To me, it seems very significant that we have a new pope exactly half way through the term of Vatican II.  The very way in which he was selected, according to our lead story from the Wall Street Journal, is intriguing. It could easily be interpreted as evidence that the Holy Spirit hasn’t given up on the Catholic Church.
    While there have been calls in recent years for a Vatican III, it has been clear since the start that Vatican II will take the full hundred years to work itself out. There have been 21 councils in 21 centuries. At the halfway point of Vatican II we have a new pope with an unused name, a fresh approach, an unlikely candidate from the most populace Catholic area of the world. The shift is huge, and just possibly what it will take to get Vatican II back on track.

   To me, it seems very significant that we have a new pope exactly half way through the term of Vatican II.  The very way in which he was selected, according to our lead story from the Wall Street Journal, is intriguing. It could easily be interpreted as evidence that the Holy Spirit hasn’t given up on the Catholic Church.
    While there have been calls in recent years for a Vatican III, it has been clear since the start that Vatican II will take the full hundred years to work itself out. There have been 21 councils in 21 centuries. At the halfway point of Vatican II we have a new pope with an unused name, a fresh approach, an unlikely candidate from the most populace Catholic area of the world. The shift is huge, and just possibly what it will take to get Vatican II back on track.
    Vatican II never really suited Europe, it was too radical. As long as the pope came from Europe and the developed North, the Council could not be fully implemented. Now it can fulfil its destiny and its explicit purposes.
    We have a pope from the Developing World, the part where Liberation Theology was born, where conditions are such that the gospel message of social justice can be taken seriously. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal e-book on the subject, that was exactly why Francis was elected pope. In his address to the other Cardinals he was focused on that famous Protestant question 'what would Jesus do?'
    It’s a good question. For twenty- five years the church after Vatican II moved radically to the left, and in the last twenty five years it lurched in reaction even further to the right. Now Francis is in charge presumably for the next seven to ten years to chart a course somewhere in the middle. But does he have the vision and the stamina to correct the path?

2.

    Contrary to popular impression it is the Ecumenical Council which governs the particular papacy, not vice versa. The pope is there to administrate the directions set by the Council. Since Vatican II and the Dogmatic Constitution ratified there, the Catholic Church is actually a constitutional papacy. The top down model has been replaced as the working paradigm, enabling democratic principles of collegiality and subsidiarity to be the governing principles.
    These were abandoned by the last two popes but that is more their fault than the church’s. It is still governed by the principles and documents of Vatican II. Pope Francis’ first statements about the restoration of Vatican II to its moorings seems to recognize the problem to be solved.
    The big question for Francis is whether he is up to this job. He’ll need the help of the Holy Spirit particularly in the view of progressive Catholics who understand that a great deal of recovery is needed. So far the signs are good, or at least good enough.
    In my view the key factor in my own optimism is the fact he is a Jesuit. He is the first Jesuit pope. The Jesuits have their own Black Pope as the leader of their congregation has come to be known, with their special relationship to the pope due to the historical issues of periodic repression. These two men have already met since the election of Francis. 
    Happily the Jesuits have been leading advocates of both Vatican II and the social justice dimension of the gospel since 1965 when the council closed. Their lengthy formation process – twice that of regular clergy –  and dedication to a rigorous discernment process before taking major spiritual direction decisions, augur well for Francis’ dedication to the job at hand.

3.
  
    In view of the above, it seems time to look back over the last fifty years of political history of the Catholic Church. The political problem Francis has to solve has an interesting history. The seeds of success are in the salient detail.
    While the church seemed to move straight ahead with the overall program of reform that came out of the documents of Vatican II – beginning with internal structural reform and moving through ecumenical and multifaith relations and taking seriously the constitutive element of the gospel in the social justice teachings of the church – there was always a Trojan Horse element sleeping at the heart of it all. And this was the church’s sexual teaching.
    Not to mix metaphors too liberally, in this area the church met its Waterloo. Not only did it create a serious ongoing crisis of confidence in the central teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church but it has led to a precipitous political crisis, a great divide between the traditionalist and the progressive wings of the church.

4.

    In 1968 the progress of Vatican II was severely challenged by the Birth Control controversy. It was the first opportunity for the traditionalist faction, which had always been opposed to the reforms of the council, to assert itself. This was spearheaded by the man who became Pope John Paul II, who as the Polish cardinal Karol Woytola, counselled Pope Paul VI to reject the advice of his Birth Control Commission which voted overwhelmingly to modify the church’s position on contraception.
     Prior to Vatican II, procreation rather that partnership had been seen by the official church as the purpose of the sacrament of marriage. After the council they were equated as equal. Much of the credit for this shift can be attributed to a Canadian contingent of bishops headed up by Remi De Roo of Victoria. He had done his homework well with in-depth consultations of educated, articulate, professionally trained married couples such as Grant and Vivian Maxwell, Bernard and Mae Daly and Marg and Jim Beaubien, to name a few.
    This shift turned out to be revolutionary. Eighty per cent of Catholics in the developed world rejected Paul VI’s teaching and this created an ongoing crisis of confidence in the efficacy of the central teaching authority in the Roman Catholic Church. As Bishop De Roo himself has often stated, a teaching has to be received by the faithful to be effective and established. Rome has never solved this issue of sensus fidelium or this problem of crisis of confidence.
    As the new pope has said, the church needs to be where the people live and have their problems, not in an ivory tower removed from the fray arguing about the colour of vestments and the quality of incense. The credibility of the teaching authority in the church is where the theologically literate lay leadership is at in the middle class sector of the church just as social issues are where the working class dwell.

5.

    With the failure of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s anti-contraception teaching letter, internal church reform seemed to hit a wall. The traditionalists had their shibboleth to use against the progressives as a measure of true Catholicism. The progressives moved on to other agenda items such as ecumenicism and social justice but the divide had settled into hardened attitudes.
    I have written a book on how Bishop De Roo was framed in an attempt to discredit him and his record by just such forces when he challenged effectively the model of corporate capitalism as an inappropriate way of doing global development in a gospel justice model.
    The justice model of Catholicism became known as prophetic Catholicism. In Progressive circles, after the 1971 Synod on Justice in the World, gospel justice work became a constitutive part of the church’s mandate. In traditionalist circles this was played down, or given a peculiar twist such as John Paul II instigated with his 1981 labour encyclical, Laborems excercens.
    Happily the Jesuits worldwide endorsed the prophetic ministry of the church. They also paid the price with murdered members, especially in Latin America. Francis knows the cost, coming from that region. There is even speculation already that the assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador will soon receive the respect and honour as a martyr within the church, which he deserves.
    The new stage is set. The dominant players are being auditioned for the role. The plot is clear, the narrative script needs fine tuning, then the play can begin for the next decade. Vatican II can be recovered, even restored if we dare use that term. But we are not the audience, we are all the players and the whole world is the stage.