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For all those who feel committed to the entire Catholic tradition, the Second Vatican Council is a difficult topic. On the one hand, we know that Vatican II could not have turned anything the Church has always taught upside down. On the other hand, we live in an environment where much seems to have been turned upside down—and we are told that this is precisely the will of the Second Vatican Council, which everyone is expected to acknowledge. And this is not being said by just anyone whose views one could easily dismiss, but by many professors of theology, almost all commentators in the Church media—and most bishops say it as well, or at least signal their tacit approval. Opposition to the “spirit of the Council” and what is passed off as such appears to be the ultimate “anathema” in a Church where one can otherwise say, doubt, or demand almost anything.
It is helpful, then, to revisit how critically Joseph Ratzinger—long before he became Benedict XVI, having himself traveled to the Council as a young theology professor with high hopes—assessed the effects of this supposed dawn of a “new spring” just a few years after his graduation. His assessment, delivered on the 10th anniversary (and later likely slightly revised for inclusion in one of his books), begins with unflinching realism and leads to the sobering insight that this Council, too—like others before it—may have failed to fulfill the purpose for which it was convened and may have done the Church more harm than good.
“That our churches, our seminaries, and our monasteries have become emptier over these ten years is something anyone can have the statisticians confirm, if they have not noticed it themselves; that the atmosphere in the Church has at times been not merely frosty, but downright bitter and aggressive, also needs no elaborate proof; that factionalism is tearing the community apart everywhere is part of our daily experience, threatening the joy of the Christian life. Anyone who says such things is quickly accused of pessimism and thus excluded from the conversation. But these are quite simply empirical facts, and to deny them betrays not so much pessimism as a quiet despair.”
The fact that a council may initially be followed by great confusion comes as no great surprise to Joseph Ratzinger. He cites a letter from Gregory of Nazianzus, who in the year 382 declined the invitation to continue the Council of Constantinople with words that sound disturbingly relevant today: “To tell the truth, I believe one should shun every council of bishops, since I have never witnessed a happy outcome at any of them; nor the abolition of abuses …, but always, on the contrary, ambition or strife over how to proceed.”
He cites even harsher judgments from Gregory’s contemporary and friend Basil. For Basil, the councils of that time led to “appalling disorder and confusion” and filled the entire Church with “ceaseless chatter.”
Only in historical retrospect—according to Joseph Ratzinger—did the great councils of the 4th century become recognizable as beacons of the Church, which helped clarify the identity of the faith through the changing times. Nevertheless, the assessment of the then-professor regarding the effects of these councils is not entirely positive. With palpable sorrow, he recalls the severe schisms that followed them and inflicted wounds on the Church that have not yet healed: “The faithful heirs of the great Bishop Cyril of Alexandria felt betrayed by the formulations that ran counter to their sacred tradition; as Monophysite Christians, they still constitute a significant minority in the East today, whose very existence gives us a sense of the severity of the struggles of that time.”
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council hoped to avoid such grave consequences by refraining from any dogmatization. “A council that did not dogmatize and excluded no one,” according to Joseph Ratzinger, “seemed capable of offending no one, repelling no one, but attracting everyone. In truth, it fared no differently than the ecumenical councils that preceded it; no one today can seriously dispute the crisis-ridden developments into which it led.”
Among the reasons for this, the then-professor highlighted two in particular: “The Council saw itself as a great examination of conscience for the Church; ultimately, it wanted to be an act of penance, an act of conversion.” Consequently, there was a great willingness to acknowledge, more or less without hesitation, everything the world held against the Church as the Church’s actual guilt toward the world. In order not to incur new guilt, people wanted to see and acknowledge only the good and what was worthy of adoption everywhere. Yet this not only led to a general identity crisis but also tore open a deep rift with the Church’s entire tradition, which now had to appear worthless. Consequently, many would have viewed a radical new beginning as the only alternative.
Joseph Ratzinger identified the naive optimism of the Kennedy era as a second reason. “We can achieve anything if we only want to and devote the necessary resources to it. It was precisely this rupture in historical consciousness—this self-tormenting farewell to the past—that gave rise to the idea of a ‘zero hour,’ in which everything would begin anew and everything that had been done wrong up to that point would finally be set right. The dream of liberation, the dream of something entirely different (!), which shortly thereafter took on an increasingly violent character in the student revolt, also hung, in a certain sense, over the Council; it was this dream that first inspired people and then disappointed them.” The conclusion that Professor Ratzinger draws from both of these motives is devastating. Where repentance leads only to the negative, it all too easily turns into pride; genuine repentance, on the other hand, “leads to the Gospel—that is, to joy, including joy in oneself. The form of self-accusation that was reached at the Council in relation to its own history failed to recognize this and thus led to neurotic manifestations.”
What does this assessment—more than 10 years after the end of the Council—mean for Joseph Ratzinger? Where, in his opinion, must one begin in order to set in motion the proper reception of the Council, which has not even begun? To answer this question, he examines some of the fundamental concepts that shaped the discussions at the Council.
First, he considers the idea of communio—that is, the “theology of the People of God” so emphatically emphasized at the last Council. In putting this theology into practice, he argues, the Council and those responsible for its implementation fell into grave errors by interpreting “communio” and “collegiality” almost exclusively in terms of committees, councils, commissions, and conferences. On this point, he says: “No one can doubt that the unchecked proliferation of such bodies has led to an incredible waste of energy and the production of mountains of meaningless paperwork, while the best minds were worn down by endless discussions that no one wanted, yet which were unavoidable given the new structures.”
He goes on to examine the frequently touted concept of “simplicity.” In doing so, he makes it clear that “simplicity” did not mean poverty or a renunciation of decor, but rather, first and foremost, a justified insistence on reason and rationality, which must not be understood as contrary to faith in Christ. In practice, however, this often led to submission to the Enlightenment’s concept of rationality and the dictates of the spirit of the age.
At the conclusion of his reflections, Joseph Ratzinger drew a sobering conclusion as early as the mid-1970s—one that must displease all those who today wish to elevate the Council, which refrained from all dogmatization, to the status of a super-dogma. At the end of the Council, Karl Rahner compared the mass of paper produced to the vast quantities of pitchblende needed to extract a small amount of radium. Yet between pitchblende and radium there is at least a definite connection—where there is pitchblende, there is also radium. “But there is no similarly necessary connection between the pitchblende of words and paper and the living Christian reality. Whether the Council will become a positive force in Church history depends only indirectly on texts and committees. What is decisive is whether there are people—saints—who, through the unforced commitment of their very selves, bring about something living and new.”
Ratzinger concludes with the unsettling thought that we must today “be self-critical enough to acknowledge that the naive optimism of the Council and the overconfidence of many who supported and promoted it justify, in a frightening way, the grim diagnoses of earlier church leaders regarding the danger of councils. Not all valid councils have also become fruitful councils in the history of the Church; in the end, some amount to nothing but a great futility.”
All quotations are from “On the Place of the Church and Theology Today” in Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Principles, Donauwörth 2005, pp. 383–395.
