Except for Church insiders and those following the extended reporting of John Cogley in the New York Times or “Xavier Rynne” in the New Yorker, the seismic shift of Vatican II (1962-1965) meant little to Americans, including American Catholics, until the first shockwave reached our shores in the Fall of 1965.
This is the moment when Paul VI broke all tradition and precedent (popes had been, quite literally, “prisoners of the Vatican” for the previous 94 years) by traveling across the Atlantic to deliver his Church’s message to the world. Pope Paul VI, the “Pilgrim Pope,” became the first pope to ever visit the United States.
The scene was the stuff of high theater…
Shortly after Amintore Fanfani, Foreign Minister of Italy and President of the twentieth session of the United Nations General Assembly, had called the meeting to order, he and Secretary General U Thant provided the official escort down the main aisle. Soon, only the slim, white-robed figure stood at the green marble rostrum.
Pope Paul VI, only hours from his arrival, had already presided over a special service at St. Patrick's Cathedral and met with President Lyndon Johnson at Waldorf Towers under the tightest security precautions ever taken in New York City; that meeting had to be “private” because the U.S. did not yet have diplomatic relations with the Vatican City, so this was not officially a State Visit. Quite a contrast with 2015, when both the White House and the Congress officially welcomed the pope as a visiting Head of State!
Later, Pope Paul would present U Thant with a diamond-studded cross and ring (valued at $115, 000, to be sold to raise funds for alleviating world hunger), meet with a small interfaith group at Holy Family Church on East 47th Street, celebrate Mass before 90,000 people at Yankee Stadium, and visit the Vatican Pavilion at the New York World's Fair to gaze at Michelangelo's Pieta before flying back to Rome.
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| The Papal Mass Yankee Stadium |
But this was moment he had really come for--the moment he had been invited for when planning for a UN conference on "Peace on Earth" began at Santa Barbara's Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in 1963. Since the Center's inspiration came from John XXIII's encyclical letter Pacem in Terris, it had seemed fitting to invite his successor to address the UN. Now he stood before the General Assembly, the first Pope to visit the New World. He spoke in French.
Many listeners expected no more than polite and pious boilerplate, but he had not made the trip for nothing. As Drew Middleton of the New York Times reported, "The Pontiff's address, with its emphasis on universality, disarmament and the development of a world authority, went far beyond the simple pleas expected by most of the delegates." In fact, Paul delivered one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.
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| Pope Paul Addressing the UN General Assembly |
Specifically, Paul appealed to outlaw all nuclear weapons, issued his famous "Jamais plus de guerre!" cry, urged more concerted action on hunger, and, in "the most controversial part of the speech," advised the UN to admit Red China. Most surprising and significant of all, however, were the Pope's extended remarks about his own church and the UN itself. He began by characterizing the trip's importance from the Catholic point of view:
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. .
Next, he challenged the UN to an extraordinarily exalted view of its own mission:
Now, you represent all peoples...The edifice which you have constructed must never fall; it must be perfected and made equal to the needs which world history will present. You mark a stage in the development of mankind from which retreat must never be admitted, but from which it is necessary that advance be made.
The Pope paused. Then, in the measured tones of the career diplomat he was, he sharpened his point by comparing the UN's global mission to Catholicism's:
You are a bridge between peoples. You are a network of relations between states. We would almost say that your chief characteristic is a reflection, as it were, in the temporal field, of what our Catholic church aspires to be in the spiritual field: unique and universal. Your vocation is to make brothers not only of some, but of all people.
Finally, he sought to convince his listeners that his Church's own concern with humanity's spiritual needs should link, rather than separate, the two organizations:
This edifice which you are constructing does not rest upon merely material and earthly foundations, for thus it would be a house built upon sand; above all, it is based on our own consciences. 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.
It was October 8, 1965. Vatican Council II would end just eight weeks later, but until now it had remained a distant blip on most Americans’ radar. Paul had used this speech to announce the Council’s agenda in the most public way imaginable.
Demands on New York's communication system were greater than for the Kennedy funeral and the five Gemini moon shots combined; A.M. Rosenthal, then the Times' metropolitan editor, called it "the saddest professional day in our lives," because a strike kept the paper's papal coverage off the stands. But millions saw the TV coverage of the pope landing in New York, the pope meeting the President of the United States, the pope before the UN, the Pope saying mass at Yankee Stadium.
Even then, however, few observers realized that the agenda Paul proclaimed simply as his Church’s “weary pilgrimage in search of a conversation” had already put this vast and ancient organization on a collision course with its own past.
The stated intention at Vatican II was not “collision’” of course; it was “renewal.” Even so, anything new in an institution so old, any move from point A to point B, held the risk of disrupting long-accepted ways.
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| Francis in America |
Vatican II set a course correction for the world’s largest organization, and 50 years later that course is still disputed. But the recent visit by Francis has made 2 things perfectly clear. First, the place of the Catholic Church in American life is more public and powerful than ever before. Second, Francis intends to steer that Church back onto the course intended by Vatican II, especially by his insistent focus on the twin “north stars” of Mercy and Justice.
And thus our Church continues that “conversation with the entire world” that Paul VI began 50 years ago.
Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015
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