Monday, December 21, 2015
#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.
Vatican Council II (1962-1965) finished its work on December 8, 1965. Two weeks ago the 50th anniversary of that historic accomplishment passed quietly. And last week the 79th anniversary of Pope Francis’ December 17 birth also passed without much notice. For me, these two anniversaries are deeply connected.
When Vatican II who opened in 1962, I was a 13 year old high school freshman--and for the next four years the Council shaped life at my Jesuit high school. We prayed daily for the Council’s success. We followed the Council’s progress through John Cogley’s New York Times coverage. We learned the Council’s background and progress in history and religion classes. We attended liturgies where the coming liturgical reforms were explained and demonstrated. We held an annual open “Model Vatican II” complete with all of Vatican II’s working commissions (I always chose to join the “social communications” commission!).
Meanwhile, Jorge Bergoglio (today Pope Francis) was also a student, but in a Jesuit seminary. For both of us, the Church we grew up in was changing before our eyes--and the Church we would work in would be a very different place.
Even during the Council, I had shifted parish roles from altar boy to commentator and lector at Masses. In college I often attended an 11 PM campus Mass where communal participation, folk-style music, and the English language contrasted sharply with the silence of pre-conciliar liturgies. And when I graduated I chose to pursue theological studies, not as a seminarian, but at a secular university. I would later decide against a fulltime academic career to pursue professional lay ministry in parishes--something unheard of before the Council. Forty-plus years later I’m still doing parish work.
Meanwhile Bergoglio was ordained a Jesuit priest and followed the path that led to his election 2013 as the first Jesuit pope.
During our careers, we have both witnessed the euphoria and confusion that Vatican II’s reforms unleashed on Catholic life. We saw the polarization that followed, as extremists campaigned either for the restoration of pre-conciliar Catholicism or for more radical reforms. We watched as church officials diluted and blocked the Council’s historic momentum by reverting to the “business as usual” mode that is the M.O. of all bureaucrats. We both feared that Pope John XXIII’s dream of a missionary Catholicism, actively engaged in modern life as a powerful evangelizing presence, would remain unfulfilled.
But as pope, Francis has seized the opportunity to retrieve John’s vision--and with it, the Council’s promise--with the simplest of strategies. By both his actions and words, he has bypassed 50 years of academic debate about the Council (a debate which unwittingly enabled the bureaucrats’ inertia) by focusing on one simple notion that was the keynote of John’s address on the very day that he opened the Council in October 1962:
We see, in fact, as one age succeeds another, that the opinions of men follow one another and exclude each other. And often errors vanish as quickly as they arise, like fog before the sun. The Church has always opposed these errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She consider that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations…the Catholic Church…desires to show herself to be the loving mother of all, benign, patient, full of mercy and goodness toward the brethren who are separated from her.
John’s keynote of “mercy” has become the current pope’s key to rescuing Catholic renewal from the bureaucrats. For Francis, in fact, “mercy” lies at the center of the Church’s mission:
Throughout history, some have been tempted to say that the Church is the Church of only the pure and perfectly consistent, and it expels all the rest. This is not true! This is heresy! The Church, which is holy, does not reject sinners; she does not reject us all; she does not reject us because she calls everyone, welcomes them, is open even to those furthest from her; she calls everyone to allow themselves to be enfolded by the mercy, the tenderness, and the forgiveness of the Father…
In short, Francis has made “mercy” a password for retrieving and preserving Vatican II’s vast historical agenda. This single password “mercy” has allowed him to communicate a simple message that hundreds of millions of people have heard. He has made mercy the Church’s litmus test: If we are driven by mercy, we become the Church we are meant to me. But if anything else other than mercy drives Catholic life, then the Church fails its mission.
What could be simpler? And this simplicity has not only made Francis the planet’s most popular leader--it has has also rescued Vatican II from the very edge of history’s dustbin. This old man has brought the Council back to life. In a word, 50 years after the event, Pope Francis has now made Vatican II HIS Council! As he himself said, in language implying a critique of the bureaucrats:
Our goal is not to proselytize but to listen to needs, desires and disappointments, despair, hope. We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace. Vatican II, inspired by Pope Paul VI and John, decided to look to the future with a modern spirit and to be open to modern culture. The Council Fathers knew that being open to modern culture meant religious ecumenism and dialogue with non-believers. But afterwards very little was done in that direction. I have the humility and ambition to want to do something.
For me, that “something” has also meant rescuing my own career from the grim prospect of futility. No one wants to devote an entire life’s work to a losing cause, only to find that one’s finish line is worse than the starting point. Before Francis, I feared the real probability that Catholic life would be worse when I finish my work than it was when I began in 1972. Francis has restored the real possibility that John XXIII’s vision of a merciful Church will finally take root in Catholic hearts.
But birthdays reflect the march of time. Francis and I share the same December 17 birthday, and neither of us has much time left—he even less than I. We hear increasing stories that his enemies plan to undo his work once he exits the world stage. We can only hope that Francis has enough birthdays left to make his rescue mission irreversible.
So now that Francis has made the Council his Council, we have more reason than ever to wish him not only “Happy Birthday” but also “Ad Multos Annos!”
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015
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