Posted on 04/15/2005 4:34:46 PM PDT by Grey Ghost II
In church's dreams, Vatican II never happened
April 13, 2005
BY ANDREW GREELEY
The American TV networks spent huge sums of money and sent scores of people to Rome last week. Characteristically, they spent little time or energy on research and hence provided weak and stereotypical journalism, limited to questions about married priests, female priests, gays and sexual abuse. They missed completely the most critical issue for the church in the 21st century -- Vatican Council II and the changes it created.
Many, if not most, of the cardinal electors would tell you that the council was an incident, a bump in the road. The council fathers wrote some useful documents. There was misguided enthusiasm after the council, but Pope John Paul II sternly reimposed order on the church. The council is interesting mainly now as a historical matter.
Leaders lost their nerve
They could not be more wrong. The council was a revolutionary event that had a profound impact on Catholics who lived through it and indirectly on their children, who have barely heard about it. It's still the green dragon lurking in the Sistine Chapel even if the electors can't quite see it.
The model of unchanging Catholicism in response to the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution assumed that the church would not change, should not change, could not change. Suddenly the laity and lower clergy experienced changes in liturgy, in Scripture interpretation, in theories of religious liberty, in attitudes toward other Christians and Jews, in trust of the modern world. The structures -- patterns of behavior and supporting motivations -- that had supported the church for several centuries collapsed.
The council fathers may not have foreseen this collapse, but they did vote for the changes (in overwhelming numbers) and hence the documents themselves and the action of the fathers (presumably in Catholic theology guided by the Holy Spirit) were responsible for the destabilization.
It was, as it seemed then, a new spring for the church, now flexible, joyful and confidently open to the world. However, the ferment frightened some of the leaders who lost their nerve and responded the only way they knew how -- repression. They issued new orders without any serious attempt to explain the reasons for them. They silenced some theologians. They appointed reactionary bishops, who were not always the brightest or most humane. They investigated seminaries. Their mood changed from optimism to grim warnings and solemn denunciations. The church, for a few years a bright light on the mountaintop, had once again become an embattled fortress afraid of the modern world.
House of cards collapsed
The leaders confidently expected that the laity would do what they were told. They could not have been more wrong, nor their strategy more counterproductive. The laity and the lower clergy for the most part simply ignored them and went about creating new structures in which Catholics would affiliate with the church on their own terms. Resignations from the priesthood and the collapse of priestly vocations began only after the desperate attempts to slow down change turned the mood of the council years sour. The present crisis of the credibility of church leadership arose precisely from mistaken attempts to reassert the old leadership style. The problem is not so much the council as restorationist attempts to undo it.
To be fair, no one realized how potentially frail was the so-called confident church of 1950, both in America and around the world. A push from a handful of conciliar documents and the whole house of cards collapsed. For many leaders who had known the seeming serenity of the pre-conciliar church, it was unthinkable that the structures had disappeared overnight and with them their own credibility. So they fell back on them to prevent a disappearance that had already occurred.
The restorationist style continues here in Rome, though it should be clear that it doesn't work. Despite the late pope's efforts to reassert the church's traditional sexual ethic, acceptance of it has declined everywhere.
Few willing to admit truth
In the pre-conclave atmosphere, it is necessary to pretend that this is not true. Or if there is a bit of truth in it, the proper response of the new pope should be yet tougher repression, more vigorous restoration. Almost no one is willing to admit even to themselves that the leadership strategy since 1970 has caused most of the problems in the church -- the decline of vocations and church attendance and the alienation of the young.
Vatican II is the dragon in their midst that they cannot see and they wish would go away. Unfortunately they have not, will not learn that you cannot repeal an ecumenical council and cancel its effects.
Then you have no scruples, only ambition.
No, you parrot that. If you "taught" it, your instruction would be comprehensive, from a position of faith and agreement and acceptance. That's definitely NOT what you're doing. After all, you admit this:
But I don't defend Humanae Vitae or the Church's teaching on contraception, because I can't do it.
You're little more than a sophisticated fraud, comparable in many respects to Frances Kissling.
Last week I carried an interview with Fr. Diego Lorenzi, the private secretary of Pope John Paul I, on the 25th anniversary of the pope’s election. Lorenzi’s recollections summoned others from readers of “The Word from Rome.” Among other things, a few readers wrote to ask if it was true that prior to becoming pope, Cardinal Albino Luciani had expressed a positive view of birth control.
In short, the answer is yes.
In 1967, when Luciani was still the bishop of Vittorio Veneto, then-Cardinal Giovanni Urbani of Venice asked him to prepare a position paper for the bishops of the Triveneto region on artificial contraception, then under study by Pope Paul VI. The story is told in the superb recent book Papa Luciani: Il Sorriso del Santo, by Andrea Tornielli and Alessandro Zangrando.
Luciani, who attended all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), had already been wrestling with the problem. In his diary from his days at Vatican II, Un Vescovo al Concilio, published in 1983, he said that the formation of a study commission had produced hope that the teaching might change. Another factor fueling that hope, he wrote, was the “spiritual trauma” the issue was causing for married couples, for whom it represented a “laceration of conscience.”
In January 1965, Luciani gave a retreat for the pastors of the Veneto in which he told the following story:
“A Capuchin bishop told me at the council, ‘Sometimes I thank God that I’m a bishop for only one reason, not for anything else. The reason is that I don’t have to hear confessions at Easter, dealing with painful, difficult cases that are hard to resolve. These blessed Christian couples simply don’t want to convince themselves that the use of contraceptives is a sin. At the end I never knew what to say … What could I say to a young father who already had six children and he was the sole support of the family? I knew that he was a good young man and in every other way obeyed the law of God.’
“I assure you,” Luciani told the pastors, “the bishops would be extremely happy to find a doctrine that would declare licit the use of contraceptives under certain conditions ... If there’s only one possibility in a thousand, we have to find this possibility and see if maybe with the help of the Holy Spirit we can discover something that previously escaped us.”
In a recent interview, Msgr. Mario Senigaglia, Lorenzi’s predecessor as Luciani’s secretary, recalled that his stand was well known. In fact, he said, some Italian wags referred to Luciani at the time as “the bishop of the pill.”
Paul VI got wind of the thinking in the Triveneto and sent his personal theologian, Msgr. Carlo Colombo, to meet with the bishops. Sources say that during the closed-door session, Luciani argued that Colombo’s position was “too abstract” and did not take account of the real-life struggles of couples.
In the spring of 1968, Luciani gave a series of presentations in parishes. In Mogliano Veneto, the birth control question arose. His response has been preserved in an audio recording.
“For me, this is the most serious theological question that has ever been dealt with by the church,” Luciani said. “In the age of Arius and Nestorius, the issue was the two natures of Christ, and these were serious questions, but they were understood only at the very top of the church, among theologians and bishops. The simple people understood nothing of these things and said, ‘I adore Jesus Christ, the Lord who has redeemed me,’ and that was it, there was no danger. Here, on the other hand, it’s a question that no longer regards solely the leadership of the church, but the entire church, all the young families, the young Christian families. It is a truly central point that they are still studying.”
When Paul VI issued Humane Vitae on July 25, 1968, however, Luciani’s adherence was immediate and unwavering. He wrote a letter to his diocese four days after the encyclical appeared.
“I confess that I had hoped in my heart that the extremely grave difficulties could be overcome and that the response of the magisterium, which speaks with special charisms and in the name of the Lord, could have coincided, at least in part, with the hopes held by many spouses.”
Yet, Luciani said, Pope Paul has spoken, and the proper response is assent.
The Pope “knows that he is about to cause bitterness for many; he knows that a different solution would probably have drawn greater human applause; but he’s put his trust in God, and in order to be faithful to His word, he re-proposes the constant teaching of the magisterium, in this most delicate matter, in all its purity.”
As late as 1974, after he had become patriarch of Venice, Luciani publicly acknowledged how difficult this teaching was to enforce.
“Among couples with few children, some maintain a heroic self-control that merits admiration,” he said at a convention. “Others … find themselves in difficulties so serious that, on the objective plane, not even the confessor sometimes has the courage to pronounce on the gravity of the sin, entrusting everything to the merciful judgment of the Lord.”
The story invites a historical “what if?” If Luciani’s papacy had endured longer than 33 days, how would he have handled the birth control issue?
It’s virtually certain he would not have reversed Paul VI’s teaching. The church does not lurch from position to position like that, and Luciani was no doctrinal radical. Moreover, in Venice some saw a hardening of his stands as the years went by. On the other hand, it is reasonable to assume that John Paul I would not have insisted upon the negative judgment in Humanae Vitae as aggressively and publicly as John Paul II, and probably would not have treated it as a quasi-infallible teaching. It would have remained a more “open” question.
Source. Whether that would have been good or bad obviously depends upon one’s point of view
Compare that with:
But I don't defend Humanae Vitae or the Church's teaching on contraception, because I can't do it.
Hmm...from the story:
[Paul VI] knows that he is about to cause bitterness for many; he knows that a different solution would probably have drawn greater human applause; but he’s put his trust in God, and in order to be faithful to His word, he re-proposes the constant teaching of the magisterium, in this most delicate matter, in all its purity.
Sounds like a supporter of HV to me. Note that the quote you bold is from 1965, 3 years before HV.
You're not supposed to notice these minor twists and turns.
LOL
Yes, you do, publicly, while claiming to be an ordained clergy member of the Diocese of Fort Worth, when you continue to draw a moral equivalency between barrier methods and NFP.
>>I think 'progress' will continue unabated. Only catastrophy will mobilize a realignment.
>>I hope I'm wrong, and that our future Pope and many of the up and coming young Priests will lead the Church back to her moorings.<<
I hope you're wrong, too, because I hope I'm wrong and I agree with you. There are no safety nets for the faithful anymore. Long ago if you went astray and off the rails, there was a network of Catholic help to get you back in line, but not anymore. I have personally witnessed people having a crisis of faith asking a New Order priest for guidance and all he's got for them is psychobabble.
In the 1960's Fulton J. Sheen warned us to keep our children out of so-called Catholic schools where their faith is at risk from Modernist corruption, and that they are better off in public education where they have a chance of defending their faith. The problem is now much worse.
Far too many Catholics are okay with the kind of talk that Greeley spouts, okay with women priests, homosexual "marriage," First Communion in the Hand, the banalization of the priesthood, on and on. We really ought to know better. We are daring with defiance the just wrath of God almighty at this rate.
Mother Teresa said this claim was absolutely false. She was a personal friend of JPI and was quoted as saying he was wholly orthodox on Humanae Vitae.
However, if this claim is true, the ONLY conclusion we might draw today is that the Holy Spirit protected Christ's Church from error, in this case by the providential early demise of JPI.
You really think Luciani would have promoted HV as John Paul I?
Tetzel, you are incorrect. The doctrine against contraception, even though it has been proposed infallibly, has not been proposed as a truth of divine faith; denying it is not heretical.
Moreover, sinkspur's position seems to me to be that he accepts HV on faith, while admitting that he, personally, cannot justify it from reason. Heresy requires the doubt or denial of a truth of divine and catholic faith - not doubt of the arguments from reason used to support it.
Did you read the quotes from Luciani himself? You really think he would have promoted HV?
Do you think he was lying when he wrote that HV is the constant teaching "in all its purity", necessary in order to be faithful to the Word of God? I would think better of a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, where the contrary is not proved.
I don't teach it.
You're teaching it right here.
You have also claimed to met with young couples who've sought counselling, haven't you? Wouldn't THAT be teaching it?
Actually, yes it could.
You repeatedly draw a moral equivalency between barrier methods and NFP.
Do you now repudiate that publicly expressed opinion? Do you now publicly state that barrier methods and all artificial methods of contraception are inherently evil, and that there is no moral equivalence between NFP and barrier methods, and that while barrier method use is intrinsically sinful, NFP is not?
Until you state this, it is only perfectly clear that you are a publicly dissenting (and, since it is a grave matter of morals, therefore mortally sinning) AmChurch "deacon."
No. I don't think he was lying. He was saying what he had to say as a pastor and bishop.
But, six years after the above quote, he said this:
“Among couples with few children, some maintain a heroic self-control that merits admiration,” he said at a convention. “Others … find themselves in difficulties so serious that, on the objective plane, not even the confessor sometimes has the courage to pronounce on the gravity of the sin, entrusting everything to the merciful judgment of the Lord.”
That doesn't sound, to me, like a cardinal who has no reservations about HV.
When Paul VI issued Humane Vitae on July 25, 1968, however, Luciani’s adherence was immediate and unwavering.
Thus, your public heresy here becomes their canon law quagmire.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.