#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

#367 Ten Ways Catholic Life is Better

Today’s tough times shouldn’t blind us to how much renewal we have already accomplished…

In these days of sex-scandal fatigue, declining numbers, fractured fellowship and polarized politics it is tempting to wallow in discouragement.  These are hard times.  We long for the “good old days.”

But there is another view.  As I observe my 40th anniversary in parish work (I began at St. Mary’s in Laurel, Maryland in the summer of 1972) I prefer to think of our present situation as a short-term stumbling block on the long-term path of Catholic renewal.

As someone who lived through Vatican II, I see our Church in the light of the Council’s call for a “Second Pentecost” to give new life and vitality to our ancient tradition.

But while Vatican II’s four years were my four high school years, my childhood was spent in an earlier version of Catholicism.  So my perspective filters through a life lived in three parts: (1) a pre-council childhood, (2) a conciliar adolescence, and (3) a post-council adulthood spent working in the Church.  From this vantage point, I see many ways the Church now is dramatically better off.

1. Catholic Identity.  Gone are the days when Catholicism shaped our identity mainly by giving us rules to follow.  Nowadays everyone I work with knows that being “Catholic” means to embrace a personal faith descended from 20 centuries of believers and shared with 100s of millions worldwide.  By now Catholics cannot remember the days when “personal faith” was an alien concept among Catholics.  Yes, the “good old days” had its share of “devout” Catholics--but for most the “Catholic faith” was merely a set of propositions one accepted and rules one obeyed.  The idea that God is love, and we are to be disciples of His incarnate Son, too often got lost in the shopping list of Catholic Do’s and Don’ts.  Those days are gone, and good riddance.

2. Liturgy.  Gone too are the days of unheard mumbled prayers and passive people in the pews.  Gone are full pews at Communion time (only 15% of Mass-goers received communion in the 1950s), rosaries at Mass, the “elites” who possessed their own missals and the skill to navigate among their many multicolored bookmark-ribbons.

Now people come to Mass for the right reason - - the Eucharist itself.  They participate in its celebration: hearing the readings, responding to the priest, praying together the Kyrie and Gloria and Psalms and Sanctus and the Our Father, greeting each other in peace, and coming forward en masse to receive Communion. 

3. Sacramental life.  I still remember when Baptism meant merely “washing original sin from the soul” of babies (and mothers were excluded), when Confirmation made “soldiers of Christ” of kids too old for Christian initiation but too young to take any mature responsibility.  I remember when funerals were morbid black reminders of death’s grip and God’s wrath.  I remember when the Eucharist was merely an annual duty-call for most Catholics.

Today our sacramental system, while far from perfect, has been restored to firmer foundations.  Baptism makes us members of the Body of Christ, and its fullest form is the restored Baptism of adult catechumens at the Easter Vigil.  Confirmation now comes between Baptism and First Communion, or else is conferred on youth old enough to seriously renew their own baptismal vows.  Funerals are now bright with color, alleluias, the Paschal Candle, and the hope of Resurrection.  And the Eucharist is once again the center of all, the way we come together as one body.  Even Reconciliation, though underutilized, is now humane rather than mechanical, healing without being clinical.

4. The Bible.  Many of us remember when “Bible” referred merely to that big coffee table book where families recorded baptisms and weddings.  But few Catholics remember that we never heard the Old Testament or the letters of Paul at Church.  Only the Gospel was read aloud and in English.  Now nearly the entire body of the Old and New Testaments is proclaimed aloud at Mass over a three year cycle.  And we’ve fairly well dispensed with the old-time “sermons” on whatever topic crossed Father’s mind, in favor of genuine homilies that unpack, interpret, and apply the scripture readings for the congregation.

Moreover Bible study has become part of many adult education programs and faith-sharing groups, and is built into every single school-age religious education curriculum.    So the Bible is now at the center of Catholic life in a way unknown to our grandparents.

5. The Laity. “Laity” means “people,” and the day is long gone when they were content to “pray, pay, and obey.” For 40 years or more, lay volunteers have assumed leadership in ministry as lectors, Eucharistic ministers, in baptismal and marriage preparation, in the RCIA, and as parish councilors and small group leaders.  And since 2005, lay professionals now make up the majority of parish staffs. 

Laypeople are no longer helpless children in the church, totally dependent on “Father” to care for them.  Such infantile docility enabled the cover-up of sexual abuse for decades, but Vatican II’s call for an “adult” laity finally doomed clergy corruption.  The Church of silence is gone for good.

6. The Workforce.  Gone are the days when parishes were run by a drill-squad of priests, alike in uniforms, training, tasks, and lifestyle.  Now parish leadership resembles a ball-club: role players with distinct jobs, different training, and specialized skills.  Before my arrival, the St. Mary’s staff consisted of three priests.  Today St. Mary’s lists more than 12 staff people on its website. Typically, large parish staffs are now loaded with laypeople. Instead of marching in lockstep, they must work like a team--which means their diverse gifts build up the Body of Christ, just as St. Paul described, in a way the old workforce never did.

 7. Women’s roles. Even as numbers of women religious fell, women rose to new prominence in our Church.  Nuns headed diocesan departments, became parish pastoral associates, and lay women as well flooded into parish ministries, until today women make up nearly 80% of all parish staffs.  Our grandfathers could never have imagined this transformation of Catholicism’s patriarchy--but maybe our grandmothers dreamt it!

8. Collaboration.  John-Paul II said “Collaboration is the act proper to solidarity,” and our unity as Church today is manifested by our deep commitment to a collegial approach at all levels.  Following the model of Vatican II itself, we now see Catholic life shaped by gatherings of the US Bishops, diocesan councils, parish pastoral and finance councils and a myriad of parish committees and small groups. 

I used to joke that Vatican II gave us lots of documents, lots of changes, and lots of meetings--and for the last 30 years I’ve made my livelihood going to those meetings.  The Church’s business no longer follows the Charles Lindbergh “flying solo” model, but instead uses the model Saint Paul had in mind when he addressed his letters to “My Co-workers.”

9. Ecumenism.  Who still remembers the “good old days” when Catholics were prohibited from any dealings with Protestant churches?  As teenagers, my older sisters were even kept from YWCA dances because the Y was a “Protestant” organization.  For my parents, Catholics were “devout” but Protestants were always “staunch.”

Over the last 40 to 50 years the landscape has completely changed.  We still have differences with our separated Christian brothers and sisters, but we no longer fear “the other” or shun them.  Indeed, many progressive Catholics now find they share much perspective with progressive Protestants, just as many conservative Catholics feel allied to conservative Protestants.  Such conversations across the ecumenical boundaries were unthinkable 50 years ago, but a commonplace now--and that has revised hope for a future when Christians will again be united.

10. The End of Quarantine.  At all levels, Catholicism has ditched its old isolationist posture in favor of dialogue with the outside world.  That world remains toxic in many ways, but rather than hide away from fear of infection our Church now opts for immunizing its people with a faith strong enough to engage those of others faiths and even those of no faith.  So our popes travel the world and address the UN, our bishops blog and issue pastoral letters on public policy and voter education, our schools teach a broad range of students from different backgrounds, and even our liturgies embrace facets of contemporary culture (folk music, photography, dance) that enrich our life as Catholics, living a global faith in the global world.

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During my high school years, as the Council progressed, my father once speculated on the outcome: “What if priests get just as good at mumbling English as they ever were at mumbling Latin?” The operative word, of course, was “mumble”--and he was right in part.  We still mumble along, trying to perfect renewal and sometimes stumbling on an obstacle in our path.  None of the 10 points above is perfectly realized. They are works in progress.  

But there is no doubting this: these 10 points have already restored an authentic practice of our ancient tradition that seemed impossible 50 years ago. They have made us a better Church.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012