TIME ESSAY

VATICAN II: TURNING THE CHURCH TOWARD THE WORLD

"THE whole world expects a step forward," said John XXIII as he opened the Second Vatican Council in October 1962. When Pope Paul VI formally closed it last week, he heralded it as "among the greatest events of the church." Whatever the future's judgment, there can be little doubt that the council indeed represents a momentous step forward in carrying Christendom's oldest, largest body into modern times and bringing it into closer contact with all men--religious or not.

Vatican II was strikingly different from the 20 other ecclesiastical assemblies that Roman Catholicism ranks as ecumenical. It is the first council that did not face, or leave in its wake, heresy or schism. Councils have always been the church's last-resort response to crisis--from the First Council of Nicaea, summoned by Emperor Constantine in 325 to combat the Arian heresy, to the abortive Vatican I (1869-70), which faced the bewildering effects of the ever-widening industrial revolution.

At the time Vatican II convened, there were few obvious threats, few violent complaints among its 560 million members. Yet the church was scarcely facing up to the growing secularization of life, the explosion of science, the bitter claims to social justice in old nations and new. Catholic theology, dominated by a textbook scholasticism, appeared to have stopped in the 13th century. Except by a few pioneer ecumenists, Protestants were unhesitatingly regarded as heretics.

Today this sort of thinking seems almost as remote in the church as the sale of indulgences--and this is perhaps the strongest single measure of the council's achievements. The essentials of Catholic dogma stand, of course, as does Rome's claim of universality. What has changed drastically is atmosphere and attitudes. "Before, the church looked like an immense and immovable colossus, the city set on a hill, the stable bulwark against the revolutionary change," says the English Benedictine abbot, Dom Christopher Butler. "Now it has become a people on the march--or at least a people which is packing its bags for a pilgrimage."

In all, more than 2,400 patriarchs, cardinals, bishops and religious superiors took part in the council's deliberations. For the first time in history, observers from Protestant and Orthodox churches not only sat in attendance at the debates, but were also consulted.

The 16 promulgated decrees, constitutions and declarations that are the council's legacy divide roughly into two categories. The majority are aimed at the internal renewal and reform of Catholicism, but at least four may profoundly affect the relationship between the church and the non-Catholic world.

One document that has already changed the spiritual life of the church is the constitution On the Liturgy, which led to widespread introduction of vernacular languages in the Mass. Another constitution, On the Church, asserting that bishops collectively share ruling power over the church with the Pope, is the charter for what many theologians feel will be a slow but unstoppable democratization.

Of more concern to non-Catholics are the documents that clearly define the end of the church's Counter Reformation hostility to other faiths. One is the much rewritten constitution On the Church in the Modern World, which attempts to express the mind of Catholicism on such matters of common concern as peace and war, world poverty, industrialism, social and economic justice. A decree On Ecumenism, committing Catholicism to work for Christian unity, for the first time acknowledges Protestant bodies as churches that share God's grace and favor. The declaration On Religious Liberty states the right of all men to freedom of conscience in worship. Another declaration, On Non-Christian Religions, condemns anti-Semitism and asserts that the Jewish people as a whole cannot be accounted guilty of Christ's death.

Many bishops readily admit that these and other documents of Vatican II show some omissions and outright failures. The ecclesiastical legislation had to be shaped and sometimes compromised to gain the approval of disparate men--Italian country bishops who have seldom seen Protestants, and Dutch prelates who pray with them almost daily; U.S. cardinals whose most pressing concern is a multimillion-dollar building fund, and Asian missionaries whose church is a Quonset hut. Methodist Observer Albert C. Outler of Texas says that "several of the declarations are substandard; several are no better than mediocre."

The success or failure of Vatican II cannot be judged merely by the bulk of written documents. More important is the spirit that brought the council together and inspired its discussions. In general, the council indicates a new attitude toward a complex, pluralistic world. Without denying its own belief that it has a special divine mission, Catholicism now acknowledges that it is but one of many spiritual voices with something to tell perplexed modern man. The more the church returns in spirit to the unfettered simplicity of the Gospel from which it sprang, the more likely it is that its voice will be heeded again by the world. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.