Obama and the spirit of Vatican II
There have been several efforts to tease out connections between Barack Obama and Catholicism–not surprising given many clear affinities, if clearly not a wholesale overlap. Some have been more adept than others. John O’Malley, whose writings I like very much, takes a new tack in an essay at America‘s site, titled “Barack Obama and Vatican II: The president’s persona and the spirit of the council.” O’Malley recognizes the “minefield” he is entering, especially as regards discussions of “the spirit” of the council, which as he notes is anathema to many today. But he persists, and draws a connection between the council’s “style”–a trope of his–and Obama’s style in his election night speech and his Notre Dame address:
The council hoped that this new style of being, which brings with it a new way of proceeding, would lead to cooperation among all persons of good will—Catholics and non-Catholics, Christians and non-Christians, believers and non-believers—on the new, massive, and sometimes terrifying problems that face humanity today. This new way of proceeding in large part constituted “the spirit of the council.” It was one of the big messages the council delivered to the church and to the world at large.
That is why when I heard Obama’s two speeches I was struck by how much he spoke in accord with the spirit of Vatican II. In those two addresses, as well as in his other speeches, he called for civility, for the end of name-calling, and for a willingness to work together to deal with our common problems, including abortion, rather than a stand-off determination to impose one’s principles without reckoning what the cost to the common good might be…
…Classical theorists about rhetoric like Cicero and Quintilian described it as the art of winning consensus, the art of bringing people together for a common cause. It is an art, please note, closely related to ethics, for those same theorists described the truly successful orator as vir bonus dicendi peritus–a good man, skilled in public speaking. It is an art in which Obama excels and which, certainly unwittingly, puts him in touch with the spirit of Vatican II.
I often hear laments that the spirit of Vatican II is dead in the church. Is it not ironic that not a bishop but the President of the United States should today be the most effective spokesperson for that spirit? To judge from the enthusiastic response he received from the graduates at Notre Dame, his message captured their minds and hearts. Maybe through young Catholics like those at Notre Dame who are responding to Obama’s message the spirit of Vatican II will, almost through the back door, reenter the church. The history of the church has, after all, taken stranger turns than that.
By coincidence, though with a good deal less erudition, I tried to make a similar point re the church “ad extra” in an article this week at PoliticsDaily, in which I argue that Obama may be rescucitating the spirit of Eugene McCarthy and a “liberal” or social justice Catholicism that had been exiled in recent decades by the GOP and the church leadership–with the help of more than a few Catholic pols. Maybe that too is changing. My piece is here. Comments welcome.
Congratulations, David, on your award for “Best In-Depth Reporting on Religion” from the American Academy of Religion.
Will Hugh Jackman be hosting … sorry, wrong Academy Awards show. ;)
Congrats again.
“I often hear laments that the spirit of Vatican II is dead in the church. Is it not ironic that not a bishop but the President of the United States should today be the most effective spokesperson for that spirit? To judge from the enthusiastic response he received from the graduates at Notre Dame, his message captured their minds and hearts.”
Maybe we should make Obama a bishop. After all the hated Samaritan became the symbol of goodness for Jesus. The bishops, is it said, are demoralized. They could pick themselves up by reforming themselves. Ecclesia semper reformanda. The church must always reform itself.
See also Sr. Joan Chitester’s piece in NCR on Obama’s ND speech.
William Collier: Many thanks. Word does travel…Actually, AAR tells us that if we can attend, we will have no opportunity to make remarks. Now there’s a template for the Oscars!
In those two addresses, as well as in his other speeches, he called for civility, for the end of name-calling, and for a willingness to work together to deal with our common problems, including abortion, rather than a stand-off determination to impose one’s principles without reckoning what the cost to the common good might be…
If that’s the spirit of Vatican II, then Bush was equally in the spirit of Vatican II back in 1999-2000, with comments such as these:
“And if those conservatives don’t get their act together, they could get a good long rest.”
That’s the whole point though. “[C]onservatives” should not get their act together. They should stay away from the Ruling Party and out of politics all together and let the so-called “progressive, social-justice Catholic[s]” continue to accumulate the political power they desire so much for themselves and have been trying so hard for the last few decades to regain.
Stuart, I think we could agree that Bush’s actions did not exactly animate his Vatican II spirit, if that’s what that refernce could imply. But I’m not sure it implies much regarding O’Malley’s essay, which entails numerous other attributes of Obama’s that Bush manifestly did not possess or deploy.
MAT, your idealism is laudable perhaps, but not what the vast majority of conservatives want, nor is such a flight from the world necessarily advisable or “Catholic,” nor certainly Vatican II. But that’s an argument with your fellow conservatives. Maybe then you can go and bash those power-hungry libruls!
A few comments. First, I was lucky enough to be a student of John O’Malley, taking his Vatican II class, where we had the opportunity to read all the council documents. It was a helpful class despite whatever disagreements I have with Fr. O’Malley’s interpretation of the council.
On the “spirit” of the council. I know Fr. O’Malley has heard this criticism before, as some of us raised it during the class. The problem many people have with invoking the spirit of the council is that it often relies on a selective reading of certain documents and the exclusion of others. Let me put it this way. By the time I had completed my undergraduate and MA degree in Theology, I had read Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes maybe 3 or 4 times in various classes. The first time I, and many other students, had read Christus Dominus was in Fr. O’Malley’s class. Many of my more progressive classmates developed an ironically juridical temperament as they cited favorite passages from Gaudium et Spes, while ignoring qualifying sections from the same document as well as other proclamations that would tend to moderate their interpretations. Arguably, the same case may be made against conservative Catholics who dismiss some of the more progressive passages of Vatican II in favor of others that that they find more agreeable.
Second, I disagree with O’Malley’s interpretation of Obama’s approach to the abortion issue. Despite the public debate surrounding abortion and a possible sea change in the public’s views on abortion, Obama’s views regarding abortion law are currently normative, and reflect the status quo of the last 30 years. Calling for a give and take between the various sides on abortion is rather difficult when your side is accepted as the law of the land. It is hard to discern exactly what Obama is putting on the table when he signals that he is open to negotiation. Obviously Mexico City was not on the table. What is? Are conscience clauses his concession? Much has been made over the possibility that Obama’s health care plan and other social program will effectively reduce the amount of abortions performed in the US. It is an interesting argument, if not rather convenient. If effect, conservatives are asked to support programs the president was going to pass anyway, for reasons not related to abortion.
On the brief thread on “empathy” yesterday, I noted Rich Lowry’s column asserting Obama’s choice of Sotomayor ws substituting “empathy” for “impartiality.’
This is the continued kind of quiet desparation stretch I hear from many Consrvatives, not unlike MAT’s post.
I also think Bush was far more of a divider than a uniter, whereas Obama is really trying, dspite the efforts like we see here from Stuart et al.
The spirit of VII,based on living through those times til now, is alive in notions of “common good” and “common ground.” That spirit is not driven by power lust – though others may gratuitously assert it.
Stuart, I think we could agree that Bush’s actions did not exactly animate his Vatican II spirit, if that’s what that refernce could imply.
Agreed, but the point is that both men offering nice-sounding rhetoric about the “common ground” and about wanting to heal political divisions at the beginning of their presidencies. It remains to be seen if or how that rhetoric will have any meaningful effect over the next 4-8 years. (As has been mentioned in other threads, with no attempt at refutation, Obama’s call for common ground on abortion has not been accompanied by the slightest gesture at an actual policy change on his part.)
But I’m not sure it implies much regarding O’Malley’s essay, which entails numerous other attributes of Obama’s that Bush manifestly did not possess or deploy.
Numerous? I’m not seeing that. O’Malley’s article mentioned a call for civility and the search for common ground, both of which were themes of Bush’s early rhetoric too. The only other thing O’Malley mentions (one is not “numerous”) is that Obama is “skilled in public speaking.” No doubt Obama far exceeds Bush on that score, but the notion that delivering a good speech is somehow connected to Vatican II is quite a stretch, to say the least.
“… such a flight from the world necessarily advisable or “Catholic,”…”
It’s not advisable because your interests are contrary to theirs but of course it’s Catholic. It is exactly the approach of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches which has allowed them to thrive in quite hostile cultural and political environments since the days of Maron, to use just one example – and hence their great appeal to people like me.
Adeodatus has laid down a largely fair-minded (if brief, as these posts have to be) critique of O’Malley’s interpretation. I look forward to hear responses to his post & his responses to them.
Adeodatus is not alone in misreading Vatican II. You cannot understand the council without appreciating the context in which the documents were finished. Everyone of the documents were a result of compromise as the reformes realized that what they accomplished was historic enought and that the continuation of that renewal would have to happen after the council.
Of course, the result is that each can interpret the council according to her prejudices which is what happens. The central theme is that this was a council of earth shaking changes and made the church better albeit not as tidy and hypocritical as pre-vatican II.
Adeodatus cheated himself by not spending more time with O’Malley. His experience would have been a lot richer.
Fr. O’Malley welcomes the influence of Cicero and Quintillian and their rhetoric of civility. He feels that both Vatican II and President Obama embrace not just the style but the virtues advocated by the classical authors.
This is not the first time the revival of oratorical skills has been praised. In the Florentine Renaissance the orator was praised as a defender of (small r) republican virtues against the tyrants and demagogues in Milan and other cities with petty despots. Such rhetorical resistance was surely noble at the time (and we could use some of their spirited defense of limited government today) but there was also a naivete in the efforts of these new humanists which historians have widely recognized. The excessively optimistic Renaissance view of civic capacities led many to forget, downplay and often attack the views of their predecessors in the Middle Ages. So when Fr. O’Malley praises the use of words like “brothers and sisters, cooperation, partnership, human family, conscience, collegiality and especially dialogue,” I wait to see how these words are augmented with Augustinian and medieval insights, even those of the dreaded scholastics, and what choices are made when conflicts occur among world views. Unfortunately the “spirit of Vatican II” is often sharply contrasted to the pre-Vatican II period in the same way the humanists found fault with the Middle Ages.
Some see Obama as influenced by Niebuhr more than Vatican II. I would be happy if there room on his bookshelf for a little bit of Augustine as well.
Bill, I am amused, but not surprised, that you presume to know the extent of my interactions with Fr. O’Malley. Oh, well. I tried.
“Unfortunately the “spirit of Vatican II” is often sharply contrasted to the pre-Vatican II period in the same way the humanists found fault with the Middle Ages.”
The Middle Ages, the dark ages, butchered early Christianity. We need less of Augustine and more of Peter and Paul. Without what Augustine did to them.
David G – congratulations! Very well-deserved.
In another thread, I made the suggestion that in the realm of politics, it is the laity rather than the bishops who are, collectively, the “church in the world”. I agree that President Obama is civil and engageable (if that’s a word). The church’s point of view is represented in the political arena by an active, educated and engaged laity at all levels of the political process. So istm that we engage the Administration “in the spirit of Vatican II” as voters, as candidates, as public officials, as lobbyists, as advocates for the poor, as advocates for the unborn, etc.
Perhaps I am naive, but I don’t see much incivility on the part of Catholics in the public square. I think we are very willing to engage. A majority of us supported the President in the election, so there should be some sort of a natural warmth there.
David, congratulations on your award.
Regarding the diversity of belief in those who profess to be Catholic, at the end of the Day, you are left with those who recognize The Absolute Truth, and those who follow relative “truth”, which because it is relative, was never The Truth to begin with. The Spirit of Vatican II was not about compromise, it was about proclaiming The Truth.
David – congrats on your award. You stand with others who, like you, earned these awards for articulation of a complete and insightful stories that make a difference.
Was waiting to see if Nancy would weigh in on your O”Malley piece. I had copied/pasted some of this below on the first blog about Tiller trying to change the endless tone and division which only goes on and on and on.
Allow me to add some comments:
- Adeodatus – you make some good points about how colleagues interpreted or, in your eyes, skewed the reading of Vatican II documents. Is that really how Fr. O’Malley presented it?
- would suggest linking O’Malley’s thoughts to those of the 5 volume Alberigo works on Vatican II. Together, both give a fairly comprehensive view of Vatican II and O’Malley’s contribution about style and rhetoric is unique and easy to miss when trying to read through all of the documents.
- am sure that there are two sides in any interpretation (taught history for a number of years). Let’s say that your points are well made – O’Malley’s contribution is very relevant today – are we really as catholics fighting the culture of death vs. life or are we fighting the various interpretations of catholic culture, period. Is secularism the issue or is it our own partisanship, polarizations, and divisions?
Compare some of the recent statements by Wuerl vs. those of Chaput, Burke, Morlino, Martino, Finn and company. Read the talks at CUA early this week especially points made by Kmiec in terms of the role of a bishop and their rhetoric.
David,
I admire O’Malley’s willingness to question those who have regressed from the “spirit of the council.” While God no doubt has a special place in heaven for those who uphold His absolute and eternal truth as contained in the Gospel, He surely has a place for those who, while upholding His ultimate truth, have the ability to bring people together in the here and now as well.
So, this Spirit of the Council is not the Holy Spirit, but some other spirit which is now missing from the church? That’s what I get from OMalley’s excerpt here. I should go read the rest of it.
Perhaps the Holy Spirit is at work in ways we cannot yet fully comprehend.
No doubt, if we share the same elements of Truth, those elements are unitive.
Is it not possible that Christ’s truth has not yet been fully revealed?
The Truth is fully revealed even if we do not comprehend it. That is why He Has Founded His Church. He guides us through The Holy Spirit.
“It is finished.”-Christ
JC, I do suggest reading the rest, and O’Malley’s book. He is, I believe, using “spirit” in its more commonplace, or secular, or lowercase sense, rather than a theological sense. He isn’t being literal. The same I think could be said for those who want to stress the primacy of “the texts.” Theirs is not (I think) a view of the texts as holy writ.
I guess the spirit/text debate could go on forever, but I do think part of the problem, if that’s what it is, is that–as O’Malley et al note–V2 was a pastoral council rather than a council focused on dogma or defining doctrines. Hence the texts themselves deal with the spirit of the law rather than the law of the spirit, so to speak. Even an appeal to “the texts” is a kind of interpretation, every bit as much as an appeal to the spirit of the council.
But that goes ad infinitum.
Patrick Molloy: I think one could certainyl find plenty of Niebuhr in V2, even in the texts. But then again, Niebuhr has become the Protestant equivalent to “the spirit of Vatican 2″ in that you can find him anywhere you like, if you like.
As for original sin, I certainly think the Fathers of Vatican Two were not Pollyannas, nor are the documents. And Obama has periodically reflected on oroginal sin, nowehere more eloquently perhaps than last month at Notre Dame:
MAT: You say: “It’s not advisable because your interests are contrary to theirs but of course it’s Catholic. It is exactly the approach of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches which has allowed them to thrive in quite hostile cultural and political environments since the days of Maron, to use just one example – and hence their great appeal to people like me.”
I say: Not sure what you mean. What are my interests? And they are contrary to whose? Also, the fuga mundi is part of tradition, but by no means the whole.
Will do.
David Gibson,
Congratulations on your well deserved award!
You are right not to make too much of the spirit/text dichotomy. It is misleading. One cannot get the spirit apart from the texts; it is only in the richness of the texts that the spirit is apprehended. As Fr. O’Malley has so well said, compared to the texts of the councils that preceded it, Vatican II is quite discontinuous in its language (read texts). One has to wonder where the hermeneutic of continuity resides, then, except in the minds of those who want to push it. Is it really there or is it a convenient construct?
So is there anyone who sincerely thinks that the comparison between Obama and Vatican II sheds any meaningful light on anything of substance? It seems to me that calls to civility are hardly unique to Vatican II (the author himself recognizes that people have been known to praise civility since ancient times), and it seems even more tenuous to suggest that the ability to deliver a speech has anything to do with Vatican II (one could more aptly say that Obama is of the spirit of Demosthenes, at least on certain occasions).
Yes, I sincerely think so.
Continuity is a construct. Always has been. The church of dogma and the church of liturgy have cast confused clouds on the meaning of the mission of Jesus. We have conveniently ignored the Sermon of the Mount as undoable so we have nothing left but dogma and liturgy.
Another sorry construct is apostolic succession which favors lineage over goodness and authority over the gospel.
Obama is rightly mentioned in the arena of the gospel whether one calls it the Spirit of Vatican II or by any other name. His body of work is not complete yet as he gently chided those who made a big fuss of the honorary degree (a symbor of pedantry if there ever was one). And maybe he is doing the Sermon on the Mount contrary to those who seemingly have only one issue.
“So is there anyone who sincerely thinks that the comparison between Obama and Vatican II sheds any meaningful light on anything of substance? ”
This isn’t about substance, it’s about style.
Honestly, it may be a Boomer thing. Vatican II and the American civil rights movement coincided. To people above a certain age, the linkage is probably natural. I’m not old enough to have experienced the “spirit” of either one first hand, so I have to try to get by on a sort of second-hand smoke contact buzz in order to understand it.
While part of the thread here is about (Obama’s) style and its congruence with V2 spirit, underlying that is also how one perceives the credibility of the continuity the current Church leadership is practice with the Council.Again, I think the Kelly article at NCR or his book argue that many 50′s Catholics have moved away from that approach- and I would suggest find resonance in the presiden’t's words and his evocations of Bernadin and Hesburgh as to where leadership should be at (in continuity.)
OK, you sincerely think so. But why? Is there a reason that you associate civility and speechmaking with Vatican II in particular, as opposed to any of the innumerable other persons or organizations that have praised civility and/or speechmaking throughout history?
I mean, if Obama grows a beard, one could write a fulsome article praising Obama for imitating Abraham Lincoln, but that would be a bit over the top: it’s hardly as if Lincoln bore such a special relationship to beards that any beard-grower is now a reincarnation of Lincoln. Likewise, it hasn’t been explained how Vatican II bears any special relationship to civility (let alone making a good speech), such that anyone who says “let’s work together” is now speaking in the spirit of Vatican II.
Vatican II brought long standing enemies together. Protestants talked and prayed with Catholics. Jews were not longer condemned as Christ murderers and the Good Friday Liturgy was amended. Interfaith marriages became more “civil.”
Etc.
One might say the church became more civilized until the restorationists appeared.
Hi, Bill, unfortunately, the restorationists were at Vatican II itself, and they never entirely disappeared.
Btw, IIRC, the Good Friday liturgy was actually amended by Blessed John XXIII’s predecessor sometime in the 1950′s, when nobody dreamed that an ecumenical council would convene in just a few short years. Things were happening and changing in the church and in the world before, during and after Vatican II.
I’ll need to read Fr. O’Malley’s book to grasp his fine points. (I did hear him give a talk on VII at a Catholic university a few years ago.) But a larger point. It seems to me that there’s been a good deal of enamored feeling from progressives in religion (as well as politics) towards Obama the person and the president.
Good will towards a new president isn’t uncommon. E.g., a number of liberals had a lot of good will towards George W. Bush at the start of his presidency on issues such as faith-based initiatives & Left No Child Behind. And of course more good will on Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. (That Bush lost that good will, remains his fault.)
In no way do I begrudge the warmth towards the current president. However, one should also note that (1) not everyone on the Left is necessarily warm towards Obama. There has been, for instance, grumbling from the far Left towards Obama’s war policies. Small-scale grumbling, to be sure, but it may escalate by next year if the far Left finds his policies wanting. More to the point, one should note too that (2) Obama’s admirers may possibly approach Obama-dology, See link on Richard Wolffe below for an example in politics. As for the topic at hand, I strikes me that Fr. O’Malley was not a little starry-eyed in calling Obama a “Vatican II president.”
Wolffe could become a flashpoint in the larger debate over whether journalists are too enamored with Obama’s biography. Photo: Composite image by POLITICO
Read more: “A sheep in Wolffe’s clothing? – Ben Smith – POLITICO.com” – http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23252.html#ixzz0HOtveNWE&A
I consider John O’Malley as a modern day prophet and I need to explain that. One might say that he is using allusions and allegory to make a point. The contrast with the bishops highlights a most important fact of the deep lack of leadership in the American church. O’Malley takes seriously that we must be as shrewd as serpents and as simple as doves. He does not throw his pearls before swine.
Obama is not the point. The bishops are.
Bill-
With such episcopate that is morally bankrupt, the ascendancy of the restorationists and a pope who seems unsuitable for bringing the church into the third millenium (all according to your opinion), why do stay in the Church? Presumably the Catholic Church has no more claim on truth or on Christ than any other Christian church, so why stay? Out of nostolgia?
I ask this sincerely and without sarcasm. Does anything deep and abiding hold you (or others who share you opinion on the contemporary church)? If you say liturgy, the communion of saints, the sacraments, then why not the Episcopal Church? They have all that plus women priests, optional celibacy, a much more democratic way of church governance and rarely a word against abortion, same-sex marriage and the like.
Again, I ask this humbly.
I dare not speak for Bill, buyt there are many, myself included, who think the Church,, OUR church, is terribly out of balance.
That problem is perceived as going back to during V2 and after in the attempt by the curtialists to retain essential powwer and control.
The movement backwards has continued apace and many have drifted off in disgust.
Yesterday, I sent off my check in response to the neg from our National Pastoral Life Center, which supports best practices in the Church and trying to bring together the intellectually compatible but historically divided (by “incessant redundancies,” to borrow a phtrase from a poster at another thread) of pro-life and social justice.
If I think that the hierarchy is doing a miserable job, does that mean move on?
That strikes me as aterrible criterion.
If I think profound changes are necessary to move forward, does that mean move on?
Another awful criterion.
If folks would truly seek “common ground”, beyond just their frame, maybe we’d appreciate the Church as lighthouse in a broader perspective, say like Bernadin, Hesburgh (and the presicdent?)
Jim, Bob, and Bill – would suggest that the history of Vatican II and its central personalities have a more complex pattern that simply pre-Vatican II, post Vatican II, restoration, hermenuetic of continuity or is it discontinuity. Whatever name you choose, tension, disagreements, even personal attacks are at the heart of the this journey we call church.
It is interesting reading some of the biographies of central personalities in the Curia and at Vatican II. Example – Rahner and Ratzinger were two of a kind as periti at Vatican II; yet within 3 years (some say has a result of the student riots in ’68 in Europe) Ratzinger moved into a fairly conservative stance from which he has never wavered. Others e.g. Martini, Lecardo were so moved by their experience of Vatican II, that they described it as a conversion rededicating their lives to missions, ecumenism, etc.
Here is an interesting passage that illustrates what goes on behind the scenes in the Vatican. From discussions around the letters of JPII:
“In 1946, then-Father John Tracy Ellis was in Richmond doing research on his biography of Cardinal Gibbons when the chancellor of the diocese mentioned he was enjoying reading the correspondence of Bishop Denis O’Connell, who had served as Gibbons agent in Rome and rector of the American College before returning to the States as rector of Catholic University, auxiliary of San Francisco and finally bishop of Richmond. The next day Ellis and a colleague headed up to the two trunks in the attic and recognized they had in their hands the greatest single treasure trove of American Catholic historical correspondence ever found by happenstance.
The letters show well that even within the Church, holy men and women have not been above an occasional sharp elbow. Cardinal Gibbons wept when he learned that William Henry O’Connell (no relation to Denis) of Boston was to be made a cardinal. When the 1903 conclave elected Giuseppe Sarto as Pope Pius X, Gibbons cabled to Archbishop John Ireland, “Pope man of God.” Ireland wrote to O’Connell that his friends cardinals Rampolla or Vanutelli “would have done me for ‘a man of God’”.
The letters of Ella Edes, a lay woman who worked as a secretary at the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, at the turn of the century are similarly rich. She referred to Cardinal O’Connell as “Pomposity” and recalled the story of an Irish bishop who, with his mind, would place the names of stubborn clerics in his chalice at Mass. “[T]hey die off like flies,” Edes wrote. “What a pity one could not put Pomposity, Satolli (cardinal and former apostolic delegate to the U.S.), Merry del Val (the cardinal Secretary of State), Falconio (another curial cardinal) & a few others in that celebrated chalice & leave them to God’s disposition and will!”
My point is not to commend Ms. Edes for her charity. It is to point out that there never was, and never shall be, a Golden Age in the church. There is never a time when our human desire to triumph in argument, support our friends and frustrate those who oppose us or our ideas, will lead all to frolic in cheerful and harmless prose. There should be a time – and the advent of the blogosphere makes it more likely – when we can tweak each other in print without demonizing each other, when it is okay to be a little arch, a little over-the-top. I yearn for the time and the means when the realm of the humanly sacrosanct is lessened, e.g. some episcopal pronouncements, and the realm of the genuinely holy, e.g., God’s Word, is just so enlarged.”
Happy reflections and I would not leave the church no matter how many Chaputs, Egans, Morlinos, Martinos, Burkewisczs, Finns, Ryans, etc. that we have.
I just want tp add that some here have attempted to reduce the value of Obama to “cibvility and speechmaking.” – a damn with faint praise.
See the Vatican reaction (at NCR) to his Cairo speech – more than just style.
I mentioned civility and speechmaking because those were the two points as to which O’Malley claimed (albeit with no explanation other than the vaguest hand-waving) that Obama is representing the “spirit” of Vatican II. I said nothing that would “reduce the value of Obama” to the two characteristics O’Malley identified.
Mr. Andreass, Mr. Buck, and others – we stay in this church; the shifts in ecclesiologies, etc. Here are some added analyses that enhances and expands Fr. O’Malley’s points about style and rhetoric v. civility/speechmaking – note below Gaillardetz’s history of councils and specifically the call of Vatican II’s aggiordamento:
“Who is Responsible for Church Reform?
A Review of The Church in the Making by Richard R. Gaillardetz
By Paula Ruddy
Exodus or reform? In what direction is the Spirit taking you? Many of us, Catholics, are asking ourselves this question at the beginning of the 21st Century. We are trying to discern whether the Spirit is moving us to create new communities of spiritually supportive people within the Catholic tradition while outside the control of Rome, or whether we are called to work for reform within the Roman Catholic institution. Perhaps some are called to leave the Roman Catholic institution to live their mission in another denomination. All options will bring about change within the institution. None is easy.
Gaillardetz, in his book The Church in the Making, talks about the theologies of church coming out of Vatican II. His is one of an eight book series, “Rediscovering Vatican II,” marking the Council’s 40th anniversary and published by the Paulist Press in 2006. The series covers the 16 documents promulgated by the Council at its conclusion. Gaillardetz’s book deals with three documents: “The Constitution of the Church” (Lumen Gentium), “The Pastoral Office of Bishops’ (Christus Dominus), and “The Eastern Rite Catholic Churches” (Orientalium Ecclesiam).
Is “reform” a fighting word? To some, maybe. Not in the dymanic view that Gaillardetz’s describes, however. Every Council is an “ecclesial event” in a theology of church in which reform is essential to its continued life. The lived experience of the Church gives rise to a need periodically to sort through theologies and articulate afresh its thinking and direction. The Roman Catholic Church is in a constant state of reform, leading up to and away from one council to the next.
What experience gave rise to Vatican II? In the 11th Century, when secular princes threatened the Church’s autonomy by controlling bishops, Pope Gregory VII instituted a massive reform to consolidate papal authority.
“What Gregory set in motion was a gradual yet inexorable shift from a church whose foundation lay in theology and sacramental practice to a church whose foundation lay in canon law. … In spite of periods of tremendous theological creativity, henceforward for almost nine hundred years the dominant framework for understanding the church would be that of law and jurisdiction rather than theology.” (pp 41-2.)
It was to retrieve the theological and sacramental foundations of the Church that Vatican II was called. In their lived experience, people were thirsting for Spirit.
Gaillardetz first describes the process each document went through during the successive sessions of the Council. The first draft, or schema, was usually a sketchy outline of the traditional teaching by Vatican officials. Then the theologians would rework the draft, introducing new ideas coming from updated scriptural studies and current theologies, the assembled bishops would debate the ideas, and new drafts would be prepared for the next session. For those of us who lived through that time, waiting for reports like readers of a serial novel, the names bring it all back–Suenens, Rahner, Congar, Schillebeeckx, and (Darth Vader music here) Cardinal Ottaviani, the ancient Curial obstructor.
In order to get almost unanimous agreement from the bishops on the documents, theologians had to compromise. The way they did that was to place alternative formulations of some teachings one after the other in the same chapters of the document. That solution to their problem has caused new problems of interpretation over the 40 years since Vatican II. Using only the texts of documents, people who do not like change, cite the formulation that fits their agenda, and people who do want reform, cite passages that fit theirs.
Gaillardetz’s method deals with this problem not only by looking closely at the history of each document, but by reading them together, and examining how they have been received and implemented. He crystallizes the major points made in the documents, which he then follows through the 40 years of their reception and acceptance by local churches. Finally, he talks about where we are today.
What are the spiritual insights of the early church retrieved by Vatican II?
The priority of Baptism: “By proposing a nascent baptismal ecclesiology, the council offered a line of reflection that could pull back the ecclesiastical curtain hiding the exclusive role of clerical leadership. This baptismal foundation encouraged a new mode of theological reflection on who we all are as church and, in particular, regarding how we might conceive the relationship between the ordained and the rest of the Christian faithful.”
The mission of the church: “When the council situated the whole church within the world and characterized the church as ‘sacrament of universal salvation’ it insisted that all of the baptized, lay and clergy, have a responsibility toward the temporal order. This constitutes a thoroughgoing negation of any schema that posits two separate spheres of existence—the sacred and the profane. Rather, ‘there is one sphere of existence with a complexity of definite relations that make up history’.”
Theology of the Holy Spirit: The Holy Spirit has not been sufficiently recognized in the church. “The overemphasis on the christological perspective, which has been described as a ‘christomonism,’ leads to the unspoken assumption that the Holy Spirit operates in the church primarily, if not exclusively, through the mediation of hierarchical authorities who act in persona Christi to mold and rule the priestly people in virtue of their sacred power.”
Laity: “The council taught that the laity have a right and responsibility to be actively involved in the church’s apostolate. …They have equal shares in the threefold office of Christ who is priest, prophet, and king. They are called to full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgy.”
Sensus fidei: “God’s Word has been given to the whole Christian people and not exclusively to the pope and bishops. …The council taught that the whole Christian faithful, ‘from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful,’ share in a ‘supernatural discernment in matters of faith.’ The spiritual gift is often referred to by the Latin term, sensus fidei.”
Church as sacrament: “Now since the church’s sacramentality is grounded in its total visible reality, it is only as a visible, historical reality that the church can be a sacrament of salvation and seed of the kingdom. What does this mean? It means that all things that participate in the visibility of the church participate as well in its sacramentality. Since not only Christian persons but also church laws, policies, and structures are part of the church’s visibility, they too participate in the church’s sacramental reality as a sign of an instrument of God/s reign. In other words, to assert the sacramentality of the church is to assert that church structures and policies matter. Church structures and policies can never be merely functional, “in-house” realities for a church that claims to be a sacrament of the kingdom. To the extent that these visible ecclesial realities are in keeping with the values of the kingdom of God, they share in the church’s sacramentality. To the extent that any church structure, teaching, or policy is counter to the kingdom, it diminishes the church’s sacramentality.”
Theological category of Reception: “For much of the Catholic Church’s modern history, at least since the Reformation, there has been a near-exclusive focus on a theology of tradition that attended to the ways in which the apostolic faith has been handed on. Contemporary hermeneutics and communications theory, however, have insisted on the importance of attending to not only the process of handing on the faith but also the process of its reception in concrete Chrisitian communities. The faith of the church develops from generation to generation and place to place as concrete Christian communities receive the gospel and make it their own. This means that the apostolic faith must be conceived not as something static and unchanging but as a dynamic and living reality that is always embodied not simply in propositional statements and theological treatises but also in the lived faith of the people.”
Bill DeHaas wrote:
would suggest that the history of Vatican II and its central personalities have a more complex pattern that simply pre-Vatican II, post Vatican II, restoration, hermenuetic of continuity or is it discontinuity. Whatever name you choose, tension, disagreements, even personal attacks are at the heart of the this journey we call church.
–
This point on “complex pattern” is so true & yet so easy to forget. Complexity is a goal in historical research, and historians are the opposite to physicists who strive for simplicity in the form of “laws” and “theories” (e.g., Newton’s theory of gravity & Einstein’s theory of relativity).
There is a lot to say about the division of of VII into pre- and post- periods. But such a commonplace division may ignore a lot of complexity. Here’s an instance.
It has been well documented that there was a decline in number of priests in the US and some other parts of the world after Vatican II. Conservatives and progressives may agree on this, but differ greatly on the cause(s). Their takes on these causes usually reflect their ideological preferences and not necessarily the search for truth.
Two sociologists have looked into this, suggesting that the decline might have started already prior to VII. Also, what were the causes? Taking a page from Robert Putnam (he of “bowling alone” fame), they think that the decline corresponded to a decline in civic engagement in, again, certain countries. To simplify, the more civic engagement, the higher number of priests (as in Poland in the 1980s). The less civic engagement, the lower number (as in the US).
Unfortunately their research is ongoing & we’ll have to wait for more conclusive findings. But you can check out a working paper they wrote. (I myself heard them speak on the topic a few years ago.)
I suppose my larger point is: Be cautious with generalizations about VII. The disputatious aftermath among Catholics about the Council indicates it is a lot more complex than it looked to its contemporaries and the later generations.
“Civic Engagement, Development and Religious Vocations: Cross-National Patterns in the Evolution of Priestly Ordinations”
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/1/0/1/4/pages110142/p110142-1.php
Pp. 8-9: Our most fundamental and straightforward finding is that the evolution of vocations varies enormously among national societies and that the United States is an instance of extreme and unusually prolonged decline. Among the cases we have examined only Ireland and Australia exhibit a greater total decline in the ordinations rate during the three plus decades extending from 1969 – 2000. As the findings reported in Table 1 show, when we calculate the slope of the line characterizing the evolution of the ordination rate during that three decade period, the United States is the third case from the bottom in a list of forty-two countries. Some cases actually show an increase. Thus in many national cases the vocations rate was higher at the end of that period than at the beginning, just over three decades earlier. Many of the cases that manifest an increase in the vocations rate are Third World societies in which developmental processes likely contribute much to evolution of the ordinations rate. However, in other cases of increase, political or more broadly socio-political phenomena appear to be highly important.
The Vatican says Vatican II did not invalidate past doctrines. “What was, still is.” -Pope Paul VI (pope during Vatican II)
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070629_responsa-quaestiones_en.html#_ftn4