TP O'Mahony: Pope faces formidable opposition in promotion of a synodal Church

The rejection of collegiality has perhaps been the greatest single loss of Vatican II’s legacy, writes TP O'Mahony

Pope John XXIII receives an enthusiastic welcome from the crowds at Loreto, during a pilgrimage to pray at the shrines of Loreto and Assisi in 1962; he opened the most momentous religious event of the 20th century, Vatican II, on this day 60 years ago. Picture: Getty Images

WHEN Sean Mac Reamoinn died in 2007 — he had covered the fourth and final session of Vatican II in 1965 for RTÉ — his friend Neil Middleton, the English Catholic writer and publisher, wrote of Sean’s considerable anger “at the subsequent long process of dismantling, or discrediting, by successive popes and their functionaries, so much of what Vatican II had achieved”.

This betrayal, for it was nothing less, is the real untold story of Vatican II — the most momentous religious event of the 20th century which, while it was in session, captured worldwide interest, and caused immense controversy afterwards.

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of this momentous event by Pope John XXIII in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In the history of Catholicism in the modern era, the date October 11, 1962, has a special significance.

From the moment John XXIII announced the council on January 25, 1959, speculation grew as to what course it might take, what issues it would address, and what changes it might introduce.

The pope’s opening address to an assembly of 2,300 bishops and several hundred observers set the tone — and it was captured in one word — aggiornamento (Italian for updating or modernising).

In the history of the Catholic Church up to this point there had been 20 great councils, beginning with the first, the Council of Nicaea in 325. The last was Vatican 1 (1869-70) which caused great controversy because of its definition of papal primacy and infallibility.

What would Vatican II, the 21st council, do? It was to last four years (1962-65), much longer than the pope or the council planners foresaw, and it issued 16 documents. These are its legacy, though today it is a hotly contested legacy.

Pope Francis has been struggling to return the Church to the sprit and vision of what Vatican II stood for. Picture: AP Photo/Andrew Medichini

This has crystallised during the nine-year pontificate of Pope Francis, who has been struggling to reverse the “dismantling” of much of that legacy and to return the Church to the spirit and the vision of what Vatican II stood for.

This dismantling was primarily undertaken during the long pontificate of John Paul II, during which he was aided and abetted by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later as Pope Benedict XVI, would continue the process.

Two of the key concepts to emerge from Vatican II were the redefinition of the Church as the “people of God” (carrying echoes of Martin Luther’s notion of the “priesthood of all believers”) and the doctrine of “collegiality” — highlighting the collective responsibility of all the bishops to share with the pope, as bishop of Rome, in the governance of the universal Church.

The autocratic Polish pope had little time for either of these concepts. He viewed collegiality as a dangerous infringement on papal authority, preferring the monarchical model of the papacy which seemed to have become the settled orthodoxy prior to the council.

As for the Church as “the people of God”, John Paul II lost no time in insisting on the old pyramid model, with the pope at the apex, the faithful at the bottom, and bishops and priests in between. Under Karol Wojtyla, authority, power, and control became more and more centralised in the Vatican and the Roman Curia (the Church’s central bureaucracy).

Dissent was harshly dealt with, theologians were routinely silenced, and John Paul II was utterly dismissive of the idea of a “loyal opposition”.

Massive obstacles

The rejection of collegiality has perhaps been the greatest single loss of Vatican II’s legacy, though in his promotion of a synodal Church Pope Francis is seeking to restore a form of it. He faces formidable obstacles.

The most disastrous consequence of the short-circuiting of the collegial process occurred during the pontificate of Paul VI, who had succeeded John XXIII. The latter had kept birth control off the council’s agenda, instead setting up a papal commission to examine it.

That commission’s final report was leaked to The Tablet in England and the National Catholic Reporter in the USA in the spring of 1967. Sensationally, it recommended a change in the Church’s traditional opposition to contraception.

But in July 1968, in his ill-fated encyclical Humanae Vitae, Paul VI ignored the recommendation for change, and restated the traditional anti-contraception position. This sparked (as I predicted at the time in The Irish Press) the greatest crisis of authority in the Church since the Reformation in the 16th century.

Andrew Greeley, the American priest-sociologist, was not alone in his belief that the institutional erosion of Catholicism was largely due to Humanae Vitae, which caused a serious loss of papal credibility.

The 16 documents produced by Vatican II varied in length and significance. The most obvious and visible change they ushered in was in the liturgy, with the abandonment of Latin in the Mass.

That apart, Vatican II over the past 60 years has had only marginal impact on the Irish Church.

Whether Pope Francis’s belief in a synodal Church can make a real difference, here and elsewhere, remains to be seen.