From the editor’s desk

Vatican II’s irreversible changes

Recent developments in the Catholic Church have sparked fears of an imminent counter-revolution against the Second Vatican Council. Anxiety is mainly focused on the new translation of the Mass into English but also on a more fundamental call by the papal master of ceremonies, Mgr Guido Marini, for a “renewal of the renewal” which would entail the recasting of the entire Latin liturgy. But is Vatican II itself actually in danger from reactionary forces in the Curia?

The inaugural meeting of a new movement, calling itself Stand Up for Vatican II, took place in London this week. Liturgical issues were high on the agenda and in people’s minds. A petition was launched calling on the bishops of England and Wales to rededicate themselves to Vatican II. Meanwhile their worst fears seemed to be underlined in a lecture by the leading liturgist Fr Anscar Chupungco OSB in Newcastle, New South Wales, in which he asked: “What are the possible implications of a reform of the post-conciliar reform? What agenda does it put forward? The agenda is, to all appearances, an attempt to put the clock back half a century.”

Like many of those at the London meeting, he is of the Vatican II generation. Many priests and lay people who remember those times recall with joy the reforms wrought by the council. They have dreaded ever since the possibility that the far horizons opened up by the Second Vatican Council might shrink again if the Church were to retreat fearfully behind fortress walls. All the post-conciliar popes, with the brief exception of John Paul I, have come under such suspicions. But at least on the evidence of his three encyclicals, it is hard to convict the present Pope of any such intentions. Nor have the English and Welsh bishops shown signs that they need reminding of their commitment to the main conclusions of Vatican II. Except in one small respect – the failure of the substantial majority of them to implement canon 511, which mandates the creating of diocesan pastoral councils as called for in the council decree Christus Dominus. Better channels of communication between laity, priests and bishops would go a long way towards assuaging current fears and preventing them from becoming exaggerated. That is true at national level as well as in the dioceses. How else are the bishops supposed to know what the laity are thinking, and vice versa?

But the gains of Vatican II are not seriously under siege: this is a not a Church about to go into reverse. The best evidence that Vatican II brought about an irreversible change in Catholic consciousness is the attitude of young people in the Church. The article by Dr Alana Harris in this edition of The Tablet will confirm what all who work with such young people already know. They do not refer back consciously to Vatican II and may not know much about it, but it is in their Catholicism’s very DNA. Ms Harris describes them as “anonymous conciliarists” – but if you told them that, they would very likely reply that they were “just Catholics”. Perhaps they should be taught more about the profound changes wrought by Vatican II. If they could be transported back to the pre-conciliar days of, say, 1955 they would find the Catholic Church of that time completely unrecognisable, and not remotely congenial.