A two-way channel reflecting both sides of Council coin

THE English Catholic Herald was born a couple of decades too late. A pity. It would have been interesting to have been able to compare its coverage of Vatican I with its run up to and coverage of Vatican II. And particularly interesting to have compared the influence of the Catholic press on the developments in the Church that followed each Council.
We have no eye-witnesses alive to describe Vatican I. The nearest was a frail old bishop who was loudly applauded when he entered the Aula in St Peter's on his hundredth birthday in 1962! But — he was only a child of eight when Vatican I ended.
Communications from the Vatican and its appreciation of the importance of the press have never been satisfactory. It hardly mattered in 1870, but it did matter very much in 1962 when journalists from every corner of the globe converged on Rome, hungry for news.
The Press Hall with its rows of gleaming new typewriters and telephones didn't impress them greatly. They wanted news and Pope John's announcement of the calling of the Council had not been leaked and, since none of the fathers had ever been present at a council, there was no one to tell them very much about what would be discussed at the sessions, or how long they might last.
The only information they could give was that it was to be a pastoral council to update the Church's presentation of her unchanging teaching.
No doubt the majority of bishops imagined — as I did — that we could look forward to a month or so in Rome with a clear conscience since, having been summoned to the Council by the Holy Father, we would not be neglecting our dioceses during our absence. The realisation of Pope John XXII1's announcement proved very different to the general interpretation.
The press correspondents of the Catholic Herald — as indeed all the correspondents — were unhappy, especially during the early months of the Council. The Council debates were held in secret and the daily press conference disclosed little information. Lack of information inevitably gave way to rumours and conjecture, gleaned from casual conversations and indiscreet remarks overheard over cups of coffee in the bars of the Via Consiliazione or at meals in hotels.
Reliable information was hard to gather until fairly late on in the Council, when the fathers were given permission to discuss council business informally. Many private press conferences were born!
However, not only did the press suffer from a failure in communication, so also — and I am among them — did many of the fathers. All the notices and interventions were delivered in Latin. This gave rise to little difficulty for curial bishops and for those who had been professors or lecturers in universities or colleges.
It did present difficulties to many a bishop whose familiarity with spoken Latin was small, and especially when heard from speakers from every corner of the world! It might be easy enough for English listeners to follow interventions delivered by an English speaker at a reasonable pace and in an English rather than a Ciceronian style.
It was a different story when the interventions were delivered by someone whose native tongue, style and accent reflected his country of origin — Spain, France, Germany, Portugal and the rest. Written Latin may be a universal language, but spoken Latin is very much a charism possessed by the few.
Simultaneous translation would have been a tremendous asset to many, both in giving a clearer understanding of the deliberations and in enabling many pastoral insights to have been aired by bishops less experienced in academics than in the practical field work required in administering and stimulating the life of a diocese.
Looking back over the past 25 years and more, I feel that the Catholic press — and I write of the English Catholic Herald in particular since it is celebrating its centenary year — played its most important role after the Council had come to its end. For in its end was its beginning. The Constitutions, Decrees and Declarations of Vatican II must not be seen or studied in isolation. They must be seen as a whole viewed like a wheel.
The hub, the Constitution on the Church, and rising from it to the rim, the Decrees and Declarations, encircled by the "Church in the Modern World". But even then the documents carefully studied one by one do not give the whole answer explicitly.
They are little more than blueprints to be studied and developed. And that study and
development has been the prayerful concern of the various congregations and commissions set up by Rome for that very purpose. As a member for over 20 years of three such congregations, I have realised that in the post-Vatican years the Catholic Herald has come into its own in opening its pages through articles and its correspondence columns, to the thought, the hopes, the fears of many tens of thousands of readers and has shown them more clearly the purpose and intentions of the changes and new orientations that most of us are slowly coming to understand and appreciate.
It has been through open, if occasionally somewhat hurtful and irate dialogue — that we have come to appreciate the why and wherefore of a development in our understanding of the teaching of the Church that has clarified but not altered what we painfully learned from the old Penny Catechism.
Probably most Catholics are conservative in their practice and belief. I was, and perhaps still am. I was content and comfortable in the old, pre Vatican II Church; perhaps complacent.
But the Council revealed to me the vision of a Church that was bigger than the parish in which I happily grew up; the parishes in which I served as curate and parish priest. I lived during two sessions with Argentinian bishops. I met and conversed with bishops from Africa and Asia as well as those from mainland European and Englishspeaking countries.
I came to realise that the unity of the Church was consistent with, and indeed demanded "give and take" in the presentation of its unchanging teaching without deviating from its content; in its liturgical practice and ceremonial within the context of the doctrine it presents and re-presents.
I realised as the months passed by that the Church was bigger than myself and that others were wiser and more knowledgable than myself. The Council taught me much — above all that change is not incompatible with loyalty to the Church of our fathers, nor with nostalgia for the past.
I do not envy those who have edited our Catholic journals during the years since Vatican II. Sometimes I have been angry — sometimes irate when I read them. Frequently, I am sure, the editor and contributors have — with their publications — been banned, termed heretical, and consigned to the depth of eternal damnation!
Above all, for opening their pages to the written views of those with whom I — and many others disagreed, God bless them! The editors, I mean! Blind obedience to the directives of the Church is good. But obedience based on informed discussion and dialogue, is more important in an age that challenges authority and demands to know the reason why.
So — I congratulate the Catholic Herald, acknowledge its allegiance to the Church and admit that Derry-born Charles Diamond who launched it three years after his Scottish Catholic weekly, has every right to be proud of it! Its open pages have shown us in these post-Vatican II days, how to see both sides of the coin.