By Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith
It
is 50 years since the Vatican Council began, and everyone, it seems,
has had something to say on the anniversary; what strikes me, rather
belatedly, reading the documents again, just how the world has changed
since 1962, in a way that the Council Fathers could not possibly have
foreseen.
Let me count the ways.
First, back in 1962, the
Catholic Church spoke, more or less, with one voice. Something like a
papal encyclical, or, on a local level, a bishop’s pastoral letter,
enjoyed a clear and open field, relatively free from competition. There
simply was not then the vast unregulated river of comment that streams
forth day and night from the internet, 24-hour television, and the
press. Today, a papal encyclical still packs a considerable punch, but
thousands of people, indeed millions, can now publish their opinions on
religious matters, who could not in the past. This profusion of voces
populi resembles the sort of anarchy that all those who wish to control
freedom of expression must dread.
Now, of course, it has to be
said that much of this commentary is of no enduring value, but some of
it is. When the history of these times comes to be written, some of
these voices will be heard still, and future generations will see early
21st-century Catholicism as pluralistic, not monolithic: a cacophony of
discordant voices, not a choir all singing from the same hymn sheet.
This is not the Church that the Council Fathers foresaw, or the
documents of the Council presuppose.
Second, the Council Fathers
imagined a dialogue with the world which now no longer seems possible.
Once upon a time, Catholics could engage in discussions at official
level with polite Marxists from the Eastern Bloc. That bloc no longer
exists; indeed, most blocs have crumbled. While the Church may still
want dialogue, there seem now to be few worthy partners. Few organised
bodies seem interested in reasoned debate. Take the question of gay
marriage and the farcical consultation on the same subject. The British
Government itself has rejected dialogue with the Church, as Bishop Joseph Devine has pointed out.
As
with David Cameron, so with Richard Dawkins, and so Bin Laden’s
minions. I am not for a moment saying that all these people belong in
the same category, but they all share one thing – they are not
interested in talking to the Catholic Church.
Third, the tone of
the Council documents, and their emphasis on a knowledge of the Bible,
seen, for example, in the introduction of the new lectionary, indicate
an expectation that there would be a new flowering of study and
learning. Sadly, for reasons largely beyond the Church’s control, the 50
years since the Council have seen a return to the Dark Ages in
education. Dumbing down across the board, most clearly evident in the
abandonment of the classics in schools, has largely cut theology off
from its sources. The decline, too, of a book culture has led to the
Bible becoming less accessible to many. What was once the shared
patrimony of humanity – the stories of the Bible – has now become the
preserve of those who dwell in a cultural ghetto. This collapse in
educational standards is something everyone should lament, but few do,
preferring to deny that it has happened. Catholicism needs a high
culture in which to flourish, and that high culture, in Europe at least,
is withering. The Vatican Council was, in some senses, the last hurrah
of a high culture that seemed healthy, but was in fact to be dealt its
death blow in 1968. Vatican II was supposed to usher in a new age of
Biblical knowledge. Instead, the Bible is now less known than it was 50
years ago.
This may sound pessimistic, and in a way it is. The
Vatican II Fathers probably, if they thought of the future at all,
thought of the Church continuing much as before. In the last 50 years,
this has been the unspoken assumption – that the Catholic Church would
continue, along the same model as it has since the reign of Blessed Pius
IX. But this looks increasingly unlikely. It is more than possible –
indeed it seems more or less certain – that the Church of the future is
not going to be like the Church of the past. It is going to have to do
without the huge number of priests and religious that it once considered
normal; it is going to have to do without the institutional structures.
But this shedding of an old skin, which may well be deeply painful,
could in fact be liberating. We could be on the brink, at last, of
seeing the birth of a new model of Church, one that the Council Fathers
hoped for, but the exact form of which would have surprised them
considerably.
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