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Convening Vatican II: John XXIII calls for a council

Commonweal, Feb 12, 1999 by Joseph A. Komonchak

We grow old, we grow old.... It is now forty years since January 25, 1959, when Pope John XXIII announced his intention of convoking an ecumenical council. Those old enough to remember the event may be startled to be reminded how long ago that was. They should have the experience of teaching a course on Vatican II to undergraduates. When I gave an assignment asking students to interview older members of their families about the church before and after the council, several told me they would have to interview their grandparents - their parents are too young to remember Catholic life before the council! Sigh.

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Pope John had not yet been pope for a hundred days when he made the announcement that began it all. Already he had made an impression, and, there being nothing deader than a dead pope, he was being compared favorably to his predecessor, Pius XII, with whom he seemed to differ in mind and style as much as he did in body and shape. He had been elected, so it was said, to preside over a period of transition from the long and active pontificate of Pius XII to that of John's successor. He was nearly seventy-seven years old when elected, could be expected not to live very long (as he did not - less than five years), and would be useful principally to restore some bureaucratic order in the Roman curia, much neglected in the declining years of the Pacelli reign. The new pope agreed that things did need shaping up. But his vision extended rather farther and deeper, and he looked elsewhere for a response.

His speech at Saint Paul's Outside the Walls was intended to describe what would distinguish and characterize his pontificate. Significantly, he began with his role as bishop of Rome, giving a strong indication that he intended to take it seriously and not to regard it as a necessary but somewhat peripheral responsibility of his office. Then he extended his gaze out to his universal role as pope. He saw a world which was at once alive with spiritual movements of great promise and threatened by contemporary manifestations of the conflict between Augustine's two cities, particularly the spread of a materialism that was distracting people from the things of the spirit.

John XXIII was an amateur historian who had worked on Saint Charles Borromeo's implementation of the Council of Trent. It was natural, then, for him, instead of being content with bureaucratic tinkering, to recall ancient and rather neglected forms for the renewal and reform of the church. Trembling with emotion, he said, but quite resolutely, he was proposing a diocesan synod to deal with the new challenges facing Rome and an ecumenical council for the needs of the universal church, to be followed by an updating of the code of canon law. Toward the end of his speech, given to a small group of cardinals after a ceremony dosing the Chair of Unity Octave (as it was then known), he spoke of "a renewed invitation to the faithful of the separated churches to share with us in this banquet of grace and fraternity."

Although Pope John spoke of the idea of a council as an unexpected divine inspiration, there is evidence that he had conversed about the need for a council long before he became pope, that it was an object of discussion among the cardinals at the conclave that elected him, and that he had spoken of it with several people in the few months that followed. Some of the cardinals who listened to him at Saint Paul's knew that the idea was being considered. The pope later remarked that the immediate reaction of his audience was silence, which, with a mixture of edifying piety and irony, he was willing to attribute to a surprised joy too intense for words.

That same day, the Osservatore Romano released a short and comparatively unenthusiastic press release about the pope's announcements. But it never printed the text of the pope's remarks, which did not become known until they were printed in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis six weeks later, with the ecumenical reference in the speech rather muted. Apart from reprinting the Vatican newspaper's notice, the semiofficial Vatican biweekly, La Civilta Cattolica, did not mention the council for a full three months. One could be forgiven for thinking that some people in Rome were not happy about the pope's initiative.

The text of the pope's speech, along with a request for comments and advice, was sent to the cardinals who had not attended the ceremony. Their reactions were mixed. The first words of Cardinal Montini of Milan upon hearing the news were, "What a hornet's nest!" Cardinal Lercaro of Bologna thought the decision "rash and impulsive," the result of the pope's "inexperience and lack of culture." Cardinal Spellman of New York told a French diplomat that it was "premature, senseless, and doomed in advance to certain failure." "Such meetings," this close collaborator of Pius XII said, "are only conceivable after a very long preparation and prior consultation not only of the curial cardinals but also of all the princes of the church throughout the world." Cardinal Ruffini of Palermo, on the other hand, was joyful at the news, recalled that he had himself suggested the idea to Pius XII twenty years earlier, and looked forward to an event that could be as important as the Council of Trent. Two-thirds of the cardinals, both in the curia and throughout the world, sent no response at all.

Convening Vatican II: John XXIII calls for a council

Commonweal, Feb 12, 1999 by Joseph A. Komonchak

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