The Catholic Report has pointed readers to an excellent article entitled Vatican II and the Culture of Dissent, by Russell Shaw, which I read with great interest. The article examines a “culture of dissent” that followed Vatican II, led by those that were simultaneously disappointed by the council (that it did not go far enough), and yet, acted boldly in the “spirit” of the council. This “culture of dissent” is still around, although today its influence has waned (perhaps because of a combination of death, defection, and defeat…i.e. many of its proponents have died, left the Catholic Church, or seen their influence decline in the Church). The article explains that the culture of dissent began with some of the earliest reactions to the council:
The seeds of the culture of dissent were already sown in some of the earliest reactions to the council.
In four momentous sessions between 1962 and 1965, the fathers of Vatican II hammered out a consensus contained in the 103,000 Latin words of its 16 documents — four constitutions, nine decrees, and three declarations. While most people hailed the results (though often without quite knowing what they were hailing), extremists were not well-pleased. Ultra-traditionalists, led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, prepared for diehard resistance; progressives hungered for far more change than the council had delivered.
Rev. Hans Küng, the Swiss-born theologian who was to become a veritable Prince of Dissenters, was bitterly disappointed. The religious revolution he’d hoped to lead had stalled. Despite some achievements, the council had done far less than he hoped, and now, he believed, progress was being blocked by Rome. “The renewal of the Catholic Church and ecumenical understanding with the other Christian churches… had got stuck,” he later wrote. Here was a logjam crying out to be broken.
The alleged corruption of the Church and its leaders often supplied the basis for dissent in the early postconciliar years. Charles Davis, a British theologian who quit the priesthood in 1966, declared that the Church was “a zone of untruth, pervaded by a disregard for truth.” Sociologist Rev. Andrew Greeley announced that the American bishops were “morally, intellectually, and religiously bankrupt.” Peace activist Philip Berrigan, another ex-priest, dismissed the Church as “a whore…”
But far and away the biggest building block of that culture was the “spirit of Vatican II.” It also had its start just after the council — in the United States, thanks especially to Xavier Rynne. Rynne, as everyone knows today, was the pseudonym of an American Redemptorist priest, Rev. Francis X. Murphy, used in a series of insider reports on Vatican II in the New Yorker. His articles spun the story as a titanic struggle pitting good-guy liberals against bad-guy conservatives. Immediately after the council ended, Rynne published an article pronouncing that from a “superficial point of view” — that is, from a reading of the council documents — nothing radical had been accomplished. But to think like that was to miss the point. “More important than the documents, the Council has consecrated a new spirit, destined in the course of time to remake the face of Catholicism,” Rynne/Murphy wrote.
For progressives, the beauty of the spirit of Vatican II was that it permitted them to dismiss the council’s teaching while at the same time claiming to champion the council. Thus Rev. Richard McBrien, then at Boston College and now at Notre Dame, claimed that Vatican II had validated the principle of “endless, unchecked change” in Catholic life (The Remaking of the Church, 1973). Yet Pope John XXIII, while commending openness to “new conditions and new forms of life” in his famous opening speech to the council, nevertheless insisted that the Church must “never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received by the fathers.” No matter. Father McBrien had the spirit of Vatican II.
I find the “spirit of Vatican II” to be rather humorous and disingenuous. Did church leaders after Constantinople add a fourth person to the Trinity in the “spirit of Constantinople?” Councils certainly have tones and spirits, but these are based on the teachings and decrees of the council itself, not on ideas and practices that the council specifically refused to approve. In other words, I think that the argument that since Vatican II made changes to the Church, then it stands to reason that the council calls us to make far more radical and innovative changes, is bogus. The NFL changes and updates rules and such occasionally, but that doesn’t mean the Cleveland Browns are free to trade their footballs for hockey sticks and pucks in the spirit of legitimate change (although they might be more successful at hockey than football!).
I recommend reading the entire article, but I do want to highlight some things Shaw recommends to “repudiate the culture of dissent” and “recapture the real meaning of Vatican II”:
1. Stop complaining about the council. Not long ago I heard a conservative Catholic speaker tell a receptive audience that one of the crosses borne by Paul VI was a “runaway council.” That’s a good story, but it isn’t true. Now and then Paul VI had to rein in enthusiasts, but at no time was Vatican II in a “runaway” state, and the pope and bishops were in harmony at the end. Misstatements like this one play into the hands of those who want Vatican II interpreted in a way that serves the culture of dissent.
2. Read and study the documents of the council, probe its history, and make it the subject of research, writing, and teaching. With certain commendable exceptions, orthodox Catholics seem to have left this work to progressives — an omission that could cost future generations dearly. It is troubling that the massive, and unquestionably scholarly, five-volume History of Vatican II produced by Giuseppe Alberigo and his collaborators (published in the United States by Orbis Books, with Rev. Joseph Komonchak of Catholic University as editor) appears to be on its way to becoming the authoritative interpretation of the council. Its fundamental stance is that the real significance of Vatican II lies not in what it said but in the conciliar experience itself — presumably, as reconstructed by historians like Alberigo and his colleagues. (That is like saying the significance of Shakespeare is not in his plays but in his life, even though the life is incommunicable except through the plays.)
3. Welcome and cooperate with the emerging new leadership in the Church, including the growing number of solid bishops in the United States, and work for authentic reform and renewal according to the prescriptions of Vatican II. The “reform of the reform” is an apt description for this program to undo the damage of the last 40 years and realize the purposes of the council. Leaders have begun to appear in growing numbers to make this a realistic possibility.
In other words, we need to celebrate Vatican II for what it was, not what some people did in its name. On the album “Rattle and Hum” Bono said of the song “Helter Skelter,” “Charles Manson stole this song from the Beatles; We’re stealin’ it back.” The dissenters have stolen the council, using the name of the council to justify just about any whim, and now we’re stealin’ it back.
Posted by Jonathan B 
Posted by Jonathan B 
Posted by Jonathan B 
