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Vatican II’s call for renewal did not break with tradition, pope says
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The Second Vatican Council’s call for “renewal” did not mark a break with tradition or a watering down of the faith, but reflected Christianity’s lasting vitality and God’s eternal presence, Pope Benedict XVI said.
Christianity is always young and in “perpetual bloom,” he said during an audience Oct. 12 with 15 bishops who participated in Vatican II between 1962-65. The private audience also included the patriarchs and archbishops of the Eastern Catholic churches and presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences, who were attending the Synod of Bishops on the new evangelization.
Pope Benedict fondly recalled the council, saying it was a time that was “so vivacious, rich and fruitful.”
He praised Blessed John XXIII’s usage of the term “aggiornamento” or “renewal” for the church, even though, he said, it’s still a topic of heated and endless debate.
“But I am convinced that the insight Blessed John XXIII epitomized with this word was and still is accurate,” he said.
“Christianity must never be seen as something from the past, nor lived with one’s gaze always looking back, because Jesus is yesterday, today and for all eternity,” Pope Benedict said.
“This ‘renewal’ does not mean a break with tradition, rather it expresses a lasting vitality,” he said.
Renewal doesn’t mean watering down the faith, lowering it to fit modern fads or trends, or fashioning it to fit public opinion or one’s own desires, “rather it’s the contrary,” he said.
“Exactly as the council fathers did, we have to make the times in which we live fit the Christian event; we have to bring the ‘today’ of our time into the ‘today’ of God,” which is eternal, he said.
Vatican II taught the church that it always must speak to the people “of today,” he said. However, there is no easy way to do it; it has to be done by people whose lives are firmly rooted in God and who live their faith “with purity,” he said. [More]
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5 Comments
Since the close of Vatican II, I never seem to hear the priests give homilies on how our present human life on this earth is not our true life — that our crosses and sufferings are actually “gifts” that we should carry with “joy” throughout this lifetime and offer up, because through our suffering joined to Jesus’s suffering, we are transformed and redeemed. What I hear most since Vatican II is just plain “HUMANISM.”
If a person internalizes and TRUSTS in Jesus’s words, accepts his/her life sufferings as “gifts” for transformation and redemption, rather than “punishments” and gets over the modern day self-absorbed “woe is me” attitude, that person can be spiritually transformed. If one understands and internalizes the fact that we are all one and “there but for the grace of God go I,” his/her heart will open wide, and (s)he will truly understand what unconditional love is. Understanding unconditional love frees one from human bondage and allows them to accept God’s mercy, forgive themselves and unconditionally forgive everyone else. This is true freedom.
I, for one, would like to hear more homilies on this truth and less on social justice. Being involved in social justice issues is fine, but it is still humanism. True transformation and redemption takes place within the human heart. That’s what Jesus came to instill in us and still does in all his and his mother’s apparitions.
P.S. There are some people who are outspoken on social justice issues, but it’s all on the surface — it’s not coming from the “heart.” They haven’t been transformed and redeemed within their own souls.
The Holy Father is of course absolutely correct. Vatican II did not ‘break’ with the tradition of the Church but was a further enriching of the
magisterium. The Church is a Living Thing and cannot merely be a cystalisation of the Medieval Church !
If his, the popes, statement is true why has he spent the bulk of his tenure dismantling Vat 2 and placing ultra conservatives in positions of power in the vatican?
The church is rooted in the old but living in the new. Great strides were made by the Church in trying to be more relevant to the modern world, there is and has to be more dialogue in every area and every level in order that the church my preach the Gospel to every creature. There must be openness to new thoughts and new ideas always remembering the promise of Jesus that He will send the Holy Spirit to guide us.
“Be not afraid”