself, down to the simplest practising Catholic, somewhat breathless in its aftermath. In my experience and understanding, we are still struggling with that breathlessness. But more of that below!

This is not the place to examine all the good and bad results of the experience of being a Catholic in the 60s and 70s. But allow me to reflect briefly on the remarkable rebirth of interest in the Bible as a Word of God, directed to the whole Church at Vatican II. One of the most subversive documents to come out of the Council was the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum). The pre-conciliar Church was a deeply eucharistic Church, but an Ecumenical Council, the supreme teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, now told us that there was a new player on the block:

“Just as from constant attendance at the eucharistic mystery the life of the Church draws increase, so a new impulse of spiritual life may be expected from increased veneration of the word of God, which “stands forever (Isa 40:8; 1 Peter 1:23-25”) (Dei Verbum 26).

Like most major achievements of Vatican II, this rebirth of interest in the biblical Word did not miraculously emerge at the Council itself. Its long pre-history goes back to the renewal of critical study of the Bible that began in Germany in the 19^th century.

The new age of post-Enlightenment reason rejected a religion based upon a book full of so many non-sequiturs and contradictions. Committed Christian scholars began to work hard to show that the Bible was the presence of the Word of God, transmitted in the fragile and limited words of men and women.

As some of the Christian scholars accepted the rationalist critique too easily, the Roman Catholic Church initially rejected critical biblical scholarship. However, its agenda was finally and unconditionally accepted by the remarkable and surprising appearance, toward the end of World War II, of Pope Pius XII’s Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943). Pius XII asked Catholics to prepare themselves for a fuller understanding of the true meaning of the original texts, so that the treasures of the Bible, in all their richness, could be communicated to the Church.

Nowhere have the principles guiding critical biblical scholarship been better stated than in Dei Verbum 13:

“Indeed the words of God, expressed in the words of men, are in every way like human language, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on himself the flesh of human weakness, became like men.”

Catholic biblical scholarship had been working quietly up to that time, especially in the great European Catholic centres of biblical learning: Louvain, Paris, the Biblical Institute in Rome and the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. This had been accompanied by an intense interest in the renewal of the liturgical life, also going on in Europe for several decades before the Council, especially in Germany, Belgium and France.

Inevitably, the emerging Catholic interest in the restoration of the Liturgy joined hands with an emerging Catholic biblical movement, commissioned by Pius XII, to restore the Word of God to its rightful place at the heart of the life of the Church. The very life-blood of the Catholic Tradition, the Eucharist, was seen to be inextricably associated with the living presence of the Word of God in the community. These sentiments were succinctly articulated in Dei Verbum 21:

“The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerated the Body of the Lord, in so far as she never ceases, particularly in the sacred liturgy, to partake of the bread of life and to offer it to the faithful from the one table of the Word of God and the Body of Christ.”

Bishops and Major Superiors of Religious Orders sent men and woman to study the Bible. Holiday courses in the Bible, visiting lecturers, especially from the USA, and even our local experts, drew large crowds. The Mass was celebrated in English, and we found that so much of our eucharistic celebration was “biblical”. The new Lectionary appeared. We were exposed to a rich cross-section of biblical passages, with special focus on the reading of Matthew, Mark and Luke across a three-year cycle, and the allocation of the Gospel of John to the great feasts of Christmas, and especially Easter. Priests were told that the proclamation of the Word, and preaching the Word, was an integral part of the liturgical life of the Church. Everyone was excited to find how life-giving an understanding of the Word of God, as a living presence of the voice of God, could be (see Dei Verbum 8).

Of course, it was not all “plain-sailing” Shock descended on some circles when the original intentions of the various authors of Genesis 1-11 were uncovered. Even more serious was the problem of the historicity of the events reported in the infancy narratives of Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2. The shock moved into action as some of these conclusions began to surface in post-conciliar catechetical texts. Bishops and their Religious Education personnel were placed under great pressure by small, but vocal groups who “united for the faith”. But, in the light of Vatican II, one had to ask: which faith?

No doubt there was a great deal of naivety in those early decades after the Council, and many mistakes were made. We knew what we no longer wished to say and do within our believing community, but we were unsure of how to articulate what we did want to say and do! There was a moment of “stumbling in the dark”, often not recognised as we were so buoyed up by the excitement of those days. Thus, of course, there was the occasional abuse of the new freedom that we had been given, and these exceptional cases stood in the limelight, and added fuel to a growing “slowing down” of the original enthusiasm.

As a professional biblical scholar of more than 30 years’ experience, I have had the mixed blessing of living through the pre-conciliar experience to our present moment in the life of the Church when, in my experience, the “slowing down” mentioned above has almost become a full stop.

I suspect there are several reasons for this situation. In the first place, we must admit to a period after the Council when the communication of the faith to a newer generation lost its way. A generation of young people emerged from that period – now the parents of a newer generation – who “fell between the cracks”.

My experience as the Professor of Theology at Australian Catholic University (1994-1998) taught me a great deal about the profundity of content and the pedagogical skills that are nowadays used in the process of communicating the faith. However, we have lost a generation, and they are not to be found working at their Bibles, or attending the seminars and sessions that are now increasingly difficult to run successfully. The task of recapturing the interest and enthusiasm of the present generation of young people demands extraordinary dedication and considerable skill.

Secondly, there is an increasing lack of confidence in a critical reading of the Bible. Many, including important Church leaders and Catholic lay leaders, see biblical scholarship as a danger to the simple faith of the ordinary people. These people can be exposed to every subtlety of their particular profession or trade, but they are not to be challenged to look seriously at the very source that nourishes their faith. We are facing a moment when the Word of God is once more seen as expressed only in the word of the teaching Church.

In 1943 Pius XII asked that the Catholic Church rediscover the fullness of its biblical heritage by returning to original sources, rather than simply accepting St Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. These sentiments were repeated at Vatican II (Dei Verbum 12). In 2001 the Roman document, Liturgiam Authenticam, insists – for the sake of uniformity – that all liturgical readings of the Bible must use a recent Latin translation (the Neo Vulgate) as their basic point of reference.

In 1973, the outstanding biblical scholar, Raymond Brown, could write a caricature of a phenomenon that he regarded as a thing of the past:

If the biblical scholar was going to insist on the freedom to play with his new-fangled toys of language and literary form, he was to be kept in a playpen and not let out to disturb the good order of the theological household (R. E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus [London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1973], 6).

It is my sense that this desire to curb the role of the Catholic exegete is not a thing of the past. Indeed, there is every indication that the golden era of biblical enthusiasm in the Catholic Church is on the wane.

The esteem for Catholic biblical scholarship among non-Catholics remains high, but its function within the life of the Church no longer occupies the place it had in the decades following the Council. Here at the Catholic University of America, where we run internationally significant Department of Biblical Studies, non-Catholic students outnumber the Catholics.

This is not the time to be discouraged, but to develop our sense of history, and a proper understanding of the significance of an Ecumenical Council. Most major events in world history are followed by a desire to restore the security of a time prior to those events. Only a few brief years after the French Revolution (1789), the Bourbon family was back on the royal throne of France. But they did not last long. The principles of the Revolution had been let loose, and could not be stopped by restoration. After fighting a long and drawn-out revolutionary war, there were many in the new United States of America who wished to make George Washington their King in 1812. This also had no future, as it idealised the past.

A similar historical experience is evident in our post-conciliar period. This can be painful and confusing, especially for those of us who have been part of the authentic Catholic tradition before, during and after the experience of the Council, and who have given our lives to its agenda.

However, in a moment of its supreme teaching authority, the Church has stated:

“But the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Christ. Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it “(Dei Verbum 10. Stress mine)

The restoration of the biblical Word of God, authentically interpreted by a teaching authority, under the word and exercising its ministry in the name of Christ, forms part of the teaching of an Ecumenical Council.

I have mentioned only a few major places and themes from Vatican II where the Word in the Catholic Tradition appears, but it permeates almost every document that came from that remarkable ecclesial moment. It is understandable that many would prefer to “restore” the situation that I described in my earlier paragraphs, but one cannot write history backward, no matter how hard one may try.

These are not easy times for the Catholic Church – neither its leadership nor its faithful. Indeed, we have come a long way from my days in Moonee Ponds. But I believe it is a time of painful growth that cannot be denied by the “restoration” of an idealised past. The growth unleashed by Vatican II let loose a hunger for things unseen, and this hope will not be thwarted. “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom 8:24-25).

(Fr Francis J. Moloney, SDB is an internationally renowned scripture scholar, author of many books and articles, currently Professor of New Testament Studies at Catholic University of America, Washington DC, USA. Fr Moloney is also a Patron of Catalyst for Renewal)

Historical Reflections

Edmund Campion

One day in 1975 Mary Hoban, a Melbourne housewife, was in her garden picking daisies at Eastertime. As she picked, the honey smell of the flowers sent her mind back fifty years and she remembered how her mother used to pick Easter Daisy to take to their parish church, where she and the other ladies of the Altar Society would weave it with asparagus fern, geraniums and Cecil Brunner rosebuds. Then they would wind their garland round the Easter Candle, as a floral expression of resurrection joy growing out of the crucifixion. Mrs Hoban mused, ‘How long is it since I’ve seen that done?’ She thought of other little practices that had washed away from Catholic life, such as crowning Our Lady’s statue as Queen in May or singing ‘Faith of Our Fathers’.

So she sat down and wrote an article for a new magazine, Footprints, asking people to record for posterity their memories of the customs and usages of the Australian church before Vatican II in the 1960s. This was not mere nostalgia, for Mary Hoban was a serious historian: her Life of Caroline Chisholm had filled out with many interesting details the standard work by Margaret Kiddle of Melbourne University. Her article had some shrewd hits at enthusiasts for novelty, but she insisted that she was not interested in nostalgia. ‘I love the Latin mass’, she wrote, ‘but I love the English more’. Collecting and recording the customs of the past were things worth doing: ‘They were part of an Australian-Catholic subculture which was discarded rather too quickly, leaving a devotional vacuum in some hearts’.

Mary Hoban was surely right about the ‘devotional vacuum’. For one of the unintended consequences of Vatican II was the evaporation of much of the popular religious culture which had sustained ordinary Catholics and given their lives a spirituality. You cannot think about the century of consolidation in Australian Catholicism, from the death of Father Therry, in 1864, to the Vatican II era, without seeing everywhere that lush overgrowth of a people’s religion: holy water, guardian angels, miraculous medals, the nine First Fridays, feast days, stories of the saints … Then the picture begins to fade.

No one ordered its closure; it just began to evaporate. Those engaged in pastoral work noticed that people had begun to feel a hole in their hearts, a gap in their sense of Catholic selfhood.

The reason, as Mary Hoban saw, stemmed from the demise of the Latin mass. In those years of consolidation people went to mass in great numbers and, while there, they said private prayers from books such as The Garden of the Soul or they recited the rosary — they attended mass rather than celebrated it: their prayer life was elsewhere.

Catholics took some pride in the seemingly unchanging form of the mass; but such immobilism could breed curious reactions. Among the laity, the frozen remoteness of the Latin mass brought on the efflorescences of popular piety. (Among priests it bred rubricism, the disabling psychology which fixated them on the rules of performance.)

This was a serious matter because at its deepest level the Christian community is a eucharistic people. Its most profound story is written when it is at mass. Indeed, you can say that the history of the Catholic Church is the history of the mass. So changes in the mass must reflect changes already observable in the community at large. This is particularly true of major changes, such as changing the language in which you celebrate. A vernacular mass means a seismic shift deep inside the community. Which is why the English mass became the emblem of all that is meant by ‘Vatican II’.

How did it happen? The twentieth century can fairly be called the century of the laity, with the lay apostolate one of its most significant movements. The lay apostolate tried to form a new Catholic laity, who would make its own impact on the world. It was Catholicism coming out of the ghetto after the Middle Ages and trying to find a place for itself in modern history. The lay apostolate put the Bible, especially the Gospels, into the hands of lay men and women, encouraging them to know the biblical Jesus; it developed their social conscience through discussion and reading of topical Catholic writers and papal encyclicals; it made them self-reliant and loosened clerical controls; it opened their minds to new ideas, not all of them with a church provenance; and it brought them closer to the mass and made the liturgy the wellspring of people’s spirituality.

The universities were testbeds of the lay apostolate. From 1950, Commonwealth scholarships, a Menzies government initiative, had opened up our universities to more and more young Catholics. The Menzies scholarships are a key element in the Australian Catholic story. They enabled great numbers of Catholics to move into the professions, thus changing the demographics of Australian Catholicism (and, in time, its politics).

As well, university experience would introduce Catholics to unfamiliar ideas and principles, such as the liberal principle of free speech. Not only that – the Catholic culture they experienced at university was somewhat different from the culture of the parishes. Clergy and laity were closer together, so that there was a ready acceptance of lay leadership.

Ecumenism, biblical spirituality, congregational liturgy, openness to Australian culture – such were the waves of the future already being experienced in lay apostolate groups at the universities and elsewhere. You cannot help noticing here many of the central themes of Vatican II, already up and running in Australia years before the bishops caught the ship for Italy, in 1962. That is to say, what the bishops did at the council was to stand on a high peak and discern what the Holy Spirit had been doing in the worldwide church. They then put their seal of authorisation on these initiatives. Vatican II did not start in 1962; it had been going on for many years before that date.

You can see what I mean by returning to the emblematic story of the liturgy. The year 1955 is something of an annus mirabilis in this story. That was the year of the national liturgical week, when 750 enthusiasts came to Melbourne during the January holidays, to swap experiences, hear about successes and failures, listen to lectures and, in general, renew their energies for what lay ahead. Binding them together was their commitment to making the mass central to Catholics’ prayer life once again and giving lay people a place in the mass again, as if they too were responsible for Christ’s work. Later that year – another straw in the wind? – The Sydney Marist magazine Harvest would publish an article by the Chicago parish priest, H A Reinhold, arguing for the mass in English.

The same year, 1955, saw the beginnings of a remarkable artistic collaboration that transformed the Australian church at prayer. The link man was a young priest, a year out of the Manly seminary, who had been appointed to the parish of Ryde, Ted Kennedy. In the parish he found a gifted musician, Richard Connolly, who had pursued theological studies in Rome almost up to ordination to the priesthood. In 1956 he would join the ABC’s religion department and by the time he retired he would be head of radio features and drama at the ABC. One Saturday afternoon at Ryde, Father Kennedy brought him round a page of verses and asked him to set them to music. Connolly had done very little composing, but he tried his hand, producing music, which complemented the muscular, even martial, imagery of the hymn, he had been given:

Help of Christians, guard this land,

From assault or inward stain;

Let it be what Christ has planned,

His new Eden where you reign.

The writer of the verses was another Ryde parishioner, James McAuley. When Kennedy learned that the McAuley family lived in the parish, he remembered how in 1953, as newly ordained priests, he and his classmates had heard Cardinal Gilroy enthusing about the recent convert and his long didactic Letter to John Dryden. By 1955, however, the cardinal and the convert poet had fallen out: they were on opposing sides of the Catholic political split – indeed, Help of Christians would become the battle hymn of the Catholic Right and it is not hard still to detect McAuley’s political preoccupations in its words.

No matter: a new, decidedly Australian, hymn existed. Kennedy took it to a group of priests committed to realising the vision of the Melbourne liturgical week and they asked Connolly to compose some hymns to sing at various parts of the mass. Thus began one of the most successful hymn-making teams of the twentieth century, McAuley and Connolly.

In 1960 their work would anchor the Living Parish hymnbook, edited by Tony Newman and published by a group round Roger Pryke, which would sell one million copies over the next decade, enabling congregations to sing worthy hymns in an Australian voice.

In the annus mirabilis of 1955, Guilford Clyde Young became archbishop of Hobart. Aged thirty-one when he became a bishop, he relied on his commanding presence and the clergy’s ingrained respect for authority to see him through. When he needed it, he could exert a powerful, self-conscious magnetism. In Hobart he used this ability, allied to his imperial intellect, to gentle the whole diocese into the tracks of the liturgical movement.

He began with the priests, whom he convinced about the validity of the new thinking. Putting his own mind to work, he went beyond the Roman theology he had taught as a young lecturer in the Brisbane seminary. He saw that the German Jesuit Karl Rahner was at the core of this new theology, so he set himself to master Rahner’s complex thought. He saw too that history had practical use; so he re-read the history of the church, especially concentrating on those creative centuries which saw the crossover from Greco-Roman culture to the new Western nations. His findings he presented in lectures and seminars to priests, nuns and other diocesan leaders.

Here was a fine example of episcopal leadership confronting pastoral challenges in the world of ideas. The priests on side, he got them to preach systematically on the major themes of the new thinking. Thus over several years Tasmanian Catholics worked their way through a corpus of theology. Only then did the parishes attempt to move liturgically.

Again, it was gently done … slowly, slowly, a few minutes each Sunday. The bishop liked to mix with his people and gauge their reactions. Over time, he noticed that fewer people were complaining about novelties and more were expressing their joy at the spiritual depthing his liturgical campaign had achieved.

By 1960, Young would report later, every mass in Tasmania featured full lay participation; and Tasmanians who traveled to the mainland expressed surprise at the silent, gloomy masses there. His campaign had succeeded because he had appealed to the people’s intelligence; not, as would be done elsewhere, to their obedience.

Guilford Young was the only Australian bishop to leave his mark on Vatican II. When the American Jesuit Walter M Abbott was compiling the first standard English translation of Vatican II documents – the book which would energise and inspire thousands of parish discussion groups – he turned to Young to write the introduction to the decree on the ministry and life of priests. When Derek Worlock, archbishop of Liverpool in England, died, in 1996, they found among his papers an unpublished essay on his personal spiritual journey. In this essay he recalled a dinner in Rome the night Patrick Keegan of the Young Christian Workers addressed the council (the first time, some said, that a layman had addressed an ecumenical council since the Emperor Constantine spoke at Nicaea, in 325). At the dinner, Worlock remembered, ‘Archbishop Gillie Young of Hobart made an inspired speech about the caravan of God, trundling forward, some pulling ahead, some pulling back, some hanging on like grim death to the sides’. He was a bishop for a grown-up, Vatican II church.

(Father Edmund Campion teaches history at the Catholic Institute of Sydney.)

Unfinished Business

John Heaps

In 1951, my second year at St Columba’s Seminary, Springwood, a Passionist priest, Father Placid, conducted our retreat. The thought of joining a Religious Order kept coming to my mind. The desire came from the spiritual theology of the day and from my naivety. I wanted to do what God wanted. I was told that obeying my superiors was doing the will of God. All I had to do, then, was to join a Religious Order, keep the rule, go where I was sent and do as I was told and I would be on a direct track to God. My own fallibility would not be a danger in leading me astray.

I shared my thoughts with Father Placid. The wise man said, “You are here now. There must be a good reason for that. Until there is an obvious reason that you should be elsewhere, stay where you are.” I was 23 years old, hardly a child, but like many Catholics of the time, I accepted what my authorised teachers taught.

This personal incident is an example of where we came from in our journey through, with and from the 2^nd Vatican Council. The big change was in the approach to responsibility.

In so many ways we depended on authority. In matters of Church law we didn’t attempt to discern the best way or the most charitable way to respond to embarrassing or difficult situations. We asked an authorised person for a dispensation or permission. In a vital matter, the education of children, parents were required to obtain the permission of the parish priest to send their children to a State School. His judgement took precedence over theirs. Permission was required to attend a wedding of a family member or friend if it was not celebrated in the Catholic Church. People embarrassed their hosts by rejecting a carefully prepared meal because it contained meat and it was a Friday. The priest was presumed to know better than I whether the lenten fast was appropriate in my circumstance. He could dispense me from my obligation. I could shift my responsibility on to another person and be alleviated from guilt. People far away decided what was dangerous for me to read.

“It is finally through the gift of the Holy Spirit that we come by faith to the contemplation and appreciation of the divine plan” (Gaudium et Spes No 15).

What a contrast! What a worry!

The 2^nd Vatican Council gave supreme authority to conscience:

“In fidelity to conscience, Christians are joined with the rest of humanity in the search for truth, and for the genuine solution to the numerous problems which arise in the lives of individuals from social relationships. Conscience frequently errs from invincible ignorance without losing its dignity” (Gaudium et Spes No 16).

The same paragraph stresses the importance of right conscience and integrity.

Unfortunately, we did little to prepare people to come from a state of dependence on authority for answers and direction even in small matters. For many, not having a specific law meant having no obligation at all.

One time I was asked why the Church was becoming weak in its demand for penitential acts. Abstinence on Fridays, lenten fast, eucharistic fast as we knew them were all gone. It seemed to make little impression when I suggested that it required deeper spiritual qualities to discern when, where, how we could best respond to life in an unselfish and serving way that would inevitably call us to self-sacrifice and almsgiving. It was a contrast between obedience to outside laws and obedience to conscience and the voice of the Spirit in daily life.

It wasn’t easy to help people take responsibility for their moral choices. I remember pointing out options based on different reliable opinions and the consequences and implications of each choice. After some time and effort I was asked, “What will I do?” “I have tried to point out as clearly as I can the options open to you, the choice is yours”, I replied. This evoked resentment and anger. Obviously I was meant to give the desired answer and dispense the person from personal responsibility and guilt.

The Church gave conscience its rightful place, but through lack of sound teaching on the one hand and little desire to learn on the other, freedom of conscience was much misunderstood. For some it was doing what had the most appeal, for others it was obeying the law because it is the law.

“Our human dignity demands that we act according to a knowing and free choice that is personally motivated and prompted from within, not under blind internal impulse nor by mere external pressure” (Gaudium et Spes No 17).

The Council’s teaching on responsibility was not confined to individual responsibility, because Christianity is not merely about my personal relationship, as an individual, with God. Authentic Christianity calls us to a relationship with God and therefore with God’s other children. Thus the teaching on co-responsibility was developed.

The classical definition of the Church had begun with the words, “The Catholic Church is that monarchical and hierarchical institution”. The Council stated that the Church was more than that. The Church is the People of God, worshipping in spirit and truth, living in communion and service. It is the sacrament of God’s presence in the world. Each member has dignity, each has gifts to contribute, and each has responsibility. These things are not by courtesy of another human being, but flow from baptism into the Body of Christ.

From the development of this doctrine came the changes in the liturgy in posture, language and participation. All of these changes reflected a people in communion, sharing gifts and exercising responsibility.

The sign of the priest facing the altar, back to the congregation, was that of the leader with his people behind him following where he led. It expressed the theology of “that hierarchical institution”. The priest and congregation gathered around the altar, sharing common language, participating actively and sharing ministries, expressed the theology of Church as communion, as people of God.

The Council reminded us of our role in the teaching and believing Church. It affirmed our responsibility and our dignity as the teaching Body of Christ. The expression of authentic Christian doctrine is not the prerogative of a few. Authentic doctrine is expressed by the sense of faith of the People of God.

“The People of God shares also in Christ’s prophetic office … the entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole people’s supernatural discernment in matters of faith when, from the bishops down to the last of the faithful, they share universal agreement in matters of faith and morals” (Lumen Gentium No 12).

If we want to discern true doctrine, here is the Church’s own reference point.

This teaching of the Church on authentic doctrine seems to have been ignored. The spirit of search, journey and discernment released in the Church by the Council has been stifled by central control. The 2^nd Vatican Council reminded us that there are gifts both hierarchical and charismatic. When an exclusive few claim to be the full voice of the Church, the life-giving breath of the Holy Spirit is stifled. (Jesus warned us that the sin against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven. It seems to me that this is so simply because it is not seen as sin. If no sin is recognised, no repentance is necessary and no change seems necessary).

We should not forget that it is not only through the sacraments and Church ministries that the Holy Spirit sanctifies and leads the People of God, enriching them with virtues.

“Allotting his gifts to everyone according as he wills, he distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank” (Lumen Gentium No 12).

To come from this sublime concept to a point in Church life where theologians are forbidden to discuss unresolved matters is surely stifling the Holy Spirit.

The Council called us to a fuller life as members of the Body of Christ, as People of God: a fuller life with responsibility for our actions, participation in the liturgical worship of the Church and its life of prayer, in the teaching role of the Church and in Church administration and governance. We are called to be responsible in a mature way. We clergy, religious and laity are called to be co-responsible in decision-making and in the implementation of decisions. We have a responsibility for the distribution and administration of the Church’s spiritual and temporal gifts.

The style of the liturgy before its reform, as priest teaching a people who followed behind, was the style of leadership mostly exercised in the Church prior to the Council. It was the responsibility of the clergy to make decisions and the responsibility of the laity to obey. The Council gave a different model of leadership. We were to be co-responsible on all levels.

“It is highly desirable that in each diocese a pastoral council be established over which the diocesan Bishop himself will preside and in which specially chosen clergy, religious and lay people will participate. The function of this Council will be to investigate and weigh matters which bear on pastoral activity, and to formulate practical conclusions regarding them” (Christus Dominus No 27).

It is interesting to note that the above quotation is from the Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops. It is instructing Bishops on how to exercise their ministry. Unfortunately, some Bishops don’t seem to have sufficient leadership skills and perhaps even trust in others to make a Pastoral Council work effectively. Members and prospective members of Pastoral Councils were given little or no opportunity to understand and accept their role. Thus we hear that Pastoral Councils have been tried and failed or that they are an invitation to division and trouble or a waste of time and effort for both Bishops and members.

It is also unfortunate that some Bishops still work out of a law mentality. Since the decree does not say “must” but “it is highly desirable”, they see no obligation in the matter. Yet the whole climate of the Council was not of law but of spirit. The question is not one of obligation from an external law but obligation from an inner desire to follow the call of the Holy Spirit speaking through the highest Church authority.

The Council Fathers saw the wisdom of co-responsibility on all levels. Parish priests should consult, listen, take advice and set up structures that would facilitate these things. The concept of collegiality between Popes and Bishops was affirmed. Structures to facilitate this were developed. Yet how many authentic Pastoral Councils exist? Is real collegiality evident?

So while the 2^nd Vatican Council was a glorious, liberating, exhilarating breath of fresh air, it has yet to achieve its objectives.

The great difference between the 2^nd Vatican Council and others Councils of the Church was that it was not called to react to error or address an agenda coming from a perceived adversary. It was called to look at the needs of the Church and the World and to respond to these.

The outcome from reaction in defence is quite different from the results of a response in love and care. The reactions were determined by the agenda, set by perceived opponents and cast in theological and philosophical language and perceptions of the day. They should be seen and interpreted in that way.

Genuine truth, truth conducive to life and love, co-operation and growth in unity comes more from a gentle response than it does from a violent reaction. The 2^nd Vatican Council was this gentle, yet profoundly forceful response in love. I pray and hope that its spirit will re-emerge

(John Heaps is a retired bishop, former auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Sydney.)

Pope John XXIII and Vatican II

Geoffrey Robinson

When numbers of bishops come together, they are at ease with discussion of pastoral issues, but much less comfortable with discussion of profound theological issues. This is true whether we are speaking of a meeting of the Australian bishops in Conference or of the Synod of Bishops in Rome, and I believe it was true also of the Second Vatican Council.

The Council opened up perspectives, raised questions, indicated directions and made many beautiful and inspiring pastoral statements, but it frequently did not give the clear theological foundation on which to plan confidently for the Church of the future. All too often a tension between very different theological positions was part of the Council’s treatment of a topic. This was certainly true of the Council’s treatment of collegiality, conscience and marriage, among others. It is one of the major reasons why we must entitle this forum “Vatican II: Unfinished Business”.

It is important to understand that these tensions were present in the Council itself and in the documents it produced. Opposing groups within the Church can quote different statements to support their own positions. It is not surprising, therefore, that these tensions are still with us.

Despite this, I am an optimist about the final outcome of the Council. In large part my optimism comes from the least likely source imaginable, the crisis concerning sexual abuse of minors that has engulfed the Church.

It is my hope that, somewhere around the year 2100, an historian will be able to look back and say that serious change took place in the Catholic Church in the hundred years between 1960 and 2060. At first it was the Second Vatican Council that caused changes in most aspects of the Church’s life and had a quite profound effect on the way Catholic people lived their lives. Eventually, however, the changes of the Council seemed to come to a stop and go no further. It was then, in the twenty-first century, the historian will say, that the issue of sexual abuse forced further change. Serious change in an organisation as large and ancient as the Catholic Church requires an immense energy and it was the issue of sexual abuse alone that had that level of energy, for it was this issue that finally caused vast numbers of Catholic people around the world to rise up and say, “This is not good enough. There must be change.”

And so, our future historian might report, a further series of profound changes came over the Church in the first half of the twenty-first century. They were mainly in the two areas of sex and power. They did not come without fierce opposition, but the energy for change arising from sexual abuse was so great that eventually they did come.

Human development came to be put beside spiritual development and the two began to walk hand in hand. What was spiritually healthy and what was psychologically healthy began to shed light on each other. Sexuality was distinguished from sex, spirit and matter were reunited and joy in every aspect of God’s creation began to spread. The gifts of women came to be better appreciated. Power came to be seen as service, as Jesus had intended, and collaboration and empowerment became daily more common.

It is extremely unlikely that our historian will be able to report that everything became as perfect as this, but I hope that she will be able to report serious progress.

In bringing about these changes, I am not calling for a revolution or battles in the street in front of cathedrals. The issue of abuse is complex and sensitive, and it does not allow of instant and sweeping solutions. (Will you allow me to repeat that sentence: The issue of abuse is complex and sensitive, and it does not allow of instant and sweeping solutions.) The whole Church must work together. But the immense energy for change that sexual abuse has aroused must not be lost. It must grow stronger, and it must be harnessed and used effectively.

Permit me to give a few examples. I would like to see a massive request from the Catholic people of the whole world to the Pope, asking him to put in motion a serious study of any and all factors within the Church that might foster a climate of abuse or contribute to the covering up of abuse. I would like to see an insistence that obligatory celibacy, attitudes to sex and sexuality and all the ways in which power is understood and exercised within the Church at every level be part of this study. I would, however, want a truly serious and scientific study, far deeper than anything I have so far seen in newspapers or heard around a table.

As a second example, I would like to see a massive request/demand that the collegiality the Vatican Council spoke of be used to the full in responding to this crisis. If collegiality is not fully used in an issue so important, so down-to-earth and so crucial to the effectiveness of the Church, then the Vatican Council is truly unfinished business. It does not involve any dogmas of faith, so there is no reason not to respect the needs and values of each culture. This surely means the Vatican listening to the needs of each country and not imposing the “foreign” solutions they have imposed, e.g. establishing a statute of limitations of ten years for bringing forward an accusation of abuse or insisting that all cases must be heard by a tribunal consisting solely of priests and referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome.

As a third example, I would like to see the 32 diocesan bishops and 150 leaders of religious institutes in Australia give up some of their independence for the sake of all of us acting as one on this issue. However, I realise that in the Catholic Church people treasure any independence they do have and are slow to surrender it. I also know that before the Council bishops rode roughshod over the rights of religious, especially women religious, so some religious can today be resistant to any suggestion that comes from a bishop. As I said, the issues can be complex and sensitive.

Nevertheless, my thesis is simple. The Second Vatican Council was the greatest event in the Church in my lifetime. It has inspired my life over the last forty years. But because its theology was frequently far from clear, it is unfinished business, and two of the areas that absolutely demand further work are sex and power. For these two issues the crisis of sexual abuse alone gives the enormous energy that is needed for further change to occur. We should respond to the crisis of abuse for its own sake and the sake of the victims, but we should also seek to use its energy creatively, sensitively and intelligently in order to take further the unfinished business of the Council.

In everything he did and in everything he said, Jesus Christ sang a song. Sometimes, when he cured a sick person, he sang softly and gently, a song full of love. Sometimes, when he told one of his beautiful stories, he sang a haunting panpipe melody that, once heard, is never forgotten. Sometimes, when he defended the rights of the poor, his voice grew strong and powerful, until finally, from the cross, he sang so powerfully that his voice filled the universe.

The disciples who heard him thought that this was the most beautiful song they had ever heard, and they began to sing it to others. They did not sing as well as Jesus had – their voices went flat, they forgot some of the words – but they sang to the best of their ability, and the people who heard them thought in their turn that this was the most beautiful song they had ever heard.

And so the song of Jesus gradually spread out from Jerusalem into other lands. Parents began to sing it to their children, and the song passed down through the generations and the centuries.

Sometimes, in the life of a great saint, the song was sung with exquisite beauty. Sometimes, however, it was sung very badly, for the song was so beautiful that there was power in possessing it, and people used the power of the song to march to war and to oppress and dominate others. Always, however, the song was greater than the singers and never lost its ancient beauty.

Among the last places on earth that the song reached was a far-off land that would later be called Australia. At first the song was sung there very badly indeed, for the beauty of the song was drowned by the sound of the lash on the backs of the convicts and the cries of fear of the aboriginal people. But even in that world the song was greater than the singers and gradually, in little wooden homes and churches throughout a vast and dry land, the song was sung with love and affection.

At last the song came down to me, sung gently and lovingly by my parents. Like so many millions of people before me, I too was so captured by the song that I wanted to sing and dance it with my whole life.

A eat Council of the Church came, and I was inspired by the beauty of the song that seemed to be at the very heart of that Council. The overwhelming message I received was that here were two thousand bishops, divided by many issues but united in the song. We met with other churches and found, perhaps to our surprise, that they loved the song as much as we did. In the Scriptures and in the council I found the firm foundations on which I could live my life.

There was always a tension between the beauty of the song and the weakness and the pettiness that I found within myself and in so many others who shared this song with me, but the song sustained me throughout the years.

But then the darkness of evil within the Church gathered around me, and at times it was so deep that it seemed that the very song itself had been conquered. But in the depths of that darkness, when my clinging to the song was based on blind faith rather than on any warm feeling within me, I realised that the song is quite simply part of who I am and it is in the darkness that it is most important to me.

The song must not stop with us and we in our turn must sing it to others. In doing this we must remember that this song has two special characteristics.

The first is that we, too, will never sing the song as well as Jesus did – our voices lack strength and go flat, we misunderstand the words – but, if we sing this song to the best of our ability, people do not hear only our voices. Behind us and through us they hear a stronger and a surer voice, the voice of Jesus.

The second is that we always sing the song better if we can learn to sing it together – not one voice here, another there, each singing different words to different melodies, but all singing the one song in harmony. Then people will truly know that it is still the most beautiful song the world has ever known.

In the early Church, it was customary to take up a collection of money at the celebration of the Eucharist. That money was passed on to the poor and needy. The custom endures to the present day. At the celebration of the Eucharist at the National Forum, a collection was taken up and the proceeds were given to the Sisters of St Joseph for the work with the East Timorese. Representatives of the East Timorese community in Sydney were present to accept the gift. Sr Sue Connolly RSJ, of the Mary MacKillop Institute of East Timorese Studies, wrote the following letter of thanks.

“The mass was great last night and we were very happy to be there. Thanks so much for the opportunity of presenting Timor’s great need to these good people. The amount given was $3,976.50 plus 40 American dollars! Truly, a perfect indication of the state of the heart of the people present at the Forum. I do hope that the whole experience was full of challenge, ideas and a commitment to the hard yards. Love from all of us here, especially Josephine and me.”

(Bishop Geoffrey Robinson is Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney)

Looking Forward with Confidence

Francesco Canalini

With great timely initiative, at the beginning of the new year, the Holy Father John Paul II has given the universal Church the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, signed during the concluding celebration of the Great Jubilee 2000, on the feast of the Epiphany. The freshness, the optimism, the vision that come forth from the Papal Letter have been welcomed with appreciation almost everywhere; a sign of that in Australia is the prominent attention given to it by way of the favourable comments that appeared in many diocesan newspapers.

The strong pastoral impulse intended by the Pope is inspired by the Second Vatican Council, “the great grace bestowed on the Church in the twentieth century”. “With the passing of the years, the Council documents have lost nothing of their value or brilliance” (n.57). In the mind of the Supreme Pontiff, in fact, the celebration of the Great Jubilee 2000 was linked with the examination of the Church, thirty-five years after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, to see “how far she had renewed herself, in order to be able to take up her evangelizing mission with fresh enthusiasm” (n.2). Recalling the words of Jesus to St. Peter: “Duc in altum” (Lk. 5:6 – “Go forth into the deep”) the Holy Father applies them to the actual moment of the life of the Church, inviting her “to remember the past with gratitude, to live the present with enthusiasm and to look forward to the future with confidence” (n. 1).

Inspired by this basic thought, I would like to share a couple of reflections with you this morning, focusing in particular on references to the Second Vatican Council. I am led to that also by a personal reminiscence of forty years ago. A group of us, deacons of the Roman Seminary, previous to our priestly ordination, was received by Pope John XXIII, who as Cardinal and Patriarch of Venice, used to come to our Seminary during his visits to Rome. The Blessed Pontiff told us: “You are the priests of the Council. You have been formed in the school of the past with sound foundation, you are open to the new times that are coming”.

I want to recall the start of the Council, rereading the opening speech of the Pope on October 11, 1962. John XXIII had, for sure, a new approach to world realities, inspired, firstly, by a sense of history (‘In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, …can see nothing but prevarication and ruin… They behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life’), and, secondly, by a deep sense of confidence in God (‘In the present order of things, Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations which, by men’s own efforts and even beyond their very expectations, are directed toward the fulfilment of God’s superior and inscrutable designs’).

In the face of the “marvellous progress of the discoveries of human genius”, the Church makes its voice heard and admonishes men so that “they may raise their eyes to God”. And the Church, while always opposing errors, considers that she “meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching … raising the torch of religious truth”.

This positive approach to modern world realities could be possible – in the mind of the Pontiff – only if the sacred deposit of the Christian doctrine is guarded and taught efficaciously (“In order, however, that this doctrine may influence the numerous fields of human activity, with reference to individuals, to families, and to social life, it is necessary first of all that the Church should never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers”). And speaking about the task of the Council, John XXIII is adamant: “to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion, which throughout twenty centuries, notwithstanding difficulties and contrasts, has become the common patrimony of men. It is a patrimony not well received by all, but always a rich treasure available to men of good will”.

To make even clearer his position, with the exclusion of any possible misunderstanding, the Pope emphasises that the task of the Council is not “a discussion of one article or another of the fundamental doctrine … For this a Council was not necessary… but … a renewed, serene and tranquil adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness… The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another”. This papal affirmation was popularly translated into the image of bathing a baby: “Let us renew the dirty water, but not throw away the baby”.

Paul VI, in ordering the continuation of the work of the Council, articulated further these same concepts, which remained the guiding stars for the elaboration of the documents. With the passing of the years, the first concept, of a positive approach to modern world realities, became the leit-motiv of many comments and developments. Not the same consideration was always given to the second one, which was so strong and definitive in the mind of John XXIII.

Why? Factors from different sources were responsible; some coming from secular society, others from within the Church herself.

After the Second World War, the Church remained the credible entity that opposed Nazism and Fascism. When the time of reconstruction arrived, the secular forces realised the need to unite their energies with the Church, modernity and faith together, in order to achieve the restoration of society. In this atmosphere, the Second Vatican Council was convoked.

Once the post-war reconstruction ended, followed by an improved economic situation, and the Vatican Council was closed, the secular forces wanted to separate themselves from the Church and assert their own autonomous power, breaking apart from tradition and institution. The events that occurred in 1968 in the western world society were emblematic: they aimed at a new modern man, with full confidence in reason, in search of all its spaces of freedom, beyond what had been received from the past. This wind of generalised polarisation did not spare some spheres of the Church that, for different reasons, were interested in bringing about certain significant changes in the institution of the Church.

Pope Paul VI realised that this trend was a going astray from the aim of the Council and was harmful for the life of the Church. Taking the occasion of the 19^th century of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul (which with great probability took place in the year 67), the Holy Father proclaimed the “Year of Faith”, which he concluded with a solemn Profession of Faith during the celebration of 30th June 1968 in St. Peter’s Square. With extraordinary passion and interior strength so typical of Paul VI, the Pontiff reaffirmed the same Creed in a marvellous and well-known hymn to Christ in Manila, on 29 November 1970.

A new tension reappeared between modernism and institution, progress and tradition, freedom and truth. The analytic method, proceeding from daily experiences, became gradually more credible than the teaching method from principles of truth. Catholic “novatores” with a different attitude to life than the Magisterium elaborated and applied the theory of remaining inside the Church in order to bring about changes from within.

Some influential people organised a Congress, in 1978 in the United States, to promote the theme: Toward Vatican III, with the indication that Vatican II had to be considered as a point of departure for other shores. With time, these different approaches prolonged their effect on the mentality of the world community, including some Catholics.

In spite of these understandable post-conciliar differences and contrasts, the global vision of the recent past asks for an expression of deep gratitude to the Lord for so vivid, purifying and challenging years in the life of the resilient Church. Christianity, since its origins, has experienced a sound tension between past and future, old and new, tradition and progress.

Those forms of Christian life that achieve keeping together both poles of the tension are authentic. Other forms, that put such an emphasis on one pole, thus losing the balance, walk along an erroneous path.

There is no need to fear tradition, but not even progress, the newness that God continuously creates in each period of history. Newness, if it comes from God, brings always with it a going beyond of what already exists. Tradition, if it is authentic, receives and gives a solid base to new advances (cfr. Mt. 13: 52).

To keep the balance, anyway, implies always a certain dimension of the cross. It was true for priests and faithful who were asked to adapt themselves to the new directives coming out from the Second Vatican Council. It is true for priests and faithful today, as in any other period, when they are asked to be attuned to the directives of the Magisterium. But it is just there that you see Divine Providence in action and the possibility for the Church to leave behind some faded leaves of its tree and open up, facing new challenges, towards a new springtime.

This awareness and “sensus” of history allow us to live the present with enthusiasm, in particular after the wonderful experiences savoured during the past Jubilee Year in all dioceses and in the centre of catholicity.

The mindfulness of being sent by Christ (“As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” – Jn. 20:2 1); the awareness that Jesus Christ is the “good news” of salvation made known to people yesterday today and for ever; the experience of the transforming encounter with the Lord; all this spurs us to evangelisation, to teach what we have come to know, but also – like the Samaritan woman with her fellow-citizens – enabling others to encounter Jesus personally: “come and see” (Jn. 4:29~42). As the core of her mission, the Church has the joyful duty to lead all people to encounter the living Christ: it means to accept the love by which he loves us first, to choose him, to adhere freely to his person and his plan, which consists in proclaiming and in bringing about the Kingdom of God (cf. Ecelesia in America, 1999, n. 68).

The particular challenge of evangelisation in our times is that God is not denied, but is always less known; the interest of people is somewhere else. In the last decades, in fact, the advancement of technology has favoured the formation of a post-modern culture that is fragmentary, transient and strongly sensational. Consequently, the respect for tradition, for authority, is diminished in the younger generations, which experience a kind of social relations marked by superficiality and provisionality. Even confronted with religious commitments they feel rather uncertain.

In these circumstances, the Church cannot evangelise the world by trying to imitate its way of doing, but rather by presenting a dramatic alternative to the secularised vision. The example of Mother Teresa of Calcutta comes to mind. Her personality of authentic faith captured the attention of so many people who were in search of something that was more spiritually enriching than what the contemporary culture could offer them.

It is no surprise, then, that the Holy Father, inviting us to start again afresh from Christ at the beginning of the new Millennium, points to holiness as the first task. In the contemporary world the Church can exercise her influence, realise her mission through holiness. She is called to embrace the cross of Christ, entrusting herself to the power of His resurrection. If the Church firmly adheres to the paschal mystery, she can courageously challenge the vanity of consumeristic culture, counter-attack the culture of non-belief. Thanks to her constant union with Christ, she can offer that communion with God that alone can satisfy the profound aspirations of the human heart.

“I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt.28: 20). Trusting in this promise of the Lord, the Church can look forward to meeting with confidence the challenges of today’s world and those that will come in the future.

I have read recently an aphorism: pessimists are right; but optimists succeed. Our optimism, in spite of all the problems we meet in everyday life and gloomy perspectives sometimes presented, is rooted in that promise of the Lord, who also assured us: “In the world you will have trouble, but be brave: I have conquered the world” (Jn. 16:33).

During the preparatory phase of the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII asked the then Monsignor Pericle Felici, in charge of the preparation, how things were going. “Very well” – Mons. Felici answered – “the inputs are coming from all over the world, everything is organised by themes, and officials are working on the elaboration of the preparatory documents”. “If everything is going so smoothly, it is not good news”, observed John XXIII. “If there are no difficulties, it means that it is not something valuable”.

This is a good encouragement for all who dedicate themselves to continue in the faithful application of the Second Vatican Council, the documents of which “have lost nothing of their value or brilliance”.

(Archbishop Francesco Canalini is the Apostolic Nuncio. This paper was presented at the Australian Bishops Conference in May 2001)

The Politics of ‘Aggiornamento’

Max Vodola

Contemporary Catholicism is often plagued by ideological rhetoric rather than robust debate when it comes to discussing the significance and implications of the Second Vatican Council. Two conflicting and controversial views often prevail. The first view, expounded by traditionalists, is that the Council was “too much, too soon”. They believe that it was a giant and unnecessary program of reform that was instituted suddenly and with insufficient preparation. They believe that the questions associated with the rapid development of human history following World War II would not have intruded on the Church’s life had it not been for the Council.

One gains the distinct impression that many of these traditionalists wish the Council never took place.

The second view, expounded by more liberal voices in the Church, believe that the “spirit of the Council” has slowly been rescinded by the power of the Roman bureaucracy, particularly during the pontificate of John Paul II. These advocates often feel a sense of disenchantment with the Church and long for the day of the Third Vatican Council in the hope of recreating at some future time what was done in the excitement of the early 1960s. Their sense of disenchantment is sometimes mixed with deep feelings of nostalgia.

Much of the debate centres around the figure of John XXIII and the sudden and extraordinary change that he instituted. However, it was not change for the sake of change. Pope John wanted the Church to discern the signs of the times and renew itself in the light of the Gospel. To do so required a certain amount of aggiornamento (updating), that somewhat ambiguous and politically divisive word which is at the heart of the ideological turbulence so evident in the Church from the very moment the Council was announced. It is a term intimately and controversially linked with the memory of John XXIII.

I suggest there are two important and sometimes overlooked factors here. The first is that aggiornamento has firm pastoral and intellectual foundations in the tradition of the Church and was incredibly formative in the life of Pope John himself.

Secondly, the Catholic Church had in fact begun a very slow and subtle process of aggiornamento, particularly in the areas of liturgy, biblical scholarship and the lay apostolate, long before John XXIII called the Council in 1959. The present controversies about the Council are fundamentally about John XXIII and the politics of change, its necessity, implementation and most importantly, the way change is interpreted in the history of the Church.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, change was not on the agenda of Pope St Pius X (1903-14). In fact, he was an anti-intellectual fighter against many changes that he considered evil. Pius X ensured, by his unrelenting crusade against Modernism, that the fortress-like structure of the Catholic Church would resist any form of change. He placed suspect writings on the Index of Prohibited Books and condemned many modern propositions from historico-critical methods in theology to liberal democratic principles in politics.

In his encyclicals, Lamentabili and Pascendi, both issued in 1907, Pius X used strong words of condemnation and gave orders that all dioceses were to establish a Council of Vigilance and all priests were to take an oath disavowing Modernism.

There was a flood of suspicion and reprisal. Liberal Catholic periodicals were suppressed, and seminary teachers and academics were disgraced and dismissed. According to the eminent Catholic historian, Eamon Duffy, the impact of the Modernist crisis on Catholic intellectual life was catastrophic (Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes, Yale University Press 1997, 251).

However, in one of the great ironies of history, a number of developments in the life of the Church had in fact set Catholicism on the path of aggiornamento. Pius X is best and somewhat fondly remembered for lowering the age for first communion and encouraging frequent, even daily, communion by the faithful. According to Owen Chadwick, this amounted to a revolution in the liturgical practice of worship:

“Historians, in hindsight, if asked which act of which pope did most to affect the Church since 1800, would put their finger on this change of 1905-6, the encouragement of frequent, even daily communion, and the receiving of it by children “(A History of the Popes: 1830-1914, Oxford University Press, 1998, 362).

This development also coincided with the beginning in Europe of what came to be known as the liturgical movement, which began with small groups of scholars who promoted dialogue Masses, vernacular translations of sacramental rites, lay participation and the study of the history and spirituality of the Church’s public worship.

Despite opposition to these liturgical developments, Rome encouraged such lay participation. This was the beginning of restoring the organic unity and sacramental integrity of the liturgy, which had been weighed down by excessive rubrical encumbrances since the Council of Trent.

If Pius X can be recognised for initiating liturgical changes, then Pius XI (1922-39) deserves the credit for encouraging the rapid expansion of Catholic Action, a major effort by the Church to organise, encourage and develop the participation of the laity in the mission of the Church. This development was the cornerstone of what the Second Vatican Council came to articulate as the unique and indispensable place of the laity in the life of the Church, the universal priesthood of all believers and the universal call to a life of holiness in the world.

The apostolate of Catholic Action flourished in Europe through the efforts of the Belgian priest, Joseph Cardijn, and those who joined him in his efforts.

He established the Young Christian Workers (YCW) and encouraged the discussion and dissemination of Catholic social principles according to the real life situation of the participants, through his well-known model: ‘See, Judge and Act’. The aim of the YCW was to bring Christian moral principles to bear on modern industry and to keep the young of the working classes within the life of the Church by forming them as peer leaders in their own right and not merely as delegates of the clergy.

In Australia, Catholic Action began tentatively in 1931 with the formation of the Campion Society at Melbourne University. The suffering of the Depression sparked the beginnings of a new social and philosophical awareness among members of a small group of young Catholic intellectuals and university students. This group included men such as Denys Jackson, Frank Maher, Kevin Kelly and BA Santamaria. They established the highly successful Catholic Worker newspaper and were instrumental in the formation of the Australian National Secretariat of Catholic Action. (See Bruce Duncan’s Crusade or Conspiracy? Catholics and the Anti-Communist Struggle in Australia, UNSW Press, 2001.)

The enhanced role of the laity continued to take shape during the long pontificate of Pius XII, who authorised a number of further significant developments in the life of the Church. These were relatively creative for their time and continued the process of aggiornamento.

On 29 June 1943, the Pope issued the encyclical Mystici Corporis (On the Mystical Body of Christ). This represented a move towards a more organic and sacramental definition of the Church rather than a strictly juridical one that treated the Church only as a hierarchical and entirely supernatural institution.

In a similar way, Mediator Dei (On the Sacred Liturgy), published on 20 November 1947, addressed issues such as the vernacular in the liturgy and the active participation of the lay faithful. In addressing the issue of enhancing public worship in the life of the Church, this encyclical gave birth to the more modern liturgical movement which, in 1955, was instrumental in reforming the entire Holy Week cycle and restoring the liturgical prominence of the Easter Vigil.

As a young seminarian in Rome, Angelo Roncalli embraced with enthusiasm the study of history, archaeology, secular and religious art. His preference was Patristics. At twenty years of age he wrote:

“I do not hold critical thinking in contempt and I will guard against having sinister thoughts about critics or lacking in respect for them; quite the contrary, I like critical studies and I will enthusiastically follow the latest results of research; I will keep up with new systems, with their constant development, and I will study their tendencies; critical investigation is light and truth for me: and truth is holy, and there is only one truth …I shall take comfort in the fact that God arranges everything for the sacred treasure of his Revelation to become ever clearer and purer”(Loris Capovilla, John XXIII: Witness to the Tenderness of God, Mediaspaul, 2001, 25).

In the midst of the great anti-Modernist crusade of the early twentieth century, Roncalli began lecturing in ecclesiastical history at the local seminary in Bergamo, northern Italy. He was sympathetic to those writers and intellectuals who attempted to reconcile faith and reason. He was particularly fond of Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855), priest, patriot and philosopher who devoted his life to reconciling Catholicism with modern political and scientific thought.

Roncalli was also fond of Cesar Baronius (1538-1607), the father of ecclesiastical history. In a lecture at the Bergamo seminary in December 1907 to commemorate the third centenary of the death of Baronius, Roncalli began to speak a language that would later become the hallmark of his pontificate and an essential intellectual framework of the Second Vatican Council.

In speaking of Baronius, Roncalli defended historical criticism and claimed that Baronius had quite rightly been hailed as the founder of this scholarly method. It meant that Roncalli could cautiously assert that the Church had been the first in the field of historical criticism.

This was a clever move of tactical brilliance. According to Roncalli, the general renewal of Catholic scholarship promoted by Baronius was still on the agenda, despite the Modernist controversy that had begun to engulf the Church in a tense atmosphere of suspicion, fear and ecclesiastical sanction. (On becoming pope in 1958, he visited the Holy Office and asked to see his personal file, which contained details of his early career. It was marked: “Suspected of Modernism”. See Paul Johnson, Pope John XXIII, Hutchinson & Co, 1974, 37.)

Soon after his time as a lecturer in ecclesiastical history, Roncalli was appointed secretary to the Bishop of Bergamo, Giacomo Radini Tedeschi. This appointment would have a profound influence on the future pope. He was Tedeschi’s secretary from 1905 to 1914.

Tedeschi was both mentor and father figure to Angelo Roncalli. From this unique vantage point, Roncalli accompanied Tedeschi as he re-organised the diocese, issued pastoral letters, organised Catholic Action and major congresses, revised the seminary curriculum and undertook the patient and time-consuming task of parochial visitation. Roncalli described the Synod of 1910 as the most solemn and important event of Tedeschi’s episcopate.

There had been no synod in Bergamo since 1742. At the Synod of 1910, local customs and laws were brought into line with the needs of modern times and altered circumstances. (A. Roncalli, My Bishop: A Portrait of Mgr Giacomo Maria Radini Tedeschi, Geoffrey Chapman, 1969, 92.)

Another undertaking of a more academic nature would make an enormous pastoral impression on the future pope. As a young history lecturer Roncalli became very interested in the life of St Carlo Borromeo (1538-84), the brilliant and distinguished Archbishop of Milan, who undertook major reform in that diocese after the Council of Trent. Roncalli undertook the monumental task of translating all the pastoral decrees, spiritual exhortations and synodal instructions issued by Borromeo and publishing them in a five-volume series, the last of which was completed soon after his election as pope.

In Borromeo, Roncalli found an intelligent and zealous pastor. In order to reform the diocese, Borromeo undertook meticulous pastoral visitation, followed by an extensive diocesan synod. He convoked six provincial councils and eleven diocesan synods.

Roncalli adopted Borromeo’s belief that the diocesan bishop is the authentic agent of pastoral renewal in his diocese and not some Roman bureaucrat. Following his election to the papacy in October 1958, Roncalli insisted that the papal coronation take place on 4 November, a Wednesday rather than the traditional Sunday. It was the feast of St Carlo Borromeo.

The influence of Borromeo was clearly evident when Roncalli convoked the diocesan synod of Venice in 1957, following an extensive round of pastoral visitation throughout the diocese. It was a year before his election to the papacy. In his pastoral letter to the priests and people of Venice, he wrote:

“You’ve probably heard the word aggiornamento repeated so many times. Well, Holy Church who is ever youthful wants to be in a position to understand the diverse circumstances of life so that she can adapt, correct, improve and be filled with fervour. That in brief is the nature of the Synod, and that is its goal” (Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII: Pope of the Council, Harper Collins, 1984, 264).

(Fr Max Vodola was ordained for the Melbourne archdiocese in 1997 and is currently pastor at St Joseph the Worker, North Reservoir, Vic.)

The Journey from Here

Michael Whelan

On October 11, 2002, Catalyst for Renewal held a dinner to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. What follows is the text from the presentation by Michael Whelan.

In his speech at the Opening Session of the Second Vatican Council on this day in 1962, Pope John XXIII chided the “prophets of doom”, people who “behave as if they had learned nothing from history…. and as if in the time of the preceding ecumenical Councils everything represented a complete triumph for Christian ideas and for Christian life and for rightful religious liberty”.

Pope John clearly envisaged a Council like no other in the history of the Church. In an exhortation – Sacrae laudes – he had referred to the Church “crossing the line into a new age”. The Church could not simply go on, business as usual. Archbishop Capovilla – John’s secretary in Venice and Rome – recalls the words of Pope John to him on the eve of the announcement of the Council in January 1959:

“The world is starving for peace. If the Church responds to its Founder and rediscovers its authentic identity, the world will gain. I have never had any doubts against faith. But one thing causes me consternation. Christ has been there on the cross with his arms outstretched for two thousand years. Where have we got to in proclaiming the Good News? How can we present his authentic doctrine to our contemporaries?”

Aggiornamento (ie “updating”) was needed. And a new attitude was also needed: “Nowadays”, the Pope said in that same Opening Speech,

“The Spouse of Christ prefers to use the medicine of mercy rather than severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations … (We must, therefore) earnestly and fearlessly … dedicate ourselves to the work our age demands of us”.

Thus the first “pastoral” Ecumenical Council in the history of the Church came into being – a new style of Council for a new time. The Council documents – both in content and style – reflect this pastoral intent, this new mood. Words and concepts such as “people of God”, “pilgrim Church”, “the universal call to holiness”, “collegiality”, “co-responsibility” and “communion”, became common currency. The privilege and responsibility of all the baptised was beginning to re-emerge as the primary determinant of the Church and the way it would function in the coming generations.

If you are looking for dogmatic definitions or the resolution of issues, it would be disconcerting to read the documents of the Council. Those documents, like the Council itself, are an invitation to explore new and more fruitful ways of being Church.

The Second Vatican Council marked the end of a certain way of being Church – an imperial form that had emerged in the fourth and fifth centuries. This form of Church had been consolidated through subsequent centuries by such events as the Gregorian Reform of the 11^th century, the Council of Trent of the 16^th century and the Counter Reformation that was set in train there, and the First Vatican Council of the 19^th century and the definition of papal infallibility that emerged there.

The Catholic Church entering the middle of the 20^th century was more of a sanctuary from the world than a sign in it. John XXIII – and many others – saw that this situation could not continue. What they did not see – and perhaps could not have seen – was that the Catholic population and particularly the bishops and clergy were utterly unprepared for what was about to happen.

John XXIII died on June 3, 1963 – a matter of a few months after the Council had begun. The Council Fathers – for the most part – had welcomed Pope John’s invitation to seek out a new way of being Church. The clearest manifestation of this – and a sign of things to come – was their wholesale rejection of the schemas presented by the preparatory commissions as not corresponding with the spirit of aggiornamento requested by Pope John. Would the next Pope have the courage to continue the journey?

Cardinal Montini, Archbishop of Milan, was elected as John’s successor on June 21 – eighteen days after John’s death. He took the name of Pope Paul VI. In a speech broadcast to the whole world on the following day, Saturday June 22, 1963, he gave an unhesitating and unambiguous “Yes” to the Council. He went on to say that his entire pontificate would be devoted to the Council. The Second Session of the Council opened three months later on September 29, 1963.

Just before the Third Session of the Council opened on September 14, 1964, Paul VI published his first encyclical – Ecclesiam suam. In this encyclical the Pope formally introduced the word “colloquium” – meaning “conversation” or “dialogue” – into the Church’s vocabulary, and with it one of the critical mechanisms for moving forward towards a whole new way of being Church.

Paul VI was pointing to a Church that finds its very existence in and through the “colloquium salutis” – “the conversation of salvation” (ie God’s conversation of liberating love). In this encyclical we read:

“We need to keep ever present this ineffable, yet real relationship of the dialogue, which God the Father, through Christ in the Holy Spirit, has offered to us and established with us, if we are to understand the relationship which we, i.e., the Church, should strive to establish and to foster with the human race” (71).

The Church was beginning to rediscover its raison d’être – to be a sign of the liberating love of God in and for the world – and thus the journey from an imperial model of Church towards a Gospel model of Church was beginning to take shape.

The practical implications of Pope Paul’s dialogical vision are considerable. In Ecclesiam suam we hear him say, for example:

“The Church should enter into dialogue with the world in which it exists and labours” (65);

“The dialogue ought to characterise our Apostolic Office (ie the papacy)” (67);

“The child is invited to it; the mystic finds a full outlet in it” (70);

“This type of relationship indicates a proposal of courteous esteem, of understanding and of goodness on the part of the one who inaugurates the dialogue; it excludes the a priori condemnation, the offensive and time-worn polemic and emptiness of useless conversation” (79);

“The dialectic of this exercise of thought and of patience will make us discover elements of truth also in the opinions of others, …. The dialogue will make us wise; it will make us teachers” (83);

“And before speaking, it is necessary to listen, not only to a person’s voice, but to the person’s heart. People must first be understood – and, where they merit it, agreed with” (87).

The ongoing “colloquium”, says Pope Paul VI, must by fostered in four “circles of dialogue” – with the whole of humanity, with those of other religious traditions; with those Christians who are not Catholics and with other Catholics. Of the last “circle” he says: “It is our ardent desire that this conversation with our own children should be full of faith, of charity, of good works, should be intimate and familiar” (113).

One of the most immediate, practical and significant challenges we face, if we are to move forward according to this vision of John XXIII, the Council and Pope Paul VI, is that of facilitating discontinuity amidst continuity and maintaining continuity amidst discontinuity. This will require a new kind of thinking – the kind of thinking that John Henry Newman seems to be implying in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine when he writes:

“(An idea’s) vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in efforts after freedom which become more vigorous and hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains perhaps for a time quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise in and around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often” (cf Chapter 1, Section 7).

We could put the challenge of this kind of thinking in the form of different questions, such as:

How can we develop a consciousness that is at once imbued with and utterly faithful to the tradition, yet open to new possibilities for the expression of the Gospel today?

How do we admit that we have been wrong without losing faith in the teaching role of the Church or eroding our conviction that God is with us until the end of days?

This is neither the time nor the place to attempt a thorough treatment of this most complex and difficult issue. However, I raise it here because I believe there is a deep-seated fear, in the minds of many – implicitly or explicitly, consciously or unconsciously – that the discontinuity is sabotaging or will sabotage the continuity. As a result of this fear the continuity we are stuck with is not serving us well. Or, to put it more bluntly, our inability to incorporate into our thinking and deal well with the fact that we are able to make mistakes is imprisoning us.

That said, there are some very significant signs of hope in this regard. Consider the quantum leap that we have found it possible to make with respect to our relations with other Christian Churches. Implicit in that is an admission that we did get it badly wrong – at least in some respects. Of course, it goes without saying that the journey towards greater understanding of and more cooperation with our brothers and sisters of other Christian faiths has barely begun.

Consider further, the enormous changes we have made in the liturgy, despite the 16^th century proclamation by Pius V that the Tridentine Missal was to remain the norm forever. Again, the journey has barely begun.

I believe there are also substantial signs in the writings of John Paul II that suggest he is not as fearful as some members of the Curia about opening up new possibilities and moving beyond old ways of thinking and acting. See, for example, his December 1990 encyclical, Redemptoris missio, (eg paragraph 28 where he speaks of the universality of the Holy Spirit), his May 1995 encyclical, Ut unum sint (eg paragraph 95 where he calls for a reform of the papacy), and his January 2001 ecclesial pronouncement, Novo millennio ineunte (eg paragraph 44 where he urges the development of different structures to safeguard communion).

The International Theological Commission’s March 2000 “Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past” is also a promising sign.

However, much more change is needed. And the biggest change of all will be a change of consciousness, a new way of thinking about ourselves – especially our vocation to be the earthen vessels that carry the great treasure of God’s liberating love for the world (cf 2Corinthians 4:7). And we find an interesting ally in an unlikely place.

In the September 2, 2000, issue of The Tablet, the emeritus professor of history at the University of Nottingham, Robert Markus, reviewed Garry Will’s book, Papal Sins: Structures of Deceit. In that review, Markus quoted a statement of Pope Pelagius II from the end of the 6^th century:

“Dear brethren, do you think that when Peter was reversing his position, one should have replied: We refuse to hear what you are saying because you previously taught the opposite? In the matter (now under discussion) one position was held while truth was being sought, and a different position was adopted after truth had been found: why should a change of position be thought a crime by this See which is humbly venerated by all in the person of its founder? For what is reprehensible is not changing one’s mind, but being fickle in one’s views. Now if the mind remains unwavering in seeking to know what is right, why should you object when it abandons its ignorance and reformulates its views?”

Markus goes on to note that, significant as the point of view expressed here is, even more significant is the fact that the words were actually penned for Pelagius by a certain deacon who was to succeed him within a few years as Pope Gregory the Great.

For some people, the issue of change suggested above might present absolutely no anguish at all. I suggest that might indicate they have no grasp of the depths and significance, the complexity and subtlety of what is at stake. And I am thinking of such issues as the role of the papacy – raised by the Pope himself – new forms of ministry, especially ordained priesthood, attitudes and teachings pertaining to sexuality, marriage laws, the centrality of freedom and the primacy of conscience, and regulations concerning participation in the Eucharist.

It would be dangerously naïve to think these issues could be dealt with by doing simply this or simply that. It would be equally naïve to think that these issues do not call for urgent and radical attention.

Pope John XXIII issued the challenge, the Second Vatican Council took it up, and Pope Paul VI carried it forward. Pope Paul VI also gave us a wise and practical description of how we might proceed – through good conversation anchored in and manifesting God’s conversation with the world. The privilege and the responsibility are ours to continue the journey.

By way of conclusion, let me suggest three ultimate principles and three practical rules we might bear in mind if we are to thrive in and contribute creatively to the Church of the coming years.

The three principles are:

firstly, the world belongs to God – it is in good hands;

secondly, the Church belongs to God – it is in good hands;

thirdly, we belong to God – we are in good hands.

The three rules are:

firstly, listen with the ears of your heart that you might discern what you must do;

secondly, give yourself intelligently and generously to what you must do;

thirdly, be utterly detached from the outcome!

(Michael Whelan PhD is a Marist priest and is Director of Aquinas Academy in Sydney, a founding Member of Catalyst for Renewal and Editor of The Mix.)

Social teachings of Vatican II, subsequent social encyclicals and United Nations declarations: The convergence of thought and the implications for Australian social conscience.

INTRODUCTION

“Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as sub-human living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator.” (Gaudium et Spes)

This quotation is taken from the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, know as Gaudium et Spes- (Joy and Hope) from the first two words of the document. It is arguably the most important and far reaching of all the pronouncements of Vatican II. The quotation puts into focus the theme of this talk which is firstly an attempt to trace the development of thought on the critically important issue of human rights as taught in “The Church in the Modern World” and subsequent Social Encyclicals and as expressed in the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. And secondly, to examine the practical implications and imperatives these rights have for Australians and the Australian conscience.

PREAMBLE

If this forum had been held twelve months ago I think my approach would have been different. However two events of the past year, have dramatically impacted, each in its own way, on human rights. They offer powerful case studies of the gap between the rhetoric and the reality; of the beautifully crafted document and the practical lived expression of human rights; of the erosion or suspension that fear and vengeance can have on human rights. I refer, of course to the unconscionable terrorist attacks on Washington and New York and the exposure of the extent of sexual abuse and its cover up in the Church.

In the case of September 11^th there is a real danger that in retaliation, further violations of human rights will occur and innocent people will be punished.

In the case of abuse in the church we have learned not just of the reprehensible actions of clerical predators but of the cover-up by Church leaders-a fundamental denial of the rights of the child to be protected, a scandalous failure of the Church to practise what it preaches and teaches in regard to its duty of care of children. Recall around whose neck the millstone should be attached.

I will return to these and other related events later.

Human Rights Articulated in the Social Encyclicals.

Returning to the text of Gaudium et Spes, we read:

“There is a growing awareness of the exultant dignity proper to the human person, since he (sic) stands above all things, and his rights and duties are universal and inviolable. Therefore, there must be made available to all everything necessary for leading a truly human life such as food, clothing and shelter.”

What are significant in that first sentence, are the words, “a growing awareness”. In other words, human rights and freedoms as we know and enjoy them today are of relatively recent articulation and legislation. The concept of human dignity from which human rights are derived is very ancient one and some philosophers have argued that medieval natural law tradition implicitly contains the idea of human rights. It is latent in the teachings of Christ, especially in his parables such as the “Good Samaritan” and “Lazarus at the Gate of Dives”. Jesus certainly recognised the dignity of each person in his public ministry. However, the idea of human rights did not explicitly surface until relatively modern times, nor was it enshrined in any universal document.

The strong emphasis and teachings of Vatican II on the dignity of the human person and the inescapable rights that flow from them have their origin in Pope Leo XIII ‘s famous encyclical Rerum Novarum, named “The condition of the Working Class”. This document appeared in 1891 when the Agrarian Revolution was in full swing and the Industrial Revolution well underway. Large numbers of people were being displaced off the land and moving to the rapidly developing cities looking for food, work and shelter.

There are two images burned indelibly in my memory that capture for me the inhuman conditions and appalling sufferings that were the context of this encyclical.

The first was a photo I came across while reading a book on slavery in North America. It was of an elderly African-American slave couple, staring into the camera with looks of desolation and a mixture of despair and resignation. They were holding up for the photographer, the stumps of their arms. The caption informed the reader that their master had chopped off the hands of both the husband and wife as punishment for unsatisfactory work. Not only had they been brutally torn from their homeland and forced to work as slaves in exile, they were condemned to spend their last years as victims of further gross indignity and savagery.

The second image was a drawing that appeared in a primary school history book on the Industrial Revolution in England. It depicted young girl of about ten stripped to the waist crawling on all fours in a mineshaft dragging a wooden coal wagon behind her. It is worth noting here that, even though a majority of people at the time accepted or endorsed slavery and child labour, some recognised the in justice and inhumanity and spoke out against them often at great cost to themselves. It is hard to go against the majority as many have discovered in recent days.

In this encyclical then, we have the most important religious authority in Europe committing the Church to struggle with the working class for justice and a decent standard of living-decent wages.

“There had been no precedent for such a systematic statement by a Pope on the Social Question –the complex of problems arising from industrialisation and secularisation in Europe. And yet it set a style and raised expectations, which have continued to this day. It is difficult to think of the Papacy now without such a tradition of active involvement in social debate.”

It was Leo XIII, the patrician, keen to maintain the primacy of the Papacy who started this process and in a sense became the unlikely hero of the working classes.

Leos’ Rerum Novarum was the first major step by the Vatican towards putting the Church on the side of the poor and the working class. It can be seen as the beginning of a process, which eventually led church leaders, including and especially Pope John Paul II, to approve of the notion of an “Option for the Poor”.

Rerum Novarum cannot itself be said to represent an option for the poor. The encyclical expresses deep concern for the plight of the poor, makes a strong protest on their behalf, and calls for changes in society. However, Leo did not make a clear option in favour of the poor, nor specifically refer to human rights. He wished for changes in the economic order, but he was not prepared to approve of the kind of political activity that would be likely to bring about such changes. He was convinced of the prime importance of order in society – stability was a key value of his political theology.

In certain circumstances, especially where the rights of the Church were at risk, Catholics were encouraged to seek political change, but only by legal means. In the last analysis where changes could not be brought about without a threat to social order, Christians were expected to put up with injustice. It was of a kind that actively discouraged the poor from confronting the wealthy to claim their rights; it promised reward in heaven to those who were the victims of injustice on earth.

For the next 40 years the Church, that is to say, the next two Popes, did not pick up on these social issues as expressed in Rerum Novarum, in fact, there was a movement backwards from Leo’s advanced position.

It was not until Pius XI issued “Quadragesimo Anno” that social issues were once again taken up by the Church. This encyclical challenged the capitalist model of society more strongly and more specifically than Leo’s encyclical had done. Pius XII was less radical than his predecessor- he was Pope at the time of the Second World War and was understandably concerned about the dangers of Communism and Socialism. He saw capitalism in spite of its excesses as the answer to overcoming poverty and safeguarding human freedom and dignity than the other alternatives. “His main contribution in this development of thought was his insistence that the right to private property is subordinate to the general right of all people to the goods of the earth.”

It is interesting to recall that in his Christmas radio address of 1942 with the war in Europe well underway, Pius XII proposed a list of basic personal rights including: the right to life, to religious freedom, to family life, to work, to choose a vocation and to make proper use of material goods- and all this at a time when most of these rights were being violated.

United Nations and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Three years after that address, right at the end of the Second World War, the warring nations, putting aside their weapons and recognising the futility of war once again, established the United Nations to seek ways in which the countries and races of the world may follow, leading to peace, harmony and justice for all. The cornerstone of the Declaration was Article 3, which proclaims the right to life, liberty and security of the person. Articles 4-21 specify other civil and political rights and Articles 22-27 deal with a series of economic, social and cultural rights. And conclude all these rights are laid down as: “A common standard of achievement for all people and all nations.” This universal declaration was the first part of a prospective international bill of human rights. I will refer to the subsequent ones later.

The importance of this universal declaration on human rights is emphasised in the words of Professor Henry Steiner of Harvard Law School: “No other document has so caught the historical moment, achieved the same moral and rhetorical force, or exerted so much influence on the human rights movement as a whole. The principles of the declaration have been built into many international treaties and into new constitutions of states in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Its influence was crucial, for example, in the peaceful elimination of apartheid in South Africa.”

Pacem in Terris and Vatican II

On the 25^th January 1959 Pope John XXIII in St Paul’s Outside the Walls, announced that there would be a Council of the Church. On the 5^th of April fully six months before the first session of the Chapter he issued his landmark encyclical “Pacem in Terris” In it he praised the United Nations Declaration as ” an act of the highest importance and an important step forward on the path toward the juridico-political organisation of the world community”. In the same encyclical he set forth a comprehensive and detailed charter of human rights based on natural law.

Pope John was the first Pontiff to directly refer to the United Nations and its Declaration on Human Rights. It marks the beginning of a close and continued association between the Vatican and the UN with frequent references to the Universal declarations in subsequent encyclicals and through addresses to the General Assembly of the UN by two Popes on three occasions. The Second Vatican Council especially in its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, proclaimed in the last session in 1965, took up the teaching of John XXIII and amplified it in the light of divine revelation. The human person standing above the rest of visible creation has inviolable rights and duties. Among these the Council listed: “Everything necessary for living a life truly human such as food, clothing and shelter; the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a family, the right to education, to employment, to a good reputation, to respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the upright norms of one’s own conscience, to protection of privacy and to rightful freedom in matters of religious too.”

Earlier that same year (1965) Pope Paul VI addressed the UN General Assembly on 4^th August. Conscious of the content of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights he said: “We never cease to support your organisation’s functions and initiatives, which are aimed at peaceful co-existence and collaboration between nations. You, the United Nations, are establishing here a system of solidarity that will ensure that lofty civilising goals, receive unanimous and orderly support from the whole family of nations.”

The Social Encyclicals of Pope John Paul II

Of all the Popes no other has given so much emphasis to human rights as John Paul II. He frequently refers to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In his encyclical “Redemptor Hominis” issued in 1979 he described it as a magnificent effort to the objective and inviolable rights of persons including the freedom of religion. In his first address to the United Nations on October 2^nd 1979 he spoke of the Universal Declaration as a milestone on the long and difficult path of the human race. He warned against the declaration being subjugated to political interest and the thirst for power. He also traced the scourge of war to the denial of human rights, which he said

“destroys the organic unity of the social order and then affects the whole system of international relations. Only through safeguarding the full rights of every human being he said, can peace be ensured at its very roots.”

In his second social encyclical “Sollicitudo rei socialis” (1987) he protested against the tendency to look only to the material aspects of development rather than to personal rights in their full range. “More attention” he said, “should be given to cultural, political and simply human rights, including religious freedom, the right to share in the building of society and freedom to take initiatives in economic matters.”

In yet another encyclical “Centesimus Annus” (1991) which was issued on 100^th Anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical (not by chance) John Paul praises the way in which the Universal Declaration shifted the centre of the social question to the international level, but expresses disappointment at the failure of the United Nations to establish, thus far, effective means for the resolution of international conflicts. Again he proposes a list of basic human rights similar to those given in the 1979 address to the UN. The Pope in that address gives this list:

“Permit me, he says, to enumerate some of the most important human rights that are universally recognised:

the right to life liberty and security of person

the right to food clothing and housing sufficient health care rest and leisure

the right to freedom of expression, education and culture

the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion and the right to manifest one’s religion either individually or in community, in public or in private

the right to choose a state of life to found a family and to enjoy all conditions necessary for family life

the right to property and work, to adequate working conditions and a just wage

the right to assembly and association

the right to freedom of movement, internal and external migration

the right to nationality and residence

the right to political participation and the right to participate in the free choice of the political system of the people to which one belongs.”

All these human rights taken together are in keeping with the substance of the dignity of the human person understood in his entirety, not as reduced to one dimension only. These rights concern the satisfaction of man’s essential needs, the exercise of his freedoms, and his relationships with others; but always and everywhere they concern a person’s full human dimension.”

These are in accord and in harmony with the 30 articles that make up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from the UN.

In his second address to the UN on October 5^th 1995 he called the declaration one of the highest expressions of the human conscience of our time. And in his message for World Peace Day on January 1^st 1998 he took note of the 50^th Anniversary of the declaration and warned that it must be observed integrally both in spirit and letter. The transcendent dignity of the human person derives most fundamentally from being created as a visible image of the invisible God. Our human dignity is fully revealed in Christ whose sacrifice eloquently expresses how precious we are in the eyes of the creator. Tarnished by sin, our dignity is definitively restored through the cross and shown forth in the resurrection.

In his long encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” he returns to human rights. Among them he puts in first place the right to life. He teaches that because human life has a sacred and inviolable character, it is gravely immoral to destroy innocent human life and, by extension, to place human life in danger by excessive and unjust laws, for example, the detention of children in camps.

Finally in 1993 the UN sponsored a world conference on human rights, adopting the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action. These instruments agree in affirming that “All human rights derive from the dignity and worth inherent in the human person.”

Human Rights and the Australian Conscience

As I was preparing this paper, I was struck by a most painful and disturbing irony: in the past century (the 20^th) during which, as we have seen, a “growing awareness of the dignity of the human person”, and during which wonderful documents have been written enshrining universal human rights which flow inescapably from this “awareness”, we have also witnessed the most brutal, the most bestial the most bloody period in human history. More human beings have died in wars and conflicts in the past 100 years than at any other time- a conservative estimate puts the figure at around 130 million.

That is not to say that real progress in establishing human rights has not been made. In fact in many parts of the world people are enjoying some of the fruits of the struggle. However as recent events both here in Australian and throughout the world suggest continued vigilance and relentless efforts are needed to preserve those human rights we enjoy, to make sure they are not eroded and to help those who are denied them, especially the fundamental basic rights of food, shelter and security.

The two events mentioned at the beginning illustrate this challenge. Understandably the horror of September 11^th caused fear and a sense of righteous revenge to eliminate terrorists. But as we have seen in recent days so called “collateral” damage has claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians. Is this justified?

We witness the incarceration of as prisoners captured in Afghanistan and yet to be indicted. They are denied rights to lawyers and family; the threat of a massive pre-emptive strike on Iraq and the inevitable loss of many civilian lives; The simplistic division of the white hats and black hats-“if you are not for us you must be against us” validating whatever decisions that may be taken against the black hats, the axis of evil.

I hasten to add that the rights and freedoms set forth in the international covenants are to be implemented in the measure possible, but are subject to limitations as needed to protect national security, public order, public health or morals and the rights and freedoms of other persons. Clearly some people and groups through their violent acts abrogate certain of their rights.

Nevertheless, in a climate of fear human rights are often the first casualty. During the Second World War America incarcerated Japanese-Americans (with citizenship) in camps for the duration of the war and confiscated their property. They had committed no crime other than to belong to an ethnic minority. The same happened here in Australia. Curiously, in recent years, a class action was taken out against the US Government by some of those former detainees. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiff and a token but symbolic compensation was paid.

What has happened here in Australia in recent years and especially since the Tampa incident and 11/9 events? Under the justification of “Boarder Control” we have used our Navy to intercept Asylum Seekers, people fleeing the violence and brutality in their homeland where our young men and women are fighting the very terror from which they flee. For their efforts we force them into detention camps on Pacific islands-many of them legitimate refugees. Access to these detainees is denied. They have committed no crime.

Those who made it to the mainland are held in mandatory detention for as long as two years, including children – Australia is the only Western Nation that locks up children who have committed no crime. But we are improving – a 40 million dollar detention center has just been completed in Port Augusta with state of the art 9000-volt electric perimeter fence – no nastier razor wire.

The continual vilification of these detainees and asylum seekers by way of false propaganda – “children overboard”; “illegals” “terrorists” “diseased” has legitimized verbal and physical abuse and discrimination even to the extent that the Mayor of Port Lincoln seriously urged the government to let the Army use those detainees who riot in response to their illegal detention (according to International law and the UN Convention on Refugees) as target practice!

Some commentators suggest that fear of the foreigner, which has been a feature of white Australia ever since we arrived, has raised it xenophobic head once more taking us back to the bad old days of the “White Australia Policy”. The Government has ruthlessly and shamelessly inflamed and made use of this fear in the community for its own political ends – and human rights are again the causality.

In the case of sexual abuse in the Church, the “good name ” of the church and the “boys club” mentality within clerical circles took precedence over the basic fundamental human rights of the child victims. In 1971 the Synod of Bishops made a major contribution to the development of the social teaching of the church. In part it proclaimed: ” promotion of justice is a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel. (It is not an option but an imperative). It questioned the myths of development – and especially the assumption that western type of economic development could be applied all over the world. It also accepted that a church that presumes to speak to the world about justice must itself practice justice in its own life and structures.” In both case studies the gap between the rhetoric and the reality is staggeringly obvious

Conclusion

The list of human rights as expressed in the encyclicals of the Church and the Declarations of the United Nations are extensive and comprehensive. Sadly the human condition suggests that the struggle for the time when all people throughout the world will be invested with the human rights their dignity demands will be long, arduous and plagued with set backs.

In the meantime we must never forget that in all these rights there are three, which are basic, the right to food, shelter and safety. In a country as rich as Australia this has disturbing and inescapable implications.

In a world which constantly refers to the phenomenon of globalisation of such things as trade, commerce, financial institutions, the money-market, corporations there is also global responsibility of the haves for the have nots. Tragically the “have” countries like the USA and Australia have reduced their aid to those in need in recent years.

Recently the UN held the World Food Summit in Rome with the proposal to find ways to halve the estimated 840 million hungry people throughout the world by the year 2015.In half that time the US will spend over 300 Billion dollars on arms.

Only two developed nations sent top-level delegations- feeding the starving was low on the list of priorities. Pope John Paul insisted in a letter to the Summit that the world had a duty to guarantee the right to nutrition for everyone.

And so we end where we began with the quote from Gaudium et Spes:

“Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as sub-human living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator.”

Universal Declaration of Human Rights- at a glance:

• Article 1 Right to Equality
• Article 2 Freedom from Discrimination
• Article 3 Right to Life, Liberty, and Personal Security
• Article 4 Freedom from Slavery
• Article 5 Freedom from Torture and Degrading Treatment
• Article 6 Right to Recognition as a Person before the Law
• Article 7 Right to Equality before the law
• Article 8 Right to Remedy by Competent Tribunal
• Article 9 Freedom from Arbitrary Arrest and Exile
• Article 10 Right to Fair Public Hearing
• Article 11 Right to be Considered Innocent until Proven Guilty
• Article 12 – Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
• Article 13 Right to Free Movement in and out of the Country
• Article 14 Right to Asylum in other Countries from Persecution
• Article 15 Right to Nationality and the Freedom to change it
• Article 16 Right to Marriage and Family
• Article 17 Right to Own Property
• Article 18 Freedom of Belief and Religion
• Article 19 Freedom of Opinion & Information
• Article 20 Right of Peaceful Assembly and Association
• Article 21 Right to Participate in Government and in Free Elections
• Article 22 Right to Social Security
• Article 23 Right to Desirable Work and to join Trade Unions
• Article 24 Right to Rest and leisure
• Article 25 Right to Adequate living Standards
• Article 26 Right to Education
• Article 27 Right to Participate in the Cultural life of Community
• Article 28 Right to a Social Order that articulates this document
• Article 29 Community Duties Essential to Free and Full Development
• Article 30 Freedom State of Personal Interference in the above Rights

“The Human rights movement struggles and stumbles in the face of appalling ignorance, apathy and resistance. The Only certainty is that the abuse of human rights will almost certainly increase if there are no renewed protests or more humane and humanitarian laws.”- The Mobilization of Shame.

Sources:

Vatican II Documents- Constitution of the Church in the Modern World.

The Mobilization of Shame

Robert Drinan SJ

The Church’s Social Teaching: From Rerun Novarum to 1931

Bruce Duncan CSsR

Option for the Poor: A hundred years of Vatican Social Teaching

Donal Dorr

The Social Teaching of Vatican II.

Rodger Charles SJ

Human Rights-Papal Teaching and the UN

Avery Dulles

(Both sessions were fully subscribed. Because of real interest in and serious concern for the implications of our current asylum seekers policy in regard to human rights and the Australian conscience the conversation was lively and engaging. The issues raised during the conversation in both sessions were the same. What follows is a brief attempt to capture the main points.)

Questions and issues for discussion:

What are our legal and moral obligations to abide by the UN Charter on Refugees which Australia has signed-Article 13

What rights if any do you think Asylum Seekers arriving in Australia have?

Do we as have the right to maintain a policy of Mandatory Detention? For all? For Children?

What do you think of the Pacific Solution?

What are the implications of Australia’s current policy on us as a Nation in the light of those words of Vat II- ” they do more harm to those who practise them than those who suffer the injury”

People in your circle saying about the Church and the scandal of Sexual Abuse- especially in the light of the rights of the child and the Gospel teachings?

Can we continue to maintain our standard of living while so many throughout the world are denied the very basic necessities for life? A fundamental human right.

Summary of Discussion

“The Australia that I love has been taken from me”. This quote from one of the participants, sums up what many in the group were feeling in regard to the development of Australia’s treatment of Asylum Seekers especially since the Tampa incident. At that time polls suggested that 94% of Australians supported mandatory detention for all those arriving here by whatever means without a valid visa should be held in detention. And this in spite of the fact that Australian is a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees. Even now some polls claim 80% are still in favour despite the fact that a majority have been determined to be refugees under the articles of the Convention.

The persistent negative propaganda put out by the government has inflamed the underlying fear of the outsider eroding the generous compassion so evident in the community during the time of the arrival of the Vietnamese refugees and the Kosovars.

The stories based on personal visits to the detention camps especially the story of the Avesta family in Curtin highlighted how successful the government has been in dehumanising these people in the eyes of the community and therefore ameliorating or assuaging any sense of guilt- by detaining most in inaccessible camps, Australians are denied access to them; by using spin-doctors very effectively to challenge any opposition and the groundswell of concern; by suggesting some may be terrorists; by being very creative with the truth and facts.

The question was then asked, where is the Church in all of this? Where is its voice? Mention was made of the excellent document published on the 26^th March by the Bishop’s Conference on the Asylum Seekers calling for a more humane treatment of them. Unfortunately it has not received wide circulation.

This led to a discussion of the importance of telling the stories and appropriate use of simple language. There is a danger of information overload because of the media coverage and many have made up their minds and now just turn off. “The Church needs to stop being clever and simply say ‘this is wrong’.”

“How can we help?” and “What can we do?” elicited, at first, a response pointing out the difficulty of dealing with a Government that is entrenched in this policy aware that it is still politically expedient to remain so. However it was pointed out that there are in fact many Church and community groups who are involved in a variety of ways- Jesuit Refugee Service, Mercy Refugee Service, Edmond Rice Centre, ” Spare Rooms” movement, to mention just a few.

(Jim Carty SM is a Marist priest with extensive experience working for 15 years in Japan where he was also Director of a Vietnamese refugee camp, later in Hon Kong working with refugees, the physically and intellectually handicapped, and the marginalised in SE Asia. He is the author of a report on refugees, asylum seekers and displaced people in our region. He acquired a Masters of Applied Theology in 1987 from Berkley)

Dei Verbum and Catholicism’s ancient genius – an exploration of Vatican II via Dei Verbum (The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation)

[Covering note for those who participated in this focus group at the forum. This paper is not the text of what I presented in my focus group at the forum, but it includes much of what was raised there. That day I chose to present some of the material included here as stimulus for a facilitated group conversation on a few aspects of Vatican II’s revolutionary Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum. The following paper is an effort firstly to draw together some of the necessarily scattered ideas that surfaced that afternoon, secondly to offer a broadened base for considering these, and thirdly to highlight the significant amount of unfinished business in the Church community in relation to divine revelation.]

Focus and concerns of this paper

This consideration of Vatican II’s unfinished business will focus on The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum [translated “Word of God”]. To assess the extent, to which this document has actually reached and benefited the renewing Church, I have deliberately chosen to limit my perspective in this paper to what I hear and observe from personal experience in the ministry of adult faith formation.

Primarily, I wish to illustrate that much of what Dei Verbum sought to feed into the consciousness of people has not yet been done. Even without considering its more landmark teachings, at the grassroots there is still major ignorance and misunderstanding about the three key media of Divine Revelation it stressed, namely Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium. Though people’s misunderstandings are various, I believe what underpins many of them is a type of dualistic thinking or quietism. This is particularly apparent in some religious language usage, including ways of talking about faith itself. Implicit in all of this, I sense, is a serious blockage about belief in humanity’s goodness, evidence that past emphases still lives on and have power over our insides. I think it is this incapacity to believe that God’s Spirit works in and through human beings in the Christian community which gives the major signal that Dei Verbum has not yet been transmitted properly. I say this because one of the landmark features of this document is that, below all it says on Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium; it affirms ‘humanbeinghood’.

Expressed through Scripture and Creeds, Dei Verbum grounds all its teachings in the theological conviction that human experience is revelatory of God. It is strong in its insistence that what we call “Divine Revelation” is actually God’s self-revealing in our lives, not just when we are at our best, but also when we are messy, struggling and suffering from all our limitations. It is this theological conviction which I call ‘the ancient genius of Catholicism’. Without this sort of faith consciousness, I believe, we have little chance of real Church renewal today, particularly that of our Sacramental, liturgical life.

Overview of sections of this paper

Dualistic religious language is unfaithful to Scripture, ancient Christian theology and Vatican II.

Landmark features of Dei Verbum’s theology reaffirm that human experience, reflected on by the community in the light of faith, is revelatory of God.

The ecclesial renewal called for by Vatican II’s other documents cannot work without a basis in Dei Verbum’s theological convictions.

1.1: Dissonance between religious language and human self-understandings

In his book, ‘Paths from science towards God: the end of all our exploring’, Arthur Peacocke writes of the crisis he sees in religious language in contemporary Christianity:

“Today, intellectually educated but often theologically uninformed people – if they are still attached to the Christian churches- are hanging on by their fingertips, as they increasingly bracket off large sections of the liturgies in which they participate as either unintelligible or unbelievable in their classical form, or both … There is an increasingly alarming dissonance between the language of devotion, liturgies and doctrines and what people perceive themselves to be, and to becoming, in the world.”

This paper addresses just one small facet of the crisis Peacocke signals, namely the dissonance some people experience between dualistic, quietistic religious language and their own more positive human self-understandings. The following story addresses the same issue, illustrating Peacock’s claim that people simply “bracket off” religious language if it does not speak with intelligibility and credibility into their real human lives. For the faith community of the Church, the danger then is that faith itself can be misconstrued and left aside by many who have been initiated into it.

1.2: Faith language and upholding the “good news” of being human

I have always remembered an incident related by the late Sr. Helen Lombard SGS: As founding President of the Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes in the late 1980s, Helen was invited to address the Members at the opening of Federal Parliament. Experienced communicator that she was, Helen did not waste this opportunity, speaking on one of the contemporary “signs of the times”, the issue of “privatisation”. She challenged her listeners to consider well its implications for ordinary Australians. After her address Helen said she was approached by a still-prominent politician who, intending to compliment her, said something like,

“I was agreeably surprised. I have always rather thought that religious people sound as if they are plugged into the moon, but I must admit I found myself listening to you!”

Whilst it would be possible to question if the stereotype Helen appeared to break was entirely fair, many of us would probably wince at the politician’s remark, because we recognise some truth in it. Helen’s ability to speak with meaning and to hold people’s attention on this occasion indicates that she spoke from a faith conviction far from quietism. What she said and why she said it were consistent with that vision of Vatican II found in Gaudium et Spes #1:

“The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of human beings. United in Christ, they are led by the Spirit in their journey to the kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation that is meant for all humanity. That is why this community realises that it is truly and intimately linked with humankind and its history”.

[Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, #1. adapted with inclusive language]

One of the most quoted ideals of Vatican II, this statement is unequivocal in its declaration that the Church and the “good news” of Christ are grounded in human life and human history. It challenges those of us who talk about God and explore faith with people to sound similarly grounded, lest we compromise some of Christianity’s most ancient self-understandings.

1.3: Language that negates Christian faith

When we sound as if we are “plugged into the moon”,

we raise the spectre of ancient gnosticism and its heretical, dualistic belief that the world of the spirit is good, but the world of creation is bad, so Christ comes to liberate us from it;

we deny the true significance of Jesus’ incarnation among us, ignoring the faith declarations and creeds of the early councils, especially Chalcedon and Ephesus, which insist, amongst other things, that Jesus’ full humanity is inseparable from his full divinity, and therefore, not bad;

we negate the affirmation of our own created humanity which the Nicean-Constantinopolitan creed proclaims;

we undermine two primary convictions of Christian Scripture: Christ’s resurrection and the presence of his Spirit are ongoing realities which we encounter in faith, not in some other world, but in the context of human life in this world;

we fail Vatican II’s opened stance towards the world and its vision of the Church as a vital, credible, welcome contributor within the serious conversations of our times. [cf. Gaudium et Spes, chapter 4].

1.4: Scripture affirms that God is revealed through humanity

What we have inherited in Christian faith from its outset gives us neither cause nor justification for dualistic thinking. The letter to the Hebrews is adamant that Jesus was here amongst us as one who was fully human, able to “sympathise with our weaknesses …….. one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin” [4:15]. Matthew’s gospel is just as adamant that it is the identifiably human one, Jesus, who reveals “God with us” [Mtt. 1:23]. Far from leading us to devalue our humanity or our world, Jesus affirms it and reveals that God affirms it, by announcing that God’s kingdom is to be lived and realised in the here and now. [Mtt. 4:17 ff.].

1.5: The difficulties of “revising people”

Having noted all of the above, it is also fair to concede that it is not surprising to find people today still sometimes sounding as if they are ‘plugged into the moon’. Dualistic thinking, disparaging the here and now, was certainly abroad as people of my age grew up in the decades just before and immediately after the Council. In the classroom, from the Sunday and Mission pulpits and in the confessional we were brought up hearing that Christian life was about ‘saving one’s soul’, ‘getting to heaven’, ‘avoiding sin and the devil’, ‘keeping out of hell’ and ‘gaining indulgences’ to cut back our ‘time’ in purgatory. Though all of this certainly had its effects on how we approached life in the here and now, it was a life geared towards somewhere else and it gave one the sense that this life was indeed a “valley of tears” which had to be endured as we worked through the obstacle course entailed in living it. When we spoke of God’s “grace”, it was as if it were a commodity piped in from elsewhere, and the seven Sacraments were its major outlets. “Here” was a place it were best to be out of, and “elsewhere” was where God could best be found. It is hard to undo some of this inside ourselves, to be converted to anything else. As Tad Guzie once wrote, “[R]evising books is easier than revising people”.

1.6: Pastoral learnings about faith-talk from practical experience

As a lecturer of young people preparing to teach Religious Studies in schools and as an adult educator working in various parish and diocesan faith formation programs, I know and dread the tell-tale signs when people are turning off and tuning out. I have learned that if I want to pass on the truth of the faith of our community’s Tradition I need to keep connected with life as lived, with the “joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties” of human experience of which GS # 1 speaks.

I find I also need to be careful how I talk of faith itself, avoiding over-assumptions or any glibness that might creep in from frequent usage or from the comfortably overt religious culture in which I live. I have learnt the pastoral necessity of respecting the faith journey that parents too are on when they are struggling to know how to prepare their children about faith, for the Sacraments of initiation, when the religious language they learned themselves at school seems to hold no contemporary meaning for them and, often enough, feels distant from the real concerns of their lives. In the religious concepts and language I use I find I need to emphasise that faith is not a static body of truths people have to believe without thinking. It is not incompatible with questioning and doubt, nor is it cancelled out by the sort of leaving aside that people sometimes do before they have appropriated through personal choice the faith out of which others chose their baptism.

1.7: Faith-talk and resistance to certitude

Some of the people I meet in this way find they resonate with the experience named by Richard Holloway when he writes about faith for people of today:

“I am most comfortable today with borderline thinkers – people who easily or uneasily straddle a frontier, such as believers with doubts, or sceptics troubled by insistent whispers of belief. I feel most comfortable with people like this because I myself straddle this mysterious boundary, so that I share both faith and doubt. Indeed, my definition of faith sees it as intrinsically associated with doubt. The opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty. Where we have certainty we need no faith. Faith comes in where we take something largely on trust, whatever the grounds of our trust may be. “

Beneath some people’s religious language there seems to be a view that faith is a gift God gives at baptism which we are expected to keep in its pristine packaging, preserve amidst the dangers of this world and hand back to God unsullied by any of the experiences encountered during life. I find that faith so construed is the faith that many people have given up. There is a dissonance between the certitude of this faith’s answers and the reality of what happens to people and within people across life.

Against all of this, I find it essential to reassure people that faith can be understood with a lot of compassion for the experience of being human, that is, as a lifelong journey which encompasses many phases. When looked at as a partnership between God’s grace and human response, faith becomes a gift that is gradually unpacked and progressively appreciated more, as life is lived with a deepening openness to God. I find it helps to assure people that God can cope with human mess, and that Scripture and Tradition and Christian history, properly understood, bear out that fact persistently. I find these views of faith relieve people, giving some the freedom and confidence to take up the journey again, to trust that life and faith are not so dissonant after all. Only in a climate where human life is respected in this way do people tend to want to entrust the real issues of their lives into faith-talk, I find.

1.8: “The good news is a human being”

Let me conclude this paper’s introductory section by emphasising that we misunderstand the “good news of salvation which is meant for all humanity”, to which Gaudium et Spes # 1 refers, if our ways of speaking about God and faith give any hint of dualism or fail to take seriously what it is like to be human. Bishop John Heaps does not misunderstand it. In the title chosen for chapter 2 of his book, A love that dares to question, his choice of language is arresting in the truth it speaks,

“The Good News is a Human Being”.

2.1: Dei Verbum provides theological support for practical learning:

I will move now to consider the teachings of Dei Verbum. One of the most liberating experiences of my life has been to find support for the generally pastoral learnings from practical experience I have just outlined within the theology undergirding this document. In the late 1970s at the East Asian Pastoral Institute in Manila, I had the singular good fortune to become enamoured of it through the passionate, humanly-attuned catechetical scholarship of Jose [Pepe] M. Calle SJ, exile from the Jesuit Mission in China some years before and confrère of the great Fr. Nebreda SJ. Pepe, helped his students recognise the groundbreaking nature of what Dei Verbum taught, not only in the way it clarified and transformed what Trent and Vatican I had taught earlier about divine revelation, but particularly in what it affirmed about humanity below the surface of its teachings on Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium. The words which Pepe used to sum up Dei Verbum’s import for the renewing Church still ring in my ears, and even though I have read a lot and been involved in a variety of ministries since, I never learned anything more worth sticking to in ministry than what he used to say:

“God teaches humankind about itself [and about Godself], not merely from without, but first of all from within, through the ordinary or extraordinary experiences of human life”.

More recently I discovered a quote of Karl Rahner which supports the catechetical insight Pepe Calle found in Dei Verbum. Inevitably I find teachers nodding when I use this quote, as a prelude to exploring Dei Verbum with them:

“The theological problem today is about finding the art of drawing religion out of people not pumping it into them. The redemption has happened. The Holy Spirit is in people. The art is to help them become what they are’”

2.2: Signs that Dei Verbum still awaits transmission

I believe that the continuance of a tendency to speak as if God needs to be brought into our lives from some other sphere, and as if faith is simply an adherence to a fixed body of truths, can both be attributed, at least in part, to a failure in transmission of all that Dei Verbum originally set out to offer the people of the Church. Despite a widespread spiritual hunger in people to explore God’s presence and action in their lives, there is ignorance and misunderstanding about how God ‘speaks’ via both Scripture and Tradition within the faith community. Then, for a series of additional reasons, one characteristically encounters heated resistance concerning the Magisterium’s role in teaching and interpreting the Word of God, as outlined in Dei Verbum. Clearly there is much unfinished business from Vatican II re the nature and process of Divine Revelation.

Before moving to a fuller consideration of Dei Verbum’s teachings on Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium, I will offer some practical evidence of the mammoth task still to be done at the grassroots of Church membership to transmit its teachings.

2.3: Contemporary difficulties with Scripture, Church Tradition and Magisterial teachings

Scripture:

Right across Hebrew Scripture, there is the image of God in ‘conversation’ with a variety of human beings. We regularly read or hear the words, “And the Lord said”. When questioned about the meaning of such words in excerpts such as Exodus 3: 1 ff., Exodus 33: 1 ff. or any of the interactions between God and the prophets, it is clear that, below the surface of their responses, many people imagine either that God shouts down to earth from some other sphere, or, more frequently, that God appears in personal visions giving specific, private revelations to the writers of Scripture. In this situation many still understand divine inspiration as a type of verbatim dictation by God to the writers, so God is either the only author, or the only author that needs to be considered. Furthermore, the purpose of Scripture, particularly the Gospels, is seen primarily as providing a trustable record of factually based events upon which to base one’s faith. Below such misunderstandings of Scripture lies the type of dualistic thinking of which I have been speaking, I believe: God speaks from elsewhere and human beings are simply the passive recipients of God’s Word.

As Scripture is misunderstood, so also is Tradition and the role of the Magisterium within it. At best, Tradition is composed of beliefs and practices from the past, which we repeat in order to keep in touch with the Christian faith which began with those who had known Jesus. Tradition is not a living present dynamic, and its rituals, the Sacraments and liturgy, really belong to a former era rather than to our contemporary life in any really credible way. At worst, Tradition is simply equated with conservatism and viewed as yet another version of religious irrelevance to be ‘bracketed off’ in the here and now.

The role of the Magisterium:

Some people sustain dualistic thinking into how they view the Magisterium. It is as if they attribute to the Pope, in particular, and also to the bishops, special, almost super-human powers to hear and communicate the Word of the God who speaks from elsewhere. Other people are more chary about assigning other human beings, including leaders, any significant role in interpreting God’s Word. For them, at best, the Magisterial teachings and dogma of Tradition are honoured human wisdom, judged trustable not so much on the basis of the part God plays in them but on the basis of the Christian credibility and human attentiveness of particular Church leadership at any time in question.

At our present time there seems to be a particular difficulty with trusting Church leadership, partly out of a modern, cultural tendency to query any leadership’s basis for authority, but largely as a response to the fallout from sexual abuse and the enduring dismissal of Church leadership’s capacity to guide married people on the issues raised since the 1970s in Humanae Vitae. People perceive many of those in Church leadership as out of touch with their real lives, unwilling to consult in order to become informed, and non-collaborative in searching beyond themselves for the truth by which the community of faith might be guided. It is as if Church leadership is too human to be trusted as the voice of God but not humanly grounded enough to speak on matters of importance to people of ‘the world’.

2.4: Scripture and Tradition record a community’s ongoing faith journey in partnership with God

It is probably true to say that neither Dei Verbum nor any other of Vatican II’s documents seems to have been able to provide for the people of the Church as convincing an appreciation of the role of the Magisterium as has been needed in practice over the last four decades. However Dei Verbum did provide understandings on Scripture, Tradition and even the Magisterium which, if transmitted more thoroughly, could have helped correct many of the impoverished understandings just outlined.

One of the particular strengths of Dei Verbum was its articulation of Christian faith as a dynamic, living, ongoing, co-operative relationship between God and the human people of the Church. From this faith-view flowed the following understandings of Scripture, Tradition and the role of the Magisterium.

Key understandings on Scripture

Scriptural writings emerged from an ongoing partnership between God’s gift of self-revelation and the faith community’s reflective, well-chewed over response across their history [cf. DV # 3];

Scripture therefore records a people’s faith journey, so the bible is not simply the compilation of a series of special individual revelations.

Scripture is authored ‘truly’ by both God and human beings working in the co-operative dynamic of faith within human life situations at the time of writing, cf. DV # 12:

” [The Scriptures] have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men [sic.] who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their powers and faculties so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.”

God’s word in Scripture is expressed in human words, concepts and understandings:

“God speaks through men [sic.] in human fashion” [DV # 12];:

” Indeed the words of God, expressed in the words of men [sic.] are in every way like human language …… ” [DV # 13];

Scripture not only reveals something of the Mystery of God but also of the mystery of being human:

“[I]t gave expression to a lively sense of God, [and is] a storehouse of sublime teachings on God and sound wisdom on human life”,[DV # 15],

Scripture cannot simply be read off the page literalistically because the truth it reveals needs to be explored critically, there being different types of truth lying below the variety of genres within the writings, these reflecting the cultures, needs and limitations of the human authors, as in DV # 12:

“[T]ruth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetic and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression. Hence the exegete must look for the meaning which the sacred writer, in a determined fashion and given the circumstances of his time and culture, intended to express and did in fact express, through the medium of a contemporary literary form”.

Scripture is concerned with recording the truth of God’s Mystery at work in the lives of Israel and the Christian community. It would never have seen its concern as that of recording the type of history or science 21^st Century people have come to prize [cf. DV # 11].

Key understandings on Tradition

Tradition is a continuation of God’s Word in Scripture through the whole life of the Church:

” What was handed on by the apostles comprises everything that serves to make the People of God live their lives in holiness and increase their faith. In this way the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes.” [DV # 8]

“Thus God, who spoke in the past, continues to converse with the spouse of his beloved Son.” [ibid.]

Key understandings on the relationship of Scripture and Tradition

As Trent had taught four centuries before, so did Dei Verbum:

“Thus…. the Church does not draw her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone. Hence, both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal feelings of devotion and reverence.” [DV # 9]

God’s Word is ongoing through Tradition as well as Scripture, and the two are interdependent:

” This economy of Revelation is realised by deeds and words, which are intrinsically bound up with each other. As a result, the works performed by God in the history of salvation show forth and bear out the doctrine and realities signified by the words; the words, for their part, proclaim the works, and bring to light the mystery they contain.” [DV # 2]

“This sacred Tradition, then, and the sacred Scripture of both Testaments, are like a mirror, in which the Church, during its pilgrim journey here on earth, contemplates God, from whom she receives everything, until such time as she is brought to see him face to face as he really is [cf. Jn 3:2].” [DV # 7]

Key understandings on the Magisterium:

The Magisterium continues the role of the apostles in transmitting the faith and is the office through which authenticity is assured in what is taught and passed on about Christian faith across the generations.

“In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the apostles left bishops as their successors. This gave them ‘ their own position of teaching authority.” [DV # 7]

” [T]he task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone.” [DV # 10]

2.5 Dei Verbum deepens the teachings of Trent and Vatican I

It is worth pointing out how Dei Verbum did not simply restate the earlier teachings of Trent and Vatican I. Significantly, in terms of our appreciation of a community’s developing faith journey, it went further, opening a fresh spectrum in which to clarify Catholic teaching in the light of the Church’s learning since Trent. It deliberately stretched beneath the divisions of Protestant and Catholic teachings which had viewed Sacred Scripture and Tradition as separate, often competing media of revelation, finding beneath the differences a deeper place of belief. Dei Verbum opened up a broad basis for unity on this issue, as it proclaimed:

“Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine wellspring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal… Hence both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal feelings of devotion and reverence.” [DV # 9]

Likewise, Dei Verbum # 5 and # 6 re-emphasised and strengthened Vatican II’s careful stance on the debate between supernatural and natural bases for faith, over which the fideists and rationalists had struggled before that Council. It saw grace as gratuitous, a gift of God to which one responds willingly in co-operation with the Spirit within, using all of one’s human faculties:

“By faith man [sic.] freely commits his [sic.] entire self to God.” [DV # 5]

In this ‘catholicity’ of approach Dei Verbum gathered all those absolutist positions that had divided Christians on the issue of divine revelation since the Reformation and signaled as its vision the possibility of a more compassionate and dialogical truth exploration rather than polemical stand-offs with their implicit ‘anathemas’ for all those who saw truth differently.

2.6: The truth about Divine Revelation is progressively understood and deepened:

In both its fidelity to the wisdom of Trent and Vatican I and in its deepening of their teachings, as just outlined, Dei Verbum was groundbreaking in the synthesis it was able to enunciate. However, in its recognition of the growth that occurs over time in human understanding of what God reveals, it was revolutionary. Against the backdrop of the entrenched, often emphasised pre-Vatican ideal of a Church that was semper idem [“always the same”], in the same spirit as other Vatican II documents, it taught of a Church that, like each of its members, is on a life journey in faith, as a “pilgrim” [DV # 7]:

” The…. Holy Spirit perfects faith by his gifts, so that Revelation may be more and more profoundly understood.” [DV # 5]

“The Tradition that comes from the apostles makes progress in the Church, with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on.” [DV # 8]

“[A]s the centuries go by, the Church is always advancing towards the plenitude of divine truth, until eventually the words of God are fulfilled in her.” [ibid]

Perhaps more than anything else which Dei Verbum says, this recognition of a ‘pilgrim’ journey of growth has the power to encourage both the community of the Church and us its members, by offering us the chance to be compassionate to our own limitations as we personally and communally participate in that same faith journey.

2.7: Pope John’s intervention opens the possibility for a relational rather than content-focused view of Divine Revelation

Leaving aside for a moment the actual teachings of Dei Verbum’s incarnational theology, it is also worth recalling that the very process by which Dei Verbum came into being at the Council reflected in practice the sort of searching, growing theology about which it eventually taught.

Though Divine Revelation was the second major issue after Sacred Liturgy addressed by Vatican II, the final text of Dei Verbum emerged only towards the close of the Council, after three years of conciliar experience and four painstaking redraftings. In the optimism of his dual call for “Traditione” as well as “Transitione”, and in the trust he wished to place in the Council’s further deliberations of the original curial schema on Divine Revelation, Pope John XXIII personally intervened in the process, insisting that the present and future Church needed more than simply a reiteration of past defensive teachings.

The initial curial schema had re-presented Trent’s and Vatican I’s clarifications which focused solely on the media of the content of divine revelation: Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium. Though Dei Verbum went on to make its own landmark clarifications re these same media, as we have seen, it did not do so before offering a whole fresh context in which to view those media through its attention to the actual nature of divine revelation itself.

2.8: Divine Revelation is first and foremost God’s self-revelation

The very first Chapter of Dei Verbum taught that divine revelation was God’s deliberate self-revelation. It did not simply outline the Church’s role in defending, protecting and transmitting the truths of the deposit of faith as Trent and Vatican I had done in their emphasis on the content of Christian faith. Instead, Dei Verbum focused on naming the pivotal truth of God’s role in revealing Godself as the One in the personal relationship of friendship with humanity. In terms often more like poetry than dogmatic theology, it emphasised the graciousness of God’s self-revelation, particularly through the human life of Jesus, and also through the lives and history of human beings in the community of the Church from the outset of Christianity and across the centuries.

“It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will [cf. Eph. 1:9]. His will was that men [sic.] should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature [cf. Eph. 2:18; 2 Pet. 1:4]. By this revelation, then, the invisible God [cf. Col. 1:15; Tim. 1:17], from the fulness of his love, addresses men [sic.] as his friends [cf. Ex. 33:11; Jn. 15:14-15], and moves among them [cf. Bar. 3:38], in order to invite and receive them into his own company.” [DV # 2]

2.9: Through Jesus, humanity is invited to share divinity:

As LG # 2 also does, DV # 2 takes this affirmation of humanity one surprising step further. Both remind us that the true calling of Christians is, as 2 Peter 1:4 expressed it, to become “participants in the divine nature”. That we human beings could have the temerity to view our calling in Christ in this way shocked me when I first became aware of it, until I learned that the Greek Church had always named Christian life in terms of ‘divinisation’ [theosis].

This leads me to recall my surprise when I actually ‘heard’ for the first time the astounding prayer, reminiscent of DV # 2, which accompanies the pouring of water into the chalice of wine each Eucharist:

” By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

When I checked to see if this was a ‘new’ prayer arising out of Vatican II. I found instead that the pre-Vatican Mass had the same prayer in words perhaps even more emphatically affirmative of humanity. The Marian Missal’s translation of the Latin reads:

“O God, who in creating human nature, didst wonderfully dignify it, and still more wonderfully restore it, grant that by the Mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of His divine nature, who vouchsafed to be made partaker of our human nature…”

Hence Dei Verbum is no less strong than Scripture or the ancient creeds in doing away with any basis for dualistic thinking. It emphasises that it is Jesus’ very humanity which reveals God, for he is the quintessential “Word of God”, who speaks “the sum total of Revelation” [DV # 2]. Here “to dwell among men [sic.] and to tell them about the inner life of God” [DV # 4], he also “revealed man to man himself [sic.]” [GS # 22]. Being “’a man among men [sic.]’ speaking ‘the words of God’” [DV # 4], it was “with his own lips” and “from his way of life and his works” that he revealed God [DV # 7].

3.1: The unified relationship between Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium provides a basis for ecclesial renewal

Moving now to the concluding section of this paper, I want to illustrate that the incarnational theology underpinning Dei Verbum is an essential ingredient in supporting ecclesial renewal.

I will begin this reflection by drawing out some of the implications of that teaching in DV #10 which emphasises that Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium are inseparable expressions of the single dynamic of the Spirit’s presence and action in the faith community:

“It is clear … that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.” [DV # 10]

3.2: The Holy Spirit is the life of the living Church

For me this extract provides the hermeneutical key for unlocking the full significance of all Dei Verbum’s other expressions of incarnational theology discussed across this paper. Above all, it signals that Dei Verbum’s theological stance is the very antithesis of dualism. It is not as if the Holy Spirit is called in from somewhere else to do three specialised, separate jobs for the Church and then move away again to an existence outside the world of humanity. For the picture DV #10 paints is of the whole way of life of the faith community, in collaboration with the Spirit of God across the generations. It is a holistic picture of a living, growing process, the very heart of which is the Spirit who, as Paul reminded the Romans, prays within the ‘groaning’ of us and of all God’s creation, as we await the completion of God’s design in us [cf. Rom. 8:22-27].

DV #10 marks an important climax in what Dei Verbum says re the life of the Church from its inception. It explains the process whereby the sacred writings of Scripture emerge from the Christian community’s reflection on what Jesus means to its members in the light of their faith in his resurrection and gift of the Spirit. It goes on to explain that the dogma this community teaches, through its leaders, grows out of a living, worshipping, praying community which struggles to preserve and pass on its ‘beloved believing’.

To many ears this could sound like more religious language “plugged into the moon”. So it is important to recall that it arises from a faith conviction earthed in the expectation that this will make a difference to how we live and treat each other in the practicalities of here and now. Our ancient faith is that Jesus’ resurrection and his gift of the Spirit are ongoing and that we are part of a people who belong to the Body of Christ, as Paul preached to the Corinthians [1 Cor. 12]. This is not a dead body, but one alive with the Spirit’s life [1 Cor. 12:13]. We are charged by initiation “into Christ” to be the arms and legs, face and voice of Christ in the world of our human lives. What we do and how we do it matters in the coming of God’s ‘kingdom’. Thus the creed places our belief in ourselves as Church within what it says of our belief in the very Spirit of God.

3.3: The Church as the “Body of Christ”, the Sacrament of Christ in the world

In Paul’s teaching about the “Body of Christ” it is expected that gifts will be shared by each member of the community with the community, for the good of the community, for the gifts truthfully belong to the Spirit who is the life of the community [1 Cor. 12:12-30]. The faithful community then is the primordial Sacrament of Christ through its continual life of transformation “into Christ” through Eucharist. This is the faith where the ‘holy communion’ of equally baptised persons must discern whether they are treating each other as the Body in everyday life, before they worthily eat the Body together in Eucharistic ‘holy communion’. [1 Cor. 11:29].

3.4: Who is Christ among us?

Across the centuries the Church effectively lost this sense of being the Body of equally initiated people “in Christ”. The one who led, taught and presided at liturgy gradually became the only alter Christus. He exercised responsibility for what had originally been a whole community’s call to holiness, a whole community’s call to be the Sacrament of Christ in the world, a whole community’s call to be the “we” who celebrate liturgy and the Sacraments. Then as the early Church gradually needed it, the Spirit’s gift of leading and presiding became an essential component in the life of the community. Yet, it was never envisaged as the only gift, and it was not meant to draw around itself any meaning beyond that arising from the life of the whole Body.

3.5: Restoring leadership within the vision of “hierarchical communio”

” Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church. By adhering to it the entire holy people, united to its pastors, remains always faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood [sic.], to the breaking of the bread [cf. Acts 2:42 Greek]. So, in maintaining, practicing and professing the faith that has been handed on there should be a remarkable harmony between the bishops and the faithful” [my underlining]. LG # 12 adds more emphasis to this recovery of the whole Body’s responsibility for the faith when it points to the inerrancy of the whole community through its leadership:

“The body of the faithful as a whole, anointed as they are by the Holy One [cf. Jn 2:20, 27] cannot err in matters of faith”. [my underlining]

The responsibility for the faith is given to the entire community, not just to leadership, but leadership rightly exercises that responsibility, nonetheless. Hence whatever right and responsibility is assigned to the leader is, first of all, an affirmation of what belongs to the whole people.

3.6: The genius of Catholicism: a belief that God is revealed through humanity despite the mess

But leaders are human beings too, and we readily observe their inadequacies against our rightfully high expectations of them. Whereas we cope with the fact that Scripture is limited in its capacity to put human words around divine self-revelation, and most of us learn not to give up on the Church because is has been messy in its transmitting the gospel across history, the reality is that we find it extremely difficult to extend mercy when we feel Church leadership has let us down. If the ancient genius of our faith teaches us to trust that Scripture and Tradition are human instruments through whom the Spirit of God acts in the community, it also challenges us to some compassion re how we view the Magisterium. Church leaders are not separated from the rest of the community’s continual efforts to be converted “into Christ”. Ordination dispenses them neither from having limitations, nor from the responsibility they have to minimise these limitations. They need to be authentic in their calling, so they can speak with the community’s voice and have credibility with us in their leading, teaching and unifying of the Body. In my present work, I find the best way I can help people appreciate the nature of Church leadership and its huge demands on those individuals called to it is by discussing with them the film “Romero” on the life and martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. I think it gives some glimpse into the reality that what we ask of bishops individually and corporately is indeed a ‘big ask’. Vatican II asked no less than we do. DV #10 insists

“… this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant.”

3.7: Church renewal: from inert “it” to fully participating “we”

Looked at in this perspective DV #10 offers a way of recovering a more ancient sense of the Church:

“[as a] dynamic and communal reality [rather than] as a static institution ministering to the needs of individuals who present themselves on occasion [for whom] the church is not a ‘we’ but a ‘they’ or an ‘it’”.

The importance of this need to recover the Church as a “we” rather than as an “it” came into my awareness forcefully after reading a quite brilliant article written a long time ago by a well respected Sacramental scholar and liturgist, Ralph Kiefer. Speaking of the then newly restored RCIA as a mutual ministry of witnessing to conversion into Christ for the sake of the whole Christian community, Kiefer comments,

“[The new RCIA] signals the end of the divorce between liturgy and life, between private devotion and public function, between active ministers and inert laity. For it assumes that the liturgy will be a manifestation of the real life lived by the Church – a life marked by sufficient conversion to be worth celebrating and by sufficient catechesis to enable us to perceive that the proclamation of the wonderful works of God, mirabilia Dei, is possible because they occur among us; a renewed life, moreover, in which the laity are not the passive recipients of hierarchical grace but in which the ministry made sacramental in orders is a mirror of the priestly service of the entire people of God. The real nature of Christian ministry as collegial, shared and mutual is revealed in the preparation of catechumens. The candidates for baptism are not only the recipients of the church’s ministry. They are ministers to the church as well, for it is their experience of transformation which witnesses to the presence and power of the risen Lord before the church.”

If Church renewal since the Council has been about recovering the ancient sense of the Christian community as the place where the real presence of Christ will be identifiable within the world, then the “making of Christians” through initiation and the ‘re-making of Christians’ through a whole liturgical, Sacramental life of transformation into Christ are our raison d’ être. How people respond to the call for Christian life in everyday life does matter, because that is where conversion of life rings true. Otherwise it is just unearthly religious language used in Church. Hence the recovery of the ‘primordial’ sacramentality of the whole participating community with consequences for how members live their humanity is an inspiring challenge:

“The revelation of Christ’s saving, healing and redeeming power in our midst is the making of Christians. That the people, the lay people at that, should now become primordial sacramental signs is a breathtaking departure from the recent past.”

Conclusion

Dualistic thinking cannot support that belief in ourselves as the Body of Christ, which Paul encouraged the Church to have. Neither can it support that sense of Church as the Sacrament of Christ which LG # 1 explores and DV # 10 implies. Neither can it support that belief in conversion of life “into Christ” which the recovered RCIA and all our renewed Sacramental rites celebrate. If we are to believe that when we celebrate liturgy and the Sacraments Christ is really present among us who gather in the here and now, we are going to have to regain the temerity to believe, as did ancient Catholicism, that human life is not only good, but meant to “share in the divinity of Christ”. We are also going to have to address more of the unfinished business of Dei Verbum and find ways of transmitting what it teaches: God deliberately reveals Godself within the real experiences of our human living, as we reflect on them in the light of that dynamic partnership in faith which God graciously offers us – here, now, on this earth, and with eternal consequences!

(Virginia Bourke RSJ is a Josephite Sister who has been a teacher, administrator and Congregational leader. She studied theology at Catholic Theological Union and the Catholic Institute of Sydney. Currently she lectures in theology for the Religious Education Department of the Maitland-Newcastle Schools Office, and at Aquinas Academy.)

The challenge of harnessing Vatican II: Moving with the signs of the times

Introduction

Young people exert a very important influence in modern society. Their living conditions, their mental attitudes, their relations with their families, have been completely transformed. Often, they enter too rapidly a new and social environment. While their social and even political influence is on the increase daily, they seem unequal to the weight of these new responsibilities.

The growth of their social importance demands from them a corresponding apostolic activity; and indeed their natural character inclines them in this direction. Buoyed up by their natural ardour and exuberant energy, when awareness of their own personality ripens in them they shoulder responsibilities and are eager to take their place in social and cultural life. If this enthusiasm is penetrated with the spirit of Christ, animated by a sense of obedience and love of the pastors of the church, a very rich harvest can be expected from it. The young should become the first apostles to the young, in direct contact with them, exercising the apostolate by themselves among themselves, taking account of their social environment.

Adults should be anxious to enter into friendly dialogue with the young. Through this, despite the difference in age, adults and young people could get to know each other and share with each other their own personal riches. It is by example first of all, and on occasion by sound advice and practical help that adults should persuade the young to undertake the apostolate. The young, on their side, will treat their elders with respect and confidence; and though by nature inclined to favour what is new, they will give due esteem for praiseworthy traditions.

Children too have an apostolate of their own. In their own measure they are true living witnesses of Christ among their companions.” (Decree on the Apostolate of the Lay People, Chapter III, Article 12)

When I think of the second Vatican Council, a broad spectrum of images comes to mind.

Scenes from the Australian ABC mini series Brides of Christ flash before me.

‘Johnny XXIII’

The dramatic changes the central character faced in her life and the life of the order

I also think of older people recalling ‘how much change Vatican II brought in’, ‘that things seemed different’, ‘that the church is no longer what it used to be.’

The strongest image I have of the impact of Vatican II had on the people of God, was when a religious sister explained how she felt when her order no longer had to wear their long gowns and habit. As she walked outside on a summer’s day, she distinctly remembered experiencing a soft gentle breeze touch the back of her knee and calf. She said she remembered how gentle, warm and soft that breeze was, and she felt the presence of God within and around her. She experienced a sense of freedom, insight and God’s presence all in one experience. She was open to that particular touch and interpretation.

There are moments in my work where I feel this breeze of God especially when I see and feel ‘a spirit of openness to the Spirit of God’. I see this spirit of openness when I am in the presence of young people. You know where you stand when you are with young people. They either say to you how it is, or, depending on how they feel for that particular day, their body language will surely tell you how they feel.

In recent months we have heard how some clergy, religious and lay people have abused young people. As a result strict guidelines and protocols have been implemented by church and state so that young people are protected. Young people are conscious that there are still many good people in the church and some are aware that it was the individual actions of some people who chose to abuse. Yet young people are still committed to enliven the church with their presence and to be involved. I asked some of the members of the Parramatta Diocesan Leadership Team, what they thought of the issue and one mentioned that it has made her stronger in her faith. Another felt that it helped him get a stronger determination to promote the other good things that Catholics do and say.

Young people have so much to offer. Their enthusiasm, skills and presence are needed in our church. Our parishes are adult driven and focused,but young people must be active participants in the structures of pastoral leadership in the parish, if the church is to be relevant and alive in the 21^st century.

Recalling some specific aspects of the Second Vatican Council

The documents of Vatican II highlight the influential role young people play in church and civic society. In my work I have noticed young people expressing a real willingness to engage in ‘apostolic activity’- to engage in innovative ways to make the church accessible to all people of all ages. They yearn to build a sense of community, hospitality and belonging in their parish where all people feel at home.

The Vatican II Liturgy documents stressed that the Liturgy is the source and summit of the life of the Church. Also as the liturgy is the gathering point of the parish, I often encourage adults and pastors to seek ways of inviting young people to become involved and active participants in the Eucharist. There are some parishes in the diocese which ensure that young people are involved by sponsoring them to become Ministers of the Word and the Eucharist and other ministries such as hospitality, altar servers and money collectors. Now this is not the reality that some young people would have experienced pre Vatican II. From what I have heard and read I realise that the parish world was very different. I spoke with lay and religious people, asking their experiences of church from 1962 to 1965. Here is what Stephen who was 18 years old in 1965 said:

“The CYO had a strong presence, which was great, lots of fun. Mass was said in Latin and the priest had his back to you, formal, only one mass. Vatican II happened. Priests turned around and now mass was said in English.” He didn’t know if the change was a good thing. But the good thing was that “there was more than one mass, one in the evening, which meant that he could go out on Saturday night and then go to mass on Sunday night. Although I missed the Latin, I felt that the mass wasn’t universal as it used to be.” However he realised that the church needed to relate more to young people and felt that Vatican II tried to do that.

From my conversation with Stephen I learnt that if you were young and male you could be an ‘altar boy’, but it appears that there was little participation of the laity in the liturgy. Stephen commented that there was more choice of masses after Vatican II. He felt that even though it suited the young person’s lifestyle, he noticed that that he didn’t attend mass with his family as often as he used to. He also pointed out that the Catholic Youth Organisation was huge, especially in Sydney. Initiated by Monsignor Leonard at Summer Hill, the CYO was by far the largest parish based youth activity. The CYO provided social opportunities to get to know other young Catholics on a regular basis. Many couples dated and married through the organisation. It appears that the CYO was successful because it met a need for many young people and families at the time.

So what was the time? In her book Australia in 1960’s Bereson notes that in the 60’s: –

Weekly wages were:

Fitter and turner-$56.40

Male nurse-$60 female $52.10

Teacher-$93.17-$115.70

Bank manager-$97.59

Also that:

Steak $2.30 a kilo

Car $2368.00

Rent-$16-$20

Bereson also identifies the 1960s as a decade of social revolution.

Between 1960 and 1970 Australia’s population soared from 10.3 million to 12.6 million, including1.3 million migrants.

The White Australia policy changed in 1966 to allow Asian migration.

In 1967 (there was a referendum and white Australians voted to have Aboriginal people counted as Australian citizens and included in the national census. 5 million Australians voted for change and ½ a million were against.

Karen Marder an employee of the Supreme Court of Victoria was told to lower her hemline or get a new job.

In 1964 Australia introduced compulsory registration of all 20 year-old men for National Service in the Vietnam War. The participants were chosen by ballot.

Reflections on developments over the years

It was against these social changes that Vatican II was taking place. It is not surprising that Vatican II happened in the 1960s. The main aim of the Council was to respond to the signs of the times and encourage Catholics’ understanding of their faith. The Council urged Catholics to live out their faith in homes, workplaces and places of study. During the decade of the 60s, three social teachings (Peace on Earth 1963, Church in the Modern World 1965, Development of Peoples 1967) were written encouraging people to stand for what they believed in. The social teachings of the church convey such an important message of justice, peace and solidarity – messages that young people back then and today, struggle for.

Prior to 1960s the Young Christian Workers were also very popular. Members were involved in everything from YCW football teams, marriage preparation courses to credit cooperatives, which were started up for the young people who came back after the Vietnam War. The Australian Church actively supported YCW, especially during the 1950s-60s. The YCW in Australia took part in the anti-Vietnam war protests, which the official church did not approve of since it actively supported the government’s position of the war in Vietnam. As a result of YCW’s involvement many groups were closed, some against the wishes of young people. Clearly in this situation, young people at the time felt so strongly about what they stood for, that they were prepared to make their voices known and heard.

Even today young people find expression of their spirituality through works of social justice. Why? Because of Jesus’ clear and radical stance for peace, justice and for people who are poor, oppressed and marginalised. Social justice initiatives in schools work, because students work together with other students, responding to an unjust social issue and striving to make a difference in the lives of others.

I spoke with a young man who was in his early teens during the 1970s. He remembers the changes in his Religious Education classes. There was a shift from listening to a catechetically based lesson to a more experiential ‘bean bag’ lesson. Meaning there was a high level of sharing of personal stories of spirituality in an informal fashion. He commented that it appeared to him that the church was going through a period of spiritual adolescence. The Church was trying to awkwardly embrace the new challenges that Vatican II had brought in, whilst still trying to hold on to the past traditions and practices. He became heavily involved in Young Christian Students as it was on opportunity for him to meet other young people (especially girls as he was at a boys high school) and a chance to nurture, deepen and strengthen his faith.

Spiritually and communally, young people need to affirm and support each other in living out what they believe. In the late 70s and early 80s, groups such as Antioch began to develop and work, because together the community members aim to live out their faith through talks, fellowship, music and social outings. Parent couples gave guidance and affirmation when needed.

Young people need adults to walk the walk and talk-especially in the church context. Young people often comment how appreciative they are of parents or adults who help in youth ministry, especially when adults walk with, as opposed to directing and telling them what to do. Even the council fathers knew this! They said:

“The young should become the first apostles to the young, in direct contact with them, exercising the apostolate by themselves among themselves, taking account of their social environment. Adults should be anxious to enter into friendly dialogue with the young. Through this, despite the difference in age, adults and young people could get to know each other and share with each other their own personal riches. It is by example first of all and on, occasion by sound advice and practical help that adult should persuade the young to undertake the apostolate.”

Although the CYO is no longer with us, other youth movements, programs, communities and groups (which the Council encouraged the laity to develop) such as YCS, YCW, Antioch, Josephite Community Aid, Youth, Singles and Couples for Christ, Disciples and Servants of Jesus, Encounter, Branches, Youth United for Community, Action and Networking, Edmund Rice Camps and Justice Activities, Young Vinnies, Veritas, Youth 2000 and many others are currently available across the country. There is a rich diversity amongst these movements and this parallels the diverse ways in which young people express their faith and the backgrounds they come from. These organisations do what they do extraordinarily well. They have located the pulse of ministry with youth and young adults.

So what about the parishes?

Those pastors who are prepared to place young people as their priority in their parish are doing really well. It gets around the diocese when a couple of parishes are young people friendly and have something alive, relevant and needs based. St Bernadette’s at Castle Hill is a parish where there are many options for youth and young adults. The parish is very alive especially at their Sunday evening mass which is called a Life Teen mass. Taken from their website, Life Teen is a total youth ministry program, with its basis being the 6pm youth mass. The goal of Life Teen is to create an environment for teens to have their hearts transformed through encountering Jesus Christ. Then there are some parishes, which are doing what they can for young people depending on the available resources and are trying their best to meet the needs of young people. Then there are others that are really struggling to even connect with young people. When I meet with them I can see they are genuinely trying to locate that pulse – but just can’t find it. Often when they do meet with us, they are nearly at their wits end. I can totally understand why Robert J McCarty, executive director of the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry in America, recently wrote an article ‘Ministering to the Millenials’ (2002). McCarty identified some global events and technological developments that dramatically altered the thinking and beliefs of children and young people of the 21^st century.

1981 Discovery of AIDS

1993 Free Elections in South Africa

1986 Challenger Disaster

1995 Okalahoma Bombing

1989 Fall of the Berlin wall

1991 Soviet Union Dissolution

1991 Persian Gulf War

1999 Columbine High School Massacre

Day of Terrorism in USA

Major inventions during their brief lifetimes heralds the age of technology

Video games, Nintendo

Microsoft windows

VCR

Camcorder

CDs

Explosion of Cable TV

Mobile Phones

Fax machines

Internet

Email

Satellite dishes

2001 Worldwide Satellite network

Young people in the 21^st century have experienced more global, technological and social change in their childhood than any of the Baby Boomers experienced in their lifetime, especially in the affluent western world. McCarty terms the young people of today as ‘Millenials’ saying;

“Millenials live in a world of instant communication and immediate access to information. They are technologically and media savvy, with an emphasis on visual images versus verbal and written”.

 Furthermore, McCarty describes the spirituality of young people. He says young people are believers but do not belong to a particular church.

Spirituality is important and the focus is on the journey.

Journey filled with questions, doubts, and a need to grapple questions of faith with peers and with believing adults.

They want to share their journey with others who are experienced as supportive, welcoming, authentic and caring.

Discipleship is important, not membership.

Young people are open to transcendence, mystery, beauty compassion, inclusivity, and justice.

They see religion as judgemental, elite, abstract doctrine, boring rituals and strict boundaries and rules.

Spirituality as withdrawing from the rat race, competition, hatred and the violence they see in society.”

McCarty argues that the ministry challenge is to reconstruct Catholicism for a new generation by;

Providing prayer experiences that help them heal the sacred/secular split

Nature and the arts are excellent mediums to discover God

The use of symbols and sensual experiences

Possibilities and suggestions

Vatican II affirmed ‘collaboration’, ‘sharing of gifts’, ‘dialogue’ and ‘building community’ with the pastor, adults and young people. These words will remain only words, unless we are prepared to make them a living reality-for all people. Working in this apostolate with young people I experience many joys. I feel privileged to be a part of their world and blessed to be engaged in living out the mission of the church with parishes, movements and groups. However these realities only exist because there is a willingness to be open to the Spirit of God to move with and also challenge the ‘signs of the times’.

At times I do find it challenging to sew the seeds of Vatican II particularly in today’s society and church. In order to seriously engage in making the teachings of Vatican II a reality for young people, we need to look at what is preventing young people from being involved in the Eucharist and address those obstacles with a gospel-based attitude and openness of heart. This takes honesty, time, careful planning and at times, money. If you value something, you make a space for it. Financial investment in providing resources for young people, convey a powerful message to the entire Catholic community. It says that “young people are not only the church of today and the church of tomorrow and we are prepared to create total opportunities for young people to become the best young Catholics they can be.”

I asked a pastor his thoughts on the joys and challenges of sewing the seeds of Vatican II. Fr Mark said:

“Our young grow up in an education system that equips them to be skilled at group processes requiring dialogue, collegiality and the use of subsidiarity. They live in a world that take religious liberty for granted and where ecumenism is not considered a rarity. That is a source of joy for me as a pastor. On the other hand, many youth of faith, like the adults in their lives, do not identify themselves as the People of God. Nor it is obvious to them that the Church is sacrament. The cure for the latter sadness probably lies with us adult believers.”

A young man suggested some possibilities for the future:

“For today and the future, Vatican II is still an important challenge for the church and society. Indeed there is a lot of unfinished business. I once read an article that spoke about this. That because so much effort and resources were put into reorganising the mass, catholic education, etc. after Vatican II (obviously the priority) that the church has yet to fully get behind the development and full participation of the laity. And, this is where we find ourselves today, amid complex and radical changes in societ)”.

I believe this is the challenge of the modern church. Formation and participation of the laity is not simply participation as ministers in the mass and parish life. This is important but the vocation of the laity comes from our baptism as Catholics and is practiced in the world where we live, work, play, etc. (family life, at school, at work, in the neighbourhood, etc.). According to church teaching on the laity, this is where we are called to live out our Christian vocation. However the church is yet to actively support this approach. We are so concerned about maintaining what we have, perhaps caught up in the numbers game, that the focus of most parishes is kept within the parish walls.

To take up the question of the laity, means being actively concerned about the world. It is not enough to have a formation of the laity while ignoring what is happening in their lives, our lives. Opening our eyes to this would lead to other challenges for the church.

The biggest challenge, in respect to young people is the relevancy of the church. Why is it that only a very small fraction of catholic students let alone young people in general, participates in Mass? New education and evangelisation programs, while essential, are unfortunately not enough. It is time to look at how the church can become an integrated and relevant part of young people’s lives – lets read again the documents of Vatican II, understand with open minds and hearts the signs of the times and act courageously as Jesus Christ himself taught us so well to do.”

References:

Bereson I., (2000) Australia in 1960s. Port Melbourne Victoria, Echidna Books

McCarty R., (2002) Horizon Journal. (Photostat copy)

Flannery A., (1996) The Basic Sixteen Documents: Vatican Council II Constitutions, Decrees and Declarations. Costello Publishing New York.

NOTES FROM THE WORKSHOP

Sowing the seeds of Vatican II: Joys and challenges

Questions

How do we invite young people to Church?

How to question the Church legitimately?

Year 12 retreat experiences are fantastic sources of growth and development that are not reproduced in the parish setting. How can we change this mind set?

What keeps young people away?

How relevant is the Church to young people?

What prevents parents from attending Church?

Dialogue is easy when there is something in common. How can we bridge the gap?

Insights

We need to stop worrying about ‘bums on seats’ approach

Special programs need to be developed to encourage young people to attend with friends who perhaps are not Catholic

There are a variety of causes for the lack of young people in the Church.

Need to meet young people where they are

Families of different stages of development, not all the same ‘place’ at the same time

Need to allow freedom of expression and risk failure. Don’t always know the outcome, but can develop from the shared experience

Issues

Children have different needs to adolescents and can’t be in the same group with same set of needs

Need to see Jesus reflected in the Church practices especially regarding authority, especially as a consequence of loss of integrity by some clergy

Laity and young people fail to understand Church rules, which often lead to misunderstandings

High standard of faith/life education in schools. Teachers are becoming more professional in their approach to religious education

Challenges

Need to ask young people what they think, give them room

We need to encourage, be warm and friendly, need to welcome

We can’t impose on young people; need to be aware of sensitivities

‘Models’ are not relevant. Need for young people to experience differences

The hierarchy needs to let go of their authority and share meaningfully with young people and the laity. Don’t be afraid of failing

Possibilities

Before we do anything we need to acknowledge that there is a rich diversity amongst young people, can’t put all in the same basket

Need to develop opportunities to develop them as leaders of the Church (especially in the area of TAFE and University chaplaincy.)

Need to recognise the tensions

Way forward – nurture faith developing opportunities

Need to welcome young people at all times

Need to participate meaningfully

Need to invest in resources for ‘picking up young people moving through later stages of youth journey’ (tertiary years)

Establish a National Youth Commission to develop and fund initiatives for, by and with young people

(Claire Barbeau is the Coordinator of the Youth and Young Adult Apostolate in the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta.)