Vatican II a milestone

With the 30th birthday of Vatican II fast approaching, Joe Jenkins speaks to priests on the ground about the effects these reforms have had.
WITH THE 30TH anniversary of the Second Vatican Council (December 8) looming, 250 priests and bishops meet this week at the Vatican to discuss the state of the priesthood. In the spirit of Vatican Q's marriage of modem music to the liturgy, pop singer Gloria Estefan is flying from Miami to perform for Pope Iohn Paul IL
In Britain, Vatican II has been received by the Church with enthusiasm, but not without a few hiccups. The clergy has largely welcomed the challenge of renewal, but Rome's reforms were too sudden. In history, the Church had always opposed great changes, but when it mounted its own revolution the impact was immeasurable.
"As a convert, I was astonished how conservative the Church was," says Fr Alan Cheales of St Dominic's in north London. "It was not customary for the laity to even answer at Mass." In the Fifties he found Rome unfamiliar with ecumenical prayers, such as the Unity Octave. "I always pray for the unity of the Church. In missionary work, the biggest problem is differ
ent Christians saying different things." He saw Pope John XXIII's calling of an ecumenical council as extraordinary. By the end of 1963, Fr Cheales could say a home Mass for the first time. However: "The legacy of Vatican II has been spoilt only by the lack of preparation for change by over-zealous progressives."
Fr Cheales believes the Lefebvre camp a well-meaning minority, but with a divisive influence. "Favouring Mass said in Latin is one thing, creating schism in the Church is unforgivable," he says.
Vatican II was the first Council of the Church not to arise from crisis. But the maturing of industrial society posed problems of social justice, and the Church had to respond.
"People forget how extraordinarily appalling the Church was before Vatican II," says Fr Herbert McCabe of Blackfriars, the Priory of the Holy Spirit, in Oxford. "There was the index of prohibited hooks, which now seems ludicrous. You couldn't say prayers with another non Catholic Christian ur go to their wedding," says Fr McCabe. "The Church was anti-Semitic, a great pal of Franco and any authoritarian regime with the exceptions of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy."
"From the sixteenth century the Popes felt they needed to close ranks on the Protestants. This was transformed by Vatican II. We hoped that it would reverse the centralisation of the Church and that the Papal appointment of bishops would loosen up after all that time, and it did a little, until recent years."
"Vatican II made a fierce effort to open up the liturgy, but it is disappointing that there hasn't been a better use of music or art. The exception is the superb post-Vatican II Latin Mass at Westminster Cathedral. The guitar Masses are a travesty of what a liturgy should be."
"I think the laity are shocked and a bit fed up," he says, citing the rejection by Pope Paul VI of his commission's conclusions on contraception, a good example of the bitterness felt when the
Church goes so far and yet stops short, raising hopes and dashing them. While Pope John XXIII had done for Catholicism what Gorbachev was to do for the Soviet Union, disappointment followed disappointment on what many Catholics considered issues of personal morality.
The legacy of Vatican II has been one of reform coupled with the Church's instinctive need to preserve. For some it has been reformed enough and for others it has far to go.
"We're still getting used to it even today,' says a Mother Superior of a London convent, a student in Rome at the time of the Second Council.
"Certain changes came about that we would never have dreamed of. It left some of us bewildered," she says.
"But it is great that there is so much consultation and discussion within the Church today. Thank goodness for that change!"
Father McCabe agrees. "What we said in the sixties was that if we, as a nation, are giving up Christianity, then let's at least talk about it," he says.
Sixties architecture ripped the soul out of many churches in the wake of Vatican II, but greater participation in the Mass and a re-invigorated clergy, more in tune with the lives of the laity, was compensation in the spirit of the new Church.
"I don't think Vatican II went far enough," says a parish priest in Bath. "The thinking at the time about the Church was transitional. There are some major reforms still needed, but for a start official documents are too wordy. But from what I can
tell, they don't propose a further Council." he says.
"I try to involve the laity as much as possible and I am happy with the co-operation I receive from them," says Carlisle priest Fr Thomas Quirke, of his parishioners at St Margaret Mary's. "But they distrust their ability to do the jobs they are given in the parish."
"The parish is theirs and I try to make them realise that."