Author: Audrey Rogers
These are difficult times. History offers sound lessons if one has eyes to see. Looking back, the year 1500 was a watershed year, marking the transition point from the medieval to the modern mindset because of the confluence of world-changing events. The scientific worldview radically changed, as did economic systems, communication, and military technologies, all occurring amid the erosion of the dominant religious and secular authorities. The year 2000 saw the world again in such a watershed time as humanity is moving on from the postmodern period.[1] Humanity is facing situations fraught with risk and dislocation when people desperately crave meaning and order. But our anchoring institutions are providing neither, caught as they are between the crossfire of unloving critics and uncritical lovers.
The Synod as a Response to the Unfilled Promise of Vatican II
If as many believe the Second Vatican Council was a Spirit-inspired event, then one can appreciate the opportunity the Church was given to prepare itself, in spirit and practice, for what was on the horizon. One can also lament with twentieth century theologian, Karl Rahner, over the Council’s unfulfilled promise. Vatican II was intended to prepare the Church to finally become a global church, enculturated world-wide. That did not happen then, so the global Synod is needed now.
The transition from a European Church (functioning as an ‘export firm’) to a world-Church would have been of the same theological importance as the transition from a Church of the Jews to a Church of the Gentiles. This ecclesial leap was announced at the Second Vatican Council although in “a rudimentary and vague sort of fashion,” not premeditated nor systematically planned “…but (such theological transitions) are realized more or less spontaneously out of a secret instinct of the Spirit and of grace…”[2] Sixty years later, the Church’s Synod is the beginning of a process for a Spirit-led discernment on how to implement Vatican II’s great insights.
One conciliar document after the other[3] wove a tapestry for fundamental change in the ecclesiology of the church: from institution to sacrament, from hierarchy to the people of God, from absolute monarchy tocommunion, from one, true church to church as an ecumenical community, from church as triumphant kingdom to church as an eschatological community, from a church of word and sacrament to a church who also embraced service.[4] And indeed as the hopes and dreams of the world’s peoples are being collated in this Synodal process, there is emerging a strong echo of that new Vatican II ecclesiology.
The past sixty-odd years have witnessed a clash of narratives about the meaning of the Council between those who argue that the council’s reaffirmations of previous official teachings of the Church were more central than its innovations and those who argue the reverse.[5] Did the Council represent ‘continuity’ or ‘discontinuity’? Did it represent ‘reform’ or ‘rupture’? These are the wrong questions. Indeed, there were reaffirmations and there were innovations.[6] The Council proposed change within the larger continuity “..by presenting them as the result of legitimate processes of change, such as retrieval from the past of more authentic traditions than those operative in the present (ressourcement), or updating them to meet present exigencies (aggiornamento), or postulating for them an evolving or developmental character.”[7] In this way, the Council did indeed go beyond its pre-conciliar expectations to “… bring about a deeper and more organic ‘turnabout’ than the petitions voiced on the eve of the Council had the farsightedness and courage to desire.”[8] The new style of the Council signaled the turnabout:
1. The Church would change from an exclusively top-down form of behavior to one of cooperation, collaboration, and collegiality. The Church would now act like the People of God. The Synodal listening is now confirming this desire.
2. The Church would be more servant than controller. To serve effectively requires that one be in touch with the needs of those being served, rather than supplying them with ‘prefabricated solutions.’ The Synodal listening is now confirming this desire.
3. The council used words like ‘development,’ ‘progress,’ and even ‘evolution.’ This represented a break from ‘the static framework of understanding doctrine (and) discipline.’ The Synodal listening is now confirming this desire.
4. The council replaced the vocabulary of exclusion with that of inclusion. Instead of anathemas and excommunications, the documents are filled with references to ‘sisters and brothers’ and ‘men and women of goodwill.’ The Synodal listening is now confirming this desire.
5. The Council moved from a vocabulary suggesting passive acceptance of church teachings to one of active participation and engagement.[9] The Synodal listening is now confirming this desire.
This new style of being would have positioned the Church to meet the new millennium free of its tendencies toward triumphalism, clericalism, and legalism that had so deleteriously characterized its stance to the world and even its own people. The words monarchy and perfect society had a long history in the Church and reigned supreme during Vatican I; but at Vatican II, “… the two words and assumptions silently, unobtrusively, and utterly disappeared from sight with profound results – a good example of change taking place simply through substitution and corporate memory loss.”[10]
Resistance to Vatican II
In 1966 when the Council officially closed, it was noted that the most effective opposition to the spirit and orientation of the Council would not come from its vocal detractors but “…rather from those who insist that the Council really changed nothing at all.”[11] And although Rahner would continue to describe the nature, function, and role of the world-Church into the eighties,[12] he also acknowledged resistance to this change, chiefly in the Roman Congregations of the Curia.[13] Under the post-Council popes, the retrenchment took place. A fear-based insistence on uniformity and order directed governance (the special status of the papal office over bishop conferences), teaching (orthodoxy, fidelity oaths, silencing), and practice (ritual and strict adherence to Roman Missal). Simultaneously seminaries were emptying and the numbers in the pews were slowly bleeding away, soon followed by a mass exodus caused by the exposure of widespread sexual abuse and its coverup. A small but purer Church was seen as desirable. No longer, the Synodal listening is confirming the desire for an ‘enlarged tent’.
Now as the Church moves into its third millennium, it is imperative to exorcise itself from its medieval self-understanding when there was one transcendent reality, manifest and embodied in the Church itself, a special institution directed by a special sacred society, that exclusively led the culture and interpreted its nature.[14] Reality cohered at that time: the great problem of human existence in the light of the eternal was solved and there was a security in belonging to one society that knew who it was and where it was going. The Council of Trent tried to reestablish this view and reality but too many facets of society had radically changed by then. The Church’s cosmic egg was forever shattered. And yet with Trent, the Church retreated into its fortress insisting on its medieval egg reality. The next church council, Vatican I, three hundred years later, took a militant stance against the modern world. However, within one hundred years, the Church was inspired through Vatican II to reconcile with that world as messy as it can be. The Synodal listening is confirming this desire to engage the world. How can leaven work if it is not in the mix?
In these anxious times, there are those in the Church who fear that messiness and view the Tridentine ecclesiology and its fortress mentality against the world as its salvation. This tendency to look at reality through the rearview mirror as the rest of the world drives forward becomes an increasingly precarious option for the institution’s survival. Church leaders must be good men who believe earnestly in the crucial need for control and order for the ultimate good for the Church; other explanations are too painful to accept. And yet one is not naïve enough to presume that a full and unopposed embrace of Vatican II would have obviated the woes currently being experienced in the Church. But it is difficult to dismiss that the change in attitude and practice Vatican II espoused would have attenuated many of the current woes.
The Invitation to Synod
The Synod invites the entire People of God to reflect on where the Church is and, resting in the Spirit, imagine where their hopes and dreams may extend the horizons of the possible future. This cannot be an exclusively clerical enterprise. Rather, it is the work of the faith community to actively shape the church of the future and not leave it buried in the ground of the past. The very nature of the Church is being discerned and the Synod is the means for formally and systematically receiving the sensus fidelium and honoring the principle of reception, “the ecclesial process by which virtually all the members of the church assent to a teaching presented to them as apostolic truth and ecclesial faith, thereby assimilating the doctrine into the life of the whole church.”[15] The Synodal listening is confirming the desire of the laity for communion, participation, and co-responsibility.
The Synod is the Spirit’s answer to the unvoiced hopes and dreams of the People of God in their search for meaning. The survival of the institutional Church depends on the response to this invitation.
[1] McLaren, Brian. “Looking Back to Look Ahead,” in Oneing: An Alternative Orthodoxy 2020; 8(2): 72.
[2] Rahner, Karl. “Basic Theological Interpretation of the Second Vatican Council,” Theological Investigations, Volume XX, 85.
[3] Rahner discusses Sacrosanctum Concilium, Gaudium et Spes, Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, and Nostra Aetate in particular. See Rahner, “Basic Theological Interpretation of Second Vatican Council,” Theological Investigations, Volume XX, 80-2.
[4] McBrien, Richard. The Church: The Evolution of Catholicism, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 181.
[5] McBrien, Richard. The Church: The Evolution of Catholicism, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 198
[6] McBrien lists ten reaffirmations and twelve innovations. See The Church: The Evolution of Catholicism, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 200-202.
[7] John W. O’Malley. Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church, (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 245-6.
[8] Alberigo, Guiseppe, “Transition to a New Age,” in History of Vatican II, vol. 5, The Council and the Transition, ed. Joseph A. Komonchak (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005), 611 cited by Massimo Faggioloi in Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning, (Mahweh NJ: Paulist Press, 2012), 137-8.
[9] O’Malley, John. Multiple citations by McBrien in The Church, 204. Preeminent among them is “Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?” in Theological Studies, 67/1 (March 2006): 3-33.
[10] John W. O’Malley. Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church, (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 246.
[11] McBrien, Richard. The Church: The Evolution of Catholicism, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 212.
[12] See Rahner, Theological Investigations. Volume XX: Concern for the Church, (New York: Crossroad, 1981; German Edition: 1980), Part IV: “The Future of the Church” and Theological Investigations, Volume XXII: Humane Society and the Church of Tomorrow, (New York: Crossroad, 1991; German Edition, 1984), Part III: “The Future of the Church.”
[13] Rahner, Karl. “Basic Theological Interpretation of the Second Vatican Council,” Theological Investigations. Volume XX: Concern for the Church, (New York: Crossroad, 1981; German Edition: 1980), 79.
[14] Tillich, Paul. A History of Christian Thought: From Its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism, (New York: Simon and Shuster,1968), 134.
[15] Lawler, Michael G. “Faith, Praxis, and Practical Theology: At the Interface of Sociology and Theology” Horizons 2002; 202-3.