UNDERSTANDING REFORMS IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:

VATICAN II TAKE

 

Vatican II council is one council that illicit many questions with often few answers because we never read. The culture of reading is a bit getting lost with modern technology, where things can be got with instant easy. The time to go to the library, to buy a historical book leave alone a church history book is next to none. These questions are usually addressed to historians. The question may not be necessarily whether there has been a reform in the Catholic Church? It’s all about what has been translated into action. How deeply have things changed? What kind of reform did the council initiate and how can its magnitude, or finitude, be assessed? These are questions that cross our minds whenever we hear about Vatican II council and its impact to the contemporary world.

Today no one with even the slightest knowledge about the history of the Christian Church denies that it has during its long course in the world undergone a number of significant changes. In its organization, in the styles of its theology, in the forms of its piety, in the ways it exercises its ministries. Changes do not jeopardize a deeper identity of who she is, the spirit to maintain her authenticity in the changing world. This is what Thomas Kuhn calls paradigm shift (Cf. The Structure of Scientific Revolution (2^nd Edition; Chicago Universy,1990). Those changes which have occurred in the church without being deliberately and self-consciously initiated by Church leadership, often by the kind of osmosis with them. Some developments have been repudiated as abuses, whereas others have been ratified and embraced.  Its only upon recognition, if it ever occurs, might developments therefore begin to assume some characteristic of reform or reformation. The Church has a right, and sometimes the duty, to initiate changes enacted within the Church that take place within a given frame of reference. They are within the system. They are “adjustments” or “emendations”. Terms which often describe how the Vatican II was all about. (Cf. John w. O’Malley., Reform, Historical Construction, 576). These are reforms that do not rock the boat; they steady it on its course.

Reformation is about self-consciousness that is based on ecclesiastical life or consciousness base on principles that tend to dislodge old ones. This should not be seen as puzzle solving, or mopping up. It creates a different way of looking at the universe and does not merely effect an adjustment within a prevailing view. It forces the abandonment of certain basic assumptions and it replaces them with new ones. The total shift of paradigm is by definition impossible. If we fail to understand the changes it is because we are in unreflective manner equate them with lesser ones. Some changes do not merely confirm and farther elaborate received ideas and institutions; they challenge and contradict them. The paradigmatic radicality comes with its angle components of being focused on issues. What exactly are we dealing with at hand, focusing attention on single problem or call it challenge.  One has to test for authenticity, Prove the authenticity of what kind of reform, are they perverted custom, an unwarranted development? Reformation is at the very meaning of life itself as today it correctly bears its name.

Reformation is means changing of set of ways and mentalities, which implies dislodging imbedded interest-groups and earning their hatred. The resistance to such change is inevitably enormous and requires heroic energies to overcome it. That comes clearly with the old axiom that it is more difficult to reform a religious order than to found a new one betrays a profound understanding of how institutions function.

Until the Council, Catholic thought on reform was based on what can be called a “classicist” mentality. According to such a mentality, the Church moved through history more or less unaffected by history. Men must be changed by religion, not religion by men was the concise articulation of the position, enunciated by Giles of Viterbo at the opening session of the 5^th Lateran Council, 1512. (Cf. John, O’Malley., Giles of Viterbo on Church and Reform, 1968, pp 179-91). This council too evinced a sense of freedom and flexibility in its interpretation of the tradition of the Church that was unprecedented. Religion had to change to meet the needs of the time. To initiate a new freedom of expression and action within the Church that certain Vatican institutions were now interpreted as having previous curtailed; to distribute more broadly the exercise of pastoral authority, especially by strengthening the role of the episcopacy and local churches vis-à-vis the Holy See; to , modify in people’s consciousness and in the actual functioning of the church the predominantly clerical, institutional and hierarchical model that had prevailed; to affirm the dignity of the laity in the Church.

In adjusting itself in this and other ways to a world consciousness the Council gave shape to its own paradigm of the Church. After recourse to its own tradition, the Council determined that the Church could and should in fact refashion its own paradigm to bring it more into accord with conditions which are out there. The need for the Church at present, a need legitimated by the tradition itself, was to accommodate to the present situation. Many profound changes that have taken place in the history of the Church were not the result, in the first instance, of self-conscious initiative on the part of the Church membership. There is no reason to believe that the situation is any different today, except perhaps more intensified because of the mass media and the fast pace of contemporary culture. The emergence of democracy as a favored political form, the world as global village, a new religious and cultural pluralism, and similar phenomena. The reality out there so ingrained into the way we think and judge, seems to be where the long-range grounding of the Council may lie. The new consciousness will persist and have its effects. No large institution will overnight transform its paradigm into something entirely different; no institution ever continues over a long period of time to operate wholly on the same paradigm, especially not an institution so deeply imbedded in human culture as the Roman Catholic Church.

The church is fully incorporated into human history, and changes that take place there deeply affect it. That is what the Council saw, and that perception is perhaps its best legacy. That is what it means to belong to the church that as the Council insisted, is truly a pilgrim in the world. That is the continuing challenge of the Council to us all.