It was the late summer of 2010. I was a Protestant seminary student, but I had been studying (and disputing) various claims made by the Catholic Church, precipitated by the recent conversion of one of my best friends, himself also a Protestant seminarian. The topic that most frustrated my fervent attempts to preserve my confidence in the Reformation was not Catholic criticisms of sola scriptura or sola fide.
It was authority.
I had come to realize that debates over the sufficiency of Scripture alone or how man is saved obscured a more fundamental problem: how to determine who had the authority to even decide what constituted Scripture (or, more broadly, divine revelation), let alone the thorny, complicated debates over the interpretation of various biblical passages. On what grounds did I, a 26-year-old American Protestant seminarian, claim authority to adjudicate such questions?
And, more to the point, did any person or institution have a remotely defensible claim to such authority?
Jesus didn’t say that the powers of hell shall not prevail against my faith (Mt 16:18). Nor did he say that my interpretation of the Bible would be “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15). No, that power had been reserved for the Church. And even if He hadn’t, who was I, among two billion Christians on earth, to claim I had a singular corner on what Christ taught?
The question, then, is who possesses that corner. Protestantism, I reasoned, disqualified itself, since religious authority (whatever Luther’s and Calvin’s intentions) ultimately resides in the conscience of the individual Christian. Eastern Orthodoxy, in its ethnic parochialism, seemed to lack the universal character required to secure the title. Catholicism, among all the options, seemed the only Christian institution that could even possibly possess such authority.
So I returned to the Catholicism of my youth. Perhaps some Protestants would say I abdicated my conscience, or my intellect, or both. But I think that I safeguarded and deepened them, because if I had tried to remain a Protestant while silently knowing its fundamental incoherency, I would have likely descended into cynicism and skepticism, similar to so many generations of Protestants before me. Yes, it’s true, when I entered the Church I still had reservations about a few things, such as some particulars regarding Marian devotion. But I trusted, in faith, that God had conferred the Church, not me, with authority to declare doctrine, whether on Mary or anything else.
I often think about that when confronted with arguments from Catholic brethren, many of whom are fellow travelers on the “traditionalist” side of Catholic faith and practice, when they get going about the Second Vatican Council. When I returned to the Church in 2010, I knew Vatican II had been earth-shattering, and often not in a good way, leveraged by many of its interpreters to defend all manner of liturgical abuses. I knew Vatican II, to a significant degree, had made the Catholic Church of my grandparents’ generation unrecognizable, and that the faith of many had been shaken, if not lost, in the ensuing distemper. And I knew that a few very reactionary Catholics had so resisted the Council that they provoked excommunication by Rome.
But I also knew a lot of prominent orthodox voices who defended the Council, arguing that its abuse and misinterpretation did not vitiate its authority, much as, analogically, Christians’ abuse of Scripture does not vitiate its authority. Indeed, it was an ecumenical council, after all (the twenty-first, to be precise). If, in my frustration with the many milquetoast manifestations of contemporary Catholic worship, I decided to antagonistically plant my flag in opposition to Vatican II, why stop there? I would, in effect, have returned the same individualist paradigm I had inhabited as a Presbyterian.
And yet a good number of influential traditionalist Catholics are encouraging various forms of antagonism, opposition, or cynicism towards our last ecumenical council. Some of these traditionalists are well-intended; others, especially those with a penchant for ad hominems and promoting conspiracies and bizarre controversies, I’m less sympathetic to. Either way, I’m skeptical that the growing popularity of this anti-Vatican II sentiment is a positive development for lay Catholics.
Welcome, then, is Word on Fire’s Vatican II Collection, which contains not only those documents from the Council, but a foreword from Bishop Robert Barron, commentary by the postconciliar popes, and even an excellent FAQ.
Barron understands this book arrives at an important moment, particularly in American Catholicism. “As I write these words,” he notes, “a fresh controversy has broken out, this time prompted by ‘traditionalists’ who claim that Vatican II has betrayed authentic Catholicism and produced disastrous consequences in the life of the Church.” Such traditionalists, explains Barron, have typically subscribed to a “hermeneutic of rupture” when it comes to Vatican II, viewing it not as a legitimate development of Catholic teaching, but a profound break with tradition.
Ironically, that’s also the position of progressive Catholics who believed Vatican II in its perceived “radicalism” justified the liturgical abuses and heretical teachings that have become common in the Catholic world since the Council’s closing address in 1965. Writes Barron: “With the book you are reading, I am nailing my colors to the mast. I and Word on Fire stand firmly with Vatican II and hence against the radical traditionalists. And we stand firmly with the Wojtyła-Ratzinger interpretation of the council, and hence against the progressives.”
Of course, you can already procure a copy of all the documents of Vatican II — I have one such edition. What makes this edition so valuable is its “commentary” function: interspersed throughout each document are extended citations from postconciliar popes — Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis — that help further clarify the meaning of the conciliar documents. Bishop Barron also periodically offers his own commentary on the documents, which, though not possessing the magisterial authority of, say, papal encyclicals, are still informative and excellent.
Thus, for example, in the middle of Gravissimum Educationis, the council’s document on Catholic education, the editors of the book include Pope St. Paul VI’s “Letter to Director-General of UNESCO” regarding the importance of promoting literacy around the world. In the middle of Unitatis Redintegratio, the council’s decree on ecumenism, we get an excerpt from Pope St. John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint on the same topic. These alone make the compilation an excellent resource for anyone trying to understand both the council and how its most important interpreters — subsequent popes — have understood it and sought to apply its teachings for the universal church.
But my favorite part of the book is the FAQ section at the back, which strikes at the heart of the most contentious questions regarding the council, whether from the traditionalists or progressive side. For example, the section answers the question “Did Vatican II define any new dogmas or condemn any heresies?” (No.) It also includes answers to questions such as “Are Vatican II’s teachings infallible and binding or fallible and option?”; “Are Catholics free to ignore, disparage, or reject Vatican II”; and “Could parts of Vatican II’s doctrine be removed or reversed in the future?”
Given the many controversies regarding those questions, I’d wager that a careful study of this FAQ would resolve many of the ongoing debates over the council.
I sympathize with many traditional Catholics who are frustrated with the legacy of Vatican II, especially related to the changes to the liturgy. Though not a “Traditional Latin Mass” Catholic myself, I count as friends many who are obviously blessed by the Tridentine Rite, and have been disheartened by the current pontificate’s antagonism towards it. I’ve even written in support of those who adhere to the TLM. Nevertheless, that does not excuse the language many now employ when referring to Vatican II. Indeed, I fear many well-meaning, traditionalist Catholics are being led astray by some of these anti-council voices, their language and religious identity getting dangerously close, if not crossing, the line into dissent.
However much we take issue with various actions of this current papacy and its use of Vatican II to justify what might rightly be described as frustrating, and even foolhardy takes on the liturgy, we must resist the temptation to disparage legitimate ecumenical councils. Doing so, I’d warn, will only lead us back into the irresolvable, incoherent kinds of theological and philosophical quandaries I once endured as a Protestant. And that isn’t viable. Trust me, I’ve been there.
The Word on Fire Vatican II Collection
Foreword by Bishop Robert Barron, with commentary by the postconcilear popes
Word on Fire Institute, 2021
Hardcover, 392 pages
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