by Julia Smucker<\/p>\n
When Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council, he famously used the image of opening the windows of the Church to let the fresh air of the Spirit blow through.\u00a0In studying and hearing about the council during the two years since I\u2019ve been in the Catholic Church, and especially with all the commemoration going on in this golden-anniversary year, I sometimes seem to catch a breath of that freshness. And then at other times, it feels like the Church is exhausted from spending the past 50 years arguing about what happened.<\/p>\n
Did the council go too far or not far enough?\u00a0Was it a break from tradition or an affirmation of it?\u00a0Were the conciliar documents the beginning of a conversation or the end of one?\u00a0I find these polarizing arguments the most exhausting thing about being Catholic, which makes it easy to feel nostalgic for the hopeful energy of an event that took place before my lifetime \u2013 an event that we now seem oddly constrained from celebrating, since even those who want<\/em> to celebrate it are too busy being angry about the Church today.<\/p>\n If we are to move beyond these tired arguments, we will need to let go of our polarized narratives and embrace a dynamic and politically transcendent hermeneutic.\u00a0To that end I propose, perhaps audaciously, that we recommit to living out the spirit of Vatican II, as an integral part of the whole living tradition of the Church, in a spirit of hope rather than anger.<\/p>\n Much has been made of fears that Vatican II and its practical implementations are being \u201crolled back,\u201d but while some on the fringes of the Church may wish this were possible, it is not.\u00a0The more significant developments that resulted from the council, such as participatory vernacular liturgy, magisterial involvement in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, and a more pastorally nuanced relationship between Church and world, are here to stay.\u00a0For better or worse \u2013 and I believe it is overwhelmingly for the better \u2013 the genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back in.<\/p>\n Some Catholics are anxious to put the brakes on any further reform, while others are equally anxious for another transformative event on the level of Vatican II.\u00a0Neither anxiety reflects the organic development of Church tradition.<\/p>\n Nothing short of the parousia will prevent the eventual necessity of another landmark council, but to clamor for one now is somewhat premature.\u00a0Vatican II, like Trent, was an era-defining council, and a sorely needed one.\u00a0Yet by the same token, era-defining events by definition can only happen once in an era.\u00a0Even Vatican I was not era-defining in the way that both Trent and Vatican II were, although the raw fact that the First and Second Vatican Councils were roughly a century apart has occasionally prompted me to think that the Church might do well to do some serious self-examination, perhaps aggiornamento<\/em>, every hundred years or so.\u00a0So perhaps in another 50 years it may be time for a \u201cVatican III,\u201d though none of us can predict exactly when or how the Spirit will move.\u00a0In the meantime, we still haven\u2019t finished working out the implications of Vatican II, and that should keep us busy enough for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n If indeed Vatican II is an event with ongoing repercussions, this reality is in basic continuity<\/em> with the idea of continuity.\u00a0Continuity does not mean that nothing has changed, still less that nothing will<\/em> change.\u00a0It does mean that what happened 50 years ago and what happened 2,000 years ago are pieces of the same story \u2013 dynamic plot twists which dramatically alter the course of this grand narrative, with implications that continue to unfold well beyond the events themselves.\u00a0Those who live through such defining moments cannot help but measure time by the before and after.\u00a0At the same time, if their meaning can continue to play out, it is because the story itself maintains a certain cohesion.<\/p>\n I have sometimes thought of the Church as a giant tree, ancient yet ever living, whose very rootedness allows it to move and grow.\u00a0Or to use another metaphor, as a friend and mentor of mine has said, \u201cIt is often said that the Catholic Church moves at a glacial pace.\u00a0But when glaciers move, they reshape the face of the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n Julia Smucker<\/strong> is a Mennonite Catholic, or a Mennonite who has come into full communion with the Catholic Church, or a Catholic profoundly and gratefully shaped by her Mennonite heritage \u2013 take your pick. She regularly brings the various harmonies and dissonances of this biecclesial identity into her coursework at St. John\u2019s School of Theology in Collegeville, Minnesota, where she is working on a Master of Theology (ThM) degree after earning her MA in Systematics. She is in the “Modern Liturgical Movements” class this semester taught by Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB. She is enthused by finding big-picture connections and relishes her title as the reigning Anti-Dichotomy Queen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Julia Smucker
\n“Continuity does not mean that nothing has changed, still less that nothing will change.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reform-of-the-reform","category-vatican-ii"],"yoast_head":"\n