Chapter 9

Vatican II And The Church In The Modern World

Midpoint in the twentieth century, the Catholic Church was united in doctrine, worship, and loyalty to the pope and bishops.In the twentieth century, increasingly secular attitudes towards matrimony and sexuality changed the way the family and society understood itself. The practice of birth control by means of contraception was spreading, spurred by new oral contraceptives and the sexual permissiveness they encouraged, and by propaganda about a largely fictitious “population explosion.”

Abortion already was legal in some places, and efforts were underway to bring about its legalization elsewhere. Marriage also came under assault from the growing acceptance of divorce.For the Church, much of the upheaval is associated with the Second Vatican Council, with controversy over how the Council’s decisions should be interpreted and carried out, and with the dissent and defections from the clergy and religious life during and after the council. Vatican II itself did not encourage or cause these things, but the winds of change it occasioned contributed to bringing them about.

Part IBlessed John XXIII and the Council

The Caretaker Pope

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born on November 25, 1881.

During his time as a delegate in the East, Archbishop Roncalli developed good relations with the Orthodox Church, and during World War II, he worked to assist Jews and other refugees.

The Caretaker Pope (cont’d)In June 1953, Pope Pius XII named Roncalli a cardinal and Patriarch of Venice, just as Pope St. Pius X had been five decades earlier. In Venice, he became a popular figure known for pastoral zeal and an informal style. At seventy-six, Roncalli was seen as a popular choice for pope, a well-loved man of the people who could offer a smooth transition between Pius XII and Roncalli’s own successor.For this reason reason it was thought that he would be a “caretaker pope.” One who would provide a smooth transition and would not ruffle any feathers.

Open your text to pg. 402

What was one of Pope John XXIII's first acts as pope in regards to the college of cardinals?

What three projects did he announce for his pontificate?

What nickname was he given due his kindly and friendly manner?

John XXIII

Following his election as pope, one of Bl. John XXIII’s first acts was to abolish the rule dating back to the sixteenth century which set the number of cardinals at seventy. Thereafter he took steps to increase the size of the College of Cardinals and make it a more international body. It was a bold and progressive move, but it was only the start for the seventy-six-year-old historian pope.

The Caretaker Pope (cont’d)

On January 25, 1959, Pope Bl. John XXIII announced to the world three projects for his pontificate: a diocesan synod for Rom, the drafting of a new Code of Canon Law, and an ecumenical council—the first such gathering of the world’s bishops since Vatican Council I (1869-1870) and only the twenty-first ecumenical council in the Church’s history.

Bl. John XXIII was a man of faith and piety whose friendly manner won him fame as “Good Pope John.” He cracked jokes and visited prisoners and hospital patients. He took ground breaking ecumenical steps, including establishing a Vatican office for Christian unity.

The Caretaker Pope (cont’d)Bl. John XXIII published several notable encyclicals:Ad Petri cathedram (To the Chair of Peter), written in 1959, discussed the unity of the Church. Mater et magistra (Mother and Teacher), 1961, developed Catholic social teaching and stressed the duty of developed nations to provide assistance to underdeveloped ones.

John XXIII

This champion of peace died of stomach cancer on June 3, 1963, after the first session of his most lasting legacy, the Second Vatican Council. Pope John Paul II beatified him on September 3, 2000.

The Second Vatican Council

In the apostolic constitution Humanae salutis (For the Salvation of men) of December 25, 1961, formally convoking the Council, he spoke of a “twofold spectacle”—the secular world in “a grave state of spiritual poverty” and the Church, “so vibrant with vitality.” The Church, Pope Bl. John declared, was strong in faith and enjoyed an “awe-inspiring unity.” Through an ecumenical council, it hoped to update herself in order to meet the urgent spiritual needs of the world.

The Second Vatican Council

The Second Vatican Council took place in four sessions; October 11-December 8, 1962; September 29-December 4, 1963; September 14-November 21, 1964; and September 14-December 8, 1965.

General congregations were held in St. Peter’s Basilica. About 2,860 of the world’s bishops attended some or all of the Council.

Open your books to page 404

How many documents came out of Vatican II?

What were the four constitutions which came out of the Council?

What were their latin names?

The Second Vatican Council (cont’d)The substantive work of the Second Vatican Council is embodied in sixteen documents. There are four “constitutions”

on the Church (Lumen Gentium) on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) on Liturgy and (Sacrosanctum Concilium) on the Church in the Modern world (Gaudium et

Spes) nine “decrees” and the three “declarations”

The four constitutions are the central documents of Vatican II and provide the theological basis and vision for the rest.

The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church

Lumen gentium (Light of Nations) uses scriptural images like Body of Christ and People of God to present the Church as a communion. The Church, it says, is a hierarchically structured community of faith whose members posses a fundamental equality in dignity and rights while having different but complementary roles in her mission.

The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation

Dei verbum (The Word of God) joins sacred tradition in Sacred Scripture as God’s divinely inspired word with approval of the responsible use of contemporary scholarly methods for understanding its historical context and literary forms. Scripture and Tradition are not two independent sources

of Revelation but are intimately and inextricably linked: “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single

sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church.”

The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation

It also stresses that the “authentic interpretation” of God’s word “has been entrusted to the teaching office of the Church alone.”

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy

Sacrosanctum concilium (The Sacred Council) recognized the liturgy as “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed, at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows.At the heart of the Liturgy is the Eucharist, the source

or 'font' of grace but also the end to which we direct our worship, God, himself.

The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World

Gaudium et spes (Joy and Hope) was the Council’s most direct response to Pope Bl. John’s desire that the Church be more directly at the service of the world. Its famous opening words declare: “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.”

Part II Pope Paul VI and the Postconciliar Years

Paul VI was strongly committed to Christian unity and pursued this cause through meetings with the leaders of other churches and religious bodies.Pope Paul VI moved vigorously to carry out the decisions of Vatican Council II. New commissions and other structures were established and detailed documents were issued spelling out steps to take in the reform of the liturgy, the restoration of the permanent diaconate, and other areas. He approved the New Order of the Mass (that is, the new rite of the Eucharistic liturgy in the Western Church) and published a reformed liturgical calendar.

Open to pg. 406-407

What was the name of Paul VI’s document which had the greatest impact?

What did it talk about? What did many people expect from the Pope?

Humanæ Vitæ

The document of Pope Paul VI that had the greatest impact was his encyclical Humanæ vitæ (On Human Life), published July 25, 1968.In which, he reaffirmed that the use of artificial contraception is intrinsically wrong. In Humanæ vitæ, the pope wrote that “the Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” (no. 11).

Humanæ Vitæ (cont’d)

Thus the stage was set for Paul VI’s encyclical declaring that there could and would be no change in Catholic doctrine on this matter. He taught:

This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the

inseparable connection, established by God, which

man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act. (HV 12)

In 1968, Pope Paul VI warned in "Humanae Vitae" of four results if

the widespread use of contraceptives was accepted:

1. General lowering of moral standards

2. A rise in infidelity, and illegitimacy

3. The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men. 4. Government coercion in

reproductive matters.

Sound Familiar?

Open to pg. 407

Along with dissent from Humanae Vitae, what other factors made for troubled conditions in the Church?

Who was chosen to be the next pope after Paul VI dided?

Why did he choose a double-name?

A Culture of Dissent and Defection

Along with dissent from Humanæ vitæ, other factors made for troubled conditions in the Church beginning in the late 1960s. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) said,

“dissension…seems to have passed over from self-criticism to self-destruction.” Especially destructive, he added, was the tendency to turn

away from what the council actually taught, in favor of a so-called spirit of Vatican II—in reality, a “pernicious anti-spirit.” (“How many old heresies have surfaced again in recent years

that have been presented as something new!” he exclaimed.)

A Culture of Dissent and Defection (cont’d)

Reflecting on the turmoil of these years, Pope Paul VI said in a homily on June 29, 1972, that “the smoke of Satan” seemed to have entered the Church (Homily, June 29, 1972). Worn out by the long struggle to establish order and defend orthodoxy, he died on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1978.

Part IIIThe Restoration of Confidence and Hope

Pope John Paul I took two names, John Paul, to signify continuity with his immediate predecessors.

Barely a month after his election, on September 28, 1978 the world was shocked to learn the he had died of a heart attack.

Pope John Paul II: The Early Years

The first non-Italian in more than 450 years.

On October 16, 1978, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow was elected the two hundred sixty-third successor of St. Peter as Vicar of Christ and head of the Church. He took the name John Paul II.

Exercises to be handed in

Turn to page 426 in your textbook.Work on questions 1-15 on a separate sheet of paper.

JPII: The Early Years

Born in May 1920, Karol Wojtyla grew up in Poland in the small town of Wadowice

His mother died when he was 9 years old Three years later, his older brother Edmund died After attending school in Wadowice, he moved with

his father to Krakow and attended the Jagellonian University

JPII The Early Years

He took part in a theatre group and loved outdoor activities

When WWII broke out and Poland was overrun, the German occupiers closed the university

Wojtyla worked in a stone quarry and later in a chemical factory

He participated in an underground theatre as a cultural protest against the occupation

His father died in 1941

JPII The Early Years

Pope John Paul II: The Early Years (cont’d)

In October 1942, he entered an underground seminaryAfter his ordination on November 1, 1946, he traveled to Rome to study at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican institution popularly known as the Angelicum.An active participant in the Second Vatican Council, Archbishop Wojtyla participated in drafting the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World and the Declaration on Religious Freedom. Pope Paul VI named him a cardinal in June 1967.

Pope John Paul I and the Contemporary World

John Paul II spelled out the program of his pontificate in surprising detail in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis (The Redeemer of Man), published March 4, 1979.

The dignity and destiny of the human person can only be truly understood in the light of Christ.

Pope John Paul I and the Contemporary World (cont’d)

John Paul II saw two fundamental threats to Christianity in the contemporary world: •the secular humanism of Marxist Communism, embodied especially in the Soviet Union and the puppet states of the Soviet empire, •and the secular humanism of the consumer society present in the United States and Western Europe, which gave rise to a “culture of death.”

John Paul I and the Church

He wrote fourteen encyclicals.

While taking bold and original stands on many current issues, he firmly upheld traditional positions on matters like contraception, abortion, divorce, the celibacy of priests in the Western Church, and the impossibility of women’s ordination.

Beginning in 1981, Pope John Paul’s principal collaborator in dealing with issues of faith and dissent was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger—the future Pope Benedict XVI—Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

John Paul II and the Church (cont’d)

Pope John Paul II commissioned the first new universal catechism of the Catholic doctrine since the sixteenth century.

John Paul II had strong traditional devotions, especially to the Blessed Virgin. In October 2002, he surprised many people by adding to the Rosary five new Luminous mysteries based on Jesus’ public life.

John Paul II and His Assassin

On the afternoon of May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was struck by three bullets while being driven in a slow-moving convertible through St. Peter’s Square.

John Paul II and His AssassinMiraculously, the bullet that entered the Pope missed

his main abdominal artery by a fraction of an inch and he survived.

He said, “one hand fired, and another [the Blessed Virgin Mary's] guided the bullet.”

Later he publicly forgave his would-be assassin.

He later met with him personally.

He also worked to have the man pardoned for his crime.

Part IVThe Church in the United States:

The Colonial Era

Missionaries preached the gospel with great courage and dedication. Outstanding figures included the Franciscan Juan Padilla, Servant of God, martyred by Indians in Kansas around 1540, and six French Jesuit priests and two lay assistants, known as the North American Martyrs, who were killed by the Iroquois between 1642 and 1649 in parts of what are now northern New York and Ontario. These latter were canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1930.

The Colonial Era (cont’d)

Probably the best known of these heroic martyrs was the Jesuit priest St. Isaac Jogues who died in 1646.Thanks to the zeal of such missionaries, many Indians did become Christians—for example, Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha, a young Mohawk woman who was baptized in 1676 and died four years later at the age of twenty-four; she was beatified in 1980; her feast day is celebrated on July 14.

Part VCatholicism and the Birth of a NationThe Revolutionary Years (1775-1783)

Catholics, few though they were, played a considerable role in the new country’s emergence.The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution rejected the idea of an established national church and guaranteed the right of free exercise of religion.

The Post-Revolutionary PeriodIn 1789 Baltimore was designated the first diocese of the new country, and Father Carroll was named its bishop after a vote by the priests.

John Carroll lays the cornerstone for the Cathedral of the Assumption in Baltimore

The Carroll Family and the Founding of the United States

John Carroll was probably the most influential Catholic figure in the establishment of the Church in America.The first half of the nineteenth century saw a number of outstanding figures in American Catholicism.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774-1821), a convert from Episcopalianism and widowed mother of five, began the Sisters of Charity in the United States and was canonized in 1975. Her feast day is celebrated on January 4.

Part IVA Church of Immigrants

Massive Catholic immigration from Europe to the United States began early in the nineteenth century and continued well into the twentieth century. Of the nearly three million Catholic migrants who came between 1830 and 1870, most came from Ireland, Germany, and France. The 1880s saw more than one million additional catholic immigrants, with Catholics from Eastern and Southern Europe—Poles, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Italians, and others—joining the influx.The Catholic Church was the largest religious body in the country by about the 1860s.

The Rise of Anti-Catholicism

The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk

It was written by Protestant ministers. The book helped fuel anti-Catholic violence throughout the United States.

The 1850s brought the Know-Nothing movement (so named because members were instructed to say they knew nothing about its activities), which sought to exclude foreigners and Catholics from public office.

The Rise of Anti-Catholicism (cont’d)

The Know-Nothings were a significant political force until about 1860. Catholic political strength, however, grew during these years, especially in urban areas of the East and Midwest where the Irish proved skillful at political organization. However, anti-Catholicism remained a factor in American life throughout the rest of the century and much of the century that followed.

Part VII - Growth and Conflict •American Catholicism continued its remarkable expansion after the Civil War, with dioceses, parishes, educational institutions at all levels, hospitals, and other organizations and programs multiplying rapidly.•The provincial councils were followed in 1852, 1866, and 1884 by plenary councils, also held in Baltimore, which legislated for the needs of the expanding Church.•The major figures in American Catholicism in these decades included two who came to represent the opposing sides of the debate then taking shape over Catholic cultural assimilation: Isaac Hecker and Orestes Brownson.

Growth and Conflict (cont’d)Isaac T. Hecker (1819-1888) was a convert to Catholicism who first became a Redemptorist priest, then founded a new religious community, the Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle (Paulists), committed to the conversion of Protestant America.

In order to evangelize effectively, Hecker argued, the Church in the United States had to be fully and unreservedly American.

Orestes Brownson (1803-1876), the leading Catholic intellectual of his day, had been part of the New England philosophical and religious movement called Transcendentalism before becoming a Catholic in 1844, the same year as his friend Hecker.

A writer and social critic, he was editor of a periodical called Brownson’s Quarterly Review.

Growth and Conflict (cont’d)

The two leading figures in the hierarchy in this eraCardinal Gibbons of Baltimore (1834-1921) and Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul (1838-

1918)—were “Americanizers” who favored the full and rapid integration of Catholicism and Catholics into the surrounding culture.

Others were not so sure rapid Americanization was a good idea. German Catholics in particular favored a slower approach that would allow immigrants to retain their own language and their German Catholic culture.

Part VIII - The Twentieth CenturyBy the year 1900, Catholics in the United States numbered 12,000,000 out of a total population of 76,000,000. They lived in eighty-two dioceses and were served by 12,000 priests and many thousands of religious men and women who staffed a large and growing network of Catholic schools and other institutions. Catholic immigration remained high. One notable figure of this era was the Italian-born St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917). Mother Cabrini founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, who worked among Italian immigrants in Chicago and other cities.

She became an American Citizen in 1909 and, in 1946, became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized. Her feast day is celebrated on November 13.

The Great War and Years of Depression

During World War I, American Catholics in large numbers once again (many had fought in General Washington’s army and had fought in the armed forces throughout the country’s history) fought for their country.During the 1920s and 1930s, many Catholic organizations and movements were established to reflect the Catholic Action movement championed by Pope Pius XI to encourage lay involvement in social and political activity. The Liturgical Movement for renewal of the liturgy also became an important presence among American Catholics during these years.

The Great War and Years of Depression (cont’d)

•In 1928, the Democratic Party nominated former New York Governor Al Smith as its candidate for president. •It was the first time a Catholic had run for the nation’s highest office. •There was little chance of any Democrat being elected president that year, but Smith’s candidacy occasioned a resurgence of anti-Catholicism, and he lost badly.

The Great War and Years of Depression (cont’d)

With the Great Depression and the New Deal in the 1930s, Catholics swung more strongly than ever behind the Democrats. There also was another Catholic response to the economic and social crisis—the Catholic worker movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.

The Catholic Worker movement was a sometimes controversial group committed to a radical brand of Catholicism that advocated social justice, aid to the poor, and pacifism.

Although never large in numbers, the Catholic worker movement helped shape the attitudes of many Catholic intellectuals and activists.

World War II and After

Catholics flocked to college with the assistance of the GI Bill, a government program that paid military veterans’ education costs.

Until now, many catholic immigrants had been unable to attend college

More education and increased prosperity fostered Catholics’ upward mobility and accelerated their entry into the social mainstream.In these years, too, churchmen like:

Francis Cardinal Spellman, the powerful Archbishop of New York;

the convert and author turned Trappist monk, Thomas Merton; television preacher Bishop Fulton Sheen; and Church-state theologian John Courtney Murray, S.J,

became national figures.

World War II and After (cont’d)Catholicism was on its way to becoming a dominant force in shaping American culture.

A rise in anti-Catholicism was one predictable result, reflected in the book American Freedom and Catholic Power (1949) by writer Paul Blanshard.

Against this background, the election in 1960 of Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy as the first Catholic President of the United States was a watershed event—a definitive defeat for anti-Catholicism. On the other hand, it came at a price. During the campaign, Kennedy gave a famous speech to Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas, assuring them that, if elected, he would not let his religion influence his performance in office. In doing so, he established a pattern—certainly not an integrated, Catholic approach—that many Catholic politicians would adopt in the decades that followed.

Vatican II and the American Church

American Catholics were generally enthusiastic about the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), and implementation of its decisions seemed to go well at first. Responding to a Vatican II mandate, the bishops organized themselves as an Episcopal conference—the National Conference of Catholic Bishops—replacing the old, more loosely structured NCWC.

Vatican II and the American Church (cont-d)

•Though some remained staunchly faithful, many Catholic colleges and universities distanced themselves from the Church. •Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanæ vitæ, reaffirming the Church’s condemnation of artificial birth control, met with organized dissent. •Unauthorized liturgical experiments became commonplace.•Mirroring the anti-authoritarian mood of the 1960s and growing opposition to the Vietnam War, authority in the Church came under attack. •According to opinion polls, many Catholics rejected the doctrinal and moral teaching of the Church on numerous issues.

Vatican II and the American Church (cont-d)

•Perhaps the most damaging and disheartening development in the American Catholic Church was the disclosure of rampant sexual abuse of minors among some American clergy.•This scandal was something which was, unfortunately, “swept under the rug” for many years.•Some men who were expected to live according to a higher standard were found to have fallen in an inexcusable way.•This had a detrimental effect on the Church even to this day.

Conclusion: Present and Future

Pope John Paul II called often for a “new evangelization” in formerly Christian regions—notably Western Europe—where faith and religious practice have declined in the face of affluence, pleasure-seeking, and the secularist mentality arising from the rationalism of eighteenth-century enlightenment philosophy and the scientism of the nineteenth century.

Although conditions in the church stabilized and improved under John Paul II, the crisis of dissent that began in the 1960s persisted, especially in Western Europe and North America. Neo-Modernism made deep inroads.

Conclusion (cont’d)Programs for implementing the Catechism of the Catholic Church have begun to address these problems within the context of the New Evangelization.A deeply disturbing aspect of secularism in the twentieth century was the rise of the culture of death—a worldview and value system expressed in things like contraception, population control, and abortion. Moreover, other forces of evil were presented as progress: euthanasia, the acceptance of homosexual acts, human cloning, the destruction of nascent human life for the sake of scientific experimentation, embryonic stem-cell research, and the threat of large-scale warfare by nuclear, chemical, or other means. The Church supports genuine human rights and the progress of scientific knowledge at the service of human needs. However, it is necessary to distinguish true rights and legitimate advances from policies and practices based on utilitarian “ends-justify-the-means” reasoning.

Conclusion (cont’d)

In the face of these and other challenges now present or yet to come, however, the Church continues her pilgrimage through history with serenity and hope.

The program already exists: it is the plan found in the gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ himself…

Conclusion (cont’d)Recent events have reopened the debate about whether American culture at its roots is or is not compatible with Catholic beliefs and values. Some hold that founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are grounded in the natural law tradition largely shaped by Catholic thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas; as a result, they say, American values offer a congenial setting for Catholicism. Others maintain that the founding documents are grounded in the rationalism of the eighteenth century Enlightenment: moral relativism, religious indifferentism, individualism, and the ethic of “choice” visible in today’s American Culture.

Conclusion (cont’d)Moreover, although American Catholics are more numerous today than ever, only about one out of three regularly attends Sunday Mass, and many reject Church teachings on important matters of belief and practice. Although the number of priests and religious has fallen in the past forty years, new vocations to the priesthood and religious life are showing much promise that is expressed in serious spirituality and vibrant pastoral zeal. A number of dioceses and religious orders throughout the United States are showing hope in the form of a small resurgence of priestly vocations.

Conclusion (cont’d)The United States is the scene of a profound conflict between Americans who support religiously based values and secularized Americans who advocate a relativistic morality of individual “choice”. Catholics can be found on both sides of this divide. In these new, and in some ways more difficult, circumstances, many American Catholics still face the old need to decide what it means to be both Catholic and American.With the election of Pope Benedict XVI and then Pope Francis, the joyful optimism of their predecessor, John Paul II, is very much alive and well.

THE END