Catalyst for Renewal

Vatican II Memories and Reflections

"In the Advocate Michael Costigan gave a more thorough day-by-day account of the Council than any other English-language diocesan weekly"

- Edmund Campion, Australian Catholics, Viking 1987, p.204

Father Campion’s generous view of what was accomplished by the Melbourne Catholic Advocate under my editorship during Vatican II could be challenged, but not by me.

Whatever about that, the fact remains that experiencing and reporting the Council, at a large cost in terms of expended time and energy, was the personal highlight of my life.

Reflecting on this in 1982 for a special National Council of Priests publication marking the twentieth anniversary of the Council’s opening, I wrote: "The Second Vatican Council dominated ten of the fourteen years (1955-69) I spent in the priesthood. Reporting the Council for Melbourne’s Catholic weekly newspaper, the Advocate, and at times for other sections of the Australian Catholic press, was the biggest professional challenge I faced during a twelve-year career in journalism. And experiencing the Council during its second session in 1963 was the turning point of my life".

The same article concluded with a judgement and a not wholly successful attempt at prophecy: "No public event in my lifetime has meant more to me personally than the Second Vatican Council. For the Church as a whole, I believe it will continue to be regarded as the most significant happening of this century. And I predict that, when the year 2000 arrives and journalists are speculating on who should be named the Man (or Person) of the Century, there will be a strong case for Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Pope John XXIII, the Pope of the Council."

While living in Rome as a seminarian and student priest from 1952 to 1961 I had witnessed the final six years of Pope Pius XII’s pontificate, the election of John XXIII in 1958 (I was there in St Peter’s Square that night – and later met him three times) and the preparations being made for the Council following Pope John’s surprise announcement at St Paul’s Basilica in January 1959.

During those years I came to know and be influenced by a number of Roman teachers who were to emerge as significant figures in the course of the Council and the post-conciliar period. Three who stand out in my memory were the future Cardinals Pietro Parente and Pietro Pavan and the future Archbishop Annibale Bugnini.

In spite of his theological conservatism, Parente, who was the deputy in the Holy Office to the formidable Cardinal Ottaviani, played a key role in winning majority acceptance for the idea of episcopal collegiality. He defended it, to the astonishment of many liberals, in one of the most important speeches delivered at the Council, during the third session in 1964.

Pavan, my doctoral supervisor at the Pontifical Lateran University, had been a principal drafter of Pope John’s encyclicals Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris. He was a major ally of the likes of Father John Courtney Murray SJ and Bishop Emile-Josef De Smedt in successfully promoting the Council’s epoch-making teachings on Religious Liberty and the Church in the Modern World.

And Bugnini, who taught liturgy to a generation of Propaganda College students at the Pontifical Urban University, was probably the main architect of the Church’s still controversial liturgical reforms. Some of us had a foretaste of what was to come at the First International Congress of Pastoral Liturgy in Assisi in September 1956. There we young clerics listened with rapt attention to such speakers as Cardinal Lercaro, Father Jungmann SJ, Cardinal Gerlier, Bishop von Bekkum, Father Antonelli OFM, Bishop Spuelbeck and Father Clifford Howell SJ. We also heard a cautious final address in Rome from Pius XII, who warned against a number of liturgical innovations, some of which were to be adopted less than a decade later at Vatican II.

I record these memories (and there are many others) as a corrective to the view that Romans were totally unprepared for what emerged at the Council. Certainly some of the transalpine theologians were harshly treated by the Vatican in the 1950s and were often pilloried in our classrooms by theologians of the Roman School. But we students in the Pontifical Universities were not unaware of the views of the future stars of the Council, some of whom were later to be highly honoured by the Church (Congar, de Lubac, Danielou, von Balthasar, Rahner etc.).

One of my classmates and best friends, the late Adrian Hastings, English theologian, historian and Africanist, was already anticipating the great conciliar developments in ecclesiology, ecumenism and the Church’s turnaround on human rights.

Was our excitement and enthusiasm during the Council years misplaced?

Even at that time it was recognised that some of the Council’s documents were flawed. As a journalist, for example, I found the statement on mass communications innocuous and unhelpful, while many clergy and religious were unimpressed by what the Council Fathers had to say about their calling. And, viewed retrospectively, even the most important and historic documents – those on the Church, the Unity of Christians, Revelation, the Liturgy, the Church in the Modern World and Religious Liberty – are also not beyond criticism, as commentators as eminent as Cardinal Ratzinger have found. But their teachings did set the Church on a new course – and their acceptance and full implementation will continue to be a major priority of Popes, Bishops, Clergy, Religious and Laity for many more years.

While certain other developments in the post-conciliar period are a source of worry and disappointment to all who truly love the Church, it seems to me that virtually every matter of concern is offset by hopeful signs. Here are some random thoughts on just a few of the key challenges that will continue to face the Church.