Given that we have had only 21 of them in 20 centuries, it was a once in a lifetime experience. Vatican II enlivened the autumns between 1962 and 1965, engaging not just Catholics or even other Christians but all the world, with the media treating it as though it were the Super Bowl. The word “ecumenical” comes from oikos, the Greek word for house, since the intent is to gather family members back under one roof. And for the final session 50 years ago, I was there.
Camden Archbishop Celestine J. Damiano directed me to finish my studies for the priesthood at Rome’s Gregorian University, with my residence at the North American College. Speaking no Italian, since my parents were both American born, and knowing I would not see them and the rest of my family and friends for over three and a half years, I hesitated. But I could take my time learning the language of the land since I was living in an American colony, especially since I discovered that the classroom language of the Jesuits’ flagship university was Latin. I had had 12 semesters of it, although few in spoken Latin. The Greg allowed modern European languages after my first two years there when student pressure for modernization was applied.
My first autumn there saw the final session of the ecumenical council. Some of my professors were periti, theologians who were council experts, advising the bishops in the drafting of the 16 documents that sought to fulfill Pope John’s desire to open the windows of the church to allow fresh air. The pope’s advisors, called the Curia, had drafted several documents long in advance with the expectation that the council bishops would endorse them. However some leading European cardinals called for a fresh start, and convinced the majority of their brother bishops to launch out into the deep, not being content to rubber stamp work already done.
At the university, it was heady. We knew we were at ground zero of a momentous meeting. We students from all parts of the world had great incentive to learn our lessons since the wind of the Holy Spirit blew through the house, bringing in all sorts of different things, like Catholics being allowed if not encouraged to attend Protestant services when we had been forbidden before; English in the Mass when we had been told that Latin guaranteed the universality of the church; collegiality restoring the role of bishops acting in concert with the Roman Pontiff; burials of suicides now allowed; the church seeing itself not as a pyramidal monarchy but as a circle of people both clerical and lay gathered with Christ our foundation as the People of God, and so many other changes that even those originally resistant would not want to see dismissed today.
There were some three days’ open session of the council when we students could enter St. Peter’s basilica, where the 2,500 bishops met daily for the usually sequestered work they did. It was nothing less than majestic to see such great things taking place with the Spirit’s guidance under the 48 story high dome of Michelangelo, under the barrel ceiling ornate with Incan gold. It was true, as the media reported, that the basilica had two coffee bars, nicknamed Bar Jonah and Bar Kokbah. Since the very essence of a council is talking and listening, much council business was done not just over rows of desks but over espresso as the fathers tried to influence each other, especially before the many votes taken.
Augustinian Father Martin Luther in the 16th century had hoped for great things from an ecumenical council held in 1517 called Lateran V. He was scandalized at the selling of indulgences and other sacred things, some of them ironically as fundraisers for the completion of St. Peter’s. He took offense at the departures from the early church, whose simplicity he craved. When it failed to deliver any substantial reform in the short time it was in session, he posted his Ninety-Five Theses on Oct. 31 of that year. More than half of these concerned abuses with indulgences. The epochal Council of Trent, 1545-63, was called belatedly to respond to the upheaval of the Reformation. The Cold War atmosphere between Catholics and Protestants that we remember from before Vatican II came from this period.
For me it has been a lifelong memory of having seen for myself of how God acts in the church.
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