On the morning of October 17, 1978, the newly-elected Pope John Paul II concelebrated Mass with the College of Cardinals and pledged that the program of his papacy would be the full implementation of the Second Vatican Council. That was his “definitive duty,” for the Council had been “an event of utmost importance” in the two millennia of Christian history. As I explain in To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books), the next 26-and-a-half years saw John Paul II fulfill that pledge, for his pontificate was an epic of teaching and witness that helped provide the Council the interpretive keys it had not given itself.
Unlike the previous 20 ecumenical councils, Vatican II did not articulate or identify a definitive key to its proper interpretation: something that made clear that “This is what we mean.” Other councils had written creeds, defined dogmas, condemned heresies, legislated canons into Church law and commissioned catechisms. Vatican II did none of those things, which was one reason why a donnybrook over the Council’s intention and meaning ensued.
In the 1975 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (Announcing the Gospel), Pope Paul VI began the process of giving the Council-without-keys an authoritative interpretation by recalling John XXIII’s original intention for the Council: Vatican II was to launch the Church on a revitalized mission of Christ-centered evangelization. John Paul II filled in the blanks of what that new evangelization would involve with his voluminous magisterium — and by his pastoral visit to the Holy Land in March 2000, which reminded the Church that Christianity began with a personal encounter with the Risen Lord Jesus, who must be ever at the center of the Church’s proposal and proclamation to the world.
At John Paul II’s side during this great work of providing the keys to the Council was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would succeed the Polish pope as Pope Benedict XVI. Like his papal predecessor, Ratzinger was a man of the Council; in fact, the young Bavarian theologian had been one of the three most influential theological advisers to the conciliar bishops. So it was not surprising that, in his first Christmas address to the Roman Curia in 2005, Benedict XVI should have forthrightly addressed the question of the proper interpretation of Vatican II.
Like the man who summoned it, Pope John XXIII, Pope Benedict knew that the Council was not convened to reinvent Catholicism; that was not what ecumenical councils do. Rather, the Council was intended to rekindle the Church’s faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and renew the Church’s experience of the Holy Spirit, so that, like the disciples after the first Christian Pentecost, the Church would be emboldened for radical mission. Thus Vatican II, he taught, should be understood as a Council that developed the Church’s tradition organically. Vatican II was not a rupture with tradition, but a deepening of the Church’s self-understanding in continuity with divine revelation.
Which is why, in To Sanctify the World, I suggest that the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI should be understood as one, continuous, 35-year arc of conciliar interpretation, providing the keys that unlock Vatican II’s authoritative teaching and evangelical power.
What, then, of the present pontificate?
Pope Francis has spoken of his respect for the Council. And his call for a Church “permanently in mission” certainly reflects John XXIII’s original intention for Vatican II, which Pope John summed up in one succinct sentence in September 1962: “The purpose of the Council is….evangelization.” Yet the present pontificate has diverged from the Council’s teaching in several ways.
The Vatican’s current China policy contradicts the Council’s teaching that no rights or privileges are to be given governments in the appointment of bishops — a teaching now legally embodied in Canon 337.5. The Holy See’s adherence to the 2019 Abu Dhabi Declaration and its claim that the plurality of religions is an expression of God’s will does not sit easily with the Council’s proclamation of Jesus Christ as the one, unique redeemer of humanity: the Lord who is the center of history and the cosmos.
One of Vatican II’s signal accomplishments was its strong affirmation of the authority to govern conferred by sacramental ordination to the episcopate; recent reforms of the Roman Curia, the deposition of bishops without due process and curial diktats about the proper celebration of Mass (and even the content of parish bulletins!) undercut that authority. And the pontificate’s exceptionally narrow interpretation of the Council’s teaching on the liturgy has made the implementation of Vatican II even more contentious.
These disparities will be a focus of the next papal conclave.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
“The purpose of the Council is….evangelization.”
“Catholic anathema only damns Catholics to hell. No Papal Church bindings to sin affect the Protestants, who are outside the Catholic Church!”, a fellow Catholic told me. I replied, “Well then it is better for me to become a Protestant, where Papal Catholic anathemas cannot harm me or my family. We will simply sneak into Mass for the Eucharist, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation, as Protestants”. “No! No! No!, If you leave the Catholic Church you are automatically anathematized and go to hell”, my Catholic friend responded.
I see Vatican II as the day ‘No Salvation outside the Church’, switched to Popes only using the ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ to only spiritually punish Catholics, not our newly accepted ‘Ecumenical’ Protestant brothers and sisters. I see this as the most tremendous injustice against Catholics. Also, what Protestant is going to want to convert to Catholicism knowing that they are only subjecting themselves to Catholic auto-anathemas and their spiritual death capabilities.
If Popes and Councils are not going to use the ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ to enforce Christ’s Laws equally applying to all people on earth, then have Pope Francis loost all Papal and Council bindings from the past 2000 years. All the worlds people will simply take Pope Francis’ and Council’s remarks as ‘Pastoral’ opinions and advice.
Matthew 16:13
Jesus replied, “Blest are you, Simon son of John! No mere man has revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. I for my part declare to you, you are ‘Rock,’ and on this rock I will build my church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it. I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
John 20:20
At the sight of the Lord the disciples rejoiced. “Peace be with you,” he said again. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then he breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound.”
The underlying principle is that non-culpable ignorance excuses you from holding heretical beliefs. That principle is holds inside and outside the Church.
The trouble is, we tend to consider all non-Catholics as strictly non-culpably ignorant, with the corollary that the more Catholic you appear, the more culpable you must be. There is a general tendency for non-Catholics to be more badly catechized (and for badly catechized Catholics to leave the Church) but ignorance is not necessarily non-culpable, even among non-Catholics. We have an obligation to seek the truth.
We assume no/low culpability in a specific person when we cannot prove otherwise to avoid the sin of rash judgement. It’s a prudent move. But it seems rather strange to assume that in the modern world, with more information in a cell phone than was available to St. Thomas Aquinas, that the reason people in general stay Protestant is that they just can’t figure out where the truth is, even with honest, persistent effort. That makes about as much sense as assuming a Catholic parish made up almost entirely of 2-child families doesn’t have a contraception problem because it could be infertility. “Those who seek, find.” Eventually.
What we get from the Church is truth, and that truth is bounded with fences, AKA anathemas. For all the disciplinary abuses in Catholic history (including recent history) the Church can’t send you to hell – only define how you send yourself there so that you can avoid it. I’ll take that deal, gladly. I see the cessation of warnings for Protestants as a tremendous injustice to *them*, not to us.
“Which is why, in To Sanctify the World, I suggest that the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI should be understood as one, continuous, 35-year arc of conciliar interpretation, providing the keys that unlock Vatican II’s authoritative teaching and evangelical power.”
And we have all seen the catastrophe that has been. When is there ever after 60 years’ time going to be the kind of hard, thorough, and courageous critical examination of the horrendous failures of Vatican II? The shop-worn bromides that Weigel continues to offer about Vatican II can no longer be taken seriously and border on the delusion and irrationality
It is not that Vatican II was a rupture from the 2000 year Tradition and Teaching of the Catholic faith. What ruptured and has continued to this day is a rupture from Vatican II and the continuous Teaching and Tradition of the Church by a mob of renegade bishops who have thrown their lot in with Secular Man.
We read: “Unlike the previous 20 ecumenical councils, Vatican II did not articulate or identify a definitive key to its proper interpretation: something that made clear that ‘This is what we mean.’”
Is there one significant exception to this observation? Two comments:
FIRST, the case is made that the Council did clarify what it meant about the “hierarchical communion” in the possibly ambiguous Chapter 3 of the schema on the Church, when it added the Prefatory Note. The note was prepared at the instruction of Pope Paul VI, and added to the schema by the pope himself, and accepted by the Council as part of the schema before the final vote of 2134 to 10….
“The pope also explicitly extended the interpretation of the note to the whole of Chapter 3, and not only to the qualifications [….] On Tuesday, November 17, each Council Father received a personal printed copy of the Preliminary Explanatory Note, and afterwards the Council voted 2099 to 46 in favor of the manner in which the Theological Commission had handled the qualifications in Chapter 3” (Fr. Ralph M. Wiltgen, SVD, “The Rhine Flows into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II, 1967, pp. 228-234).
SECOND, although briefly, the Council inserted clarity—in the schema Gaudium et spes, itself–about natural law, which today is synodally obsured:
“Contemplating this melancholy state of humanity, the Council wishes to recall first of all the permanent binding force of the universal natural law and its all-embracing principles. Man’s conscience itself gives ever more emphatic voice to these principles. Therefore, actions which deliberately conflict with these same principles, as well as orders commanding such actions, are criminal. Blind obedience cannot excuse those who yield to them” (n. 79).
[“Binding,” a word curiously absconded by the German “synodal path” which announces itself as “binding” within the non-universal tumor of Germany. You just cannot trust used car salesmen, even in red hats!]
Ah, bishops.
“One of Vatican II’s signal accomplishments was its strong affirmation of the authority to govern conferred by sacramental ordination to the episcopate; recent reforms of the Roman Curia, the deposition of bishops without due process and curial diktats about the proper celebration of Mass (and even the content of parish bulletins!) undercut that authority. And the pontificate’s exceptionally narrow interpretation of the Council’s teaching on the liturgy has made the implementation of Vatican II even more contentious.”
These matters are a fair bit more complicated than Mr Weigel suggests. The undercurrent in all this is the misbehavior of bishops (those who committed crimes and the many more who covered up sin in the clergy) not to mention the running amok of many traditionalists as a response to the generous freedoms provided them by two popes–over the objections of many bishops–especially in 2007.
Any Church–universal, diocese, parish, or monastery–must be guided and governed according to particular circumstances it faces. When a Church responds with faithfulness and even bravery in the face of difficulty, as Rome did in its early centuries of martyrdoms, Christians easily recognize it. Likewise when bishops bring scandal and it results in a wide swath of suspicion, that regard falls to tatters. Placing bishops under the watchful eye of their brothers, and yes, *pearl-clutching* even lay people, is an appropriate development.
In a modern world full of immediate information, misbehaving prelates as far away as France are outed to the whole world. Sixty years ago, Cdl Ricard would remain an unknown, even if he confessed to shooting someone on the Champs Elysées. The man submitted a resignation three years ago. This isn’t quite a deathbed confession, but it’s close. If he is unwilling to defrock himself, stain his red robes black or even gray, withdraw to a monastery (if any will have him), and take the initiative to decline any further honors or participation in the C of C, his brother bishops should certainly take action.
The bottom line always is what furthers the Gospel. Fiddling around with centuries-old procedures will only embitter faithful Catholics and discourage any seeker from jumping aboard ship.
Well it’s about time Weigel took Francis head on.
I think Mr. Weigel meant canon 377.5 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law not 337.5. Pope Francis clarified the line about the diversity of religions from the 2019 Abu Dhabi Declaration is his General Audience of April 3, 2019:https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20190403_udienza-generale.html Following scholastic theology, we can maintain that there is a diversity of religion according to God’s permissive will. This clarification by Pope Francis is sufficient. I don’t know why people keep bringing this matter up.
We can’t deny that there is a diversity of religions in the world today. If God did not allow this diversity to exist (according to his permissive will), then it means that this diversity of religions exists AGAINST his will. This position, though, has serious theological problems. It implies that God is impotent to stop what is contrary to his will. God, in his Divine Providence, has his own reasons for allowing various religions and cultures to exist.
Did the Roman Empire exist according to God’s permissive will? Our Lord himself tells Pilate that he would have no power over Him unless it had been given to him from above (cf. Jn 19:11). St. Paul tells the Romans that the civil authority (then the Roman Empire) is a servant of God for their good (cf. Rom 13:4). God, in his permissive will, allowed the Roman Empire (with all its paganism and cruelty) to exist, and He used the Empire for certain good ends according to his Divine Providence. If God can permit the Roman Empire to exist, why can he not allow a diversity of religions to exist according to his permissive will? God’s permissive allowance of a diversity of religions in no way denies that Jesus Christ is “the one, unique redeemer of humanity: the Lord who is the center of history and the cosmos.” According to Vatican II, whatever good or truth is found in these religions is looked upon by the Church as “a preparation for the Gospel” (Lumen Gentium 16).
Mr. Fastiggi from your reference: “why does God allow many religions? God wanted to allow this:”
Sounds like an active will, not a permissive will. I don’t think any typical catholic in the pew would take it any other way, even if they were aware of this statement from the pope’s April 2019 general audience. I would guess that 99.9 % of catholics are not aware of it, so in practical terms I don’t think that the pope “clarified it.”
Dear Crusader,
It’s very clear from his April 3, 2019 General Audience that Pope Francs is speaking of God’s permissive will. This is even clearer in the Italian original where what it translated as “allow” is actually “permit.” When the Holy Father says, “God wanted to allow this,” the Italian original is: “Dio ha voluto permettere questo” (God wanted to permit this). Pope Francis then says “the scholastic theologians made reference to the voluntas permissiva of God. He willed to permit this reality: there are so many religions” (i teologi della Scolastica facevano riferimento alla voluntas permissiva di Dio. Egli ha voluto permettere questa realtà: ci sono tante religioni). I don’t see how this can be understood except as reference to God’s permissive will. If God wills to permit a reality, it’s still his permissive will. You might be correct that most Catholics have not heard of this clarification. Well then we we should make it known and stop saying Pope Francis never clarified the matter.
Not to drag this out, and my final comment on this – I disagree with your last sentence that “we should make it known (the true meaning and intention of the pope’s statement). He should make it known, and the fact is that he makes many statements that others have to attempt to clarify, explain, etc. He frequently seems to do this intentionally.
Thanks for your clarification on the Italian, but, using my 99.9 % figure again, I don’t think that 99.9 % of catholics who don’t know Italian would understand the nuance.
“to permit” doesn’t mean anything unless willed is understood as referring to the Active/Passive. It does very little work semantically.
G*d willed to permit sin. Is that Active or Passive? G*d willed to permit that you marry the wrong person. That is not a sin. Active or Passive? G*d willed to permit you to choose between fish and steak for lunch on Monday. Active or passive?
“G*d Wills” is where the clarification must be.
Just like what Weigel did with his manipulation of St. Pope John Paul II’s social teaching and made it appear as a total endorsement of fundamentalist free market capitalism when in fact the Saint Pope critiqued both capitalism and socialism, Weigel is doing it here in this essay again by misleadingly and falsely portraying Pope Benedict XVI’s 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia as one which presented the Pope’s preferred interpretation of Vatican II as that of continuity in contradistinction to rupture. Weigel is again showing what he’s best at by twisting and manipulating the Pope emeritus’s thought when in fact the papal preference and wish was for Vatican II to be interpreted and applied as reform rather than simple continuity. Reform contains both elements of continuity and change. This is a lesson for all Catholics to not rely only on commentators but to read the primary source texts of Church teaching. Weigel is not unlike the majority of commentators who spread the so-called spirit of Vatican II which mostly consist in adding their agenda over what the conciliar bishops, deliberations, texts and event have given us as church teaching. Blinded by his agenda and biases, what Weigel perceives as divergence on the part of the present Pope, are actually Vatican II reform, not only continuity, that is today being continuously received and carried out by Pope Francis.
John Paul II had no criticism at all for free market capitalism. He had many criticisms for how it can be abused through corrupt practices as do even the most “right leaning” of conservative pundits, corruptions that can be prosecuted by statutory law. His criticism of socialism was that it is an intrinsic evil, at all times, that denies innate human diginity and individual initiative for heroic virtue. This, by the way, is what the Church has always taught.
I think the Catechism reads differently – at 2424, 2425, 1886, 1887.
Centesimus Annus also sets up the picture so as to differentiate nuances in words, also to suggest better words – at 42 second paragraph.
In a word we are required to practice justice beginning by subordinating capital and not making it sacrosanct and primordial.
I think Weigel is very balanced here, good pinpoint historicity and references with sharp, accurate, poignant short-list of inherently contradictory novel activities or “developments”. Easily read. Thank you.
They have opened the stables… until some future Pope is able to control the stampede, lots of damage is about to be done. The next few years will bring great pain upon the Faithful and much confusion. From external appearances it will seem as if the Church has collapsed.