Catholic Transcript Online

Almost half a century after Vatican Council II, multiple books and articles about it are now appearing almost out of nowhere. Among the most enlightening pieces in print is the late Father Richard John Neuhaus’s "What Really Happened at Vatican II," which appeared in the October 2008 issue of First Things (the monthly he founded and edited until his death in January of this year).

One of the fascinating aspects about interpretations of the Council is that two of its leading participants were later elected to the Papacy: Pope John Paul II, who was a Father of the Council, first as Administrator of the Archdiocese of Krakow, then as Archbishop; and Father Joseph Ratzinger, who served as an influential peritus, or "theological expert," during all four sessions, from October 1962 to December 1965.

Such a historical note should immediately catch the attention, at least, of some of the legion "interpreters" of Vatican II who claim to possess better insight as to what the Council meant. This point was clearly made by Father Neuhaus in his article in First Things, wherein he cited Pope Benedict’s assessment made shortly after he was chosen for Peter’s Chair in 2005. The Holy Father (again, a peritus at Vatican II) said:

"On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call ‘a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture’; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is ‘the hermeneutic of reform,’ of renewal in the continuity of the one subject, the Church that the Lord has given us. It is a subject that increases in time and develops, yet always remains the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God."

Pope Benedict rejects the routinely offered distinction employed by most commentators between "conservative" and "liberal" with respect to Vatican II; it fails, the Holy Father insists, to capture the difference between "a hermeneutic of reform and a hermeneutic of rupture." For one thing, the Council’s doctrine can be described as "emphatically liberal" in its view of democracy, as well as its invitation to find a "new way of engagement between faith and reason" – as Father Neuhaus read Pope Benedict.

Vatican Council II was in so may ways a stunning event, and doubtless the major religious historical happening of the 20th century. But the awe which its documents continue to inspire is in perfect continuity with all those of the 20 General Church Councils preceding it. Hence the decrees of Vatican II must be read within the Tradition that reaches back to the very beginning of Christianity.

Notwithstanding this truth, Father Neuhaus was quick not to deny that Vatican II was somewhat different from earlier Church Councils. Granting "continuity in teaching," he wrote, Vatican II was convoked at an hour "when there was no obvious crisis troubling the Church" – over and beyond, of course, what had been happening behind the Iron Curtain and in parts of Asia. Besides, Pope John XXIII, who called the Council into session, urged that the assembly be primarily "pastoral" in approach, and that it avoid so-called "power language." Moreover, Vatican II reached outward to the world in unprecedented ways. Mark, for a few examples, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (which was a "first" for a Council, and was thought by many to be an impossible document to write), the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (doctrinally awesome), the Decree on Ecumenism and the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.

On multiple fronts, the 20th century was astonishing. But from the lens of religion, no other event quite matches the dynamic power of Vatican Council II, a thoroughly graced assembly which, for all its innovative accents, was firmly anchored in the First General Council of Nicaea, and reflects each one of the other General Councils which followed Nicaea.