In last week’s article we talked about ourselves as a people who have a history, a history that has involved considerable change over the many centuries of our existence.
Our present time is in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. That Council was like a great ship which leaves a good deal of turbulence in its wake. It is not the first Council to have done so, in fact just about all the most significant Councils have left issues to be resolved in their aftermath.
Vatican II is like a watershed between the period following the Council of Trent and the time flowing from it. The Council of Trent (16th century) had the Protestant Reformation and the Reform of the Catholic Church to deal with. These issues dominated the work of the Council and the reform work which followed it on many fronts. It gave prominence to those issues which had to be immediately addressed. And in the course of this concentration on some aspects of the faith – those denied by the Reformation in particular – other aspects fell into the background and in the course of time were quite significantly underestimated.
In the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a great deal of research took place which concentrated on the Scriptures, on the writings of the Fathers of the Church (Bishops and theologians from 2nd to 7th century), and the actual works of the great medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas along with many others. There was also a great deal of research done into the history of the Church’s liturgy and a great deal was discovered there which fed into the liturgical reform following Vatican II. Some of this research happened with scholars from other Christian churches in which they all discovered that the churches had much more in common than they had previously thought.
All of this research – along with feedback from the pastoral life of the Church – fed into the discussions and documents of the Second Vatican Council.
A different path has been set for the whole Church by the Council and we need a continuing and honest dialogue to continue in order that we proclaim Christ anew in the very different age in which we are called to live.
Published: 1 November 2024
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Kerry Bourke says:
Thank you Fr. Frank. It is always good to be reminded to be open to change and to be able to discern whether any changes are in accord with Jesus’ teachings. Trusting Jesus’ promise that He will be with his Church till the end of time and that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it!