"The Spirit of Vatican II"

Oh, there's fear in the land that Pope Benedict XVI has a sheaf of papers hidden in a drawer somewhere, ready to roll back - nay - rescind! - the decisions and guiding spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

Well, no. People who say that generally either don't understand what Vatican II was or are deliberately misrepresenting it.

If you're interested in this - in Benedict XVI's reputation as standing in opposition to the Council, please take a breath...and do some research, both on what V2 was all about and what the new Pope has said about it.

You might want to take a look at this interview, in which then-Cardinal Ratzinger says that one purpose of the Council was to rescue the Church from subjectivism and give it a public voice - 

"In the 19th century, in fact, the opinion had spread that religion belonged to the subjective and private sphere, and that it should limit its influence to these realms," he writes. "Precisely because religion was relegated to the subjective sphere, it could not be presented as the determinant force for the great course of history."

"Once the working sessions of the Council ended, it had to be made clear again that the Christian faith encompasses the whole of existence, it is the central pivot of history and time, and is not destined to limit its realm of influence" to the subjective, the cardinal adds.

He continues: "Christianity tried -- at least from the point of view of the Catholic Church -- to come out of the ghetto in which it was enclosed since the 19th century, and to be fully involved again in the world.

This is something I've said time and time again in relation to V2. When you study the life of J23, you see so clearly that his reasoning behind convening a council was just what B16 says - to bring down the barriers between Church and World not so that the Church could be "updated" because modernity is so cool, but so the Church could more powerfully preach the Gospel to a world which it understood, listened to, and whose language it spoke. Sometimes this involved making the externals of the Church - the language, the ritual - more accessible - but, most importantly, it was about entering the life of the world, so the Gospel could be preached. The central imagery of V2 is opening windows and doors. A popular misconception is that this imagery is supposed to evoke an "updating" so the Church is more "relevant" (implying that the teachings need to change). But no - it's an answer to Mt 28. Go out and preach.

Here's a well-done introduction to Vatican II

So as I said, part of that process involves looking at "how" the Church is, and discerning which aspects - of language, ritual, or even intellectual assumptions - are elements which were useful in another time, but today perhaps are obstacles to a modern person's hearing of the Gospel. It involves looking at new situations, challenges and ways of thinking that require a vigorous re-framing of the answers so that they make sense.

(Simply put: to hear the Good News as a 20-something web designer in San Francisco in 2005 might require the Church to go at it a bit differently than it did in preaching to a midwife in 15th century Paris. And so on.)

But do you see? The Gospel endures. What's being preached in every age, what the Church has been charged with, is the Good News: God created, God loves, God desires our heart, Jesus bridges the gap, Jesus saves, Jesus forgives, so are we called, and all else is straw, so why waste your time on anything else.

Somehow, in the last few decades, the impression has been left that this latter point is up for grabs, and that being a disciple means something else other than following Jesus. Really. Talk about re-defining. The impression has been left by preachers, teachers, and by the way in which too many Catholics have experienced liturgy.  The selective use of the Documents of the Council is breathtaking. That's not a Second Vatican Council problem, properly understood. That's a problem of misapplication, to put it mildly. What Cardinal Ratzinger has been determined to protect is that central core, and to make sure that it's very clear that this is what Catholic Christianity is about.