Holy Father
addresses conference studying the implementation of the Second Vatican Council
From 25 to 27 February over 200 Bishops, theologians, historians and
catechists attended a conference in the Vatican on the implementation of the
Second Vatican Council. The meeting was organized in the context of the Holy
Year celebrations. On Sunday morning, 27 February, the Holy Father addressed the
participants, calling the Council a "gift of the Spirit to his
Church": "For this reason it remains a fundamental event not only for
understanding the Church's history at this end of the century, but first and
foremost for exploring the abiding presence of the risen Christ beside his Bride
in the course of world events". The Pope said that the Council was a truly
prophetic message for the Church and "will continue to be so for many years
in the third millennium which has just begun". Here is a translation of his
address, which was given in Italian.
Your Eminences,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
1. I am very pleased to meet you at the end of the conference that has been
held these days in the Vatican on the truly demanding and stimulating theme of
the implementation of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. I greet Cardinal
Roger Etchegaray, whom I thank for his address on behalf of you all. My greeting
also goes to the Prefects of the dicasteries and the other Cardinals, as well as
to the Archbishops and Bishops whose presence highlights the importance of this
meeting. Lastly, I greet the experts who have come here from various parts of
the world to contribute their own experience and reflections.
The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council has been a gift of the Spirit to his
Church. For this reason it remains a fundamental event not only for
understanding the Church's history at this end of the century, but first and
foremost for exploring the abiding presence of the risen Christ beside his Bride
in the course of world events. Through the Council Assembly, which saw Bishops
come to the See of Peter from all over the world, it was possible to note how
the patrimony of 2,000 years of faith has been preserved in its original
authenticity.
The Council studied the nature of the Church
2. With the Council, the Church first had an experience of faith, as
she abandoned herself to God without reserve, as one who trusts and is certain
of being loved. It is precisely this act of abandonment to God which stands out
from an objective examination of the Acts. Anyone who wished to approach the
Council without considering this interpretive key would be unable to
penetrate its depths. Only from a faith perspective can we see the Council
event as a gift whose still hidden wealth we must know how to mine.
At this juncture the significant words of St Vincent of Lerins come to mind:
"The Church of Christ, the concerned and careful guardian of the dogmas
entrusted to her, never changes anything in them; she removes nothing and adds
nothing; she does not cut what is necessary and does not add what is
unnecessary; she never loses what is hers and never appropriates what belongs to
others; but with all zeal, she attends faithfully and wisely to the ancient
dogmas and desires only to perfect and hone those which had in ancient times
been given an initial form and first outline, to strengthen and reinforce those
which are already prominent and developed, and to preserve those which have
already been confirmed and defined" (Commonitorium, XXIII).
3. The Council Fathers were faced with a real challenge. It involved
the effort to understand more deeply, at a time of rapid changes, the nature of
the Church and her relationship to the world, in order to provide a suitable
aggiornamento". We accepted this challenge—I too was a Council Father—and
responded to it by seeking a more coherent understanding of the faith. What we
achieved at the Council was to show that if contemporary man wants to
understand himself completely, he too needs Jesus Christ and his Church, which
continues in the world as a sign of unity and communion.
The Church, the People of God journeying on the paths of history, is truly the
perennial witness to a prophetic message. While she attests to the newness
of the promise, she makes its fulfilment evident. The God who has promised is
the faithful God who fulfils the word he has given.
Is this not what the Tradition going back to the Apostles enables us to
affirm every day? Are we not a continual process of transmitting the saving Word
that offers man, wherever he may be, the meaning of his life? The mission of the
Church, as the trustee of the revealed Word, is to proclaim it to everyone.
This prophetic mission means taking responsibility for making visible what
the Word proclaims. We must therefore put into effect the visible signs of
salvation, so that the message we bring may be understood in its integrity.
Christians cannot delegate to others the task of taking the Gospel to the world.
It is a mission that involves their own responsibility as believers and
followers of Christ! The Council wished to restore this fundamental truth to all
believers.
The Council stands in continuity with the past
4. In order to mark the first 20 years of the Second Vatican Council, I
convoked an Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in 1985. Its goal was to celebrate,
examine and further the Council's teaching. In their analysis the Bishops spoke
of the "lights and shadows" that had marked the post-conciliar period.
For this reason, I wrote in the Letter Tertio millennio adveniente that
"an examination of conscience must also consider the reception given to the
Council" (n. 36). Today I thank all of you who have come here from many
parts of the world to answer that request. The work you have undertaken in these
days has shown how present and effective the Council’s teaching is in the life
of the Church. Certainly, it requires ever deeper understanding. However, within
this dynamic the genuine intention of the Council Fathers must not be lost:
indeed, it must be recovered by overcoming biased and partial interpretations
which have prevented the newness of the Council's Magisterium from being
expressed as well as possible.
The Church has always known the rules for a correct hermeneutic of the
contents of dogma. These rules are set within the fabric of faith and not
outside it. To interpret the Council on the supposition that it marks a break
with the past, when in reality it stands in continuity with the faith of all
times, is a definite mistake. What has been believed by "everyone,
always and everywhere" is the authentic newness that enables every era to
perceive the light that comes from the word of God's Revelation in Jesus Christ.
5. The Council was an act of love: "A great, threefold act of love"—as
Pope Paul VI said in his opening address at the Council's fourth session—an
act of love "for God, for the Church, for humanity" (Insegnamenti, vol.
III [1965], p. 475). The effectiveness of that act has not been exhausted
at all: it continues to work through the rich dynamic of its teachings.
The Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum put the Word of God at the
heart of the Church’s life with renewed awareness. This centrality stems
from a more vivid perception of the unity of Sacred Scripture and Sacred
Tradition. The Word of God, which is kept alive by the faith of the holy people
of believers under the guidance of the Magisterium, also asks each of us to
accept our own responsibility for preserving intact the process of
transmission.
So that the primacy of the Father's Revelation to humanity may endure with
all the force of its radical newness, theology must first become a coherent tool
for understanding it. In the Encyclical Fides et ratio I wrote: "As
an understanding of Revelation, theology has always had to respond in different
historical moments to the demands of different cultures, in order then to
mediate the content of faith to those cultures in a coherent and conceptually
clear way. Today, too, theology faces a dual task. On the one hand, it must be
increasingly committed to the task entrusted to it by the Second Vatican
Council, the task of renewing its specific methods in order to serve
evangelization more effectively.... On the other hand, theology must look to the
ultimate truth—which Revelation entrusts to it, never content to stop short of
that goal" (n. 92).
Communion is the basis of the Church's reality
6. What the Church believes is what she makes the object of her prayer.
The Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium explained the premises of a
liturgical life that would give God the true worship owed him by the people
called to exercise the priesthood of the New Covenant. The liturgy must allow
every member of the faithful to enter deeply into the mystery to grasp
the beauty of praising the Triune God. The liturgy, in fact, is an anticipation
on earth of the praise that the hosts of the blessed give God in heaven. At
every liturgical celebration, therefore, the participants should be given the
possibility of a foretaste, albeit under the veil of faith, of some of the
sweetness that will flow from contemplating God in paradise. For this reason,
every minister, conscious of the responsibility he has to all the people
entrusted to him, must faithfully maintain respect for the sacredness of the
rite and grow in his understanding of what he celebrates.
7. "The time has come when the truth about the Church of Christ must be
explored, set in order and expressed", Pope Paul VI said in his message at
the opening of the Council's second session (Insegnamenti, vol. I [1963],
pp. 173-174). With these words the unforgettable Pontiff identified the
Council's principal task. The Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium was a
true hymn of praise to the beauty of Christ's Bride. In those pages we brought
to completion the doctrine expressed by the First Vatican Council and we
sealed it for a renewed study of the Church's mystery.
Communio is the foundation on which the Church's reality is based. It is
a koinonia that has its source in the very mystery of the Triune God and
extends to all the baptized, who are therefore called to full unity in Christ.
This communion becomes evident in the various institutional forms in which the
ecclesial ministry is carried out and in the role of the Successor of Peter as
the visible sign of the unity of all believers. Everyone knows that the Second
Vatican Council enthusiastically made the "ecumenical" yearning its
own. The movement of encounter and clarification, which has been carried out
with all the baptized brethren, is irreversible. It is the power of the
Spirit who calls all believers to obedience, so that unity may be an effective
source of evangelization. The communion that the Church lives with the Father,
the Son and the Holy Spirit is of how brothers and sisters are called to live
together.
A prophetic message for the Church's life
8. "The Council, which has given us a rich ecclesiological doctrine, has
organically linked its teaching about the Church with its teaching about man's
vocation in Christ": I said this in my homily for the opening of the Synod
of Bishops on 24 November 1985 (Insegnamenti, vol. VIII, 2, p.
1371). The Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, which dealt with the
fundamental questions which every person is called to answer, repeats to us
today words which have lost none of their timeliness: "It is only in the
mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear"
(n. 22). These words are especially dear to me and I wanted to propose them
again in the fundamental passages of my Magisterium. Here we find the true
synthesis to which the Church must always look in her dialogue with the people
of today as with those of every other age: she knows that her message is a
fruitful synthesis of the human being's expectation and of God's response to
him.
In the Incarnation of the Son of God, which this Jubilee is meant to
celebrate on the 2,000th anniversary of the event, man's call becomes obvious.
He never loses his dignity when he abandons himself in faith to Christ, because
his humanity is then raised to participation in the divine life.
Christ is the truth that never fades: in him God reaches out to every
human being, and every human being can see God in him (cf. Jn 14:9-10). No
encounter with the world will be fruitful, if the believer ceases to fix his
gaze on the mystery of the Incarnation of God's Son. The emptiness that many
people feel as they face the question about the reason for life and death, about
human destiny and the meaning of suffering can only be filled by the message of
the truth that is Jesus Christ. The human heart will always be
"restless" until it can rest in him, the true refreshment for all who
"labour and are heavy laden" (Mt 11:28).
9. The "little seed" which John XXIII planted "with anxious
mind and hand" (Apostolic Constitution Humanae salutis, 25 December
1961) in the Basilica of St Paul-Outside-the-Walls; on 25 January 1959, when he
announced his intention to convoke the 21st Ecumenical Council in the Church's
history, has grown and become a tree which now spreads its majestic and mighty
branches in the Vineyard of the Lord. It has already produced many fruits in its
35 years of life, and it will produce many more in the years to come. A new
season is dawning before our eyes: it is time for deep reflection on the
Council's teaching, time to harvest all that the Council Fathers sowed and
the generation of recent years has tended and awaited.
The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council was truly a prophetic message for
the Church's life; it will continue to be so for many years in the third
millennium which has just begun. The Church, rich in the eternal truths
entrusted to her, will still speak to the world, proclaiming that Jesus Christ
is the one true Saviour of the world: yesterday, today and for ever!
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