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Diekmann says hold fast to hope - Vatican II figure Godfrey Diekmann
National Catholic Reporter, Feb 26, 1999 by Patrick Marrin
Vatican II participant appeals for restored priorities, transformed lives
Vatican II, regarded by some as one of the most revolutionary councils in church history, is now the subject of video retrospectives and historical overviews that pronounce who won, or where the pendulum has come to rest. If anyone is watching or reading, the easiest verdict is that the council is fading in both time and influence, its prophets either gone or all but silent.
With at least one notable exception.
Even at 90, Benedictine Fr. Godfrey Diekmann carries his 6-foot-3-inch frame straight and tall behind the aluminum walker he is pushing swiftly down the long monastic corridor at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn. His face -- large, sculpted and serene -- glows above his black turtleneck.
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He is a man on a final mission, made all the more urgent by a doctor's verdict last August that he could die or be incapacitated at any moment by a, host of heart troubles that have left him too fragile for any further medical remedy.
Diekmann, regarded by many as one of the giants of the American church and a key participant in the work of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), has been using his borrowed time since Benedict August to reassert that the most important goal of the Second Vatican Council was to recover for everyone full and confident access to an intimate life with God through Jesus Christ. The key to opening up the institutional church to this life was to restore an understanding of the church as the body of Christ. This single reform held revolutionary implications for every aspect of the church's governance, worship, spirituality and mission. (See accompanying story.)
The body of Christ
For Diekmann this is no worn cliche but Christianity's best-kept secret, a startling revelation conveyed in the prayer offered daily during the preparation of the wine at Mass: "By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity."
In his 63 years teaching patristics -- the rich treasury of writings from the first centuries of the church -- Diekmann has struggled to convey to his students the meaning of the patristic adage: "He became human that we might become divine."
"My main point in teaching was to make my students realize what Christianity is -- that it's not just being good with the grace of God helping us, but it means real transformation, that you are sharing the divine nature. This must be taken seriously.
"What does it mean to say that we are members of the body of Christ?" Diekmann asked. "It means that in some absolute, almost contradictory way, we are sons and daughters of God, and not just as a figure of speech. The very fact that we casually keep on talking about being adopted children of God is proof that obviously we don't have the faintest idea what this is about, because adopted, by itself, in present usage, can only mean a matter of the law.
"We acknowledge that Christ, of course, is the tree Son of God. But we are now also tree sons and daughters of God, but by a gift -- by adoption -- and this is actually sharing the life of God. That is a staggering thing, and for many Catholics it is completely new."
For Diekmann, these "glad tidings" so exceed the claims of ordinary religion, are so stunning in their implications, even theologians fail to comprehend them. The language of Western philosophy has never been able to adequately express what the Eastern church has always celebrated through symbol, music and ritual in its liturgy, Diekmann said.
For all the controversy that swirled about Vatican II, this is what it was basically about -- to re-animate the church and its members as the body of Christ.
Diekmann believes that we cannot overstate the importance of this restored ecclesiology and must not allow it to languish. It was the soul of the 40-year pastoral liturgical movement that helped prepare the church for the Vatican Council, and it is the one image of the church that has the power, lacking in other images, to inspire us to embrace the gospel's call to become participants in the life of God.
Resistance to the council
The main source of conflict during and after Vatican II was that the ecclesiology being displaced, a highly centralized and hierarchical model based on Robert Bellarmine's image of the church as a "perfect society," was well entrenched in 1959 when Pope John XXIII surprised everyone by convening the council.
The pre-Vatican II church most older Catholics remember, enshrined by the Council of Trent in 1563 and bolstered by Vatican I in 1870, was a proud if isolated medieval cathedral/fortress at the height of its triumphalist stature. The Catholic church was the oldest, largest, wealthiest, authoritarian institutional religion on earth. For many, it was also divinely ordained, infallible and changeless.
Diekmann shares the view held by many church historians that such a structure was rooted not in the New Testament but in Emperor Constantine's decision in 313 to advance Christianity as the state religion. The church went from being a countercultural force and catalyst to being guardian of the status quo. Bishops became territorial, or diocesan, governors, a corruption of their original servant roles and a blow to collegiality, or shared authority among all bishops. "From the time of Constantine until Vatican II, you had an uninterrupted development of clericalism and centralization," Diekmann said. By unplugging this ecclesiology, the Catholic church set a bold precedent for institutional change worldwide.
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