A VATICAN II-GENERATION PRIEST LOOKS BACK... AT GOA AND THE CHURCH Fr Desmond de Sousa CSsR desmonddeso...@hotmail.com
During his interaction with about 400 local priests recently, Pope Benedict XVI fielded about ten questions. One "Vatican II generation" priest (like myself, ordained in 1966) expressed frustration that much of the Council seemed lost. "We had great hopes, but in reality things showed themselves to be very difficult," responded the Pope, recalling the great "enthusiasm" that he himself felt during Vatican II. He however noted that almost every post-conciliar period in history brought difficulty and even "total chaos." He cited the first Council of Nicea in 325. Pope Benedict gave his own reading of what went awry in the implementation of Vatican II, saying it was impeded by two interruptions. The first was in 1968 with the "great crisis of Western culture." The other was in 1989 with the collapse of Communism and the subsequent "plunge into nihilism." THE SECOND FRENCH REVOLUTION Historians call it the second French Revolution of May, 1968. What began as a seemingly harmless, student demonstration in Paris escalated into a national upsurge of protest against "the system." Recalling those intoxicating days in May 1968, the French consider the events of May (apart from the two world wars), as "the most important occurrence in the 20th century." During the student revolt that swept Europe, particularly from France in 1968, one incident in Tuebingin particularly upset Fr Joseph Ratzinger. An expert during Vatican II, he was appointed professor of dogmatic theology at the prestigious German University of Tuebingen. He was appalled at the bubbling prevalence of Marxism among his theology students. Student protesters disrupted one of his lectures. In his own words, this incident alarmed him to the fact that religion was being subordinated to "a tyrannical, brutal and cruel," political ideology. "That experience," he later wrote, "made it clear to me that the abuse of faith had to be resisted precisely." THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION This intuition of his was reinforced in 1989. The people who lived under Communism rose up and asserted themselves against the party. Future historians will look back on May 1989 as probably the most momentous month in the second half of the 20th century. Forces of epochal transformation bubbled up "from below" in China, Poland, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, while they were supposedly being marshaled "from above" by Gorbochev’s "glasnost" and "periostrika" in the Kremlin. Ultimately, Gorbochev lost control of the process "from below" and the might of the Soviet Union crumbled like a pack of cards. These two incidents of 1968 and 1989, were potent lessons from history for the institution of the Catholic Church, on the destructive dangers of "people's power." But the Catholic Church, sooner or later has to take account of the most explosive phenomenon of modern civilization: the emergence of a desire for full self-determination on the part of individuals. Today, even religion itself is increasingly becoming a private affair. It has no point of reference to any institution, ritual, person or dogma outside of oneself. REKINDLING THE SPIRIT OF VATICAN II IN GOA Pope Benedict XVI then indicated that there were three responses within the Church to the events of 1968 in particular. One group "identified this new Marxist cultural revolution with the will of the Council" and claimed that "behind the written words (of the documents) was this spirit." [Pope Benedict XVI like his predecessor Pope John Paul II is deeply suspicious of movements like liberation theology and feminist theology.] Another group became "absolutely against the Council." [This group was led by Archbishop Lefebre and his followers called Lefebrists, but now are members of the Society of Pius X who along with the Opus Dei have fairly succeeded in suppressing the creative forces "from below".] The third group with which he evidently identified himself began doing "timid and humble research to bring forth the true spirit" of Vatican II. It was time he observed, to "rediscover the great heritage of the Council, which is not a made-up spirit behind the texts, but is rather the great conciliar texts themselves, re-read today," in the light of experience. It would seem that that the Church in Goa will have to go through some similar process to rekindle the spirit of Vatican II. Certain historical events have strangled the spirit of renewal in the Church in Goa. One is certainly, the 451 years of "Portugesization" of the Church which did not end with the political liberation or annexation of Goa, (depending on whose perspective one aligns with) in 1961. Goa archdiocese continued to have an Apostolic Administrator, with no powers to renew the Church in the spirit of Vatican II, while the Patriarch returned to Portugal During the heady days of 1968-69, while the whole Church in India participated in the monumental process of renewal according to Vatican II, during the Church in India Seminar, the Church in Goa was an enthusiastic but impotent participant. The open scars left on a colonial Church were evident in every effort at renewal of the Church in Goa over the next 40 years. The thesis of a very eminent living churchman of Goa identified these scars: first, the traditionalism of the clergy that opposed the spirit of a participative renewal of the Church as the people of God. They clung to the hierarchic, priest-centered Church of the past; second, the lethargy of the laity, fed for centuries on pious devotions -- novenas, processions, emotional enactments of Christ's sufferings called "sanctos passos" -- without any intellectual faith content. This type of emotionalism in spirituality with little or no intellectual content is a hangover from the spirituality that still exists in southern Europe -- Portugal, Spain, Italy, southern France -- that provokes a reaction of atheism or agnosticism, "religion is the opium of the people", but more specifically, militant anti-clericalism among vast sections of the lay faithful that religion is a money-making racket run by priests. This horrendous divorce of liturgy and faith from the ordinary every-day life of the faithful, inevitably leads to a culture of secularism and anti-clericalism, even anti-Catholicism, that plagues Europe today and is cascading into Goa. Was this reaction not recognizable in the past, particularly among the male members of elite Catholic families in Goa, many of whom had attended seminary in the old days and left for more secular studies and professions? Do we need evidence of its presence in the Church in Goa today, more especially among the youth that are seduced by the glitz and glitter of modern culture, in its multi-religious and multi-cultural milieu? This sort of liturgical spirituality, divorced from daily living, elicits an emotional response to the past historical event of the suffering and death of Jesus on the Cross. It has little or no relevance to the daily struggles of the poor people for survival and is absolutely remote from, "Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation." (Synod of Bishops on Justice in the World, 1971) The spirituality of Vatican II -- particularly its new attitude of dialogue, not blind opposition, to the "world;" the centrality of the resplendent hope of the Resurrection, more than the Birth and Crucifixion of Christ as the principle foundation of catholic faith; the radical shift from a spirituality of devotions to a spirituality of the "signs of the times" (Mt.16:1-3) and responsibility for the "world" ("Thy Kingdom come... on earth as it is in heaven") - were some of the new emphases that still have little importance in the Church in Goa. These are some of the symptoms of the traditionalism of the priests and the lethargy of the faithful THE SPIRIT OF VATICAN II Pope John XXIII was a professor of Church history. Elected Pope in 1958, (the year I joined the seminary) his sense of history indicated a shadowy, new world straining for unity after two catastrophic World Wars, within the first half of the 20th century. Only a global event that transparently revealed Jesus Christ as the epicenter of unity would convince the nations of the world striving for unity. His inspiration to call the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) was to witness to the world just such an event, a living sign of Christ's last prayer, "That they may be one... that the world may believe that you have sent me." (John 17:21). With his intuitive grasp of living at a turning point of history, Pope John XXIII was deeply aware of the need for a response from the Church to the world. Robert Kaiser wrote, "To John the geopolitical world of 1959 was a world in transition, a world passing through the treacherous shallows of a time-lag between two worlds: between the ancient order originated by Richelieu, perfected by Bismarck, flowering in the colonial empires of England, France and Germany, and the shadowy world of the near future in which he foresaw the unity of mankind as a whole. That unity he thought could come about in several possible ways: through a refined internationalism; through the centripetal instincts of men face to face with the expanding universe of outer space; or through a cataclysmic disintegration. In each possibility he saw that the critical factor was the same: the confrontation between East and West. But John viewed this confrontation uniquely. He did not see it as a facing off of Christ with Antichrist, nor of religion with anti-religion. Looking beyond the obvious externals, he saw that in East and West, and in the new nations of Africa and Asia, men were building a self-contained, man-dominated, self-satisfied ethos of human behavior -- which could only lead to an aseptic hell on earth. With many another modern thinkers, John saw the modern dilemma as one of moral dimensions. His pain came from the fact that Christianity was taking such a small part in solving this dilemma." (Inside the Council, 1963, p14) In his opening address to the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII said, "As regards the initiative for this great event which gathers us here, it will suffice to repeat as historical documentation, our personal account of the first sudden welling up in our heart and lips of the simple words "Ecumenical Council" ... It was completely unexpected, like a flash of heavenly light shedding sweetness in eyes and hearts. And, at the same time, it gave rise to a great fervor throughout the world in expectation of the holding of the Council." His words also reflected his hope for renewal of the Church. "We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand... The Council now begins in the Church like daybreak, a forerunner of most splendid light. It is now only dawn, and already at this first announcement of the rising day, how much sweetness fills our heart." He released the hitherto long suppressed ambiguous forces of creativity and dissent "from below" and mobilized them "from above" to update and transform the Catholic Church in the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). This is the key principle for the total renewal of a society or institution: not an orderly, deductive (top-down) process as Pius XII tried through his 46 encyclicals during his nineteen year pontificate, nor a merely inductive (bottom-up) process which revolutionaries believe in, of overthrowing the government "from below" and then forming a new government that oppresses the people "from above." Rather, the groundswell of creative forces "from below" once released have to be held together by a credible, participative leadership "from above." Otherwise, as Michael Gorbochev, learned to his everlasting dismay, the groundswell will explode into numerous fragments like the Soviet Union did. Pope John XXIII and his successors, to a greater or lesser extent, have taught the world this fundamental process of social transformation: release the creative forces "from below" but hold the groundswell "from above" through a credible, participative leadership. ### Goanet Reader is edited and compiled by Frederick Noronha.