Pope pens rare article on his inside view of Vatican II
(Vatican Radio) – On Wednesday, the eve of celebrations for the 50th anniversary of
the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the Pope’s newspaper L’Osservatore
Romano, published a special edition dedicated to Vatican II. It opens with an
article written by Pope Benedict XVI on his personal memories of the great ecumenical
gathering. Penned this past summer in Castel Gandolfo, the article is in fact the
preface to a collection of writings by the young Prof. Joseph Ratzinger at the time
of the Council, which, however, have never been published. Edited by Archbishop Gerhard
Ludwig Müller, [current Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
– ed], the complete collection is due to be published in Germany , by Herder.
Below
we publish the full text of the preface:
It was a splendid day on
11 October 1962 when the Second Vatican Council opened with the solemn procession
into St Peter’s Basilica in Rome of more than two thousand Council Fathers. In 1931
Pius XI had dedicated this day to the feast of the Divine Motherhood of Mary, mindful
that 1,500 years earlier, in 431, the Council of Ephesus had solemnly recognized this
title for Mary in order to express God’s indissoluble union with man in Christ. Pope
John XXIII had chosen this day for the beginning of the Council so as to entrust the
great ecclesial assembly, which he had convoked, to the motherly goodness of Mary
and to anchor the Council’s work firmly in the mystery of Jesus Christ. It was impressive
to see in the entrance procession bishops from all over the world, from all peoples
and all races: an image of the Church of Jesus Christ which embraces the whole world,
in which the peoples of the earth know they are united in his peace.
It was
a moment of extraordinary expectation. Great things were about to happen. The previous
Councils had almost always been convoked for a precise question to which they were
to provide an answer. This time there was no specific problem to resolve. But precisely
because of this, a general sense of expectation hovered in the air: Christianity,
which had built and formed the Western world, seemed more and more to be losing its
power to shape society. It appeared weary and it looked as if the future would be
determined by other spiritual forces. The sense of this loss of the present on the
part of Christianity, and of the task following on from that, was well summed up in
the word “aggiornamento” (updating). Christianity must be in the present if it is
to be able to form the future. So that it might once again be a force to shape the
future, John XXIII had convoked the Council without indicating to it any specific
problems or programmes. This was the greatness and at the same time the difficulty
of the task that was set before the ecclesial assembly.
The various episcopates
undoubtedly approached the great event with different ideas. Some of them arrived
rather with an attitude of expectation regarding the programme that was to be developed.
It was the episcopates of Central Europe – Belgium, France and Germany – that came
with the clearest ideas. In matters of detail, they stressed completely different
aspects, yet they had common priorities. A fundamental theme was ecclesiology, that
needed to be studied in greater depth from a Trinitarian and sacramental viewpoint
and in connection with salvation history; then there was a need to amplify the doctrine
of primacy from the First Vatican Council by giving greater weight to the episcopal
ministry. An important theme for the episcopates of Central Europe was liturgical
renewal, which Pius XII had already started to implement. Another central aspect,
especially for the German episcopate, was ecumenism: the shared experience of Nazi
persecution had brought Protestant and Catholic Christians closer together; this now
had to happen at the level of the whole Church, and to be developed further. Then
there was also the group of themes: Revelation – Scripture – Tradition – Magisterium.
For the French, the subject of the relationship between the Church and the modern
world came increasingly to the fore – in other words the work of the so-called “Schema
XIII”, from which the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World later
emerged. This point touches on the real expectations of the Council. The Church, which
during the Baroque era was still, in a broad sense, shaping the world, had from the
nineteenth century onwards visibly entered into a negative relationship with the modern
era, which had only then properly begun. Did it have to remain so? Could the Church
not take a positive step into the new era? Behind the vague expression “today’s world”
lies the question of the relationship with the modern era. To clarify this, it would
have been necessary to define more clearly the essential features that constitute
the modern era. “Schema XIII” did not succeed in doing this. Although the Pastoral
Constitution expressed many important elements for an understanding of the “world”
and made significant contributions to the question of Christian ethics, it failed
to offer substantial clarification on this point.
Unexpectedly, the encounter
with the great themes of the modern epoch did not happen in the great Pastoral Constitution,
but instead in two minor documents, whose importance has only gradually come to light
in the context of the reception of the Council. First, there is the Declaration on
Religious Liberty, which was urgently requested, and also drafted, by the American
Bishops in particular. With developments in philosophical thought and in ways of understanding
the modern State, the doctrine of tolerance, as worked out in detail by Pius XII,
no longer seemed sufficient. At stake was the freedom to choose and practise religion
and the freedom to change it, as fundamental human rights and freedoms. Given its
inner foundation, such a concept could not be foreign to the Christian faith, which
had come into being claiming that the State could neither decide on the truth nor
prescribe any kind of worship. The Christian faith demanded freedom of religious belief
and freedom of religious practice in worship, without thereby violating the law of
the State in its internal ordering; Christians prayed for the emperor, but did not
worship him. To this extent, it can be said that Christianity, at its birth, brought
the principle of religious freedom into the world. Yet the interpretation of this
right to freedom in the context of modern thought was not easy, since it could seem
as if the modern version of religious freedom presupposed the inaccessibility of the
truth to man and so, perforce, shifted religion into the sphere of the subjective.
It was certainly providential that thirteen years after the conclusion of the Council,
Pope John Paul II arrived from a country in which freedom of religion had been denied
by Marxism, in other words by a particular form of modern philosophy of the State.
The Pope had come, as it were, from a situation resembling that of the early Church,
so that the inner orientation of the faith towards the theme of freedom, and especially
freedom of religion and worship, became visible once more.
The second document
that was to prove important for the Church’s encounter with the modern age came into
being almost by chance and it developed in various phases. I am referring to the Declaration
“Nostra Aetate” on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. At the outset
the intention was to draft a declaration on relations between the Church and Judaism,
a text that had become intrinsically necessary after the horrors of the Shoah. The
Council Fathers from Arab countries were not opposed to such a text, but they explained
that if there were an intention to speak of Judaism, then there should also be some
words on Islam. How right they were, we in the West have only gradually come to understand.
Lastly the realization grew that it was also right to speak of two other great religions
– Hinduism and Buddhism – as well as the theme of religion in general. Then, following
naturally, came a brief indication regarding dialogue and collaboration with the religions,
whose spiritual, moral, and socio-cultural values were to be respected, protected
and encouraged (ibid., 2). Thus, in a precise and extraordinarily dense document,
a theme is opened up whose importance could not be foreseen at the time. The task
that it involves and the efforts that are still necessary in order to distinguish,
clarify and understand, are appearing ever more clearly. In the process of active
reception, a weakness of this otherwise extraordinary text has gradually emerged:
it speaks of religion solely in a positive way and it disregards the sick and distorted
forms of religion which, from the historical and theological viewpoints, are of far-reaching
importance; for this reason the Christian faith, from the outset, adopted a critical
stance towards religion, both internally and externally.
If at the beginning
of the Council the dominant groups were the Central European Episcopates with their
theologians, during the Council sessions the scope of the common endeavour and responsibility
constantly broadened. The bishops considered themselves apprentices at the school
of the Holy Spirit and at the school of reciprocal collaboration, but at the same
time servants of the word of God who were living and working in faith. The Council
Fathers neither could nor wished to create a new or different Church. They had neither
the authority nor the mandate to do so. It was only in their capacity as bishops that
they were now Council Fathers with a vote and decision-making powers, that is to say,
on the basis of the Sacrament and in the Church of the Sacrament. For this reason
they neither could nor wished to create a different faith or a new Church, but rather
to understand these more deeply and hence truly to “renew them”. This is why a hermeneutic
of rupture is absurd and is contrary to the spirit and the will of the Council Fathers.
In
Cardinal Frings I had a “father” who lived this spirit of the Council in an exemplary
way. He was a man of great openness and breadth, but he also knew that faith alone
leads us out into the open, into that space which remains barred to the positivist
spirit. This is the faith that he wished to serve with the authority he had received
through the sacrament of Episcopal Ordination. I cannot but be ever grateful to him
for having brought me – the youngest professor of the Catholic theology faculty of
the University of Bonn – as his consultant to the great Church assembly, thereby enabling
me, alongside the others, to attend that school and to walk the path of the Council
from within. The present volume contains a collection of the various writings that
I presented at that school. They are thoroughly fragmentary offerings, which also
reveal the learning process that the Council and its reception meant and still means
for me. I hope that despite all their limitations, these various offerings, combined,
will help to make the Council better understood and to implement it in a healthy ecclesial
life. I warmly thank Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller and his collaborators at the
Pope Benedict XVI Institute for the extraordinary commitment they have taken on in
order to produce this volume.
Castel Gandolfo, on the Feast of Saint Eusebius,
Bishop of Vercelli 2 August 2012