without understanding this fact! In shorthand terms, we are discussing the difference between what we might dub Pope John XXIII Catholics8 (those reared on or influenced by Vatican II) and Pope John Paul II Catholics9 (those reared on and influenced by Pope John Paul II and his former right hand man in the Vatican and now his successor, Pope Benedict XVI).10 One cannot understand the current state of Roman Catholicism or the potential bridges and barriers to potential ecumenism without understanding and gaining a real working knowledge of this distinction.
In calling a Vatican Council for the Roman Catholic Church at the time he did so in history, Pope John XXII specifically intended to engage the church in dialogue with the modern world.11 The noted writer James Carroll states in his thought provoking work Toward a New Catholic Church12 that Vatican II engendered ‘a new awareness of what it meant to be Catholic.’13 This was the Council, according to Carroll, that had the intent and the effect of ‘taking the Church out of the Middle Ages.’14
The immediate and long term effects of this worldwide church gathering were quite staggering to pre Vatican II Catholics. As a result of this Council, major changes occurred in several important areas. Among the most significant included:
1. Shifts in the way the central worship event (i.e. the Mass or Eucharist) was celebrated. As a matter of fact, the use of any term other than ‘Mass’ for this act of worship only became widespread after the Council. These shifts included:
The movement from Latin as the language of the Mass toward the use of the vernacular i.e. the language of the people celebrating the Eucharist and turning the altar around so that the priest faced the people. This act also led to others: worship (liturgical) documents from the Council emphasized the importance of the Word and preaching. In basic terms, ‘going to Mass’ became a different kind of worship experience for Catholics. What had been a more ‘private’ kind of prayer albeit in a public setting was now presented differently. The participation of the congregation in the responses and the singing became a significant expectation. Those days when Catholics might quietly ‘say their Rosaries’15 or other prayers as the priest ‘said Mass’ appeared to be fading away. A new language regarding this worship experience came onto the Catholic scene, a more communitarian and participatory language. Instead of ‘going to Mass,’ Catholics were welcomed to ’participate in our shared celebration of the Eucharist. 16
2. A major change in the way Catholics viewed other Christians. Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism17 had the effect of casting Protestants in a different light. It appeared that the Catholic Church was reaching out to non Catholics in a way heretofore unforeseen on the official level. Rather than condemning the errors of Protestant ways, the Council called for deeper cooperation on all levels of the church. This would include studying together along with the church’s ‘separated brethren,’ the Council’s term for non Catholic Christians, reading the Bible together and joining with one another in prayer. In an outstanding and timely 1972 column for his local Archdiocesan newspaper, the distinguished Catholic theologian Richard McBrien spells this out in specific, helpful detail. It is a source worth reading!18
3. The Council emphasized a different kind of role for persons who were not ordained, i.e. most of the people within the church. It declared a common ‘priesthood of the faithful’19 in which all Catholics would embrace their identity as ‘ a priestly people.’20 A new popular Catholic hymn also emerged, using for its title that very Biblical term ‘priestly people.’
4. In fact, the Council truly reshaped how Catholics would view the church. As some ecclesiological theologians have noted, this Council moved the church from the position of seeing itself as synonymous with the notion of Kingdom of God and more toward being a servant of a Kingdom, a realm that is far greater, broader and wider than the church.21 The concept that church and kingdom were not synonymous with one another had broad implications for the church’s understanding of itself.
5. The official Council documents and structure had the imprint of John XXIII’s style all over them — They struck others, including interested Protestant observers present at the Council, as open, hospitable and welcoming to others, reflecting the reality that the Catholic Church has a message for the world, but that there are other messages out there as well. The Council created the impression that the church was willing and eager to work cooperatively with all persons of good will to achieve the goals of the Kingdom of God. It should be noted that the council itself was a collegial gathering in which Bishops (and observers from all over the world and varied religious traditions) rubbed shoulders with and truly collaborated with one another.22
The Second Vatican Council unleashed a torrent of change within the church. Much of the change was not directly intended by the documents themselves but those zealous about the reform of Catholicism saw within the Council and the direction of the church’s official pronouncements a newfound openness to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit upon the whole church, including its nonordained. Thus, as a result of Vatican II, a church that had for so long been identified as presenting answers to its ‘faithful’23 by which they were expected to shape their lives was becoming a church in which many clergy and faithful alike became quite comfortable asking questions.
And so, through the 1960s and 1970s, controversies and questions swept the Catholic Church. Priests and theologians challenged many of the practices of the church. They stood in private disregard of and public disputation with the church’s teaching on birth control, mandatory celibacy for its priests, the ordination of women and the infallibility of the Pope. A new phenomenon emerged whereby Catholic lay men and many lay women began attending exciting graduate programs in some of the world’s finest Catholic universities and colleges and attained credentials to serve as pastoral ministers, chaplains, youth ministers and Directors of Religious Education, in many cases serving either in expanded positions with new titles or in ministries that had not been envisioned not so long before.24
In Chapter 3, I will locate my own journey through the Catholicism of this post Vatican II period with these changes I have just described. As I will reiterate at that time, many of these changes took place as another phenomenon was occurring. Large numbers of men who had been ordained to the priesthood had decided to give up their priestly roles. Declines were starting to happen in the number of young men who were entering seminaries to train to be priests. At the same time, religious orders of women (popularly known as nuns) were experiencing the same reality as was the ordained priesthood. Articles, books and films regarding the relational and sexual lives of priests and nuns began to emerge. The net effect of their departure had a massive impact upon the official church’s ability to staff local parish elementary and secondary schools. The situation dramatized in films like Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s25 was not fiction at all. It was real. Catholic schools depended for decades upon the incredible, herculean efforts of these sisters and their departure, oftentimes documented as ‘leaving to be married,’ had a powerful effect on the configuration of Catholicism in many countries, most definitively in the United States!
As has also been demonstrated by the data, the departure from the priesthood of so many men who opted to marry women also has had a net effect on the high proportion of Catholic priests who are homosexual in their orientation. We will examine how this fact has provoked reactions in the church reflective of the divide between the ‘John XXIII’ Catholics and those of a more ‘John Paul II’ persuasion.
In October 1978, the College of Cardinals elected a Pope whose over twenty six year pontificate (1978-2005) would have an incredibly powerful impact upon the Roman Catholic Church as it entered the twenty-first century. Pope John Paul II, born Karol Wojtyla, was a renowned Catholic bishop in his native Poland who by the strength of his powerful intellect and his charismatic personality, used the ministry of his papacy to reshape the church.
That
