The Sixth Tool: The Big Picture Questions Settled by Vatican II

The controversial Council really was a gift to the Church after all, despite everything.

For those who think that Vatican II was the only Church council where the problems got worse afterwards…

Although I am not a traditionalist Catholic in the sense that I don’t regularly attend the Latin Mass, I have close friends and relatives who do, and in my years of interaction with them, I have a healthy respect for the movement, whose growth and problems remind me in many ways of the growth and struggles of the lay community movement I experienced in my teen and young adult years. Hence I feel a desire to point out a few blind spots for young trads, or areas that may become blind spots unless they are thought about clearly.

In traditionalist circles, it’s typical to trash-talk Vatican II, unfortunately. But even among non-trad faithful Catholics, it’s common to express frustration with the existence of the Council, especially people who are frequently clashing with liberal Catholics (the sort who speak of Vatican II as the Holy Grail which enables them to re-shape the Church in their preferred image—which is usually the image of the dying Episcopalian Church).

Whether because it is rhetorically put on a pedestal or consigned to the rubbish heap of history, Vatican II remains controversial, a wedge in faithful Catholic circles, frequently dividing potential allies from one another. As parish life has dwindled and movement such as traditionalist Catholics increase, there is a tendency to see this council with hostility, as a failure, as irrelevant, as pointless and unnecessary, as a stumbling-block. One of my good friends, a professional Catholic, said to me recently, “No one has ever been able to convince me that I should care about it.” This post is an attempt to show him—and others—why we should.

I also mean to issue a warning, one which will only make sense to faithful Catholics. Condemning a Church Council like Vatican II, especially as a lay person, is a spiritually dangerous position to put oneself in, because it facilitates pride. Since pride is the one vice that is the most dangerous to our immortal souls and the most difficult to eradicate, we must be wary of adopting it, even as an intellectual veneer to defend a position, even one we sincerely believe in.

Catholics quarrel (especially now) about how much respect or deference one must show to a Pope you disagree with. (That answer, for the record, is as much respect as you are required by the Fourth Commandment to show to your earthly parents.) This I can understand to some extent: I’m sure that Renaissance Catholics struggled with respecting Alexander VI as well. But I am agog at the hubris and arrogance of rejecting an entire Ecumenical Council, especially one so close to one’s own historical time period. No Pope acting alone, let alone a bishop, priest, or lay person, has the authority to overturn or a Council. I don’t know that excessive arrogance on our part will do anything except make us vulnerable to the lies of the Enemy. We are not as strong as we think we are.

So I would like to offer in this post that not only is Vatican II not a mistake or a stumbling block, but a tool given to us by the Church through the Holy Spirit, to equip and guide us through this very crisis that we are in today. It is entirely necessary, even crucial! In fact, the Council settled some “big picture” questions so firmly that we have even forgotten that the questions even existed.

Government and Religious Freedom

For example, there was the question of systems of governments. Should American Catholics be working for the restoration of a Catholic monarchy in America? Can a good Catholic be involved in a democratic republic? We have long forgotten that this was a concern, both for Catholics and their fellow countrymen in pre-Conciliar America, stretching from colonial times to the clashes between Bishops Bernard McQuaid and John Ireland to the quarrels of Joseph Clifford Fenton and John Courtney Murray. The Church had so long existed in the realms of emperors and kings that it seemed to many of her children that monarchy was an essential part of being Catholic. The fact that early republican revolutions, like the French Revolution, were openly hostile to Christianity didn’t help clarify matters.

Vatican II firmly disentangled the skein of faith from the threads of thrones, and asserted that Christians can live with clear consciences in a republic or a democracy, so long as they bring their faith into their public life. In America, this could have even been easier, since the American founders presumed their citizens would be people of faith.

Also, the fathers of Vatican II affirmed that religious freedom is a good ideal, and that even the Catholic faith should be freely chosen. Again, this was a question that needed to be settled, and settled soon, as more and more Catholics were living in secular nations. Catholics were free to lobby for moral goods such as marriage and the sanctity of life without anyone worrying that this was just a prelude to Catholic theocracy.

Changes in the liturgy didn’t only happen after Vatican II….

The Call of the Laity

There was also the question of the role of the laity. Vatican II did not decree that laity should serve at the altar or vest themselves like clergymen: what it did say was that the laity have the great responsibility to sanctify every area of human endeavor.

For this reason the laity, dedicated to Christ and anointed by the Holy Spirit, are marvelously called and wonderfully prepared so that ever more abundant fruits of the Spirit may be produced in them. For all their works, prayers and apostolic endeavors, their ordinary married and family life, their daily occupations, their physical and mental relaxation, if carried out in the Spirit, and even the hardships of life, if patiently borne—all these become "spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ".(199) Together with the offering of the Lord's body, they are most fittingly offered in the celebration of the Eucharist. Thus, as those everywhere who adore in holy activity, the laity consecrate the world itself to God. (Lumen Gentium, 34)

Downgrading clericalism to an error, the Church asserts that ordinary men and women are crucial to the Church in bringing the Gospel to the world. Saints like Francis de Sales and Josemaria Escriva had anticipated this teaching in their own apostolic work, but Vatican II asserted that the Church should not be spoken of as consisting merely of priests, bishops, and religious, but the whole people of God. That’s been much more clear in the years since Vatican II.

And without that understanding, it’s hard to imagine all the apostolic work begun by the laity since Vatican II would have happened. Previously in America, if there was a problem, the bishops would call upon a religious order to take care of it. But with the devastation of the American religious orders that came in the wake of the mass institutional disobedience to Humanae Vitae (let’s not forget that’s how it all happened), so many of the laity rolled up their sleeves and got to work filling the gap. I mentioned Catholics United for the Faith as one lay apostolate organized in the wake of Vatican II. But the rest of the lay-run and lay-led initiatives that have sprung up since Vatican II are too numerous to count: Christendom College, Augustine Institute, Catholic Answers, FOCUS, Christ in the City, the New Oxford Review, Crisis, TFP, Divine Mercy Institute, American Life League, and hundreds more.

Additionally, in the same document, Lumen Gentium, Vatican II also clarified the role of the bishops, specifically the infallibility of bishops teaching in union with the pope. This was unfinished business left over from Vatican I, where the council defined papal infallibility but had to disband the conference when Rome was attacked during the Franco-Prussian war and the bishops were forced to flee.

Catholics and the Bible

Study on John Singer Sargent by Victoria Fulton. Support her here.

Should Catholics read the Bible on their own, or was that a Protestant error? It’s hard to recall that there used to be a widespread belief among American Catholics and non-Catholics that Catholics are not allowed to read the Bible. Again, this is an error that Vatican II devoted an entire document, Dei Verbum, to dispelling.

Whether or not Catholics should read and study the Scripture had been a low-level difficulty for many American Catholics in a land steeped in Protestant fundamentalism, and Vatican II affirmed the place of the Bible in the spiritual life of the ordinary Catholic, giving birth to any number of apostolates dedicated to providing solid Scriptural teaching tools imbued with a Catholic perspective.

The documents also reaffirmed the content and unity of Scripture in the face of the massive loss of faith in the Bible suffered by the mainline Protestant denominations. Fr. Thomas McGovern points out in his article on Vatican II and the Scriptures that Vatican II emphasized as no other church document had yet done the relationship between the three entities of Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium:

It is clear, therefore, 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. (Dei Verbum, 10.b)

Clarifying the Liturgy Wars

In the battleground of the liturgy, Vatican II’s contributions did NOT include the New Order of the Mass (the Novus Ordo) or even liturgy in the vernacular. As anyone who’s been involved in the liturgical wars should know, Vatican II affirmed that Latin should be retained in the liturgy, presumed Mass would still be celebrated ad orientum, and stated that Gregorian chant should have pride of place. What the Fathers appear to have had in mind was a return to the responsorial Masses still found in the Eastern liturgy, where the congregation responds to the celebrant. These responses had been minimized and delegated to altar boys and choirs in the centuries since Trent, and Vatican II advocated for a liturgy involving both priest and people, consistent with their call to the laity. And indeed, the Novus Ordo done right somewhat approximates this hope (though no one in the West can come close to the East when it comes to liturgy). Thomas Day documents how in some places speedy and silent Masses had become the norm in pre-Vatican II liturgies, with opera singers brought in to trill arias on big feasts. That’s why Vatican II drew attention to Gregorian chant being far more appropriate to the liturgy than any sort of hymn or song. Rather than add songs to the liturgy, singing the Mass was what the Fathers of Vatican II were recommending.

That the document on the liturgy (and the meaning of the whole Council) was twisted, distorted, used for various agendas, ignored, or mocked should not surprise anyone who understands the power of the Liturgy. Liturgy is literally “tilling the ground,” and priests are gardeners plowing the earth, scattering seed, bringing forth growth. Christ warned in the Gospels that the Enemy would come and sow weeds by night, and Satan did. But the battle for the liturgy continues, and I pray the victory will come gloriously and will fulfill the purest expectations of the Fathers of Vatican II, to see the whole people of God worshiping “in spirit and truth.”    

The Church and the Jewish People

Lastly, one small portion of Vatican II may end up having the greatest effect of all: the Church declared in her declaration on non-Catholic religions, that the Jews remain the chosen people of God. The prophet Pope John XXIII had wanted, in the light of the Holocaust, to dedicate an entire document to the Jews but was talked out of it. But the eight paragraphs dedicated to the Jews helped heal a centuries-old family wound dating back to the time of the Church Fathers and the Talmud.

The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles. Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles. making both one in Himself.

…God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues—such is the witness of the Apostle.

The Jewish people responded with gratitude, and many common initiatives in Scripture study and joint work began that continue today.

On the 50^th anniversary of that document Nostra Aetate, “The Promises of God are Irrevocable,” the Church reiterated that teaching more explicitly, stating that “replacement theology” in which the Church is seen as replacing the Jews, is no longer a Catholic option, and that the question of the role of the chosen people was settled by St. Paul in the eleventh chapter of Romans when he deals with the problem directly. As the Church very rarely settles on a definitive interpretation of Scripture, this is historic.

The Church has always believed that the sign of the end times would be the Jewish people recognizing Christ as their Messiah. When this happens, I believe Vatican II will be seen as removing a significant obstacle to that regrafting.

So I believe that Vatican II was called by the Holy Spirit to settle some of these global questions so that the Church could go forward. Some of the issues raised, namely the liturgy, are still being sorted out, painfully and dreadfully, but it would be wrong to think of it as a useless council. The heresy of Arianism multiplied exponentially after the Council of Nicea, and I’m sure the Catholics of the time complained about how Nicea “didn’t go far enough” or “just made the problem worse.” But it showed Catholics the way forward. As a daughter of the Church, I believe that if we were to study and recover the teachings of Vatican II, we may find the Holy Spirit has mapped the way for us out of these troubling and confusing times.

Certainly, we ignore them at our peril.