Do We Need a Vatican III or an Eighth Ecumenical Council

When a newly elected Angelo Roncalli, as Pope John XXIII, declared in January, 1959, that he was convoking a council for his church, there were at least two reactions. First, within the Roman Catholic Church there was a response of genuine surprise. Many Catholic authorities and experts had held the position that since the First Vatican Council, ending in 1870, future councils would be unnecessary. Second, there was the general and initial non-Catholic rebuff. There was the opinion that this envisioned council had nothing to do with the Orthodox and Protestant worlds. This attitude was reinforced by the fact that the last council of the Catholic Church, Vatican I, had led to no positive steps toward a great propinquity between the Catholic Church and other churches; on the contrary, it had contributed to a greater distancing of the churches. The fact that today, on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the first session of the Second Vatican Council, there is widespread interest in this council, not only by Catholics but also by many other Christian groups, is the result of two factors. The first is the very nature of the council itself. It became obvious in the initial planning that Vatican II was not to be a condemning council. It was to proclaim no new doctrines, and no one was to be anathematized in its proceedings. It was, rather, to be a pastoral council, one described as the first truly international council, which sought to bring the Catholic Church into a positive relation with other churches, other religions, and the modern world. A key word soon identified was aggiornamento. Behind that simple foreign word, to those who speak and think in English, stood a long-overdue effort by the Catholic Church to deal seriously and discriminatingly with a culture created in the West by the Enlightenment, economic and political revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the development of natural and human sciences, and the secularization and pluralization of society. The results of such an effort would lead to the end of a uniform Catholicism and the emergence of new forms of this one church. Such a prospect quickly reduced the apprehension of non-Catholic groups and individuals. The second factor was that the council took place after some forty-five years of the modern ecumenical movement. In spite of the fact that the Catholic Church had largely remained aloof from this movement, its influence on even the Catholic Church cannot be denied. The ongoing efforts both of Faith and Order and of Life and Work, embodied in 1962 for some fifteen years in the World Council of Churches, were realities that ecumenically sensitive Catholics could not ignore. Thus, it was then, and is now appropriate and incumbent that ecumenical attention be given to Vatican II and its aftermath. The absolutely remarkable aspect of this situation begins to become clearer if we pause and think of the same state of affairs fifty years after either the Council of Trent or Vatican I. Even taking into account the different social contexts and historical circumstances of those councils, we can see the radical difference in comparison with Vatican II. In most non-Catholic circles, there was little interest in probing the legacy of these two councils. Nevertheless, the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II is being observed in numerous ecumenical publications and conferences, including this annual conference of the North American Academy of Ecumenists. Up to this point the agenda of the NAAE conference has explored from varying perspectives the legacy of the council, which I interpret to mean its effects on different groups. How has Vatican II affected or impacted a number of churches? The task assigned to me is indisputably different. While the other presentations look to the past and the present, this lecture has the clear expectation of being future-oriented: Do We Need a Vatican III or an Eighth Ecumenical Council? …