The Vatican Council: What Went Wrong?

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This week the bishops attending the second session of the Vatican Council in Rome will end their deliberations and go home. Behind them they leave a great historical movement brought temporarily to a halt. From a council that promised to bring about a sweeping inner renewal of Roman Catholicism, Vatican II has become a parliament of stalemate, compromise and delay.

The change in pace of the council reflects the change in Roman Catholic leadership that took place between sessions. Vatican II was first summoned by that quiet revolutionary, Pope John XXIII, who intuitively felt the need for an aggiornamento—a modernization of the church. His instinct was dramatically proved right during the first session, when a majority of the prelates rejected the standpat schemata on liturgy, the sources of revelation and the nature of the church proposed by the conservative Roman Curia.

In vote after vote, the bishops made it clear that they wanted to address the world in decrees that would be free of what Belgian Bishop Emile Josef De Smedt called "triumphalism, clericalism, juridicism." Pope John stayed behind the scenes, but each time he was called upon to mediate a dispute between the progressives and the conservatives, he quietly but effectively sided with the forces for change. Last December, when the first session ended, no ecclesiastical legislation had been passed, but the progressives had cleared the way for action at the second.

All the while, Pope John was ill—which won sympathy for his vision. Then, last June, he died. His death created a vacuum of inspiration.

Liturgical Change. Superficially, there was much to applaud about the council's second session. In a decisive straw vote that concluded a meandering debate on whether bishops shared ruling authority over the church with the Pope, the prelates overwhelmingly approved the democratic notion of collegiality. They narrowly voted to discuss the Virgin Mary in the schema on the church rather than as a separate item; giving special emphasis to Mary is a pet cause of the conservatives, but any major Marian pronouncement will disturb ecumenical discussion between the church and Protestants.

Just before the session ended, they undertook a lively discussion on a schema concerning ecumenism that included chapters condemning anti-Semitism and favoring individual freedom of worship for all men. This week, in one of the last acts of the session, Pope Paul will formally promulgate an impressive decree on liturgical changes that authorizes greater use of the vernacular in the Mass and sacraments.

But it is in doubt whether many of the progressive sentiments expressed by the bishops in debate will ever be enacted into legislation. And the only other substantive measure passed at the session is as much a step backward as the liturgical decree is a step forward. Last week the council railroaded through without discussion a schema on communications that tolerates state censorship of mass media, suggesting civil authorities prevent "harm to the morals and progress of society through the bad use of these instruments."