Tom McMahon today begins to "cut into the meat" in this fourth part of his series on The Documents of Vatican II. A large focus today is on the impact Yves Congar had on the Council and the empowerment given to the laity.

The "little red book"...

It would be interesting to know how many Catholica readers still have a copy of Walter M Abbott's original edition of "The Documents of Vatican II".

The years have flown since that little red book came into my library. Mine is battered and bruised by healthy use. I have begun to re-read the whole … hum … interesting this hindsight and yet I am not the same reader as I was in the 1970's, today more mature and capable of care-full discernment. I read between the lines with a historical prospective. I see where one document offers healthy reform and I can spot where this other document is weak and ineffectual, out-of-date, out-of-touch. I am reading about a church that is not the same today as it was in 1965. One never stands in the same waters of a rushing river. What we call CHURCH is an evolutionary developing mystery. This mystery of Jesus in the modern world is a fascinating one act play for me, actors entering and leaving the stage of life at times unrelated to the adventure. I have to be aware that I can become sidetracked by costume and scenery.

As I look at these 1965 blueprints I first noticed the index, a tip off to the pecking order of document importance. Yves Congar had a conviction that Vatican Two was not an end in itself but the beginning of the church to come. Vatican Two documents are sound religious fiction, making a future possible. One of Vatican Two's severe drawbacks is the human inability to know the future. The emergence of a middle class and the value of each individual person shows up only in the last blockbuster document THE DECLARATION ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM — American Jesuit John Courtney Murray's invention.

The initial documents are an inviting set up, a carrot type invitation to the powerful bishops who might have come to the Council to have the world look at their worldly domains, that old glorious medieval church of Europe over which they were prince and eminence. Once inside the dialogue over CHURCH the trap is sprung as modern thinkers place before the assembly carefully prepared possible improvements and solutions to an ailing institution, Under the guise of the theoretical word CHURCH John's "committee" leads the assembled bishops into the personal life of emotions and faith of the world's millions of Catholics, a venture that over 45 years resembles an Alice in Wonderland-Jules Vern odyssey. Millennium is overturned in days.

Never once is the old Church confronted head on. The documents are a masterpiece of examining problemed areas without mention of the negative, utilizing the positive tools for reform and better health. The Council documents are carefully chosen pathways addressing the involvement of the church with world wide people; they are modern word maps to the carrying out of the mission of our master teacher Jesus. They are written in the crude transitional language of two eras of time and spirituality. The challenge to change is all almost on every page, subtle and mixed with the obsolete. In most I have no difficulty following the positive healing trends. Unknown to themselves the Council fathers were deep into cognitive therapy. It is with humor that I imagine the little red book (above) as having a warning label of skull and bones and poison to forewarn the old conservative curial elements. Most dangerous to clericalism is the oncoming of the laity.

The emergence of the laity — thanks to Yves Congar...

Yves Congar — organiser of the worker-priests of France

To understand the emergence of the laity we need to appreciate the French Dominican priest Yves-Marie-Joseph Cardinal Congar. Like John the 23rd, Congar's religion is closely tied into his birth family, systems that took their core values from committed Christian parents. Born and raised in the famous Ardennes at age 10 Yves knew siege, hunger, and the deportation of his father by invading German troops. Separation usually causes acute depression, a malady infecting the French people during two world wars. As Hitler paraded Jack Boot German soldiers beneath the Arc d'Triumph the morale of the French people fell into deep depression. France was a defeated nation and the French people were distressed, lacking hope. Here was a nation, 99% baptized Catholic with less than 10% active in adult religious matters. Yves Congar, like the preacher Jesus, would use nature's tools to combat depression and he would be opposed by the powerful.

As ordained Dominican French army chaplain-priest Yves Congar is jailed by the Nazis yet is instrumental in organizing the covert movement known as the WORKER PRIESTS OF PARIS. French workers were being deported to work in German munitions factories and the Germans were careful not to allow any clergy to accompany the exiles. Leaving behind the whole Trentan sacramental system, along with their cassocks/soutanes, book, chalices, and vestments these priests disguised as factory workers joined the depressed. They offered what Victor Frankel experienced and wrote about in his LOGOTHERAPY, a vision of hope and future in the midst of chaos. These were the first clergy since the Council of Trent who involved with ordinary people on a very human psychological level. Trained in seminary/novitiate isolation these men counter-scripted their own depressive style of life and brought a spirit of hope and meaning to a broken people. Laity and clergy became one.

Upon their return to freedom in 1945 Pius the 12th ordered the worker priests back into their clerical paraphernalia and separateness from the people, many refusing to do so and a large group was suspended from Roman ministry. Congar had written the progressive THE POPE MUST BE A REPRESENTATIVE OF BISHOPS AND NO LONGER A VICAR OF CHRIST. (The core failing of Benedict the 16th in 2010.) He was exiled to a monastery and seemingly the priests-worker movement died. The unity of laity and clergy would fall victim again to clericalism. The Body of Jesus would die.

Jesus rises again … this fellow wears many disguises and has no nationality…

A young Josef Ratzinger and Yves Congar who, at that time, would have been broadly perceived as reading from the same page of the hymnal.

When John the 23rd in 1959 calls Yves Congar out of exile to be a major contributor to John's Council; he is in fact referred to as the architect of Vatican Two. Yves Congar's most valuable input was his recognition of the value of common people. People are again on the march in union with savvy clergymen and the Body of Christ is taking shape in he modern era. Pius the 12th's Mystitci Corporis is coming to life. I remember so well in 1954 seminary theology professor Edward "Cop" Wagner S.S., forced to teach THE BODY OF CHRIST, stumbling around the issue of women being members. Growth of this Body is the same as human development; I would say today that we are approaching a teenage stage. One can't force human growth. Maturity comes from experience.

What I see in the documents is a cadre of alert clergy jumping off a carefully selected high diving board, plunging into an unknown murky waters of real life.

The index pages to Walter M Abbott's original edition of "The Documents of Vatican II". Click on the images to enlarge.

Did the church possess any values that could benefit modern society? The institution was putting itself on trial as a worthy carrier of the message and mission of Jesus. Was God dead, and Jesus a mere historical relic? Would the church survive modernity? The Council would give permission for church membership to employ modern psychological tools to address reality directly. There is a primitive human psychology to the Documents of Vatican Two, they accompanying a world-wide revolution in human sexuality, the dignity of the woman, and the freedom of each individual creature. The documents of Vatican Two were written for human consumption; it was like a relay foot race in which bishops hand over the baton to the laity. After World War Two empires fell and former colonies became nations; we are now witness to the collapse of the old European Roman Empire while a new church community is arising. Vatican Two with its spiritual battle plan is playing its role in being a source of emancipation. The issue at stake is whether the sleeping giant of laity will recognize this unique moment of earthly salvation.

I might have been baffled by the pecking order if I did not first read Pope John the 23rd's OPENING SPEECH TO THE COUNCIL. John is masterful as he avoids pessimism (European legacy of WW1 and 2, Inquisition, Crusades, sin and evil, religious revolts, etc.). While first lauding the Roman Church and its past leadership John immediately offers: "Side-by-side with these motives (the august gathering and power of the church) there has been for 19 Centuries a cloud of sorrows and of trials" John has confronted the assembly with a huge "YES, BUT…" (first open the argument and then follow immediately with a reality contradiction), challenging the bishops to search for and encounter squarely the spiritual problems ailing the institution. The bishop is called to be a spiritual teacher. Only the people can understand the world in which they live; the laity is invited to be sent forth as modern day apostles under the guidance of a spiritual bishop. Recall here Augustine of Hypo say that he knew he was a bishop but his membership in community was of equal value.

By going back nineteen centuries personally I see John as avoiding the issue of the Church being instituted by the historical Jesus. The Church is a human people-made institution and is being returned to human hands. People are responsible for the church. The Council's theme: All people can be involved. It's a Peoples church. History has always held "Ecclesia semper reformanda" that is, "the Church always in need of reform". In truth only laity can re-form the Church.

The DOCUMENT ON THE LAITY looks like an after thought; in reality it is a sleeper, deep in the mind of Yves Congar and based on Pius the 12th 1940's recognition in Mystici Corporis of the sleeping giant that lies in the lay people. Vatican Two is a subtle and powerful wake up call for the followers of Jesus to step up to their baptismal commitment. 45 years later the old institutional guard steeped in the medieval notion of illiterate peasant woman and man struggles to govern a faltering Roman institution, unaware of the power of the laity. The medieval church has been given a mortal blow and from its ashes is rising, and will continue to rise, the Phoenix new PEOPLE OF GOD. In another 50-100 years Rome will be no more than a tourist memory.

I first saw the laity offer to the pope and world bishops a devastating lesson in the exodus of vowed sisters and nuns from convents worldwide. (1970's-1980's) The exodus of vowed sisters from the Roman system is a violent silent protest about the way the Vatican has treated women for the past 1000 years. Does it come as a surprise to you that I lump the SISTERS in the category of laity? Rome considers nuns and vowed sisters to be laity — carefully protecting the special category of male priest (as promulgated by the Council of Trent, 1542, and the center now of modern conflict, and purposely excluding females from the ordained office of priesthood. In the eyes of the Vatican women are laity; we shall shortly examine the document on RELIGIOUS LIFE, which by the way comes in the document pecking order behind BISHOPS and PRIESTLY FORMATION. Interestingly the DECREE ON THE MINISTRY and LIFE OF PRIESTS is proceeded by LAITY. Is this a cart before the horse or is the position deliberate? I think not as in the mind of Vatican One and Trent the bishop, esp. the bishop of Rome, is the only true Jesus' priest. At episcopal ordination the theology is that a bishop receives the fullness of Jesus' priesthood whereas at a priest's ordination the cleric receives a portion of this so called Jesus' priesthood. This theology is crumbling. Did the bishops of Vatican Two have an intuition about future clerical problems and the decline of the ordained male priesthood?

This historical Jesus would not buy it...

Today's religious world swirls in chaos over the above theology, some bishops lording it over and suppressing priests with whom they have disagreement, and women claiming a share in the Jesus' priesthood. I buy none of it! Women today want a share of a Jesus' priesthood aka that which is passed on traditionally since Trent … how old is the tradition? Jesus never ordained a bishop or a priest. Jesus had followers called disciples — ordinary folk who committed to his way of life. The disciples of Emmaus, Luke 24, were men and women who listened to and were taught by Jesus. They are laity! The word LAITY means DUTY! When a woman priest recently told me she had no time to study I quietly dismissed her and the entire woman-priest movement as irrelevant to and impotent for myself in today's society. We don't need a continuance of privileged ignorant leaders. Look carefully beyond titles and robes and see the harm done by ignorant bishops who know only the Middle Ages hierarchy. What I observe is a woman separating herself out of the servant priesthood of the committed baptized, standing apart in clerical collar and Roman liturgical robes. The historical Jesus would not buy it. The priesthood of the laity is the only hope for tomorrow's revitalized church. I met a newly ordained priest yesterday… and I wondered. He is young, impeccably dressed in black, cautious … and I wondered. He is stationed in a parish I was instrumental in establishing back in 1960; I treasure a pin given to me by the Public School Teachers Association of California for my work with public school children of that very parish, the only Catholic priest to have been so recognized. I had a bit of Congar in me 50 years ago.

The pecking order in the line up of Vatican Two Documents is very obvious to me in 2010. All documents are dated 1965 and I might be fooled by the way documents appear if I don't keep in mind that Pope Paul's signature in that year is the final approval in old medieval church. As open as the Council fathers could be in discussion — rank, age, and wealth of diocese playing a great role — I could picture old style bishops snoozing off or taking time out during the discussion to go for a latté in one of the two coffee bars that were on the sides of the General Assembly. When 1800 bishops have the right to have their public say one can imagine that some of the talks were powerful and others second class. One story I remember well was that of a Coptic bishop sitting next to an American Ordinary who had just waxed eloquently on the absolute need for an unmarried priesthood. As the speaker returned to his seat the Coptic reached out and touched him, congratulating him on his fine presentation and informing the Roman bishop that the Cop was married and had four children. The Coptic Church is one of the seven units that make up the universal Catholic Church, this Egyptian unit older and equal to the Roman institution.

Next week I will offer a special story of lay men and women in the modern world, true church of Jesus' people. I attended today the funeral of a business man who has organized cargo shipments of school and medical supplies to needy Africans. I need some time to get precise names and details. I'll be back on this subject of the LAITY.

Tom McMahon in San Jose. Ca. once ordained and separated, now united as family man with the people of God. 17/07/2010

©2010 Tom McMahon

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