It was a splendid day, when on 11 October 1962,
over two thousand Council Fathers solemnly entered St. Peter’s Basilica
in Rome, marking the beginning of the Council,” the journalist Joseph
Ratzinger wrote in a special on the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, published by L’Osservatore Romano, the Holy See’s official newspaper.
“Christianity must remain in the present in order to give shape to the future.”
Forty thousand copies in three languages. The twenty thousand copies in Spanish have already sold out. Twelve thousand copies have been published in Italian and eight thousand in English.
Benedict XVI’s text has also been published on the Vatican newspaper’s website, in German, Italian, Spanish, English, French, Portuguese and Polish. “It was a moment of great suspense. Great things were expected to happen.”
He was there, at the “great Church assembly” as part of the group of theological minds, as advisor to Cardinal Joseph Frings and now he is here to give a clear interpretation of the most important religious event of the 20th century.
“The Council Fathers could not and did not want to create a new and different Church. They had no mandate and it was not their duty to do so - Benedict XVI explained. They were Fathers of the Council with a single voice and the right to decide, only as far as their powers as bishops stretched, by virtue of the sacrament and the sacramental Church that is.”
Hence they “could not and did not wish to create a different faith or a new Church, but under stand both in a deeper way, so as to truly “renew them.” A hermeneutics of decision is absurd and goes against the spirit and will of the Council Fathers.”
The Pope’s commemorative tone is fresh and engaging. “It was quite something to see bishops of different ethnicities and races from all over the world, arriving: an image of the Church of Jesus Christ that embraces the whole world, a world in which people of the Earth know they are united in peace.”
Previous Councils, Benedict XVI highlighted, had almost always been called for a concrete reason, to find a solution to a specific issue. “This time there was no specific problem to resolve.”
But this is precisely why there was a sense of expectation hanging in the air: The Christianity which the Western world had built and moulded seemed to increasingly be losing its efficient strength. It seemed to have become tired and it appeared as though the future was determined by other spiritual powers. The perception of Christianity’s loss of the present and of the task that lay ahead as a result was summarised well by the word “update”.
John XXIII had convened the Council without laying out concrete problems or plans, so as to allow to it to go back to being a future shaping force: “This was the greatness but also the challenge of the task that lay ahead for the ecclesial assembly.
Single Episcopates undoubtedly approached the great event from different angles. Some approached it with a sense of expectation for the plan that was supposed to be developed.”
It was the Central European Episcopate (Belgium, France and Germany) that had “the most resolute ideas. When it came to the details of the event, focus was placed on different aspects but there were some common priorities.
One essential issue was ecclesiology which needed to be looked into in greater depth from the point of view of the history of Trinitarian and sacramental salvation; added to this was the need to complete the doctrine of the primacy of the First Vatican Council through a review of the Episcopal ministry.
One important issue for Central European Episcopates, Joseph Ratzinger stressed, was the liturgical renewal which Pius XII had started to take steps towards.
Another issue which received a special focus and was particularly important for the German Episcopate, was ecumenism: “Enduring the Nazi persecution together had brought Protestant and Catholic Christians much closer; this should have been understood and promoted further throughout the Church. Added to this was the thematic cycle Revelation-Scripture-Tradition-Magisterium.”
For the French, “the issue of the relationship between the Church and the modern world began to really take centre stage.”
That thirteen years after the conclusion of the Council, John Paul II should come along, from a Country where freedom of religion was opposed by Marxism, stemming from a certain kind of modern state philosophy, that is, was “certainly providential”.
The Pope came from a context that was quite similar to that of the ancient Church, so the relationship between faith and freedom, particularly the freedom of religion and worship, became visible once again.
Finally, on a personal note: “For me cardinal Frings was a “father” who lived the spirit of the Council in an exemplary way. He was a man who exuded a powerful openness and greatness but he was also aware that only faith guides us out into the open, to that broad horizon which bars a positivistic spirit. This is the faith he wanted to serve with the mandate he received through the sacrament of the Episcopal ordination.”
So “I cannot help but be grateful to him for having chosen me (the youngest professor in the Catholic theology faculty at Bonn University) as his advisor, taking me to the Church’s great assembly and giving me the chance to attend this school and follow the course of the Council from the inside.”