Pope Paul VI declared at the final plenary meeting of the ecumenical council that the historic assembly of the world’s bishops “has been deeply committed to the study of the modern world.”
Speaking to more than 2,000 bishops and a host of special delegations from all parts of the world, Pope Paul declared:
“Never before, perhaps, so much as on this occasion has the Church felt the need to know, to draw near to, to understand, to penetrate, serve and evangelize the society in which she lives and to come to grips with it, almost to run after it in its rapid and continuous change.”
The Dec. 7 plenary public meeting in St. Peter’s basilica witnessed the final passage and proclamation of the last four council documents, including the very timely one on the role of the Church in the modern world.
The results of the formal voting on the last four documents of Vatican Council II were:
Religious liberty — yes, 2,308; no, 70; null, 8.
Missions — yes, 2,394; no, 5; null, 0.
The Church in the modern world—yes, 2,309; no, 75; null, 7.
Priestly life and ministry — yes, 2,390; no, 4; null, 0.
The session was also marked by the truly history-making reading of a joint statement approved by the Pope and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople which sought to lay the ghost of bitterness of the 11th-century exchange of excommunications which fractured the body of Christendom.
Bishop Jan Willebrands, secretary of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, read the document in the council hall. Then Augustin Cardinal Bea, president of the unity secretariat, read a papal brief annulling the excommunications of 1054. The joint declaration read by Bishop Willebrands reviewed the facts surrounding the exchange of excommunications in 1054 between papal legates and the patriarch of Constantinople. The document noted that the excommunications were directed against persons rather than against the two Churches as a whole and “were not intended to break ecclesiastical communion between the Sees of Rome and Constantinople.”
In the joint statement Pope Paul and Patriarch Athenagoras expressed regret for the offenses of the past, saying in part:
“They likewise regret and remove both from memory and from the midst of the Church the sentences of excommunication which followed these events, the memory of which has influenced actions up to our day and has hindered closer relations in charity, and they commit these excommunications to oblivion.”
Lastly, the joint statement declared that the Pope and the Patriarch “deplore the preceding and later vexing events which under the influence of various factors — among which lack of understanding and mutual trust — eventually led to the effective rupture of ecclesiastical communion.”
The ceremonies of the last plenary council meeting began at 9 a.m. with the assembled bishops and thousands of others singing the hymn to the Holy Spirit, “Veni Creator Spiritus,” as Pope Paul entered the basilica. The Pope and 24 presidents of national conferences of bishops, including Archbishop Patrick A. O’Boyle of Washington, concelebrated Mass at the high altar. Also among the concelebrants was Coadjutor Archbishop Louis Levesque of Rimouski, Que.
The concelebrants included nine cardinals: Coptic-rite Patriarch Stephanos I Sidarouss of Alexandria; Manuel Cardinal Goncalves Cerejeira of Lisbon; Benjamin Cardinal de Arriba y Castro of Tarragon, Spain; Franziskus Cardinal Koenig of Vienna; Peter Cardinal Doi of Tokyo; Juan Cardinal Landazuri Ricketts of Lima, Peru; John Cardinal Heenan of Westminster, England; Agnelo Cardinal Rossi of Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Giovanni Cardinal Colombo of Milan, Italy.
Also Archbishop Paul Yu Pin of Nanking, China; Archbishop Gabriel Garrone of Toulouse, France; Archbishop Peter McKeefry, of Wellington, New Zealand; Archbishop Julio Rosales of Cebu, The Philippines; Archbishop Charles Heery of Onitsha, Nigeria; Archbishop Octaviano Marquez Toriz of Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico; Archbishop John McCarthy of Nairobi, Kenya; Archbishop Anibal Munoz Duque of Nueva Pamplona, Colombia; Archbishop Jean Zoa of Yaounde, Cameroun; Archbishop Raymond-Marie Tchidimbo of Conakry, Guinea; Archbishop Justinus Darmajuwana of Semarang, Indonesia; Bishop Edmund Peiris of Chilaw, Ceylon; and Bishop Claudius Bayet, vicar apostolic of Ubon, Thailand.
Appropriately, the Mass of the day was that of St. Ambrose, who like Pope Paul had been bishop of Milan, Italy.
Before the Mass began, the council’s secretary general, Archbishop Pericle Felici, read the first and last paragraphs of the four documents promulgated at the meeting.
The papal promulgation of the documents on the Church in the modern world, religious liberty, the missions, and priestly life and ministry completed the work of the Second Vatican Council, although the next day there was a formal closing ceremony.
In his more than 3,000-word Latin address, the Pope showed he was very conscious of the historic significance of the council and its meaning for the world. Early in his speech, Pope Paul recalled that Pope John XXIII, who had summoned the council, had stated as its major goal “that that sacred deposit of Christian doctrine may be guarded and taught more efficiently.” Of this goal, Pope Paul declared: “His great purpose has now been achieved.”
“To appreciate it properly it is necessary to remember the time in which it was realized: a time which everyone admits is oriented toward the conquest of the kingdom of earth rather than that of heaven; a time in which forgetfulness of God has become habitual and seems, quite wrongly, to be prompted by the progress of science; a time in which the fundamental act of the human person, more conscious now of himself and of his liberty, tends to pronounce in favor of his own absolute autonomy, in emancipation from every transcendent law; a time in which secularism seems the legitimate consequence of modern thought and the highest wisdom in the temporal ordering of society; a time, moreover, in which the soul of man has plumbed the depths of irrationality and desolation; a time, lastly, which is characterized by upheavals and a hitherto unknown decline of even the great world religions.
“It was at such a time as this that our council was held to the honor of God in the name of Christ and under the impulse of the Spirit.”
Analyzing the religious value of the council, the Pope declared that one of its most important considerations was that “it has been deeply committed to the study of the modern world.”
Stressing the Church’s increased concern for the world, Pope Paul said this is a “response to the distances and divisions we have witnessed over recent centuries, in the last century and in our own especially between the Church and secular society.
“This attitude has been strongly and unceasingly at work in the council, so much so that some have been inclined to suspect that an easygoing and excessive responsiveness to the outside world, to passing events, cultural fashions, temporary needs and an alien way of thinking … may have swayed the persons and acts of the ecumenical synod to the detriment of the religious orientation of the council itself.
“We do not believe this shortcoming should be imputed to it, to its real and deep intentions, to its authentic manifestations.”
The Pope’s speech was very revealing of his deeply felt concern for modern man. In one passage he became almost poetic as he spoke of the Church’s concern for man “as he really is today.”
The Holy Father spoke of the “man all wrapped up in himself, the man who makes himself not only the center of his every interest but dares to claim that he is the principle and explanation of all reality.”
“Every perceptible element in man, every one of the countless guises in which he appears has in a sense been displayed in full view of the council Fathers, who in their turn are mere men. And yet all of them are pastors and brothers whose position accordingly fills them with solicitude and love.
“Among these guises we may cite man as the tragic actor of his own plays; man as the superman of yesterday and today, ever frail, unreal, selfish and savage; man unhappy with himself as he laughs and cries; man the versatile actor, ready to perform any part; man the narrow devotee of nothing but scientific reality; man as he is, a creature who thinks and loves and toils and is always waiting for something … man sacred because of the innocence of his childhood, because of the mystery of his poverty, because of the dedication of his suffering; man as an individual and man in society; man who lives in the glories of the past and dreams of those of the future; man the sinner and the saint.”
The Pope insisted, however, that while the council had considered man’s frailty, it “insisted very much more upon the pleasant side of man rather than on his unpleasant one. Its attitude was very much and deliberately optimistic …”
“Instead of depressing diagnoses [it proposed] encouraging remedies; instead of direful prognostications, messages of trust issued from the council to the present-day world. The modern world’s values were not only respected but honored, its efforts approved, its aspirations purified and blessed.”
The Pope acknowledged that the council “did not attempt to resolve all the urgent problems of modem life.” But, he said, it did make known the Church’s “authoritative teaching on a number of questions which today weigh upon man’s conscience and activity.”
Pope Paul also insisted that the Church through the council has “declared herself the servant of humanity at the very time when her teaching role and her pastoral government have, by reason of the council’s solemnity, assumed greater splendor and vigor, the idea of service has been central.”
Citing St. Augustine, the Pope concluded by declaring: “This council can be summed up in its ultimate religious meaning, which is none other than a pressing and friendly invitation to mankind today to rediscover in fraternal love the God ‘to run away from whom is to fall, to turn to whom is to rise again, to remain in whom is to be secure, to return to whom is to be born again and in whom to dwell is to live.'”
JAMES C. O’NEILL
Vatican II: 50 years ago today 