Pope Francis in Krakow on July 30, 2016. (Photo by Alik Keplicz/AP)
By Massimo Faggioli (Villanova)
By Massimo Faggioli | United StatesAdd to your favourite storiesFirst published on October 5, 2021.Pope Francis knows how to cause a stir with his statements.But even when the current Bishop of Rome says things that should not be newsworthy, they are objectively relevant in the context of the embattled Catholic Church of today.
One example: the pope recently said that the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) shaped his theological and pastoral vision. He did so in the preface of a new book called, Fraternità segni dei tempi, which was co-written by Cardinal Michael Czerny, one of his fellow Jesuits and top Vatican official, and Christian Barone, an Italian priest and theologian.
The English translation is called, Siblings All, Sign of the Times: The Social Teaching of Pope Francis. It will be published in 2022 by Orbis Books.
Greater insistence on the centrality of Vatican II "It is necessary to make more explicit the key concepts of Vatican Council II, the foundations of its arguments, its theological and pastoral horizon, the arguments and the method it used," Francis writes in the preface. This was not an off-the-cuff remark, but a written statement in a book published by the Vatican's printing house and reported on September 28 by its official media outlet, Vatican News.
Why is the pope's statement on Vatican II so newsworthy? T he organized opposition to Francis did not react as usual by alleging that the Jesuit pope had said something unorthodox or had yielded to the liberal and secularist spirit of the time. That's not because it would be very conspicuous for Catholic leaders -- cardinals and bishops especially -- to distance themselves from the Church's 21st ecumenical council.
Just the opposite.
Francis vs. the anti-Vatican II crowd
They didn't need to react. It is enough to do a search online in conservative and traditionalist circles, as well as their publications and theological self-help websites, to get an idea of the magnitude of the problem. These groups simply identity Vatican II with selling out Catholic identity and weakening the sense of the tradition.
Other times, they use Vatican II as a synonym for relativism, neo-paganism and heresy.It's not just social media or EWTN. (I am not linking to those websites because they don't deserve free advertisement).
Pope Francis has done -- and is doing -- much to change this situation.It is impossible to ignore how much impact this pontificate's words and deeds have had in restoring the place and reputation that Vatican Council II deserves in the discourse in the Church, but also in the discourse on the Church in mainstream media.
An uphill battle for the coming generation
Most recently, his "motu proprio" Traditionis custodes -- which reversed Benedict XVI's decision in 2007 to universalize use of the "extraordinary form" (pre-Vatican II) of Mass in the Roman Rite -- is one of the most important acts in the post-conciliar Church to reinforce the binding value of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.
But it's an uphill battle that at least another generation of Catholics will have to fight. It suffices to look at the curricula in the seminaries and the formation programs in many Catholic institutions to see that Pope Francis' language about and references to Vatican II are the exception, not the norm.
The problem here is not really the absence of the term "Vatican II". It is the absence of that theological depth in favor of a mix of glossy apologetics, saccharine devotionalism and motivational confessionalism. In other cases, even in supposedly liberal Catholic schools of theology, Vatican II is no longer part of the curriculum. It has been pushed aside in favor of more fashionable trends.
The deliberate sidelining of the Council
At least in the United States, it is now rare to find a graduate student in Catholic theology that has a basic grasp of Vatican Council II, its history and theology. Paradoxically, it is less rare to find some knowledge of the Council among Catholic undergraduates. From what I have seen, they are still learning something about Vatican II in Catholic high schools, but then it gets lost among those who continue to study theology. They almost never hear anything about the Church's most recent Council in their parishes.
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