#445: “Ad Multos Annnos !” for Francis —and for HIS Council

The traditional Latin birthday toast “Ad Multos Annos !” (to many years!) had double (or even triple) meaning the last two weeks.

# 417: Two Popes, Two Saints—But Only ONE Pole!

This week’s canonizations seem to unite opposite poles within the Church--but these popes were not really poles apart.

I celebrated Mass on Boston Common with Pope John-Paul II (and 400,000 other people including my wife, father, brother, and sister-in-law) in October 1979.  Eight years later, in September 1987, I saw him again at a special (and much smaller) gathering of lay leaders in San Francisco’s Saint Mary’s Cathedral.  On that occasion, I actually met the pope, shook his hand, and exchanged a few words with him.

This charismatic man’s papacy shaped an important part of my adult life and a good deal of my professional ministry in the Church.

By contrast I never either saw or met John XXIII. Yet this simple shepherd touched my life even more deeply than John-Paul II.  His papacy made my career possible--a career previous generations could never have imagined.  Absent John XXIII, I would no doubt have led an entirely different life.

As John and John-Paul became saints this week, it feels as if they are the first saints I can call my own--that is, saints whose lives changed mine during their own lifetimes.

The conventional wisdom is that canonizing these two men simultaneously is a shrewd political move by Pope Francis.  His aim, it is said, is to end the polarization over the legacy of Vatican Council II (1962-1965) by uniting the author of the council, John XXIII, with the man some blame for attempting to restore the Church to its pre-conciliar state, John-Paul II.

On the level of public relations, this makes perfect sense.  It is undoubtedly true that liberal Catholics lionize John XXIII while conservatives champion John-Paul II.  It is also obvious that they were dramatically different men who had highly contrasting papacies.  So the PR message is clear: if the Church’s “Hall of Fame” is big enough to embrace them both, then the Church itself is big enough to embrace both liberals and conservatives.

On the level of the debate rhetoric, this also makes sense.  The long-standing debate over Vatican II’s legacy has often pitted those claiming the Council brought “renewal and change” against those saying it offered “continuity rather than rupture.” It has pitted those claiming the Council’s agenda was really “ressourcement” (the retrieval of ancient, lost elements of Catholic tradition) against those claiming the Council was really about “aggiornamento” (updating or modernizing the Church).  It has pitted “reform” against “restoration,” and even lead to paradoxical proposals about “the reform of the reform.” Making John XXIII and John-Paul II partners in sainthood sends the clear message: they are not pitted against one another, and neither should we. 

But on the level of facts, the decision by Pope Francis to schedule both canonizations together is not really about saying “it is time to get past the polarization over Vatican II.”  It is about saying “such polarization was mistaken all along.”

As I’ve written often before: John-Paul II was himself a product of the vast changes that John’s Council unleashed.  He chose the name John-Paul (imitating John-Paul I) to confirm his intention to follow the conciliar path laid out by John XXIII and Paul VI.  He was himself a council father, instrumental in some of its major documents.  He vigorously implemented the “changes” from the Council in his native Poland.  He became the first non-Italian pope in 400 years thanks to the Council’s new openness.  He took up his three predecessors’ efforts to transform the papacy itself and turned it into the highly visible global office that it is today.

In short, had there been no Vatican II there could never have been a Pope John-Paul II.  Which means, without John XXIII: there would be no John-Paul II.  Their destinies were linked all along. These two popes were not opposite poles.  Only John-Paul II was a Pole!

Moreover, there is absolutely no doubt that John-Paul II understood John’s vision for Vatican II, as well as its impact.  In 2000 he announced the beatification of John XXIII in a homily that included this comment:

Everyone remembers the image of Pope John's smiling face and two outstretched arms embracing the whole world. How many people were won over by his simplicity of heart, combined with a broad experience of people and things! The breath of newness he brought certainly did not concern doctrine, but rather the way to explain it; his style of speaking and acting was new, as was his friendly approach to ordinary people and to the powerful of the world. It was in this spirit that he called the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, thereby turning a new page in the Church's history: Christians heard themselves called to proclaim the Gospel with renewed courage and greater attentiveness to the "signs" of the times. The Council was a truly prophetic insight of this elderly Pontiff who, even amid many difficulties, opened a season of hope for Christians and for humanity.

If we unpacked this dense paragraph we notice several important points about John-Paul II’s perspective:

1.     John’s impact came from his unique personality and character.

2.     John’s vision was both conservative and dynamic: he did not change doctrine, but he did communicate it in a new way.  He brought Catholicism a new, modern style.

3.     This was precisely the “spirit” that inspired the Council.

4.     Vatican II “turned a new page in the Church’s history”

5.     Vatican II linked the gospel message to the signs of the times.

6.     Vatican II was John’s “prophetic insight” bringing hope “for Christians and for humanity.”

Notice that none of the familiar, polarizing debate rhetoric is found here.  Rather, John-Paul II clearly saw John and his Council taking a “middle way” between two poles--between those expecting substantial revisions of church teaching, and those asserting that Vatican II brought nothing new.

In fact, both men were theological conservatives who saw a little

need to change Catholic doctrine.  Yet both also embrace the notion that the Council was needed to “turn the page of history.” Why?  Because by the mid-20^th century, the Church’s ability to communicate the gospel message had badly deteriorated and needed updating.

In this sense, much of the debate about Vatican II has falsified both the Council and the vision that inspired both these popes.  Liberals have too often expected doctrinal changes that the Council neither proclaimed nor implied.  Conservatives clung to “traditions” that the Council wanted to replace with more effective ways of communicating the gospel message.

On the pastoral level, the wisdom of this “middle way” has always been obvious to me.  For more than 40 years I have been responsible for communicating the gospel message to others.  In my 20s I worked mainly with catechists and parents.  In my 30s, I worked with pastors, sisters, their lay colleagues, and with parish volunteers.  Turning 40, I edited a newspaper for Catholic readers.  Since then I have worked with parish staffs, clergy, religious communities, parish lay leaders, and done a lot of adult faith formation for ordinary laypeople.

In nearly all these settings, my goal has been to communicate the core of Catholic tradition in a new way, and apply it to the practical needs of Catholic life on the local level.  Almost nothing I communicated was actually new “teaching”--it was our tradition in modern dress.  In short, I have spent 40 years doing the work of Vatican II.

Yet over and over, people would react by saying, “Really?  That’s really what the Church teaches?  That’s really our tradition?  That’s really our faith?  That’s really what it means to be a Catholic?”

Such reactions came from ordinary laypeople, from Catholic school graduates, Catholic college graduates, and even the seminary graduates.  As a pastoral minister, my answer to all those questions was, “Yes, really!”

As an educator, their questions always made me wonder: Why are people so surprised?  Why do they think they’re hearing something new?

The answer to both these questions is, I believe, both obvious and instructive.  People are surprised by their own tradition, and they think they are hearing something new, because the previous explanations they got were so bad.  In short, Catholics everywhere were living with the legacy of generations of mis-education about their faith.

This practical experience over 40 years is instructive in two ways.  First, it tells us that John XXIII was right: we did need a new way to explain the faith, because the old ways had lost their ability to communicate the truth of our tradition.  Second, it explains why the debates over Vatican II have occupied such extreme positions and missed the middle ground occupied by John, John-Paul, and Francis: Namely, people on both sides were so embedded in outmoded and distorting explanations of Catholic tradition that they ended up fighting over the wrong things.  Conservatives fought to protect positions that were no longer communicating Catholic truth, and liberals fought to change teachings based on misconceptions of what those teachings were.

And so this double canonization, in my view, merely confirms what has been true all along: that once John’s Council “turned the page of history,” there could be no going back under Paul VI, John-Paul I, John Paul II, even Benedict XVI.  They are all products of Vatican II, they all embody a transformed papacy in a transformed Church.  And now Francis appears on the stage of history--the first pope since John who was not a Council participant--to lead us on the middle way that so many have needed for so long.

Still, I acknowledge one difficulty (albeit unintended) caused by John-Paul II’s papacy.  For many Catholics too young to remember Vatican II, his very charisma tended to overshadow the memory of the Council. 

Some, like George Weigel, argue that John-Paul II supplied the “interpretive key” to the Council’s meaning. But my experience is that, on the practical level, John-Paul II made reference to Vatican II superfluous. Many younger Catholics simply could not see past the towering figure of “John-Paul II, Superstar.” The effect eclipsed both Vatican II and John XXIII himself.

But now “Saint John-Paul II” will be forever linked to “Saint John XXIII,” whose Council made John-Paul’s papacy possible.

I pray that this double canonization thus makes John-Paul’s shadow newly transparent, so that all Catholics see his place properly: as one of a series of great figures beginning with John XXIII, whose courage and vision opened that new page of history which Vatican II turned for us all.

Abbey Robes

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014

#396: The Providential Summer of ‘63

Fifty summers ago, dramatic events brought one of those tectonic shifts that alters the landscape for generations...

This summer brings many significant 50^th anniversaries, since the summer of 1963 brought so many significant events. Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated; Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in a doorway to block access by blacks to the University of Alabama; President John Kennedy delivered three important speeches: on civil rights (to mark the centennial of the Battle of Gettysburg), on freedom for the Soviet bloc, and—on June 26—he stood before the Berlin wall and delivered the famous lines “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

For Catholics, June 1963 and the weeks that followed were particularly dramatic.  And 50 years later, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that the drama unfolding that summer was no doubt of divine inspiration.

It all began with the death of Pope John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli), who will soon become Saint John XXIII.  

John XXIII lying in state, June 1963

 John had opened Vatican Council II in October 1962, had publicly intervened to help resolve the Cuban missile crisis that same month, and was made Time Magazine’s man of the year in January 1963.  But even then, he knew he was dying.  At his death

on June 3, the world mourned the loss of the most beloved pope in memory.  Because of his achievements, Catholics do not observe his feast day on his death date (as is standard for saints and venerated people of the Church) but on October 11, the opening date of Vatican II.

But June 3 brought crisis, for John’s death created an immediate vacuum that threatened chaos.

When Vatican II began as the largest meeting in history and the first general council since 1871, the conservatives hoped (and many more expected) that it would adjourn quickly after rubber-stamping Catholicism’s status quo.

Instead, the world’s bishops rejected the boilerplate drafts offered by Vatican officials and committed the Council to a full-scale reflection on the nature of Catholicism in its place in the modern world.  This commitment would transform Vatican II into the most important religious event of the 20th century--and one of the three or four most important watersheds in Catholic history.  But it also meant that, by the end of the Council’s first session in December 1962, almost nothing had been finished yet. 

John’s death suspended all plans for a second session, expected in fall 1963.  The next pope’s name was unknown until an election could be held.  Whoever he was, he would be under no obligation to reconvene the council, or--if he did--to continue with John’s (and now the bishops’) agenda. 

So questions abounded: Who will be pope?  Will he continue the Council?  What will he have the Council do?  In a word, all bets were off.

It all ended well.  The next pope, Paul VI (G.B. Montini),

Pope Paul VI

decided to reconvene the Council, and in his opening address he quoted John’s 1962 opening address to confirm that Vatican II was to be nothing less than a “new Pentecost”—a rebirth—of the Catholic Church. Thus the summer of ’63 included serious preparations of the new, more substantive drafts that would ultimately become known as “The Documents of Vatican II.”

But hindsight tells us that none of this happy outcome, none of this surprisingly smooth transition from pope to pope (and from first Council session to second session) was really an accident, or a matter of good fortune.  Looking back upon facts that have emerged over the last 50 years, we can now say that the events of summer 1963 appear to be the result of a plan--a plan not of human design.  In other words, summer 1963 witnessed an act of divine Providence.

The providential pattern leading to the successful continuation of Vatican II was composed of three main elements:

The young Roncalli

A Long Friendship.  As far back as the 1920s, Angelo Roncalli (later John XXIII) and Giovanni Montini (later Paul VI) were friends.  In 1925 Pope Pius XI appointed Roncalli apostolic visitor to Bulgaria.  Roncalli was devastated to be sent out of Italy. But Montini (who worked at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State) encouraged him, saying he would now have opportunities to encounter the Orthodox churches of the east and the Muslim tradition.  This mattered to both men, since both wanted to promote a reconciliation with other faiths.

The young Montini

When, after later serving as Vatican apostolic delegate to Turkey and Greece, Roncalli was made papal nuncio to France in 1945, it was Montini who signed the letter of his appointment. 

Roncalli in France

 Later, it was Montini who also asked him if he were willing to become patriarch of Venice. They corresponded frequently over the years, well beyond the demands of protocol, and one biographer says that Montini became Roncalli’s “Roman confidant.”

When John XXIII observed his 80^th birthday in 1961, it was Montini who celebrated the Mass.  And when John lay dying in June 1963, it was Montini who arranged to fly in his family from Milan to be at his old friend’s bedside.

A Close Partnership. When Pope Pius XII died in 1958,

Pius XII

Montini (now Archbishop of Milan) was a favorite to succeed him--but he was not yet a cardinal and was thought a bit young. Since Pius had ruled for 19 years, the College of Cardinals preferred a shorter interim papacy, and thus an older man.  So they elected 76-year-old Roncalli to be a caretaker of the papal seat.  They expected a brief, uneventful papacy.

When John XXIII shattered expectations by calling for the first council of bishops in a century, even Montini was surprised.  “This holy old boy,” he said, “doesn’t seem to realize what a hornet’s nest he is stirring up.”

Nonetheless Montini began advising John as early as 1961 on the best approach to a successful Council.  And he offered public support in a pastoral letter to the people of Milan in which he said “It is the whole Church that expresses itself in the Council…And we are the Church.”

Montini as Archbishop of Milan

In June 1962, only weeks before the opening of the council, John sent Montini to the final meeting of the central committee preparing for the Council.  Montini delivered the pope’s message: the Council was not to concentrate on condemnations and anathemas (like many previous councils), but was to emphasize mercy and love.  Cardinal Ottaviani, the Grand Inquisitor, spoke for many of the “intransigenti” (church officials opposed to reform) when he said, “I pray God that I may die before the Council’s end.  That way I can die a Catholic”!

We now know that that during Vatican II’s first session in the fall of 1962, John invited his friend Montini (and no one else) to reside in the papal apartments.  John did not attend council meetings himself, so he relied on Montini to keep him abreast of the mood among the bishops.  We also know that Montini led the progressive bishops in overcoming the resistance of the intransigenti.  This ensured that the council would not be brief and unproductive, but would last four years and transform Catholicism.

When John was made pope, the first man he chose to become a new cardinal was Montini.  And after the dying John receive the last rites on June 1, 1963, he told those around him that he guessed Montini would be his successor.  Three weeks later, his prediction came true, and his close partner and old friend) took over the reins of Vatican Council II.

Thus, when the College of Cardinals elected Montini himself as John’s successor 50 years ago on June 21, 1963, the cardinals were uniting two friends in one office.

A Shared Vision.  As preparations for the second session of the Council proceeded during the summer of 1963, the partnership these two friends had forged began to bear fruit in an inspired vision of how the Council could renew the Church and its mission in the world

Both men were francophiles influenced by the “new theology” of Jesuits Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou and Dominicans like Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu.  Both shared an optimistic view of modern life and a critical view of clerical church customs and structures.  Both believed that the wisdom of Catholicism was a key to steering the power of modern technology, science, and culture toward good rather than the evil--and they were both convinced that only a transformed Church could accomplish this. Both saw this transformation as the Council’s purpose and agenda.

When John addressed the Council’s opening session on October 11 1962 he called for a “New Pentecost.”  And when Montini became Pope Paul VI in the summer of 1963, he made that rebirth his own top priority.  As summer ended and the Council reconvened, Paul repeated John’s call for a “new Pentecost” and made it clear that John’s vision of a renewed and updated Church was now in the capable hands of his former friend and partner.

Two years later Paul addressed the United Nations just as the Council was finishing its work.  Here is how he described himself and the Church he represented:

Like a messenger who, after a long journey, finally succeeds in delivering the letter which has been entrusted to him, so we appreciate the good fortune of this moment, however brief, which fulfills a desire nourished in the heart for nearly twenty centuries. For, as you well remember, we are very ancient; we here represent a long history; we here celebrate the epilogue of a weary pilgrimage in search of a conversation with the entire world, ever since the command was given to us: Go and bring the good news to all peoples.

Paul VI addressing the UN General Assembly

And here is how he described the historic, even heroic vision that had inspired both him and John:

The hour has struck for our "conversion," for personal transformation, for interior renewal. We must get used to thinking of humanity in a new way...With a new manner, too, of conceiving the paths of history and the destiny of the world...The edifice of modern civilization must be built upon spiritual principles which alone can, not only support it, but even illuminate and animate it.

Looking back, we can only marvel.  The troubling questions that were provoked by John’s death in June 1963 were answered by summer’s end--but only later have we realized that the answers were engraved by the wisdom of divine Providence in the hearts of two men whose paths had converged 40 years earlier and whose shared accomplishment still touches us deeply, 50 summers later.

  © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2013

#118: Does Life Begin at 40?

As part of my ongoing observance of the 50th anniversary of Vatican II,  I am reprising two posts from the 40th anniversary! Here is the first:

Most of my parish presentations on the Second Vatican Council II (1962-1965) begin with two images. The first image is from an event that happened 40 years ago this past week, in December 1965, when Pope Paul VI rose to announce the end of the council before 2000 bishops in St. Peter’s Basilica. His speech is especially significant 40 years later, after so much conflict and debate about Vatican II’s legacy.


For Pope Paul, the key question was, “What is the religious value of this Council?”—and in his mind, the answer was very clear:

 Never before, perhaps, so much as on this occasion, has the Church felt the need to know, to draw near to, to understand, to penetrate, serve and evangelize the society in which she lives; and to get to grips with it, almost to run after it, in its rapid and continuous change. 

I have always felt that, aside from all the documents produced by the council, and all the literature of all those documents, and all the arguments about that literature, the public pronouncements of two men set the gold standard for understanding the council: John XXIII (whose personal vision the council was) and Paul VI (who brought that vision to life).

How can anyone claim to discover the “true meaning” of the council if that meaning conflicts with the stated intentions of the council’s founder and chief architect? Neither the concrete texts of the council documents nor any elusive “spirit” behind the council can be invoked to justify an interpretation that conflicts with the stated intentions of John and Paul.

Those intentions were clear at the opening of the council in October of 1962, when John XXIII referred to the council fathers meeting “as if in a new Cenacle.” The Cenacle, of course, was the upper room where the Church was born on Pentecost. On another occasion, John made his point even more explicit, calling the council “a second Pentecost.”

Three months later, as the Council’s first session ended, the Pope concluded by imagining what the Council’s outcome would be, and he repeated his opening day imagery:

“It will be a new Pentecost indeed, which will cause the Church to renew her interior riches and to extend her material care in every sphere of human activity.” 

 The next autumn, after John’s death and the election of Paul VI, the new Pope re-opened the council by quite deliberately quoting John’s “new Pentecost”.

What did this mean?

It meant that both men saw the council coming in a moment in history that required nothing less than the rebirth of the church. Though there had been 20 ecumenical councils in the 20 proceedings entries, they did not refer simply to “another Pentecost,” let alone “a 20th Pentecost.” This, for them, was to be the Second Birth of the Church. In my mind, there can be no doubt about what this means.
First, it means that Vatican Council II must rank among the very most important events in the entire 20 centuries of Catholic history. I would personally rank it as one of the two or three greatest of all Church councils and would also rank it among the half dozen most important events in Church history.

Second, the notion that the Church in 1962 needed to be reborn begs the question “Why?”
Why, after 20 centuries of living off the legacy of the First Pentecost, was it now necessary to have a Second? What challenge was the Church facing that it had not faced over those 20 centuries? And how was the council supposed to meet that challenge? No explanation of Vatican II is credible unless it answers these questions.

Third, Paul VI picked up the baton dropped by John XXIII with the same visionary zeal that John himself had shown. In particular Paul expressed the same optimism about the council’s work and legacy. Neither man succumbed to fear, hostility, or pessimism in looking at the Church’s challenge and future—and this optimism extended beyond the Church to the world outside.

The Second Image I use actually comes from 1963, just after Paul VI had assumed the reins of Vatican II:

The little boy, bare-headed in his winter coat and short pants, stands saluting his fallen father. Next to him stands his widowed mother, the grief engraved on her face just barely visible behind the black veil. A nation and world watches as his father’s casket passes by.

For any American born before 1960, the classic image is as close as our memories. For younger readers, it is an icon emblazoned on our culture. One need look no farther to see the great gap separating not only today’s Catholics from the Catholicism of the past, but also a “generation gap” among today’s Catholics.

Kennedy’s funeral was the first globally televised event in world history—and the most widely viewed Latin Mass in history. Countless millions watched the procession of black-clad figures rising in Washington’s Saint Matthew’s Cathedral as Richard Cardinal Cushing intoned the first Latin phrases of the Requiem Mass for the Dead. It was a ceremony full of long solemn silences between the woeful singing of the Dies Irae (“Day of Wrath”) and the deathly echoes of chanted Latin lifting into the church’s incense-filled arches—with Walter Cronkite and other TV commentators explaining what was happening as the aging Boston cardinal recited the Latin with his back turned to us all.
For many, the Kennedy funeral remains an archetypal image, but for me the telling image is the little boy himself. For some of us, JFK Jr. is the little boy we saw saluting live on TV. But for others, that little boy is but a photograph in a history book. For them, the real JFK Jr. is the most eligible bachelor of his generation, himself the victim of a tragic and early death.

Why does this matter? Because those who saw the boy live can remember Vatican II, and those who did not, cannot.

That boy’s father, in his 1960 inaugural address, spoke of the torch being passed to a new generation. He meant it was time for the nation’s fate to become the responsibility of those born after 1900.
The same is true of Vatican II. After 40 years, the time has come: the council’s fate, its legacy, must become the responsibility of those born after 1965. Anyone who believes the work of Vatican II is complete is dead wrong. But if a new generation cannot be persuaded to take up the cause of Renewal, the council’s promise may be dead too.

If Vatican II is to live on, then its life must begin now, at 40 years into its history. But I fear the challenge will not be met, not because it is insurmountable, but because it has gone unrecognized until now. Is it too late, after 40 years, to breathe new life into Vatican II?

Next week: Why Vatican II needs a second wind, and how to get it.
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2005

#372 10 Ways to Remember John XXIII

Even if most Catholics have forgotten about Vatican II, or are simply too young to remember it, now is the time to recall the hero behind the Council.