Pastoral Vision

Jul 21, 2016

By Prof Fr John W. O’Malley, SJ,
The basis for describing the Second Vatican Council as pastoral is unassailable. On the day the council opened, Oct 11, 1962, Pope John XXIII characterized it as such. In his address that day, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, he told the assembled prelates that the council was to be “predominantly pastoral in character.” The prelates heard the message. From that point forward, speaker after speaker at the council, especially those from the so-called majority, insisted on the council’s pastoral character, implicitly contrasting it with a doctrinal council, which presumably was more serious.

So where is the cliché? What is wrong with designating Vatican II a pastoral council? In response, I say that there is nothing wrong with it. In fact, I want to vindicate it. But before it can be vindicated, it must be deconstructed. Once deconstructed, it can be reconstructed and then emerge with greater force and deeper meaning.

The cliché, as currently understood, tends to trivialize the council, principally by implying, at least for some commentators, that the council’s decrees are less substantial, more contingent, more subject to reform or even dismissal than those from the supposedly great doctrinal councils of the past. Vatican II, like certain beers and soft drinks, is council lite — no heavy calories!

Even more important, the cliché misdirects our attention from what is utterly unique about the council’s pastoral character. Vatican II was pastoral in such a radically new mode when compared with previous councils that, before we can correctly use the expression, we must purify it of the conventional understanding, reconstitute it in its proper breadth and depth, and only then let it return to its rightful place in the world, with its head held high.

But if we judge a council’s dignity and gravitas by the number and importance of its doctrinal decrees, does not Vatican II really qualify as a council lite or council not-so-serious? After all, Vatican II did not define a single doctrine. In Vatican II, there are no dogmas in the sense of solemn definitions, like the definition of papal infallibility of Vatican I. Yes, that is true. Vatican II did not define a single doctrine, but that does not mean it was not a teaching or doctrinal council. (Every dogma is a doctrine, but not every doctrine is a dogma.) The council did not define any doctrines because it adopted a mode of discourse different from that operative in councils that produced definitions, most notably Vatican I.

Not defining certainly does not necessarily mean that the council’s more important teachings are less binding or less central to the Christian religion, solemnly approved as they were the largest and most diverse gathering of prelates by far in the entire history of the Catholic Church and then solemnly ratified by the supreme pontiff, Paul VI. We must remember, moreover, that the “Constitution on the Church” and the “Constitution on Divine Revelation” are specifically designated as “dogmatic constitutions.” If, indeed, we look at the number and importance of Vatican II’s teachings, the council is not council lite but the very opposite.

It is clear by now that Pope Francis’ blueprint for the initiatives of his pontificate has, from the very first instant, been the teachings of Vatican II. In his initiatives, he has been teaching us by word and deed. These initiatives have consistently been described by both, his friends and his foes, as pastoral, or, especially by the latter, as “only pastoral.” Here the cliché returns, but in its unreconstructed form.

When in mid-April this year Francis brought back with him to the Vatican 12 Muslim refugees from the island of Lesbos, was he only performing a compassionate act, in the hope that others, especially governments, would be inspired to go and do likewise? Or was he not also proclaiming, by a deed more powerful than the words of any encyclical, a doctrine central to the Christian message, a doctrine on whose observance St. Matthew tells us in Chapter 25 our very salvation depends? “I was a stranger, and you took me in.”--America