The Gardener’s Class starts the year-long celebration of the Fiftieth Foundation Anniversary of their Garden.
The Grand Finale
The true ‘Grand Finale’ of the council is the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes GS). Talk of the Church ad extra and you find the 93 paragraphs of GS as the ultimate reflection covering topics ranging from atheism to economics, abortion, and war. It provides tremendous guidance for our daily lives as well.
“Gaudium et spes, luctus et angor hominum huius temporis… “
“The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted: these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.
Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of men.
United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every man.
That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.”
Actually, a little more than a year before the start of Vatican II, Pope John already made big strides in his dream of ecclesial aggiornamento when he issued the encyclical Mater et Magistra which the Gardener’s class translated into the vernacular and issued in easy-to-follow question-and-answer style. It was the 70th anniversary updating of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, the thirtieth of Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, and the twentieth of Pope Pius XII’s radio broadcast of 1 June 1941- social teachings all, the Church acting ad extra.
In GS, said Father Rahner, “the Church as a totality becomes conscious of its responsibility for the dawning history of humanity. [And] this responsibility, our political theology, can no longer be excluded from the consciousness of a world Church.”
He said that in Vatican II the Catholic Church had made a “qualitative leap” towards becoming a “world-church” as, according to him, the Church had previously been too much culturally tied to Europe and North America. He described the Council as a caesura, a “neat break” from a culturally narrow past, from a monolithic Eurocentric Church to a truly pluriform world-Church. Just as in its earliest years, the Church underwent a transition from its inward-looking Jewish-Christian world into the vast and unfamiliar Greek-Roman world, and in the process, breaking away from cherished traditions and principles such as circumcision and the Torah, so now, it is moving from a Eurocentric, monolithic Roman Church to a multi-cultural, polycentric world-Church. This new transition demands, as before, a caesura, a break, an interruption in the history of salvation.
Vatican II was the first modern council that Asian Bishops took part in, though the actual number of Asian Bishops was relatively small – 298 when the Council opened and in the fourth and last period, of 2,625 participants, 311 in all. We’ll return to this in a little while when we touch on the Synod of Bishops.
The Synod of Bishops
In response to the desire of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council to keep alive the positive spirit engendered by the conciliar experience, the Synod of Bishops was established as a permanent institution by Pope Paul VI on 15 September 1965.
While he was still Archbishop of Milan, in a talk commemorating the death of Pope John XXIII, he made reference to an “on-going collaboration of the episcopate that is not yet in effect, which would remain personal and unitive, but given the responsibility of governing the whole Church”.
After his election as Pope he kept returning to the concept of collaboration within the episcopal body – the bishops in union with the successor of Saint Peter – in a talk he gave to the Roman Curia (21 September, 1963), at the opening of the second session of the Second Vatican Council (29 September, 1963) and again at its closing (4 December, 1963).
Felici
On 15 September 1965, at the beginning of the 128th General Assembly (of the second Vatican Council), Bishop Pericle Felici, General Secretary of the Council, promulgated the Motu Proprio – Apostolica Sollicitudo with which the Synod of Bishops was officially instituted.
Years later (1996) the Synod of Bishops was called to a special assembly for Asia – the continent hosting almost 65 per cent of humanity, mainly non-Christian – in an activity that would seem to make up for the brevity of the Declaration on Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate).
Asia is an extensive area that includes the Middle East, the Gulf countries, South Asian countries, the Central Asian countries, the South East Asian countries, Asian Siberia and the countries of the Far East. It is mother to many races and peoples and pantheon to the world’s great religions. Some of the most profound religious, philosophical, social and linguistic systems and organizations known to history are credited to Asian sages, saints and religious visionaries from time immemorial. They have guided the destinies of millions of peoples through centuries and millennia.
It was here in Asia where Jesus Christ was born in the flesh. It was in Asia where He preached the Good News, suffered, died, rose again, breathed the Holy Spirit upon His disciples and sent them to the ends of the earth to proclaim the Good News and gather together communities of believers.
It was here in Asia where the history of evangelization began, in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. The first Christian community was formed here. From Jerusalem it spread to Antioch. From then on, it spread to the West and to the East. Some of the early Councils were held here in Asia. Several of the great Fathers of the Church were Asians. Most of the earliest liturgical traditions, families and patriarchates have their origins in Asia.
Pope Francis I
Today, the Philippines is the only predominantly Catholic country in Asia, accounting for nearly half the Catholic population of Asia. We do not say this as judgment but as mere fact. It is a fact so stunning that it can render you speechless. Of more than three billion Asians, less than a hundred million are Catholic Christians. Good Pope Francis, coming as he does from a co-third-world region such as Asia belongs to may have a greater appreciation of this fact. And good Father Karl Rahner may have to reiterate his line of world church with less finality, more tentatively, more humbly, which I am sure he’d have no problem about.
We have here a fact tendentious to a challenge – the constantly fresh challenge of effective missionary activity, gentle, culture-sensitive, tenacious.
The Establishment of Episcopal Conferences
Episcopal conferences have long existed as informal entities, official assemblies of all the bishops of a given territory, but were first established as formal bodies by the Second Vatican Council (Christus Dominus, 38), and implemented by Pope Paul VI’s 1966 motu proprio Ecclesiae sanctae. The operation, authority, and responsibilities of episcopal conferences are currently governed by the 1983 Code of Canon Law (see especially canons 447-459).
The nature of episcopal conferences, and their magisterial authority in particular, was subsequently clarified by Pope John Paul II’s 1998 motu proprio Apostolos suos. A conference of bishops cannot make doctrinal declarations unless it receives two-thirds approval of the individual bishops of the conference and receives the subsequent recognitio, that is, recognition of approval, of the Holy See.
THE CBCP
On February 15, 1945 the Rev. William Piani, D.D., apostolic delegate to the Philippines, created the Catholic Welfare Organization to address the country’s needs following World War II. It had 17 members and incorporated on January 22, 1946 with the purpose to unify, coordinate and organize Filipino Catholics to work together on education, social welfare, religious and spiritual issues under the direction of the Filipino bishops. The Holy See approved the Constitution on June 28, 1952.
After Vatican II, the CWO became the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, on January 31, 1968. In 1972, its structure was updated, and was approved by the Pope Paul VI on May 21, 1973. Finally, in January 23, 1988, a revised Constitution was approved by the Holy See.
Many consider the CBCP an influential body in Philippine politics and society particularly when it filled the public protest vacuum during the start of martial law and issued strong pastoral statements against the dictatorship of the late Ferdinand Marcos. Centuries of episcopal “conservatism” were erased almost overnight and Philippine bishops began to have a “progressive liberal” image of identification with “the poor, the deprived, and the oppressed.”
Its National Secretariat for Social Action became the leading edge of religious outreach to the Philippine underclass. In the fullness of time, the CBCP’s moral judgment of the farcical character of the 1986 presidential election ushered in a people’s urban uprising that was characterized by massive non-violence around the same time a similar phenomenon was happening in Pope John Paul’s Poland.
Rightly or wrongly, accurately or inaccurately, the CBCP is credited with or blamed for the downfall of two presidents occasioned by massive non-violent insurrectionary protest of a united urban populace. The power arises from clear, timely, unafraid moral pronouncements.
But, perhaps, too, aside from the “superstructural” episcopal actions like the occasional moral pronouncements by individual bishops and the CBCP on matters affecting the people, there is also the tenacious “infrastructural” action by the laity and the basic communities.
For the Philippines, the key pastoral idea of Vatican II which gave birth to creative and effective pastoral initiatives is its thrust towards a more participatory Church. The post-conciliar projects such as inculturation, collegiality, co-responsibility, liturgical renewal and other similar projects are concrete expressions of participation: the institutional church participating more fully in the daily lives of the people, and the laity participating in shaping the life and ministry of the Church.
Many Philippine bishops are fully convinced that Basic Ecclesial Communities are the most compelling evidence of the reception of communio ecclesiology in the Philippines where you find the key elements of a renewed church according to the vision of Vatican II: dialogue, participation and co-responsibility.
You all know this, how BECs are communities guided by the pastoral method summarized as “faith-discernment-action;” how the members reflect on their experiences in the light of the Word of God and discern together the course of action to which the Holy Spirit is directing them.
When the Philippines was under the grip of a dictatorship and countless innocent civilians were subjected to warrantless arrests, illegal detentions, suspicion of conniving with insurgents, and forced recruitment to paramilitary groups, the BECs were its members’ way of making sense of their experiences of violence and injustice and coming up with discerned actions in response to their experience.
The present situation of massive systematic automated electoral fraud is still a matter for people’s discernment. The target of manipulation is the composition of national government. Local government contests are left to traditional vote-buying sprees. But who will be allowed into the Philippine Senate and the 58-member party-list representation in the House of Representatives is now exposed to be a matter of massive electronic fraud though utterly divorced from appreciation by local voters who are more concerned with local officials. And in another election such national level targeting will necessarily include the offices of the country’s President and Vice-President. Thus, the CBCP is at it again; it has no choice; it must heed the call of the hour; it must speak out even if doing so may yet lead again to nothing less than regime change. Would you not call that “the spirit of Vatican II?”
AND NOW:
Pope Francis has appointed a commission of eight cardinals to advise him on reforms of the Roman Curia.
In the first clear indication that he plans major changes in the administration of Vatican affairs, the Pope named cardinals from every continent to the commission. The latter will be asked to “advise him in the government of the universal Church and to study a plan for revising the apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia, Pastor Bonus.” Pastor Bonus, released in 1988 by Pope John Paul II, included the last major changes in the responsibilities of the Roman Curia, the administrative offices of the Holy See.
The new commission of cardinals was announced on April 13, 2013, exactly one month after the election of Pope Francis. The Vatican announcement noted that in convening the group, the Pope was “taking up a suggestion that emerged during the general congregations preceding the conclave,” – in sum, as immediate response to urgently felt needs.
Pope Francis was elected at a time when many Church leaders were calling for changes in the Roman Curia, after a series of missteps that culminated in the “Vatileaks” scandal, the leaks of documents that pointed to squabbling and charges of corruption in the Vatican bureaucracy, especially in the Secretariat of State. Pope Francis had addressed the full staff of the Secretariat of State on April 12, the day before the commission of cardinals was announced.
IN CONCLUSION
Many talk of the Catholic Church not living up to “the spirit of Vatican II,” and many more mock the phrase as if it’s a ruse for turning the council on its head.
But many of the Gardener’s generation remember this time in a warm and positive way, and that legacy is lasting. The council was, for most Catholics, a breath of fresh air.
For many, Vatican II is most pivotal not because it declared new doctrine but because it changed the way the faith engages the modern world just like the original convenor, Pope John XXIII, wanted it and prayed so hard for it.
Most significantly, the Council opened up a space and brought fresh air to that space enabling Catholics to think critically, intelligently, thoughtfully, thoroughly, about their religious tradition…conversing with those engaged in science, government and other faith traditions.
In the world but not of it they would always feel at home because a Council had defined it: they are God’s people in via, a people going home. FINIS