(Vatican Radio) On Friday morning Pope Benedict XVI gathered with members of the Pontifical
Household in the Redemptoris Mater chapel for the second Advent sermon delivered by
Papal Preacher Capuchin Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa.
Belwo please find
the full text of Fr. Cantalamessa’s second Advent reflection
THE SECOND
VATICAN COUNCIL: 50 YEARS LATER A KEY TO ITS INTERPRETATION
1.The Council:
the hermeneutic of rupture and of continuity In this meditation I would like to
reflect on the second great cause for celebration this year: the fiftieth anniversary
of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council.
In recent decades, the attempts
to assess the results of Vatican II have multiplied. This is not the occasion to pursue
this line of thought, nor would time permit it. From the time of the Council, alongside
these analytic interpretations there have also been attempts made to provide a synthetic
evaluation - a search, in other words, for a key to interpreting the conciliar event.
I would like to include myself in this endeavor and try to offer a reading of the
various keys to its interpretation.
There were essentially three: aggiornamento,
rupture, and renewal in continuity. In announcing the Council to the world, John XXIII
repeatedly used the word “aggiornamento,” which to his merit has entered into the
universal vocabulary. In the opening address of the Council he offered a first explanation
of what he meant by this term:
“The twenty-first Ecumenical Council […] wishes
to transmit the Catholic doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion
[…]. However, our duty is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were
concerned only with antiquity, but also to dedicate ourselves promptly and without
fear to that work which our era demands of us, pursuing the path which the Church
has travelled for almost twenty centuries […]. It is necessary that this certain and
unchanging doctrine, to which our faithful assent is due, be studied and expounded
in the manner required by our times”. Gradually, however, as the Council’s work
and sessions progressed, two opposing fronts formed, depending on whether, of the
two purposes mentioned, the first or the second was being emphasized: i.e., continuity
with the past or innovation with respect thereto. For the latter front, the word ‘aggiornamento’
came to be replaced by the word ‘rupture’, but it bore within it a very different
spirit and very different intentions. For the so-called progressivists, it was an
achievement to be greeted with enthusiasm. For the opposing front, it was a tragedy
for the entire Church.
Standing between these two fronts – which agreed on
the statement of the fact but were opposed in their judgment regarding it – we find
the position of the papal Magisterium, which speaks of “renewal in continuity”. In
Ecclesiam suam, Paul VI returns to John XXIII’s word “aggiornamento” and states
that he wishes it to be regarded as a “guiding principle”. John Paul II reiterated
the judgment of his predecessor at the beginning of his pontificate, and on several
occasions he expressed himself in the same vein. Above all, however, it has been the
current Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI who has explained what the Magisterium of the
Church means by “renewal in continuity”. He did so a few months after his election,
in the address delivered to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005. Let us listen to
several passages:
“The question arises: Why has the implementation of the
Council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult? Well, it all depends
on the correct interpretation of the Council or - as we would say today - on its proper
hermeneutic, the correct key to its interpretation and application. The problems in
its implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face-to-face
and quarreled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more
and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit. On the one hand, there is an interpretation
that I would call "a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture"; it has frequently
availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology.
On the other, there is the "hermeneutic of reform". The Pope acknowledges that
a certain discontinuity and rupture did in fact occur. However, it did not pertain
to the basic principles and truths of the Christian faith but rather to several historical
decisions. Numbered among them was the conflict that had arisen between the Church
and the modern world, culminating in the wholesale condemnation of modernism under
Pius IX. However, it also regarded more recent situations, such as that created by
developments in science and by the new relationship among religions, with the implications
this holds for the problem of freedom of conscience. Not last was the tragedy of the
Holocaust, which required a rethinking of attitudes toward the Jewish people. The
Pope writes: “It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a
single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had
been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical
situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved
not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance. It is
precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels
that the very nature of true reform consists”. If we move from the axiological
level, i.e. of principles and values, to the chronological level, we could say that
the Council represents a discontinuity with the Church’s recent past and instead represents
a continuity with respect to the remote past. On many points, especially on the central
point of the idea of the Church, the Council wanted to bring about a return to her
origins, to the biblical and patristic sources of the faith. The interpretation
of the Council offered by the Magisterium; i.e., of renewal in continuity, had a distinguished
precursor in Cardinal Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.
Newman, who has often been called “the absent Father of Vatican II”, demonstrates
that when we are dealing with a great philosophical idea or religious belief, such
as Christianity: “Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its
scope. […] In time … dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles
reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher
world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to
have changed often”. St. Gregory the Great anticipated this conviction in some
way when he stated that Scripture “cum legentibus crescit”, “grows with those
who read it”; that is, it grows by constantly being read and lived, to the extent
that new questions and new challenges in history arise. The doctrine of faith changes,
then, but only in order to remain true to itself; it changes as regards historical
contingencies, in order to remain the same in substance, as Benedict XVI has said. A
somewhat banal but nonetheless indicative example may be found in language. Jesus
spoke the language of his time; not Hebrew, which was the noble language of the Scriptures
(the Latin of his day!), but rather the Aramaic spoken by the people. Fidelity to
this initial fact could not consist, nor did it consist, in continuing to speak in
Aramaic to all the future hearers of the Gospel, but in speaking Greek to the Greeks,
Latin to the Latins, Armenian to the Armenians, Coptic to the Coptics, and so forth
right up until our own day. As Newman said, it is precisely by changing that it remains
true to itself. 2. The letter kills, the Spirit gives life With all due respect
and admiration for Cardinal Newman’s immense and pioneering contribution, now at a
century and a half’s distance away from his essay - and with all that Christianity
has experienced since then - still we cannot fail to detect a lacuna in the unfolding
of his argument: the almost total absence of the Holy Spirit. In the dynamic of the
development of Christian doctrine, he does not take sufficient account of the preeminent
role which Jesus reserved to the Paraclete in revealing to the disciples those truths
which they couldn’t yet “bear”, and in guiding them “into all the truth” (Jn. 16:12-13). What
is it, in fact, that allows us to resolve the paradox and to talk about renewal in
continuity, about permanence in change, if not the Holy Spirit’s action in the Church?
St. Irenaeus understood it perfectly when he stated that revelation is like a “a precious
deposit held in an excellent vessel which always, by the Spirit of God, renewing its
youth, causes the vessel itself containing it to renew its youth also”. The Holy Spirit
doesn’t speak new words. He doesn’t create new sacraments and new institutions. Rather,
he renews and perennially enlivens the words, the sacraments and the institutions
which Jesus created. He doesn’t do new things, but makes all things new! The insufficient
attention paid to the role of the Holy Spirit explains many of the difficulties that
arose in the reception of the Second Vatican Council. The Tradition in whose name
some have rejected the Council was a Tradition wherein the Holy Spirit played no role
at all. It was a collection of beliefs and practices fixed once and for all, not the
wave of apostolic preaching, which advances and sweeps through the centuries and,
like every wave, cannot be grasped except in movement. To freeze the Tradition by
making it begin, or end, at a certain fixed moment means making it a dead tradition,
unlike that which St. Irenaeus describes as a “living Tradition”. Charles Péguy explained
this great theological truth with a poet’s pen: “Jesus didn’t give us dead words
either For us to seal up into little boxes (Or even big ones.) And for us
to preserve in rancid oil … Like the Egyptian mummies. Jesus Christ, my child,
didn’t give us canned words To keep; Rather, he gave us living words To nourish
… He depends on us, weak and carnal, To bring to life and to nourish and to
keep alive in time These words pronounced alive in time”.
However, it must
immediately be said that, on the opposing front of extremism, things were not going
any better. Here there was willing talk of the “spirit of the Council”, but unfortunately
it was not the Holy Spirit. “Spirit of the Council” denoted that greater impulse toward
the new, that greater innovative courage that wasn’t able to be part of the Council
texts due to the resistance of some, and to the compromises it was necessary to make
between parties to reach unanimity.
I would now like to attempt to illustrate
what seems to me to be the true key to a pneumatic interpretation of the Council;
in other words, what the true role of the Holy Spirit is in the implementation of
the Council. Drawing upon St. Augustine’s bold and daring thought regarding the Pauline
saying on the letter and the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:6), St. Thomas Aquinas writes:
“The
letter denotes any writing that is external to man, even that of the moral precepts
such as are contained in the Gospel. Wherefore the letter, even of the Gospel, would
kill, unless there were the inward presence of the healing grace of faith”.
Within
the same context, the holy Doctor states: “The New Law is chiefly the grace itself
of the Holy Ghost, which is given to those who believe in Christ”. The precepts of
the Gospel are also the New Law, but in a material sense, as regards the content;
the grace of the Holy Spirit is the New Law in the formal sense, for it gives us the
strength to put these same Gospel precepts into practice. It is what Paul calls “the
law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:2).
This is a universal
principle which applies to every law. If even the Gospel precepts, without the grace
of the Holy Spirit, would be “a letter that kills”, what shall be said of the precepts
of the Church? And what shall we say, in the case before us, about the decrees of
Vatican II? The “implementation” or carrying out of the Council is not a simple straightforward
matter of applying its decrees in a literal and almost mechanical way. Rather, we
must seek to apply them “in the Spirit”, meaning by this the Holy Spirit, and not
some vague “spirit of the Council” which is open to every whim. The papal Magisterium
was the first to recognize this need. In 1981, John Paul II wrote:
“The whole
work of renewal in the Church, so providentially set forth and initiated by the Second
Vatican Council - a renewal that must be both an updating and a consolidation of what
is eternal and constitutive of the Church's mission - can be carried out only in the
Holy Spirit, that is to say, with the aid of His light and His power”. Where
to look for the fruits of Vatican II
Did this eagerly awaited “new Pentecost”
really occur? One well-known Newman scholar, Ian Ker, highlighted the contribution
Newman can offer to our understanding of not only the unfolding of the Council itself,
but also of the post-conciliar era. Following the definition of papal infallibility
at Vatican I in 1870, Cardinal Newman was led to make a general reflection on the
councils and the meaning of their definitions. His conclusion was that Councils can
often have effects which are not intended at the time by those who participated in
them. They can see much more, or much less, than what such decisions will produce
thereafter. Thus, Newman was doing nothing more than applying to conciliar definitions
the same principle of development, which he had illustrated in regard to Christian
doctrine in general. A dogma, like every great idea, cannot duly be understood until
its consequences and historical developments have been seen. To use his image, it
is only after the stream moves away from the rugged soil whence it arises that its
bed at last becomes deep, and broad, and full. This is what happened with the definition
of papal infallibility, which in the heated climate of the time, seemed to many to
contain much more than what the Church and the Pope himself actually drew from it.
It did not make further Ecumenical Councils redundant as some at the time had feared,
and as others had hoped. Vatican II confirms this. This all finds a singular confirmation
in Gadamer’s hermeneutic principle of the “history of effects” (Wirkungsgeschichte).
According to this principle, in order to understand a text, it is necessary to consider
the effects it has produced in history by becoming part of the same history and entering
into dialogue with it. This is what occurs in an exemplary way in the spiritual interpretation
of Sacred Scripture. It not only explains the text in light of what has preceded it
- as the historical-philological interpretation does through research into sources
– but also in light of what has followed thereafter. It explains prophecy in light
of its realization in Christ, the Old Testament in light of the New. All this sheds
a unique light on the post-conciliar era. Perhaps here, too, the true realizations
of the Council lay in places other than where we were looking. We were looking at
changes in structures and institutions, at a different distribution of power, at the
language that was to be used in the liturgy, while we failed to realize how small
these changes were compared to the work that the Holy Spirit was accomplishing. We
imagined we would break the old wineskins with our own hands, while God was offering
us his own method of breaking old wineskins, by filling them with the new wine. When
asked whether there was a new Pentecost, we should respond without hesitation: Yes!
What is the most convincing sign of this? The renewal of the quality of Christian
life wherever this Pentecost was received. The key doctrinal event of Vatican II can
be found in the first two chapters of Lumen Gentium, in which the Church is
defined as a sacrament and as the people of God journeying under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit, animated by his charisms, under the guidance of the hierarchy. In short,
the Church as mystery and institution; as koinonia before gerarchia.
John Paul II reinforced this vision and made its implementation a priority as the
Church entered into the new millennium. We wonder: where has this image of the
Church passed from the documents to life? Where has it assumed “flesh and blood”?
Where is the Christian life being lived out according to the “law of the Spirit” with
joy and conviction, by attraction and not by constraint? Where is God’s Word held
in highest honor? Where is it that the charisms are being manifest? Where is the eager
concern for a new evangelization and for the unity of Christians being felt? Since
we are dealing with an interior reality that takes place in human hearts, the ultimate
answer to these questions is known to God alone. Concerning the new Pentecost, we
should repeat what Jesus said about the Kingdom of God: “No one will say: ‘Lo it is
here!’ or ‘Lo it is there!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you”
(Lk 17:21). And yet, we can perceive some of the signs, also with the help of religious
sociology, which deals in these matters. From this point of view, the answer given
in many quarters to this question is: in the ecclesial movements! One thing however
should immediately be pointed out. Belonging to the ecclesial movements are also those
renewed parishes, associations of the faithful and new communities in which the same
koinonia and the same quality of Christian life are being lived out. From this
perspective, movements and parishes should not be seen in opposition to or in competition
with each other, but united in the realization, in different ways, of the same model
of Christian life. Some of the so-called "basic communities” are also to be numbered
among these realities; those at least, in which the political element has not taken
precedence over the religious.
We must insist on the correct name: “ecclesial”
movements and not “lay” movements. The majority of these movements are formed not
by one, but by all ecclesial components: laity, to be sure, but also bishops, priests,
and men and women religious. They represent all charisms, the “people of God” described
in Lumen Gentium. It is only for practical reasons (because the Congregations
for Clergy and for Religious already exist) that the “Pontifical Council for Laity”
oversees these movements.
John Paul II saw in these living movements and parish
communities “the signs of a new springtime of the Church”. On various occasions Pope
Benedict XVI has expressed the same sentiments. In his homily for the Chrism Mass
of Holy Thursday 2012, he stated:
“Anyone who considers the history of the
post-conciliar era can recognize the process of true renewal, which often took unexpected
forms in living movements and made almost tangible the inexhaustible vitality of holy
Church, the presence and effectiveness of the Holy Spirit”. In speaking of the
signs of a new Pentecost, we cannot fail to mention - if for no other reason than
the sheer vastness of the phenomenon - the charismatic Renewal, or Renewal in the
Spirit. Properly speaking it is not an ecclesial movement in the sociological sense
of the word (it has no founder, structure, or spirituality or its own); it is rather
a current of grace destined to disperse itself throughout the Church, like an electrical
charge in the mass, and then eventually disappear as a distinct reality. When,
for the first time, in 1973, one of the great architects of Vatican II, Cardinal Suenens,
heard talk of the phenomenon, he was writing a book entitled The Holy Spirit –
Source of all our Hopes, and here is what he recounts in his memoires: “I gave
up writing the book; I thought it was a matter of the most basic courtesy to pay attention
to the possible action of the Holy Spirit, however surprising it might be. I was especially
interested in the talk of the awakening of charisms; at the Council, I had pleaded
the cause of such an awakening”. And here is what he wrote after having personally
verified and lived from within this experience now shared by tens of millions of Catholics: “Suddenly,
St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles seemed to come alive and become part of the
present; what was authentically true in the past seems to be happening once again
before our very eyes. It is a discovery of the true action of the Holy Spirit, who
is always at work, as Jesus himself promised. He kept and keeps his “word”. It is
once more an explosion of the Spirit of Pentecost, a jubilation that had become foreign
to the Church”. The ecclesial movements and new communities certainly do not exhaust
the full potential and the expected renewal of the Council, but they do respond to
the most important of these, at least in the eyes of God. They are not without weaknesses
and at times partial drifts. But what other great renewal has appeared in the history
of the Church without human flaws? Did not the same thing occur when the mendicant
orders appeared at the beginning of the thirteenth century? At that time as well,
it was the Roman popes, especially Pope Innocent III, who first recognized and embraced
the grace of the moment, and encouraged the rest of the episcopate to do the same. A promise fulfilled
What, then, we wonder, is the meaning of
the Council, understood as the collection of the documents it produced: Dei Verbum,
Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et spes, Nostra aetate, etc.? Are we to
leave them aside and expect everything from the Spirit? The answer is contained in
the phrase with which Augustine sums up the relationship between the law and grace:
“The law was given that grace might be sought, and grace was given that the law might
be kept” The Spirit does not dispense us, then, from making use of the letter; i.e.
the decrees of Vatican II. On the contrary, it is he who urges us on to study them
and to put them into practice. And actually, outside of scholastic and academic spheres
where these decrees serve as material for discussion and study, it is precisely within
the ecclesial movements mentioned above that they are held in high regard. I have
experienced this in my own life. I got rid of the prejudices against the Jews and
against the Protestants, which I had taken in during my years of formation, not by
reading Nostra aetate, but by having experienced the new Pentecost in my own
small way, thanks to the encouragement of some brothers. Afterward I felt the need
to reread Nostra aetate, as I had likewise reread Dei Verbum after the
Spirit aroused in me a new love for the word of God and for evangelization. However,
this movement may occur in two alternate directions. Some - to borrow the language
of Augustine – are led from the letter to seek the Spirit, while others are moved
by the Spirit to observe the letter. The poet T.S. Eliot penned several verses,
which may enlighten us regarding the meaning of the celebrations currently underway
for the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II: “We shall not cease from exploration And
the end of our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place
for the first time”
After so many explorations and controversies, we have arrived
where we started; that is, at the event of the Council itself. All of the intrigue,
however, has not been in vain for, in the deepest sense, only now are we able to “know
the place for the first time”, that is, to evaluate its true significance, which was
unknown even to the Council Fathers themselves.
This allows us to say that
the tree which has grown since the Council is consistent with the seed from which
it came. What, in fact, gave rise to the event of Vatican II? The words with which
John XXIII describes the emotion that accompanied “the sudden flowering in his heart
and on his lips at the simple word Council” bear all the signs of a prophetic inspiration.
In the closing address of the first session, he spoke about the Council as a “new
and dearly desired Pentecost, which will enrich the Church abundantly with spiritual
energies”.
Fifty years later, we cannot but note the fulfillment of the promise
made by God to the Church through the mouth of his humble servant, blessed John XXIII.
If to talk of a new Pentecost seems an exaggeration, given all the problems and controversies
that arose in the Church after and on account of the Council, we need only to reread
the Acts of the Apostles and to note that problems and controversies were all but
lacking after the first Pentecost. And they were no less heated than today’s! [Translation
by Diane Montagna]