‘Going Deep, Going Forth, Going Together’ Part I: The Catholic Church in Ireland, Vatican II and Pope Francis

Abstract

‘Going Deep, Going Forth, Going Together’ Part I: The Catholic Church in Ireland, Vatican II and Pope Francis Brendan Leahy (bio) In a 1975 newspaper interview, Cardinal Conway spoke of the many changes and developments going on in the Church and society both in Ireland and worldwide. He described the situation as humanity going through ‘the birth pangs of a new civilisation’ and he foresaw it would involve a trauma that would last well into the next century.1 Just ten years previously, the Second Vatican Council had affirmed that ‘today, the human race is involved in a new stage of history … We can already speak of a true cultural and social transformation, one which has repercussions on humanity’s religious life as well’.2 We are now in the twenty-first century, and the birth pangs of a new civilisation with its many cultural and social transformations are continuing. Speaking in 2015 to a gathering of Italian Catholics in Florence, Pope Francis summarised things: ‘We are not living an era of change, but a change of era’. Models of global financial and social development are under scrutiny, church scandals abound, ecological concerns are increasing, the world is entering a world war ‘piece-meal’, as Pope Francis often repeats. No wonder many young and not so young people suffer social anxiety. The title of Sally Rooney’s novel captures a contemporary search for meaning – Beautiful World, Where Are You.3 The ‘long-haul project’ of Vatican II This year marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. As Yves Congar and others who participated in that event remarked, a way of seeing the Church changed at the Council. Coming just a few short years after a devastating World War, with new developments, culturally and socially worldwide, the Council wanted to help the Church respond to the challenges of the new emerging era by re-aligning her to its sources, particularly the Gospel. In and through its sixteen documents, the Council, [End Page 267] itself recognised as an exceptional event of the Holy Spirit, ‘re-positioned’, as it were, the Church in terms of understanding, living and expressing faith with a new missionary spirit of engagement in a world striving for unity, peace and fraternity. The Council was about more than a few ecclesial touch-ups. It was a long-haul project. In responding to a journalist’s question on the flight back from Abu Dhabi in 2019, Pope Francis observed how historians say that a council takes 100 years to take root in the Church. We’re about half-ways there. At this point, we are able to see there have been various phases in the ‘reception’, the taking root of the Council. The reception process is dynamic. It is possible, for instance, to illustrate at least a few key emphases in each of the pontificates of Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. While no one Pope nor any one phase of reception will capture all the ‘Spirit is saying to the church’ (Rev 2:7) through an event as significant as the Second Vatican Council, nevertheless the key emphases in each pontificate are significant factors in the reception of the Council. Ten years after the conclusion of the Council, reflecting on the fervour of the initial impact of the Council, Paul VI, a Pope who underlined unity and charity in his teachings, issued an encyclical on the proclamation of the Gospel (Evangelii Nuntiandi), a document that would greatly influence the future Pope Francis. In this encyclical Pope Paul already felt a need to remind people that the Council’s purpose was to better equip the Church in proclaiming the Gospel as a dynamic force in people’s lives. His first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, as relevant today as ever, proposed dialogue as the way of the Church’s mission today, a theme very much taken up by Pope Francis: ‘The Church must enter into dialogue with the world in which it lives. It has something to say, a message to give, a communication to make’ (n. 65). During the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, who had attended the Council as a young...