EDITORIAL Conversation starter: keeping Vatican II
alive
Archbishop Rembert Weakland long ago
assured himself a place in any history written about the immediate period
following the Second Vatican Council.
More than most in the hierarchy, this former head of the worldwide
Benedictine order had a global view of the church and understood deeply the
impulses that moved the church toward reform and the implications of those
reforms. More than most, too, he could both articulate the vision of the
council and lead an archdiocese in practical ways to weave the reforms into the
everyday fabric of parish life. And he was not afraid to stand up to Vatican
bureaucrats and the rising tide of Vatican II revisionists within the U.S.
bishops conference.
So it is noteworthy that Weakland earlier this year, anticipating
his retirement and a successor in 2002, wrote a letter to more than 400
diocesan priests in which he predicted a new era of retreat from Vatican II
reforms and of greater uniformity and legalism in church practice.
The candid quality of the letter, predicting the end of an era of
experimentation and creativity, ironically could only have been produced by one
so deeply convinced of the ambitions of Vatican II. It is a frank, open
pastoral exchange, an example of the kind of true authority and leadership that
cant exist when rigid application of the law becomes the
institutions guiding principle.
Unfortunately, the point of the letter is grim. In a sweeping
overview of the tug and pull since the council, Weakland sees the church
entering a period of retrenchment, a reaction to the wide-open enthusiasm that
immediately followed the 1962-65 council in Rome. In Weaklands view, the
first generation after the council was perhaps too enthusiastic; the current
generation, too rule-bound and cautious. Somewhere in the distance, Weakland
predicts, is a hazy synthesis, a generation that may well just get it
right.
Weakland makes no long-range prediction about whether reform will
win the day. There is a kind of dialectic internal to the letter that also
remains unresolved. At one point, Weaklands tones are almost
conciliatory, inviting of the new era. It may well be that at this given
moment more consistency of practice is important for the stability of the
church and its members. The younger generation needs more structures, clarity
and guidance.
It may well be exactly what is needed to make us deepen
the reforms we have already made, strive to have them more widely accepted and
finally see that they lead our people to a greater holiness.
That may be, as Weakland put it, the logic behind the way
the Spirit is leading us at this moment.
In the next breath, however, Weaklands language changes
abruptly. I fear the restorationist implementation that is characterizing
the second post-conciliar generation will err on the side of rigidity,
rubricism and a fear of the gifts of individuals, especially of the lay, and
build their renewal more on reaction than on theological insights.
This would not be the first time, of course, that fear and the
leading of the Spirit were partners accompanying the human quest for a share in
Gods life. Knowing that does little to make life easier in the
day-to-day. As Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese said, in reaction to the letter,
Progressives have to ask themselves how they plan to live in a church
that is not going to change in a direction they would like anytime soon.
Weakland is getting that conversation going.
Weakland is politically savvy enough to know that his letter to
the priests would not remain a secret and that his words would reverberate well
beyond the boundaries of his archdiocese. If he has started a conversation in
Milwaukee, he has started it for all of us.
The conditions being created by todays restorationists might
eerily resemble conditions in the church immediately before John XXIII called
the council, but there are significant differences.
The clerical culture is in crisis; the number of priests continues
to dwindle in the United States and elsewhere; the revisionists, for the most
part, are not those running the parishes, educating the children and performing
most of the ministries in todays church.
No matter how much Rome decrees, women will not remain silent,
gays will not go back into the closet, and the most educated generations of lay
people in Roman Catholic history will not suddenly forget the church history
and theology they have learned.
Also different is the fact that the exchange of ideas in the
Catholic world of today goes on at a far greater rate and among a much wider
spread of peoples and cultures than ever before -- and we dont think that
will change.
So, let the conversation begin. If there is a certain
inevitability that the restorationists -- given the appointments by Pope John
Paul II -- will have their way for a period, others will have to figure a way
to maintain the tradition of Vatican II during that time. It is never too early
to begin talking.
National Catholic Reporter, March 10,
2000
|