OUR LADY OF FATIMA  CATHOLIC CHURCH

How are we to receive Vatican II ?

Pope Benedict tells us how... first as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.... 

A. Review of the Postconciliar Era - Failures, Tasks, Hopes

In 1975, when I was asked by many persons to prepare a review of the ten years that have passed since Vatican Council II, my thoughts went back, first of all, to the days when the Council began. On October 10, 1962, that is, on the eve of the first session, Cardinal Frings had invited me to describe for the German-speaking bishops the theological problems they would be called to work upon during the Council. In searching for a suitable introduction, I came across a text by Eusebius of Caesarea, who, in the year 325, had participated in the first ecumenical council in the history of the Church - the Council of Nicaea - and had formulated his impressions of this ecclesial assembly in the following words: "The foremost servants of God had assembled from all the churches in the whole of Europe, Africa and Asia. And the one Church, become, as it were, worldwide by God's grace, embraced Syrians, Cilicians, Phoenicians, Arabs and Palestinians as well as Egyptians, Thebans, Africans and Mesopotamians. There was even a Persian bishop at the synod. Not even the Scythians were missing. Pontus and Galatia, Cappadocia and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphilia sent their best representatives. Thracians and Macedonians, Achaeans and Epirotes came, too - and persons from even further away. . . . Even a well-known Spaniard was among the numerous participants in the assembly." In these enthusiastic words we hear an echo of the description of the feast of Pentecost given by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles; there can be no doubt, therefore, about the theological statement that Eusebius intended by his report: Nicaea was a new Pentecost, the true fulfillment of the Pentecostal sign, for now the Church was actually speaking in all languages and confessing in them the one faith, thus proving herself the Church of the Holy Spirit.

The Council is a Pentecost - that was a thought that corresponded to our own experiences at that time; not only because Pope John had formulated it as a wish, as a prayer, but because it reflected what we experienced on our arrival in the city of the Council: meetings with bishops of all countries, all tongues, far beyond what Luke or Eusebius could have imagined and, thus, a lived experience of real Catholicity with its Pentecostal hope - that was the promising signum of those first days of Vatican II.

That is the way it was then. But such a "triumphalist" text is no longer thinkable as an introduction to my present remarks. I happened, however, to see a text written some fifty years later by another Father of the Church that reflects the change of perspective that we also have experienced. The author is Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the great inheritors of Nicaea and himself a participant in the Council of Constantinople in 381, which added to the Nicaean formula the explicit statement of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. In 381, the deliberations had not yet come to an end when, through the official Procopius, the Emperor invited Gregory, an important bishop and theologian, to attend a kind of second session at Constantinople in the year 382. Gregory's answer was laconic - a refusal with the following explanation: "To tell the truth, I am convinced that every assembly of bishops is to be avoided, for I have never experienced a happy ending to any council; not even the abolition of abuses. . . , but only ambition or wrangling about what was taking place." Martin Luther, who at first called urgently for a free general council, adopted this text in 1539 in his writing "On Councils and Churches", in which he expressed his later opinion about the advantages and disadvantages of councils. For this change from an earlier enthusiasm to a later scepticism with regard to councils, Luther had reasons of his own that a Catholic will certainly not share: he had realized that a Church council must confirm Church doctrine and that he could not look for approval from such a source because he had placed himself in opposition, not just to abuses, but even to Church doctrine itself. He fought, therefore, to establish the superiority of the secular court, which seemed to offer him a better chance of a favorable hearing. But if we cannot, therefore, put too high a value on Luther's negative judgment in the meaning it had for him, the judgment of one of the great Fathers who helped to formulate ecclesial orthodoxy in the councils of the fourth century will still have its own value. Admittedly, it can be argued that, however great Gregory may have been as a theologian, as a person he was a hypochondriac and possessed of an oversensitive artistic nature. It is all the more impressive, therefore, that the judgment of someone who, also as a person, was one of the most prominent figures of the century of the great councils, Gregory's friend Basil, was actually even more sharp in his criticism. Basil speaks of the "shocking disorder and confusion" of the conciliar disputes, of the "incessant chatter" that filled the whole Church.

From the kind of macroscopic view of history with which we can look back today on the happenings of that time, we must contest the views of both these bishops: it is precisely the councils of the fourth and fifth centuries that have become beacons for the Church, that point the way to the heart of Sacred Scripture and, by the stamp they have left on its interpretation, have, at the same time, assured the unity of faith in the passage of time. But if the judgment of history is, on the whole, a different one, if only the great accomplishments have proved lasting and, vice versa, only what has lasted has been proved great, their immediate contemporaries were, obviously, repeatedly exposed to the experiences described by these two witnesses of the century of great decisions. To the macroscopic view there is opposed, as it were, the microscopic one, the view from close by. And it cannot be denied that, from close by, nearly all councils have seemed to destroy equilibrium, to create crisis. The Council ofNicaea, which formulated the definitive statement of the divine Sonship of Jesus, was followed by a crushing dispute that brought about the first great heresy in the Church, that of Arianism, and, for a decade, rent the Church to her very core. The same thing happened after the Council of Chalcedon, which defined not only the true divinity but also the true humanity of Christ. The wound inflicted at that time is not closed even today: the loyal heirs of the great Bishop Cyril of Alexandria felt that they had been betrayed by formulas opposed to the tradition they held sacred. As Monophysite Christians, they form even today a significant minority in the East who, by the very fact of their existence, let us suspect something of the harshness of the disputes of that time. Closer to the present time, we have the memory of Vatican Council I, which caused the breakup of many departments of theology in Germany. The wounds did not heal for decades.

Thus the critical development that followed Vatican Council II is part of a long history; it is surprising only because, in the enthusiasm generated by the beginning of the Council, these historical experiences were largely forgotten; perhaps also because there was a feeling that everything had been done in a way that was different and better. It seemed safe to suppose that a council that refrained from dogmatization and excluded no one would also offend no one and would be repugnant to no one but would rather meet with the approval of everyone. Actually, it met with the same fate as the councils that had preceded it; no one can seriously deny the critical manifestations to which it led. Certainly, there are also unambiguously positive effects that must not be minimized. To mention only the more important theological results: the Council reinserted into the Church as a whole a doctrine of primacy that was dangerously isolated; it integrated into the one mysterium of the Body of Christ a too-isolated conception of the hierarchy; it restored to the ordered unity of the faith an isolated Mariology; it gave the biblical word its full due; it made the liturgy once more accessible; and, in addition, it made a courageous step forward toward the unity of all Christians. Perhaps, from a later macroscopic perspective, it will be only these results that will be counted, and there may, even now, be those who, as it were, live and judge from this macroperspective. But, for anyone who feels responsible for his own age, that which may, perhaps, at some future date be the decisive factor cannot be the only criterion; it is precisely the small happenings of daily life that he must face and with regard to which he must struggle to make the right decisions. From such a close view, in fact, there are weighty and very disturbing negative factors that cannot be denied-again, to name just a few: anyone who has not discovered it for himself can learn from the statisticians that our churches, our seminaries, our convents have become more and more empty during the past ten years; it does not require extensive proof to show that the climate in the Church is at times not just frigid but even acrimonious and aggressive; it is one of the daily experiences that threaten to destroy the joy of Christianity that all kinds of divisions are disrupting community. Anyone who says all this is quickly accused of pessimism and excluded from the discussion. But there is question here of empirical facts. To feel obliged to deny them is to betray not just pessimism but despair. No, to see facts is not pessimism; it is objectivity. Only when we face them can we ask what these facts mean, whence they come and how they are to be met. Two questions present themselves, therefore, for our further discussion: first, the question of the reasons for this development and, secondly, the question of how we are to respond to it.

I. How did the postconciliar development arise?

To explain what happened, I shall limit myself to just a few points. First, we must be aware that the postconciliar crisis in the Catholic Church coincided with a global spiritual crisis of humanity itself or, at least, of the Western world; not everything that distressed the Church in those years can be attributed to the Council. The human conscience bore the stamp not just of the voluntary decisions of the individual but also, to a large extent, of those external circumstances that were produced by economic or political factors. Jesus' comment that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven describes the situation in words that cannot be ignored. I offer just one example from our own history. The collapse of the old Europe during the First World War directly and fundamentally altered the spiritual landscape and, in particular, the panorama of theology. Liberalism, which had previously flourished as the product of a sated and self-assured world, suddenly became meaningless, although its great representatives were still living and teaching. Young people were attracted no longer to Harnack but to Karl Barth: a theology based on a strong faith in revelation, a theology that was quite intentionally ecclesial, was formed amid the troubles of a changed world. The return of the old prosperity in the sixties brought with it a similar change in thinking. The new wealth and the bad conscience that accompanied it fostered that remarkable mixture ofliberalism and Marxist dogmatism that we have all experienced. We should not, therefore, exaggerate the part played by Vatican Council II in the most recent developments; Protestant Christianity underwent a similar crisis without any council, and political parties have also had to deal with a phenomenon of like origin. Nevertheless, the Council was one of the factors that shared in the development of world history. When an institution as deeply rooted in souls as is the Catholic Church is shaken to its very roots, the earthquake extends to all mankind. What are, then, the critical factors that stemmed from the Council?

Involved here, I think, are two concepts that acquired increasing significance in the consciousness of the Council Fathers, the periti and those who reported on the Council. The Council understood itself as a great examination of conscience by the Catholic Church; it wanted ultimately to be an act of penance, of conversion. This is apparent in the confessions of guilt, in the intensity of the self-accusations that were not only directed to the more sensitive areas, such as the Reformation and the trial of Galileo, but were also heightened into the concept of a Church that was sinful in a general and fundamental way and that feared as triumphalism whatever might be interpreted as satisfaction with what she had become or what she still was. Linked with this excruciating plumbing of her own depths was an almost painful willingness to take seriously the whole arsenal of complaints against the Church, to omit none of them. That implied as well a careful effort not to incur new guilt with respect to the other, to learn from him wherever possible and to seek and to see only the good that was in him. Such a radical interpretation of the fundamental biblical call for conversion and love of neighbor led not only to uncertainty about the Church's own identity, which is always being questioned, but especially to a deep rift in her relationship to her own history, which seemed to be everywhere sullied. In consequence, a radically new beginning was considered a pressing obligation. The second point to which I referred stems from this fact: something of the Kennedy era pervaded the Council, something of the naive optimism of the concept of the great society. We can do everything we want to do if only we employ the right means. It was precisely the break in historical consciousness, the self-tormenting rejection of the past, that produced the concept of a zero hour in which everything would begin again and all those things that had formerly been done badly would now be done well. The dream of liberation, the dream of something totally different, which, a little later, had an increasingly potent impact on the student revolts, was, in a certain sense, also attributable to the Council; it was the Council that first urged man on and then disappointed him, just as the public examination of conscience at first enlightened and then alienated him.

For a psychologist, this mutation of the conciliar spirit would provide an excellent example of the way in which exaggeration turns virtues into their opposites. Penance is a necessity for both the individual and the community. But Christian penance means, not self-rejection, but self-discovery. The ancient Acts of the Saints emphasize the fact that no word of complaint about creation ever crossed the lips of the Christian martyrs. In this, they differed from the Gnostics, who turned Christian penance into a hatred of mankind, a hatred of their own lives, a hatred of reality. The inner precondition for penance is precisely the affirmation of oneself, of reality as such. Its contemporary antitype is to be found in statements like that of the great painter Max Beckmann: "My religion is arrogance before God, revolt against God. Revolt because he created us, because we cannot love ourselves. In my paintings, I reproach God for everything he has done badly." Something very essential becomes evident here: radical irreconcilability with oneself that rages against the self and is no longer satisfied with creation either in oneself or in others is no longer penance; it is arrogance. Wherever the fundamental Yes to being, to life, to oneself, ceases to exist, penance disappears and turns into arrogance. For penance presumes that man is permitted to affirm himself. By its very nature, it is a penetration to the Yes in the hidden places of whatever obscures the Yes. That is why true penance leads to the gospel, that is, to joy-even to joy in oneself. The kind of self-accusation at which the Council arrived with respect to the Church's own history was not sufficiently aware of this fact and so expressed itself in ways that can only be called neurotic. It was both necessary and good for the Council to put an end to the false forms of the Church's glorification of self on earth and, by suppressing her compulsive tendency to defend her past history, to eliminate her false justification of self. But it is time now to reawaken our joy in the reality of an unbroken community of faith in Jesus Christ. We must rediscover that luminous trail that is the history of the saints and of the beautiful - a history in which the joy of the gospel has been irrefutably expressed throughout the centuries. Anyone who remembers only the Inquisition when he thinks of the Middle Ages should be asked where his eyes are. Could such cathedrals, such images of the eternal, full of light and quiet dignity, have been created if faith had been just an affiiction for mankind? In a word, it must become clear again that penance requires, not the destruction of one's own identity, but the finding of it. Wherever a positive relationship to history once again becomes manifest, there that utopianism will come automatically to an end that believes that, hitherto, everything has been done badly and only now will begin to be done properly. In any event, the end of the Kennedy era showed us plainly enough the limits of the makable, and a part of that spiritual peacefulness that we seem to observe today is undoubtedly due to the fact that making and receiving, planning and reflecting, appear to have found again a better balance.

2. What should be done?

It is even more difficult to answer this second question than it was to answer the first one: what we are discussing here is the whole problem of contemporary pastoral ministry. In this connection, I propose to touch upon two points that seem important to me: first, I shall say a few words about the real role of councils; then, by way of conclusion, I should like, in terms of the two basic tendencies of Vatican Council II, to venture a comment on the proper reception of it.

a. Meaning and limits of councils

What significance does a council actually have in the Church? With this question, we return to the point from which we started our reflections. Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil, both of whom spoke from experience, were right in saying that, with the coming together and the inevitable disagreements of many individuals, a council gives rise to unpleasant effects - ambition, strife and the wounds that accompany them. Sometimes, however, such secondary effects must be endured for the sake of removing longstanding evils, just as we take medicine, despite many side-effects, for the sake of combating a greater evil. From time to time, councils are a necessity, but they always point to an extraordinary situation in the Church and are not to be regarded as a model for her life in general or even as the ideal content of her existence. They are medicine, not nourishment. Medicine must be assimilated and its immunizing effect must be retained by the body, but, in general, it achieves its effect precisely by becoming superfluous, by continuing to be an extraordinary measure. In plain language: the council is an organ of consultation and decision. As such, it is not an end in itself but an instrument in the service of the life of the Church.

The real content of Christianity is not the discussion of its Christian content and of ways of realizing it: the content of Christianity is the community of word, sacrament and love of neighbor to which justice and truth bear a fundamental relationship. The dream of making one's whole life a series of discussions, which, for a time, brought even our universities to the brink of paralysis, also exercised an influence on the Church under the label of the conciliar idea. If a council becomes the model of Christianity per se, then the constant discussion of Christian themes comes to be considered the content of Christianity itself; but precisely there lies the failure to recognize the true meaning of Christianity.

b. The question of the proper reception of Vatican Council II

An analysis of the later history of the "Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" led me, in 1975, to the conclusion that the reception of the Council has yet to begin. But what kind of reception should it be? As I have indicated above, I shall attempt to exemplify it in terms of two basic tendencies of the Council; in the process, it may become clear, to some extent, that, while the Council formulated its pronouncements with the fullness of power that resides in it, its historical significance will be determined by the process of clarification and elimination that takes place subsequently in the life of the Church. In this way, the whole Church participates in the Council; it does not come to an end in the assembly of bishops.

One of the key words of Vatican II was collegiality. Its immediate meaning was that the episcopal ministry is a ministry with others. It is not that a particular bishop succeeds a particular apostle, but rather that the college of bishops is the continuation of the college of apostles. Thus one is not alone as bishop but essentially with others. That is true also of the priest. One is not alone as a priest; to become a priest means to enter into the priestly community that is united to the bishop. Ultimately, a basic principle of Christianity itself is evident here: it is only in the community of all the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ that one is a Christian not otherwise. The Council tried to convert this basic principle into a practical reality by forming organizations by means of which the insertion of the individual into the whole became the basic rule of all ecclesial action. In place of the informal meetings of bishops that had taken place up to that time, for instance, a strictly juridical and carefully organized bureaucracy, the episcopal conference, was created. The synod of bishops, a kind of council with regular meetings, was created to express the solidarity of all episcopal conferences. The national synods met and declared their intention of developing into permanent organizations of the Church in their respective countries. Councils of priests and pastoral counselors were formed in the dioceses and community councils in the parishes. No one will deny that the basic concept was a good one and that community realization of the Church's mission is necessary. Nor will anyone deny that much good was accomplished as a result of these organizations. But neither will anyone doubt that their uncoordinated multiplication led to an excess of duplication, to a senseless mountain of paper work and to much wasted time during which the best efforts were consumed in endless discussions that no one wanted but that seemed inevitable in view of the new forms. The limitations of this paper-dominated Christianity and of the reform of the church by paper have meanwhile become clear. It has become obvious that collegiality is one thing but that personal responsibility and personal intuition are something quite different - that they cannot be replaced and may not be suppressed. Collegiality is one principle of what is genuinely Christian and ecclesial; personality is the other. It is one of the lessons of this decade that only a proper balance of the two can create freedom and fecundity.

Let us turn now to another basic concept of the Council: that of simplicity. "Simplicity" is one of the fundamental words in the "Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy", where it is always to be interpreted as a transparency and openness to human understanding. We must say, then, that a properly understood rationality is one of the main ideas of the Council. Today it is being said with increasing frequency that the Council thereby placed itself under the aegis of the European Enlightenment. But the Council Fathers had a different motive for their orientation; they derived it from the theology of the Fathers of the Church, where St. Augustine, for example, strongly emphasized the difference between Christian simplicity and the empty pomp of pagan liturgies. But we can also say that, after the largely unsuccessful attempts to achieve such an outcome in the disputes of the nineteenth century, an entrance was provided here for the spirit of the times. In this matter, too, we are better able now to assess gain and loss. In the course of history, new growth must be repeatedly pruned and attempts must be made to reach the simplicity that lies at the heart of things; for a missionary religion, the struggle for comprehensibility is indispensable. But we had more or less forgotten that man understands not only with his reason but also with his senses and his heart; and we are only now gradually beginning to learn that, in pruning, we must distinguish between the wheat and the cockle; that we must not take the embryo as our norm but must allow ourselves to be guided by the law of life.

With this, we have begun to address the process of reception by which the word is tested in life itself and, by tedious effort, is given a clarity of meaning that it cannot possess simply as word. This process of discernment is in full course with all the sufferings and pains of childbearing, in which it is always the human person who is involved. On the one hand, there are unquestionably signs of disintegration that we must not minimize. For some, it is an exclusive and, consequently, blind rationality that diminishes and pales the mystery; for others, it is political or social zeal that reduces faith to the role of a catalyst of revolutionary activity. I have no wish to impugn the noble impulses that are at work here. A Christian faith that takes seriously the Sermon on the Mount cannot be content to accept calmly as an economic necessity the differences that exist between rich and poor; it cannot, with a shrug of the shoulders, dismiss wars and oppression as the statistically inevitable byproducts of progress. But where faith is converted into an earthly messianism that justifies the senselessness of destruction and limits man's hope to what is makable, there we find also a betrayal of Christianity and a betrayal of mankind. On the other hand, we are witnesses today of a new integralism that may seem to support what is strictly Catholic but in reality corrupts it to the core. It produces a passion of suspicions, the animosity of which is far from the spirit of the gospel. There is an obsession with the letter that regards the liturgy of the Church as invalid and thus puts itself outside the Church. It is forgotten here that the validity of the liturgy depends primarily, not on specific words, but on the community of the Church; under the pretext of Catholicism, the very principle of Catholicism is denied, and, to a large extent, custom is substituted for truth. In an intermediate space that is full of uncertainty, but, at the same time, full of honest effort and full of hope, are to be found those movements in which are expressed the indestructible longing for what is genuinely religious, for the nearness of the Divine: the movements toward meditation and the pentecostal movements, both of which are laden with ambiguities and dangers, but both of which are also full of possibilities for good. Finally, there are a number of specifically ecclesial movements that promise new possibilities: Focolare, Cursillo, Communione e liberazione, catechumenate movements and new forms of communities. Here there is apparent a search for a center that will give the lie to the diagnosis that religion is dead and that will open ways ofliving a new life built on faith that will testify anew to the inexhaustible fruitfulness of the faith of the Church.

Let us attempt here a comprehensive summary. At the end of the Council, Karl Rahner offered the following comparison: huge amounts of pitchblende are needed to produce a small quantity of radium, which is the sole object of the process. In like manner, he said, the tremendous exertion of the Council was, in the last analysis, worthwhile because of the small increase of faith, hope and charity it produced. At the time, perhaps, we could not properly appreciate to its full extent the frightening gravity of this comparison. After all, there is a necessary relationship between radium and pitchblende. Where there is pitchblende, there is radium, even if the relative amounts are discouraging. But there is no such equation between the pitchblende of words and paper that was the Council and the living Christian reality. Whether or not the Council becomes a positive force in the history of the Church depends only indirectly on texts and organizations; the crucial question is whether there are individuals saints - who, by their personal willingness, which cannot be forced, are ready to effect something new and living. The ultimate decision about the historical significance of Vatican Council II depends on whether or not there are individuals prepared to experience in themselves the drama of the separation of the wheat from the cockle and thus to give to the whole a singleness of meaning that it cannot gain from words alone. What we are thus far able to say is that the Council has, on the one hand, opened ways that lead from all kinds of byways and one-way streets to the real center of Christianity. On the other hand, however, we must be self-critical enough to acknowledge that the naive optimism of the Council and the self-esteem of many of its supporters justify, in a disturbing way, the gloomy diagnoses of early churchmen about the danger of councils. Not every valid council in the history of the Church has been a fruitful one; in the last analysis, many of them have been just a waste oftime.Despite all the good to be found in the texts it produced, the last word about the historical value of Vatican Council II has yet to be spoken. If, in the end, it will be numbered among the highlights of Church history depends on those who will transform its words into the life of the Church.

B. Church and World: An Inquiry into the Reception of Vatican Council II

Of all the texts of Vatican Council II, the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" (Gaudium et spes) was undoubtedly the most difficult and, with the "Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy" and the "Decree on Ecumenism", also the most successful. In its form and in the direction of its pronouncements, it is most closely related to the history of former councils and, more than any of the other texts, allows us to see the physiognomy of the last council. Since Vatican Council II, it has come, therefore, to be increasingly regarded as the true legacy in which, after three years of fermentation, the real intention of the Council seems to have been incorporated. The lack of clarity that persists even today about the real meaning of Vatican Council II is closely associated with such diagnoses and, consequently, with this document. Are we, then, to interpret the whole Council as a progressive movement that led step by step from a beginning that, in the "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church", was only just emerging from traditionalism to the "Pastoral Constitution" and its complementary texts on religious liberty and openness to other world religions - an interpretation that makes these texts, too, become signposts pointing to an extended evolution that will permit no dallying but requires a tenacious pursuit of the direction the Council has finally discovered? Or are we to regard the Council texts as a whole in which the documents of the last phase, which are directed to the Church's relationships ad extra, are, nevertheless, oriented toward the true center of faith that is expressed in the dogmatic constitutions on the Church and on divine revelation? Are we to read the dogmatic constitutions as the guiding principle of the pastoral constitution, or have even the dogmatic pronouncements been turned in a new direction?

I. Diagnosis of the text and its tendencies

Such considerations introduce us directly to the history of the effect of the Council and of the text we are discussing. Before attempting to shed further light on the subject, however, we must ask ourselves again what exactly was the new and special character of the "Pastoral Constitution". Obviously, it will be impossible to sketch here in a few strokes the content of this document, which is, in fact, a kind of summa of Christian anthropology and of the central problems of the Christian ethos. Despite its many shortcomings, the text has, on the whole, succeeded in so purifying and deepening the heritage of tradition that, with no curtailment in what is essential, it has new value precisely for the problems that face us today. But what was most effective was not its content, which was entirely in keeping with the tradition of the Church and exploited its latent possibilities; rather, it was the general intention - most apparent in the preface - of introducing a fundamental change. Consequently, I shall limit my remarks here to an analysis of the most characteristic features of this preface. Not, I repeat, as though I could in that way fully explain the text itself, but because, as we shall see, the history of its influence is not to be separated from the spirit of this preface and is, to a large extent, stamped with its ambiguity.

A first characteristic seems to me to reside in the concept of "world", which, despite many attempts to clarify it in section two of the document, continues to be used in a pretheological stage but which, in that very form, has exercised its special influence. By "world" the Council means the counterpart of the Church. The purpose of the text is to bring the two into a relationship of cooperation, the goal of which is the reconstruction of the "world". The Church cooperates with the world in order to build up the world - it is thus that we might characterize the vision that informs the text. It is not clear, however, whether the world that cooperates and the world that is to be built up are one and the same world; it is not clear what meaning is intended by the word "world" in every instance. In any event, we can be sure that the authors, who were aware that they spoke for the Church, acted on the assumption that they themselves were not the world but its counterpart and that they had up to then had a relationship to it that was, in fact, unsatisfactory where it existed at all. To that extent, we must admit, the text represents a kind of ghetto-mentality. The Church is understood as a closed entity, but she is striving to remedy the situation. By "world", it would seem, the document understands the whole scientific and technical reality of the present and all those who are responsible for it or who are at home in its mentality.

Linked to this striking concept of a contrast between two realms, in which "world" refers to all those forces that are responsible for the present, is a second fundamental characteristic of the text: the concept of dialogue as its basic formal classification. The Council, it states, "can find no more eloquent expression of its solidarity and respectful affection for the whole human family. . . than to enter into dialogue with it. . . . " The relationship between Church and world is regarded, then, as a "colloquium", as a speaking-with-one-another and as a mutual search for solutions in which the Church brings to bear her own particular contributions and hopes that with the contributions of others progress will be made.

It is surely permissible to see as the motivation behind this formal conception the Council's strong sentiment with regard to the dangers and needs that confront mankind today. This concentration on current pragmatic, economic, political and social tasks is made abundantly clear by the designation of the "building up of human society" as the goal of the dialogue. Anyone whose ear is still attuned to the speeches made during the last session of the Council knows how eager the Fathers were, after two years of arguing theological questions, to do something for mankind that would be concrete, visible and tangible. The feeling that now, at last, the world had to be, and could be, changed, improved and humanized - this feeling had quite obviously taken hold of them in a way that was not to be resisted. After all the surprises that had emerged in the realm of theology proper, there reigned a feeling at once of euphoria and of frustration. Euphoria, because it seemed that nothing was impossible for this Council which had the strength to break with attitudes that had been deeply rooted for centuries; frustration, because all that had thus far been done did not count for mankind and only increased the longing for freedom, for openness, for what was totally different.

With this is revealed a third characteristic of the document we are considering. The text and, even more, the deliberations from which it evolved breathe an astonishing optimism. Nothing seems impossible if humanity and Church work together. The attitude of critical reserve toward the forces that have left their imprint on the modern world is to be replaced by a resolute coming to terms with their movement. The affirmation of the present that was sounded in Pope John XXIII's address at the opening of the Council is carried to its logical conclusion; solidarity with today seems to be the pledge of a new tomorrow. The basic determining factor of the whole seems to me to lie in the relationship between goal and means. The Church cooperates with the world for the building up of society. She hopes in this way "to carry on the work of Christ": namely, "to bear witness to the truth", "to serve and not to be served". The social commitment evidenced in this dialogue with the world is presented here as a task directly imposed by the gospel so that its truth can exert its full influence. This will be accomplished in two ways: on the one hand, this truth will be the element that makes the dialogue fruitful; on the other hand, it will be recognized by the efficacy of what is accomplished. Its relationship with social action is thus a unique one of tension between goal and means in which social activity is to be understood predominantly as concrete action.

If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus.Harnack, as we know, interpreted the Syllabus of Pius IX as nothing less than a declaration of war against his generation. This is correct insofar as the Syllabus established a line of demarcation against the determining forces of the nineteenth century: against the scientific and political world view of liberalism. In the struggle against modernism this twofold delimitation was ratified and strengthened. Since then many things have changed. The new ecclesiastical policy of Pius XI produced a certain openness toward a liberal understanding of the state. In a quiet but persistent struggle, exegesis and Church history adopted more and more the postulates of liberal science, and liberalism, too, was obliged to undergo many significant changes in the great political upheavals of the twentieth century. As a result, the one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was, to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe, but there was still no basic statement of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789. In fact, an attitude that was largely prerevolutionary continued to exist in countries with strong Catholic majorities. Hardly anyone today will deny that the Spanish and Italian Concordats strove to preserve too much of a view of the world that no longer corresponded to the facts. Hardly anyone today will deny that, in the field of education and with respect to the historico-critical method in modern science, anachronisms existed that corresponded closely to this adherence to an obsolete Church-state relationship. Only a careful investigation of the different ways in which acceptance of the new era was accomplished in various parts of the Church could unravel the complicated network of causes that formed the background of the "Pastoral Constitution", and only thus can the dramatic history of its influence be brought to light.

Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, its ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of this remarkable meeting of Church and world. Basically, the word "world" means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church's group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. From this perspective, too, we can understand the different emphases with which the individual parts of the Church entered into the discussion of the text. While German theologians were satisfied that their exegetical and ecumenical concepts had been incorporated, representatives of Latin countries, in particular, felt that their concerns, too, had been addressed; topics proposed by Anglo-Saxon theologians likewise found strong expression, and representatives of Third World countries saw, in the emphasis on social questions, a consideration of their particular problems.

II. Later developments

I. Euphoria of the beginning

What has since happened to all of this? It is possible, I think, to distinguish three phases in the history of the influence exerted by the text in the first decade after the Council. At first, there was a period of beginning, marked by the euphoria of reform; we might designate as its high points the second general conference of Latin American bishops that was held in Medellin in 1968 and the appearance of the Dutch Catechism in 1966. But the founding of the periodical Concilium (1965) and the appearance of the lexicon Sacramentum Mundi (since 1967) in the same languages in which Concilium is published also belong here. In German-speaking countries, an important event of this era was the publication of Publik.

Concilium was the first clear sign of a new way. Appearing simultaneously in seven languages and supported by an editorial staff scattered throughout the world, it expressed the new Internationale of progress that owed its existence to the Council. The spirit of the Council was to find in this publication a permanent organ for the perpetuation of its influence. Both its title and its internal organization were to be evidence of its intention of preserving and developing the conciliarity of the church and of thus bringing to fruition the new recognition accorded to the body of theologians. It was the discovery that this universal impulse to enter into the modern age existed all over the world and that only such a worldwide association could give power to the thought of the theologians that brought the editorial staff together; they wanted to be, as it were, a permanent council of theologians that would increasingly realize the promise of this beginning in a constant exchange with all the vital forces of the present. If conciliarity as the new form of Catholicity meant to internationalize national tendencies, this automatically implied that from now on the tendencies of the varied particular churches would also have a determinative impact and that it could no longer be expected that the direction would be set by a single central source. The peak of the development was quickly transferred, on the one hand, to the Netherlands, on the other, to Latin America.

There were, of course, considerable differences between these two peaks of progressivism. In the Netherlands, liturgical and ecumenical matters were in the foreground. Liturgical reform very quickly exceeded official limits; ecumenical zeal could no longer be restrained within established bounds. It should, nevertheless, be added that the climate, as it were, of the whole process bore the decisive mark of Gaudium et spes. The feeling that, in reality, there were no longer any walls between Church and world, that every "dualism": body-soul, Church-world, grace-nature and, in the last analysis, even God-world, was evil - this feeling became more and more a force that gave direction to the whole. In such a rejection of all "dualism", the optimistic mood that seemed actually to have been canonized by the words Gaudium et spes was heightened into the certainty of attaining perfect unity with the present world and so into a transport of adaptation that had sooner or later to be followed by disenchantment.

Latin America followed a very different course. Even more directly than in the Netherlands, Gaudium et spes left its mark on postconciliar development. During the years of the Council, the bishops of this subcontinent had achieved organizational unity in the form of a Latin American Council of Bishops, the CELAM. The moving power of this union was, above all, the awareness of social responsibility for a continent that, even after its political liberation from the colonial domination of the Iberian powers, still lived in oppressive dependence - this time, on the Anglo Saxon economy first of England, then of the United States. The cry of the poor that made itself heard there had a direct and particularly profound impact on the Catholic bishops because there was question here of a continent that is, at least statistically, almost totally Catholic, a continent that contains most of the world's Catholics. That precisely this Catholic continent should be one of the poorest became, in the historical awakening of the Council, a challenge that could no longer remain unanswered. Consequently, the first extraordinary assembly of the Latin American Bishops' Council, in Mar del Plata in 1966, had as its central theme the social and economic problem, which, in line with the thinking of the Council, it addressed from the perspective of "reform", that is, according to the Western concept of building up by means of development. The second CELAM conference, held in Medellin in 1968, found itself in a new climate. From the encyclical Populorum progressio, which appeared in 1967, and from the manifesto signed in 1967 by fifteen bishops of the Third World, they had received a new theme: "liberation".With this was introduced a second and fateful stage in the reception of the influence of Gaudium et spes. The drama of Camillo Torres, the guerilla priest with the name of one of the liberators from Spanish dominion, who was killed in February 1966, acquired increasingly historical dimensions.The period of optimistic agreement with the modern spirit, with its progress and with its offer of development for underdeveloped countries, came almost abruptly to an end. For A. Garcia Rubio, the advent of the theology of liberation meant, at the same time, the crisis of the modern world. Latin America can find no promise of help for its problems in enlightened progress. On the contrary, it sees therein precisely the reason for its misery. Its goal cannot be to become "modern" but to overcome "the modern spirit and the modern dialectic, the fullest expression of which is to be found in Hegel. Marxist dialectic must also be overcome. . . . " This is - and from the Latin American perspective, with full right - exactly the opposite of the direction taken by Gaudium et spes and, especially, by its postconciliar acceptance in the Netherlands. The problem of Latin America was and is, in fact, not reconciliation with the spirit of the modern era, identification with the ideology of Western Europe and the United States. If, for the Church in Europe, such a reconciliation might appear to be a return home from the ghetto, a solution of old problems about the relationship of Church and state and, in consequence, the healing of a trauma, that was and is not true of Latin America. Granted, the French Revolution had provided the opportunity of liberation from the Iberian powers; but immediately afterward the spirit of liberalism and capitalism fostered by the Anglo Saxon powers had become an even more painful slavery, for these only apparently liberated countries, which, as a result, could certainly not find their identity in this spirit or regard it as their "return home". By a kind of inner necessity, therefore, the optimism of the co untersyllabus gave way to a new cry that was far more intense and more dramatic than the former one.

Thus the intellectual cohesion of the Concilium-front was likewise called into question -indeed, its very foundation, namely, union in the spirit of the modern era, was shown to be flawed. In view of these circumstances, it seemed only logical that progressive Latin Americans should level sharp criticism precisely against the representatives of progressive European and North American thought. Hans Kung was accused of a shockingly reactionary political attitude and of being blind to the practical dimensions of the problem. The theology of secularization was criticized for its lack of clarity and its political naivete. Rahner and Congar were accused of naivete in the orientation of their thought; even the European and American theologians who advocated revolution and violence were not spared. Hugo Assmann, one of the principal spokesmen of Latin America, expressed his agreement with Pere Le Guillou, who spoke of charlatanism in reference to the events in France in May 1968. In view of all this, Latin America sought its own way under the slogan of "liberation", in which there appeared a new distinctive element of the influence of Gaudium et spes: insistence on a theology proper to Latin America - an idea that soon found resonance on the other side of the Atlantic in the call for an African theology. As we know, the Catholic University of Santiago in Chile became the center for such experiments in a new orientation of thought; as we know also, it was precisely there that the crisis of what had thus been begun was heightened into tragic realism.

2. Disenchantment and crisis

With the reference to the shift in Latin American thought as contrasted with the euphoria with which the Church in the West had greeted the modern spirit, the end of the first phase of the history of the influence of the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" was likewise indicated. Garda Rubio expresses the change in this way: "The initial optimism quickly gave way to an increasing pessimism about the extent to which this theology was capable of shedding light on the fundamental reality of Latin America. " From a global perspective it must be admitted that the years of euphoria were followed by a period of disenchantment and crisis. I can recount here only a few evidences of this many-leveled process. In this connection the fate of the Dutch Catechism and the course of the Dutch Church as a whole must be mentioned first. The corrections introduced into the text by Rome did not succeed in lessening the certainty and unity of the conscience of the postconciliar Church in Europe with regard to progress but rather, by the resultant heightening of anti-Roman sentiment, made her even more determined. It was not the criticism from Rome that so quickly extinguished the meteoric brilliance of this book but the internal development of Church and theology in the Netherlands, which soon outstripped the stage of friendly confidence that was mirrored in the Catechism. The urge to develop led now to radicalization, in the light of which what had been considered progressive yesterday was judged today to be incredibly reactionary. The Catechism was denounced in the land of its origin as an expression of bourgeois Christianity; it was accused, for instance, of speaking not only mythologically but even mythically, that is, of not just interpreting human existence but of ascribing to faith a reality proper to it: "We cannot rid ourselves of the impression that, according to these texts, there is supposed to exist somewhere a reality proper to faith alongside the ordinary reality of daily life." T. van der Berk, the author of these words, adds: "There is a 'Roman reality' and a 'Roman language'. Where the Catechism adheres to the former, it is at once apparent in the language." For such a "theology", the reality of faith has become a Roman reality - what an unintended laus Romae in a dark hour! When progress causes faith to be regarded as but an anachronistic facet of Church policy, it has undoubtedly achieved its goal: the suppression of dualism, identification with the world; but its meeting with the modern world occurs too late to enable it to share in the relative innocence that world once possessed and in its early hopes. When the modern era is no longer seen from the unreal perspective of the ghetto but is experienced in its naked reality, it is obvious that it knows it has come to an end and is struggling in despair against its own lack of orientation.

If Latin America was the first, because of its historical unfamiliarity with the European and Anglo Saxon phenomenon of the "modern era", to break away from the concept of reform by evolution that characterized the end of the Council and the early postconciliar era, the new development was not long in making itself felt in Europe as well. The most sensitive breeding ground, and those in which the new tendency most quickly became known, were, understandably enough, the student centers in which the collapse of the liberal and conservative mentality of postwar Western Europe was brought about with elemental violence. Countercurrents were at work here which are difficult to assess; after the period of reconstruction occurred a mutual interaction of politico-economic changes, psychological changes deriving from the attainment of spiritual responsibility by a generation that had had no experience of war and radical changes in the religious consciousness of both Catholics and Protestants. Characteristic of the whole situation was the fact that the turning, with a kind of rapturous fervor, to a Marxism that was at once anarchical and utopian not only bore within itself a religious pathos but was also supported primarily by student chaplains and student groups, who saw in it the dawning of a fulfillment of Christian hopes. The most outstanding event was that which occurred in France in May 1968. Dominicans and Jesuits stood on the barricades; the interdenominational communion that took place during the ecumenical Mass celebrated on the barricades was long regarded as a kind of salvation-historical event, as a revelation-event that introduced a new era of Christianity. Naive affirmation of the world had turned into a radical battle cry not only against the modern era but against the establishment per se. Such a militant attitude aroused new enthusiasm in young persons who thought they had found in it once again the elan of Christianity, who perceived its revolutionary force and who, at the same time, experienced Christianity as a promise, a potential for what was different, what was better, and hence as a new challenge. When we know the background, we can understand, to some extent, why the KDSE [Katholische Deutsche Studenten Einigung: German Catholic Student Union], which was founded by the bishops after the war as an umbrella organization of all Catholic student associations, became an ideological center that assigned itself the brave task of becoming "the condition that would make possible a new Church" in which the Christian concepts of liberation, service and communion would be impregnated with new Marxist realism.

I regard as the third indication the Congress organized by the editors of Concilium in Brussels in 1970 to mark the fifth anniversary of the founding of their periodical. The meeting was obviously intended as an antithesis to the congress of theologians initiated by the Pope and supported by innumerable cardinals, archbishops and bishops that was held in Rome in 1966 and by means of which Rome had attempted to keep the newly awakened power of theology in consonance with the hierarchy; but also evident was a certain unmistakable antithesis to the International Pontifical Commission of Theologians founded in 1969. Concilium sought to establish itself, on the model of the ancient rights of the Sorbonne, as the true center of teaching and teachers in the Church, to become the real rallying-place of theologians from all over the world. But Brussels became, in fact, a turning point after which the authority of that union for progress began to crack. The great scholars associated with Concilium Rahner, Congar, Schillebeeckx, Kung - were not as united as they had thought. Participants were often offended by the manner in which they were obliged to associate themselves with statements in the preparation of which they had had no share. They could no longer remain oblivious of a fact of which many of them had previously been unaware: that "progress" no longer represented a unified concept and that, in many particulars, it was perilously close to dissociating itself from the core of Christian tradition.

In the public consciousness of the Church in Germany, the demise of Publik became, ultimately, the event that marked the end of these developments. Anyone who reads the passionate comments of that time cannot help wondering why the end of a publication that had not yet made its mark could cause such a breach in the history of salvation, could be a "return to the ghetto". In fact, however, the failure of the attempt begun with such high aspirations meant the farewell to an illusion that had found there the sign of its own reality. For the leaders of postconciliar progressivism, Publik had become the place where Church and world united, where the trauma of the ghetto was overcome. But-the world did not accept it. Publik never ceased to be an unreal world created by intellectuals.

Only since that time has it become generally clear to the Church that progress no longer represents a unified force and that it is no longer possible to act in terms of the simple options offered by the Council. During the Council, the majority of bishops and theologians had shared a mutual concern to combat what was obsolete and to teach the courageous acceptance of the new as a duty for. the Church of today. Since then it seems to be generally accepted that, to be in the right, one has only to affirm the new and reject the old. Anyone who objected, as Hans Urs von Balthasar was alone in doing, that the program of the Council was not so easily realizable was counted among those who had not read the signs of the time. Only when the ruins of false hopes came crashing down was certainty shattered and new questions raised.

3. Present state of the question

It is perhaps too soon to say that for some time now the era of crisis has been changing into an era of consolidation. Let us ask, first, what we are to think of what has taken place thus far. The summary I have presented in a few short pages seems to suggest a negative diagnosis. Is anything left but the heaped-up ruins of unsuccessful experiments? Has Gaudium et spes been definitively translated into luctus et angor? Was the Council a wrong road that we must now retrace if we are to save the Church? The voices of those who say that it was are becoming louder and their followers more numerous. Among the more obvious phenomena of the last years must be counted the increasing number of integralist groups in which the desire for piety, for the sense of the mystery, is finding satisfaction. We must be on our guard against minimizing these movements. Without a doubt, they represent a sectarian zealotry that is the antithesis of Catholicity. We cannot resist them too firmly. But we must likewise ask ourselves, in all earnestness, why such contractions and distortions of faith and piety have such an effect and are able to attract those who, by the basic conviction of their faith as well as by personal inclination, are in no way attracted by sectarianism. What drives them into a milieu in which they do not belong? Why have they lost the feeling of being at home in the larger Church? Are all their reproaches unfounded? Is it not, for example, really strange that we have never heard bishops react as strongly against distortions in the heart of the liturgy as they react today against the use of a Missal of the Church that, after all, has been in existence since the time of Pius V? Let it be said again: we should not adopt a sectarian attitude, but neither should we omit the examination of conscience to which these facts compel us.

What shall I say? First of all, one thing seems to me to have become abundantly clear in the course of these ten years. An interpretation of the Council that understands its dogmatic texts as mere preludes to a still unattained conciliar spirit, that regards the whole as just a preparation for Gaudium et spes and that looks upon the latter text as just the beginning of an unswerving course toward an ever greater union with what is called progress - such an interpretation is not only contrary to what the Council Fathers intended and meant, it has been reduced ad absurdum by the course of events. Where the spirit of the Council is turned against the word of the Council and is vaguely regarded as a distillation from the development that evolved from the "Pastoral Constitution", this spirit becomes a specter and leads to meaninglessness. The upheavals caused by such a concept are so obvious that their existence cannot be senously disputed. In like manner, it has become clear that the world, in its modern form, is far from being a unified entity. Let it be said once for all: the progress of the Church cannot consist in a belated embrace of the modern world - the theology of Latin America has made that all too clear to us and has demonstrated thereby the rightness of its cry for liberation. If our criticism of the events of the decade after the Council has guided us to these insights, if it has brought us to the realization that we must interpret Vatican Council II as a whole and that our interpretation must be oriented toward the central theological texts, then our reflections could become fruitful for the whole Church and could help her to unite in sensible reform. The "Constitution on the Church" is not to be evaluated in terms of the "Pastoral Constitution", and certainly not in terms of an isolated reading of the intention expressed in the prefatory paragraphs, but vice versa: only the whole in its proper orientation is truly the spirit of the Council.

Does this mean that the Council itself must be revoked? Certainly not. It means only that the real reception of the Council has not yet even begun. What devastated the Church in the decade after the Council was not the Council but the refusal to accept it. This becomes clear precisely in the history of the influence of Gaudium et spes. What was identified with the Council was, for the most part, the expression of an attitude that did not coincide with the statements to be found in the text itself, although it is recognizable as a tendency in its development and in some of its individual formulations. The task is not, therefore, to suppress the Council but to discover the real Council and to deepen its true intention in the light of present experience. That means that there can be no return to the Syllabus, which may have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage. In the long run, neither embrace nor ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world. The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that the "demolition of the bastions" is a long-overdue task.

The Church cannot choose the times in which she will live. After Constantine, she was obliged to find a mode of coexistence with the world other than that necessitated by the persecutions of the preceding age. But it bespeaks a foolish romanticism to bemoan the change that occurred with Constantine while we ourselves fall at the feet of the world from which we profess our desire to liberate the Church. The struggle between imperium and sacerdotium in the Middle Ages, the dispute about the "enlightened" concept of state churches at the beginning of the modern age, were attempts to come to terms with the difficult problems created in its various epochs by a world that had become Christian. In an age of the secular state and of Marxist messianism, in an age of worldwide economic and social problems, in an age when the world is dominated by science, the Church, too, faces anew the question of her relationship with the world and its needs. She must relinquish many of the things that have hitherto spelled security for her and that she has taken for granted. She must demolish longstanding bastions and trust solely to the shield of faith. But the demolition of bastions cannot mean that she no longer has anything to defend or that she can live by forces other than those that brought her forth: the blood and water from the pierced side of the crucified Lord On 19:31-37). "In the world you will have trouble, but be brave: I have conquered the world" Jn 16:33). That is true today, too.

With some hesitation, I shall attempt, by way of conclusion, to portray the drama of the first post-conciliar decade with its opening scene and its climax in a parable that, in view of the harshness of our experiences, may seem to be a highly inappropriate flight into the realm of fancy. Nevertheless, despite the inadequacy and the questionable applicability inherent in every comparison, this parable does not seem to me to be so very far removed from our own experiences. I refer to what was, perhaps, the most perfect literary expression of the drama of the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern age-written by an author who knew himself to be more experienced in suffering than in song: Miguel de Cervantes. His Don Quixote begins as a farce, a crude mockery that is far from being a work of the imagination or a piece of light literature. The humorous auto-da-fe in the sixth chapter, in which the pastor and the barber burn the books of the unfortunate knight, is a very authentic gesture: the world of the Middle Ages is cast out, the door is barred against its reentry; it belongs now irrevocably to the past. In the person of Don Quixote, a new age mocks the old one. The knight becomes a fool; awakened from the dreams of yesteryear, a new generation faces reality without disguise and without adornment. In the lighthearted ridicule of the first chapter, there is reflected something of the change, of the self-assurance, of a new age that has forgotten its dreams, has discovered reality and is proud of having done so. But, as the novel progresses, something strange happens to the author. He begins gradually to love his foolish knight. This cannot, certainly, be explained simply by the fact that he was offended by the mockery of a literary thief who turned his noble fool into a lowly clown, although it may well have been the figure of the false Don Quixote that first made him fully aware that his fool had a noble soul; that the foolishness of consecrating his life to the protection of the weak and the defense of truth and right had its own greatness. Behind the foolishness, Cervantes discovers the simplicity. "He can do evil to no one but rather does good to everyone, and there is no guile in him." What a noble foolishness Don Quixote chooses as his vocation: "To be pure in his thoughts, modest in his words, sincere in his actions, patient in adversity, merciful toward those in need and, finally, a crusader for truth even if the defense of it should cost him his life." The foolish deeds have become a lovable game behind which may be seen the purity of his heart-indeed, the center of his foolishness, as we are now aware, is identical with the strangeness of the good in a world whose realism has nothing but scorn for one who accepts truth as reality and risks his life for it. The arrogant certainty with which Cervantes burned his bridges behind him and laughed at an earlier age has become a nostalgia for what was lost. This is not a return to the world of the romances of chivalry but a consciousness of what must not be lost and a realization of man's peril, which increases whenever, in the burning of the past, he loses the totality of himself.

Epilogue - Principles of Catholic Theology, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1987, pp. 365 - 393

The second study of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI...

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO THE ROMAN CURIA OFFERING THEM HIS CHRISTMAS GREETINGS

Thursday, 22 December 2005

The last event of this year on which I wish to reflect here is the celebration of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council 40 years ago. This memory prompts the question: What has been the result of the Council? Was it well received? What, in the acceptance of the Council, was good and what was inadequate or mistaken? What still remains to be done? No one can deny that in vast areas of the Church the implementation of the Council has been somewhat difficult, even without wishing to apply to what occurred in these years the description that St Basil, the great Doctor of the Church, made of the Church's situation after the Council of Nicea: he compares her situation to a naval battle in the darkness of the storm, saying among other things: "The raucous shouting of those who through disagreement rise up against one another, the incomprehensible chatter, the confused din of uninterrupted clamouring, has now filled almost the whole of the Church, falsifying through excess or failure the right doctrine of the faith..." (De Spiritu Sancto, XXX, 77; PG 32, 213 A; SCh 17 ff., p. 524).

We do not want to apply precisely this dramatic description to the situation of the post-conciliar period, yet something from all that occurred is nevertheless reflected in it. The question arises: Why has the implementation of the Council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult?

Well, it all depends on the correct interpretation of the Council or - as we would say today - on its proper hermeneutics, the correct key to its interpretation and application. The problems in its implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarrelled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.

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-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.

The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.

These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.

In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.

The nature of a Council as such is therefore basically misunderstood. In this way, it is considered as a sort of constituent that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one. However, the Constituent Assembly needs a mandator and then confirmation by the mandator, in other words, the people the constitution must serve. The Fathers had no such mandate and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord and was given to us so that we might attain eternal life and, starting from this perspective, be able to illuminate life in time and time itself.

Through the Sacrament they have received, Bishops are stewards of the Lord's gift. They are "stewards of the mysteries of God" (I Cor 4: 1); as such, they must be found to be "faithful" and "wise" (cf. Lk 12: 41-48). This requires them to administer the Lord's gift in the right way, so that it is not left concealed in some hiding place but bears fruit, and the Lord may end by saying to the administrator: "Since you were dependable in a small matter I will put you in charge of larger affairs" (cf. Mt 25: 14-30; Lk 19: 11-27).

These Gospel parables express the dynamic of fidelity required in the Lord's service; and through them it becomes clear that, as in a Council, the dynamic and fidelity must converge.

The hermeneutic of discontinuity is countered by the hermeneutic of reform, as it was presented first by Pope John XXIII in his Speech inaugurating the Council on 11 October 1962 and later by Pope Paul VI in his Discourse for the Council's conclusion on 7 December 1965.

Here I shall cite only John XXIII's well-known words, which unequivocally express this hermeneutic when he says that the Council wishes "to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion". And he continues: "Our duty is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us...". It is necessary that "adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness..." be presented in "faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another...", retaining the same meaning and message (The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., p. 715).

It is clear that this commitment to expressing a specific truth in a new way demands new thinking on this truth and a new and vital relationship with it; it is also clear that new words can only develop if they come from an informed understanding of the truth expressed, and on the other hand, that a reflection on faith also requires that this faith be lived. In this regard, the programme that Pope John XXIII proposed was extremely demanding, indeed, just as the synthesis of fidelity and dynamic is demanding.

However, wherever this interpretation guided the implementation of the Council, new life developed and new fruit ripened. Forty years after the Council, we can show that the positive is far greater and livelier than it appeared to be in the turbulent years around 1968. Today, we see that although the good seed developed slowly, it is nonetheless growing; and our deep gratitude for the work done by the Council is likewise growing.

In his Discourse closing the Council, Paul VI pointed out a further specific reason why a hermeneutic of discontinuity can seem convincing.

In the great dispute about man which marks the modern epoch, the Council had to focus in particular on the theme of anthropology. It had to question the relationship between the Church and her faith on the one hand, and man and the contemporary world on the other (cf. ibid.). The question becomes even clearer if, instead of the generic term "contemporary world", we opt for another that is more precise: the Council had to determine in a new way the relationship between the Church and the modern era.

This relationship had a somewhat stormy beginning with the Galileo case. It was then totally interrupted when Kant described "religion within pure reason" and when, in the radical phase of the French Revolution, an image of the State and the human being that practically no longer wanted to allow the Church any room was disseminated.

In the 19th century under Pius IX, the clash between the Church's faith and a radical liberalism and the natural sciences, which also claimed to embrace with their knowledge the whole of reality to its limit, stubbornly proposing to make the "hypothesis of God" superfluous, had elicited from the Church a bitter and radical condemnation of this spirit of the modern age. Thus, it seemed that there was no longer any milieu open to a positive and fruitful understanding, and the rejection by those who felt they were the representatives of the modern era was also drastic.

In the meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.

The natural sciences were beginning to reflect more and more clearly their own limitations imposed by their own method, which, despite achieving great things, was nevertheless unable to grasp the global nature of reality.

So it was that both parties were gradually beginning to open up to each other. In the period between the two World Wars and especially after the Second World War, Catholic statesmen demonstrated that a modern secular State could exist that was not neutral regarding values but alive, drawing from the great ethical sources opened by Christianity.

Catholic social doctrine, as it gradually developed, became an important model between radical liberalism and the Marxist theory of the State. The natural sciences, which without reservation professed a method of their own to which God was barred access, realized ever more clearly that this method did not include the whole of reality. Hence, they once again opened their doors to God, knowing that reality is greater than the naturalistic method and all that it can encompass.

It might be said that three circles of questions had formed which then, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, were expecting an answer. First of all, the relationship between faith and modern science had to be redefined. Furthermore, this did not only concern the natural sciences but also historical science for, in a certain school, the historical-critical method claimed to have the last word on the interpretation of the Bible and, demanding total exclusivity for its interpretation of Sacred Scripture, was opposed to important points in the interpretation elaborated by the faith of the Church.

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.

Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.

These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within. On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.

Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.

It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.

The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.

The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God's grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all.

At the same time, she assures peoples and their Governments that she does not wish to destroy their identity and culture by doing so, but to give them, on the contrary, a response which, in their innermost depths, they are waiting for - a response with which the multiplicity of cultures is not lost but instead unity between men and women increases and thus also peace between peoples.

The Second Vatican Council, with its new definition of the relationship between the faith of the Church and certain essential elements of modern thought, has reviewed or even corrected certain historical decisions, but in this apparent discontinuity it has actually preserved and deepened her inmost nature and true identity.

The Church, both before and after the Council, was and is the same Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, journeying on through time; she continues "her pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God", proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 8).

Those who expected that with this fundamental "yes" to the modern era all tensions would be dispelled and that the "openness towards the world" accordingly achieved would transform everything into pure harmony, had underestimated the inner tensions as well as the contradictions inherent in the modern epoch.

They had underestimated the perilous frailty of human nature which has been a threat to human progress in all the periods of history and in every historical constellation. These dangers, with the new possibilities and new power of man over matter and over himself, did not disappear but instead acquired new dimensions: a look at the history of the present day shows this clearly.

In our time too, the Church remains a "sign that will be opposed" (Lk 2: 34) - not without reason did Pope John Paul II, then still a Cardinal, give this title to the theme for the Spiritual Exercises he preached in 1976 to Pope Paul VI and the Roman Curia. The Council could not have intended to abolish the Gospel's opposition to human dangers and errors.

On the contrary, it was certainly the Council's intention to overcome erroneous or superfluous contradictions in order to present to our world the requirement of the Gospel in its full greatness and purity.

The steps the Council took towards the modern era which had rather vaguely been presented as "openness to the world", belong in short to the perennial problem of the relationship between faith and reason that is re-emerging in ever new forms. The situation that the Council had to face can certainly be compared to events of previous epochs.

In his First Letter, St Peter urged Christians always to be ready to give an answer (apo-logia) to anyone who asked them for the logos, the reason for their faith (cf. 3: 15).

This meant that biblical faith had to be discussed and come into contact with Greek culture and learn to recognize through interpretation the separating line but also the convergence and the affinity between them in the one reason, given by God.

When, in the 13th century through the Jewish and Arab philosophers, Aristotelian thought came into contact with Medieval Christianity formed in the Platonic tradition and faith and reason risked entering an irreconcilable contradiction, it was above all St Thomas Aquinas who mediated the new encounter between faith and Aristotelian philosophy, thereby setting faith in a positive relationship with the form of reason prevalent in his time. There is no doubt that the wearing dispute between modern reason and the Christian faith, which had begun negatively with the Galileo case, went through many phases, but with the Second Vatican Council the time came when broad new thinking was required.

Its content was certainly only roughly traced in the conciliar texts, but this determined its essential direction, so that the dialogue between reason and faith, particularly important today, found its bearings on the basis of the Second Vatican Council.

This dialogue must now be developed with great openmindedness but also with that clear discernment that the world rightly expects of us in this very moment. Thus, today we can look with gratitude at the Second Vatican Council: if we interpret and implement it guided by a right hermeneutic, it can be and can become increasingly powerful for the ever necessary renewal of the Church.

Extract from the address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia, December 22, 2005

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