Vatican II: Just what church needed

	Bishop Robert J. Banks

It was 40 years ago, on Oct. 14, 1962, that the Second Vatican Council opened in Rome at St. Peter's Basilica. According to a report I just read, of the 3,000 bishops who attended the Council, only 60 or 61 are still living. The Diocese of Green Bay is fortunate enough to have one of them right here, our own Bp. Aloysius Wycislo.

It probably is safe to say that Bp. Wycislo is one of the most lively of the group. He still is called upon by local colleges to give an eyewitness account of what actually happened at the Council. But I think he enjoys even more explaining the Council to the youngsters in our elementary schools.

The closest I came to the Council was having a priest friend chosen to be Card. Richard Cushing's peritus or expert. We shared a cottage on Cape Cod with three other priests, so all of us got a full report when he returned from Rome at the end of each session. Young as he was then, he now is with those 2,940 bishops who have passed on.

As I have read and very much agreed with the various recent articles praising the great changes in the Church brought about by Vatican II, my thoughts have also gone further back to the Church of the early '50s. I think the Church of the early '50s got somewhat of a raw deal as preachers, teachers and writers worked to help our people assimilate all the changes that came out of Vatican II.

'50s Catholics happy

Those of you old enough to remember the late '60s and the '70s will recall that the standard procedure was to point out all the problems of the old way of doing things and the advantages of the new way. If you had not lived as an adult in the '50s, you would think the Church must have been filled with a lot of unhappy Catholics.

My own recollection is that we had a lot of very happy Catholics back in the '50s. Not only was the average American Catholic happy, he or she was probably very proud of being a Catholic and very proud of the Church.

Those were the days when we were proud of having so many vocations to priesthood and religious life, that every diocese and religious order was building new seminaries or novitiates. Those were the days when we might have wanted our colleges and universities to have the status of an Ivy League school, but we were very happy that they were turning out graduates most of whom knew, loved and lived the Faith. The same was especially true of the Catholic high schools and grammar schools.

Back then, the Mass was in Latin with little participation, and perhaps many of those in attendance were motivated by the desire to avoid mortal sin, but you heard few complaints that the Mass was boring. It was widely recognized as the continuation of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, and the average American Catholic was proud that so many were at Mass every Sunday.

Looking back, I suppose we could say that there was a good deal of guilt floating around in those days. Sin was attacked in sermons and especially in the parish missions that were attended by just about every Catholic in town. But just as sin was in the air, so was forgiveness. The average American Catholic was proud about the sense of forgiveness that came after a good Confession.

There were problems, of course. Many Catholics had real trouble with observing the Church's teaching on birth control; and divorce, even in the early '50s, had become more common among American Catholics. The response of the priests, at least the ones I knew, was to be sympathetic and compassionate with the penitents who were experiencing difficulties in those areas.

As far as I can remember, there was no great clamor among the theologians or the people for a change in Church teaching about contraception and divorce. The one theological subject that was hotly debated by some theologians concerned the relationship of Church and state. The theologians, and probably those few Catholic laity who knew about it, felt that the American system was the ideal and they rejected the standard Church teaching that a government should support the Catholic Church if the citizenry was Catholic.

In my opinion Vatican II did not come about as a response to the unhappiness of millions of dissatisfied American Catholics. Instead, it came in response more to the difficult situation of the Church in Europe and to the very real pastoral and theological concerns expressed mainly by European theologians.

Grace-filled event

Once the Council opened, it was the European bishops who made sure their concerns took center stage. The one subject that was seen as an American concern was precisely the issue of the relationship of Church and state and the related question of religious freedom.

The Council itself was a wonderful and gracefilled event for the Church. The bishops were superb. Despite all the talk about conservative and liberal bishops, they almost unanimously approved every one of the documents. Two trends guided them in their work. One was aggiorna-mento, the Italian word for making the Church relevant to the modern world. The other was ressourcement, the French word for going back to the best teaching of the Church in its earlier history.

The teaching that came out of the Council was just what the universal Church needed for our times, not only in Europe but also in the United States and all over the world. We are theologically and pastorally a better Church because of the Council.

I am not so sure that we American Catholics are quite as contented and proud as we were back in the '50s. We are still suffering a bit of indigestion as we try to assimilate both the new teaching that came out of Vatican II and also the reality that there can be differences of opinion among us, even on serious subjects.

I am glad we are not as proud. Now we realize, I think more than we did 50 years ago, that it really is Jesus who builds and gives life to the Church, not us.