<> I will note that what used to be traditional and normal -faithful docility before The Magisterium of the Catholic Church established by Jesus as the Pillar and Ground of truth - now warrants a weird designation, "conciliar fundamentalist," as though Faithful Obedience were a failure or fault.
Traditionalists often complain the world has been turned upside down yet they NEVER recognise their own participation in turning it upside down. Once praiseworthy, obedience is now denigrated as a type of fundamentalism.<>
The Real Thing
Lots of Catholics talk about Vatican II, but relatively few have actually read the documents of the Council. That shouldn’t surprise us. People talk about a lot of things. Few actually know what they’re talking about because only a few people take the time to educate themselves before they speak. Unfortunately, too few catechists and religious educators belong to that minority of informed people.
Not so theologian Douglas Bushman. Bushman, director of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology, is the author of an outstanding set of introductory essays on the sixteen documents of Vatican II, in a hefty volume of the documents published by the Daughters of St. Paul’s Pauline Books & Media.
Here’s what you won’t get in Bushman’s essays. You won’t get superficial or watered-down summaries—although the volume includes outlines of all sixteen conciliar documents. You won’t get an arcane history of how a particular document was fashioned into its final form. Nor will you get an analysis that pretends to tell you what Vatican II says while actually giving you what the author thinks it should have or wishes it had said.
What you do get are sixteen thoughtful, helpful, penetrating essays on what Vatican II said and means for the life and mission of the Church today. The key words there are “said and means.” Bushman tells us what Vatican II actually said; he doesn’t expound upon themes theological and pastoral in light of the elusive “spirit of Vatican II.” He doesn’t select those portions of Vatican II he likes, while skipping over the parts he dislikes. He gives readers what the Council taught.
But that’s not all. Bushman’s essays link the teaching of Vatican II with that of popes Paul VI and John Paul II, who implemented that teaching. In other words, Bushman shows us what Vatican II means for the life and mission of the Church today, as well as what it meant for the Church of 1965. Thus, he fosters a real reception of the Council by today’s Catholics, through presenting Vatican II’s teaching in light of the pastoral issues that have emerged over the last forty years since the Council.
All catechists should know the documents of Vatican II, even as they should all know the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is in many ways the Catechism of Vatican II. And all catechists would immensely benefit from studying Vatican II through the lens of Douglas Bushman’s introductory essays.