Vatican II: Letter and Spirit

During this Year of Faith, the Pope has asked us to re-examine the most recent Council, which began fifty years ago this year, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which turns twenty.

Plenty of folks have an axe to grind one way or the other about the Second Vatican Council, but frankly it ended before I was born, and forty years before I became a Catholic. I’ve got about as much emotional investment in Vatican II as I do in Lateran II.

But there’s a weird thing that I’ve noticed since my conversion. There are a certain group of Catholics for whom the entirety of the Magisterium seems to consist of the Council.

As one example among many, there are the folks who spent considerable effort to cancel the chanted Sunday Vespers at a former parish on a series of increasingly flimsy grounds, but basically because it was “Pre-Vatican II”.

Never mind that we were chanting the revised Liturgy of the Hours in English. It wasn’t “modern” enough.

Any appeal to Tradition is met with some variation of “you want to turn back the clock!” or, “… but Vatican II!” As if the Church somehow started in 1965.

One of the particularly insidious things about this is that these folks rarely refer to the Council’s actual documents, but rather to some nebulous “spirit” of the Council. As well they might, for the Council documents never actually say anything that would support, for example, the suppression of Gregorian chant or Latin, both of which I’ve heard people claim the Council abolished.

The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.

(Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, paragraph 116)

And yet, until we joined our current parish, I’d very rarely heard it in church. And as for Latin:

Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.

(Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, paragraph 36. 1)

Generally, the only time you get Latin in the Mass is if you attend the Extraordinary Form, something else I’ve witnessed the “Spirit of Vatican II” types vilify. Another thing I’ve never understood: how can you vilify the Mass?

The Catholic Church that I joined – the Body of Christ of which I am the least part – did not suddenly spring into being in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. No, it was founded by Christ Himself upon Peter (Matt. 16:18-19).

The point of the Council was never to change dogma anyway. As Pope John XXIII said when he opened the Council,

The major interest of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred heritage of Christian truth be safeguarded and expounded with greater efficacy. ….

What is needed at the present time is a new enthusiasm, a new joy and serenity of mind in the unreserved acceptance by all of the entire Christian faith, without forfeiting that accuracy and precision in its presentation which characterized the proceedings of the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council.

What is needed, and what everyone imbued with a truly Christian, Catholic and apostolic spirit craves today, is that this doctrine shall be more widely known, more deeply understood, and more penetrating in its effects on men’s moral lives. What is needed is that this certain and immutable doctrine, to which the faithful owe obedience, be studied afresh and reformulated in contemporary terms. For this deposit of faith, or truths which are contained in our time-honored teaching is one thing; the manner in which these truths are set forth (with their meaning preserved intact) is something else.

This, then, is what will require our careful, and perhaps too our patient, consideration. We must work out ways and means of expounding these truths in a manner more consistent with a predominantly pastoral view of the Church’s teaching office.

(Pope John XXIII, Address at the Opening of Vatican Council II, 11 October 1962)

Get that? No doctrine changes, we just need to internalize them and to find better ways of explaining and teaching them.

This does not mean that we discard 2000 years of experience and tradition and start over.

It also does not mean that we discard “certain and immutable doctrine”.

When I was in college, I studied Church/State relations in the High Middle Ages. Oh, what fun! One of the documents that I studied was a Papal Bull of Pope Boniface VIII, issued in 1302 when the Papacy was in the midst of its struggle against King Phillip IV of France.

This document, called Unam sanctam, contains these thunderous words:

Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins …

Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

(Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, 18 November 1302)

Now, Boniface was not a particularly good Pope. He hired and sent mercenaries against his enemies. Charges of simony brought against him by the French crown resulted in a farcical posthumous trial at the Council of Vienne in 1311. The Council more or less found in the late Pope’s favour, but for Dante at least, he was assigned to the Eighth Circle of Hell. Many of his contemporaries agreed with this assessment.

So presumably, we can discount the words of a bad Pope, yes? And besides, didn’t Vatican II teach that you didn’t really have to be a Catholic to be saved?

Well, no. Not exactly.

The teaching authority of the Church is divided into two categories: the infallible sacred magisterium and the fallible ordinary magisterium. Leaving aside all the complications of what requires assent and what doesn’t, the fact is that the Church has taught from the beginning that the Holy Spirit protects the Church from promulgating erroneous dogma (that’s the “infallible sacred magisterium” part).

Pope Boniface said “we declare, we proclaim, we define”, and that pretty much makes the statement part of the infallible sacred magisterium.

It’s certainly important to take Unam Sanctam in context. Pope Boniface was writing to Catholics, and indeed Catholics must be subject to the Pope. Fair enough, you say, but what about that part about no salvation outside the Catholic Church?

I’ve heard it said, even by pastors of the Church, that since Vatican II, that’s no longer valid. Well, I’ve read the document in question, and here’s what it has to say:

This Sacred Council wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful. Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation.

Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism (Cf. Mark 16:16; John 3.5) and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.

(Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, section 14, 21 November 1964)

Emphasis mine. Cartoon by somebody else.

The key phrase for non-Catholics is that last bit, “Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.”

In other words, ignorance is an excuse in this case. The Catechism (quoting extensively from Lumen Gentium) puts it this way:

Outside the Church There is No Salvation

846. How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? (cf. St. Cyprian, Ep 73:21; PL 3:1169; De Unit PL 4:509-536) Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

“Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.” (Vatican II LG 14)

847. This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

“Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.” (Vatican II LG 16)

(Catechism of the Catholic Church)

Or, as Christ Himself said about those who reject Him through ignorance: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin” (John 15:22).

If you know the Truth, then you are culpable for rejecting it.

If you know that the Church has the Truth, then you must place yourself within the Church.

Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins…

And having done so, it is the words of the Church Councils – the actual teaching of the texts themselves – that you must follow, not some nebulous feel-good “spirit”.

It seemed to me that timing the launch of the Year of Faith to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council would provide a good opportunity to help people understand that the texts bequeathed by the Council Fathers, in the words of Blessed John Paul II, “have lost nothing of their value or brilliance.

They need to be read correctly, to be widely known and taken to heart as important and normative texts of the Magisterium, within the Church’s Tradition.

(Pope Benedict XVI, Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei, section 5, 11 October 2011)