CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Good Pope and His Great Council

On Sunday, November 27, 2011, the Catholic Church in the United States implemented a new translation of the Roman Missal, the “textbook” of Roman Catholic worship that contains all the prayers of the liturgy said by the priest and the people. The reason the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops revised the English translation was to bring the language of the Mass closer to the source from which it had come: the post–Counter-Reformation Latin of the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church of which they are a vitally important regional body. In essence, it was a conservative move “back” to a more “faithful” translation and interpretation of the traditional texts of the Mass.

Arguably, however, and despite the direction of the change, it was also a direct result and manifestation of the movement and spirit of Vatican II, which radically altered the liturgy for all Catholics.

This recent change started American Catholics talking about the liturgy—and their participation in worship—again, in a way not experienced in North America since the 1960s and 1970s at the height of the postconcilliar implementation of the reforms that the Good Pope had instigated. So, in effect, the hand of Pope John XXIII was being felt in a very substantial way some fifty years out and by new generations of U.S. Catholics who were unaware as to the revolution that had swept through their Church in that faraway time.

Half a century earlier, it was not at all clear that the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican would ever really happen. It was seen as a historical gamble, and bets were still being placed on the table. Nonetheless, John had forged ahead and required of his brother bishops and his curial mandarins that they come along with him. He moved the Church in ways still felt today, five decades later—and if he had not, it is impossible to know what the state of that Church and our world might be, nor how a billion souls would be nourished with a Word that claims eternal potency and absolute truth.

 

In theological terms, John responded to the prompting of the Holy Spirit by convoking the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican; he was clearly inspired, in the purest sense, by the third person of the Holy Trinity. Those who invested much hope in the promise of the council, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, were perhaps inevitably disappointed at the outcomes as the months and years rolled along. But so too were those who were skeptical of the council’s purposes: They objected to the lengths to which the synod stretched its mandate for reform, carping that it had overextended that mandate.

In other words, not many were completely satisfied by the council’s legislation, and conversely, many were disturbed by the wrenching changes wrought by the fathers—particularly in liturgical matters—even when such changes had received overwhelming votes on the floor of the assembly.

So, is this how the Holy Spirit is supposed to work in the lives of men and women, in the life of the Church? John and his adherents would claim that it is, prima facie.

In a role unique to the modern papacy, though he never led a parish church nor was he renowned for his academic prowess, John melded the temperament of a true pastor with the intellectual activity of a natural theologian. He was not a slouch at either. He came to the Throne of Peter via a career in diplomacy, just as his predecessor, Pius XII, and successor, Paul VI, did. And that is what he was, too, in spades. Who else could have kept the ship of the council afloat through the stormy first session, let alone have launched it and assuaged (at least some of the time) the egos and hugely disparate priorities of the experienced officers on his deck?

Somehow, perhaps with elements of the miraculous, certainly with personal magnetism and powers of persuasion, the peasant-born pope leveraged the power and pomp of his ancient office to see that things got done his way, more or less. As pastor, he knew that he must lead by influence and be seen as a true servant of the Servants of God. As theologian, he knew that he possessed the authority, albeit temporarily and by the spiritual accident of his election, and that he must persuade with the Word and with his own words.

In any number of instances, he let the Roman Curia have its way. To Cardinal Richard Cushing, in this regard, he confessed, “Sono nel sacco qui.” (I’m in a bag here.) But the right hand worked constantly, even as the left hand seemed to let go of the strings of papal power:

 

When the council fathers arrived in Rome, they began getting discreet telephone calls from Monsignor Loris Capovilla, the pope’s private secretary, subtly disassociating the pope from the Curia. The progressives among the bishops correctly deduced that John wanted a wholesale reform, but they did not at first realize their own strength. Gradually, encouraged by the knowledge that the world was watching, they became emboldened.

 

He emboldened others through his own adherence to discipline and his willingness to tolerate debate and speculation in the cause of finding the ultimate, if not always immediately apparent, truth.

The first session of the council is remembered for the battles fought over three important schemata, the proposals of the preparatory commissions that had caused such a kerfuffle just days after the session finally opened.

First, by a vote of 1,922 to 11, the council approved the liturgical reforms that enable the world’s bishops, in their various regional conferences, to decide the language of the Mass to be used by their people. This move, later codified in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum concillium, the first major piece of Vatican II legislation, was one of decided decentralization, if not democratization, that set the tone for the subsequent three years of debate and decision making by the fathers.

Another critical debate involved the sources of revelation, the controversial schema presented by the redoubtable Cardinal Ottaviani, who was (in simplified language) the “anti-John” of the Second Vatican Council. While ever protective of the prerogatives of the bishops and the pope, who is also a bishop, in their unchallenged function as the Magisterium, or ultimate teaching authority, Ottaviani insisted that the two sources known as tradition, pre- and post-scriptural teachings handed down orally, and scripture, the written words revealed to the authors of the Bible, be recognized as separate and equal—contrary to Protestant Christian reliance on sola Scriptura, “scripture alone.” Shelving the conservative Ottaviani’s proposed document, the council moved away from the Counter-Reformation tendencies of the Church since the sixteenth-century Council of Trent and toward John’s vision of a modern institution engaged with the world outside Catholicism’s “boundaries.” He had lived the concept of ecumenism and brought it into legitimacy as never before.

Finally, the fathers debated the nature of the Church during the first session and throughout the balance of Vatican II. Again in response to Ottaviani, the progressive council members wanted this issue—a frank discussion of what the Church does and who she is, which had been begun, then suspended, at the abortive First Vatican Council—on the table. The so-called liberals wished to purge the Church of the stains of triumphalism, clericism, monarchism, and militarism that had caused the institution to stand apart, oftentimes impotently, from the world around it and even from its own faithful. This debate opened the way for serious reconsideration by the fathers of the Catholic Church’s position on religious freedom, of Church-state relations in countries around the world, and of opening the eyes and the arms of the Church to her own laity, reaffirming the “universal priesthood” of the faithful. For many Catholics, especially in North America, this was the major accomplishment of the council. More than ever before in the history of the Church, the laity were invited to take a more active, visible role in the life of the Church and its ancient liturgy.

Each legislative act in itself was a tall order, broaching sensitive subjects that had not been spoken of in countless centuries, if ever before. John stood by during the debates, observing with some pleasure and perhaps some sadness the ebb and flow of theological development that proved his Church was neither moribund nor monolithic.

The debates and the direction of his council also proved John to be an intuitive leader open to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the moment of an event or at the birth of an idea. In his manner, which reflected the temper of his soul, this pontiff of 1,680 days inspired others to dream, to talk, to act, to be Catholic in whatever state of life they might find themselves.

When TIME magazine named John its “Man of the Year” in 1962, the magazine noted:

 

Though Pope John had proved a happy surprise to both the Catholic Church and the world, his life is full of signposts that clearly mark his life and growth. He is an intuitive being who can pierce to the heart of the matter without taking the circuitous route of deeper and more discursive minds. The rhythmic natural influences of his first years on the farm at Sotto il Monte formed him for all time. A few weeks ago, asked by some bishops what he wanted to do after the council, John replied: “Spend a day tilling the fields with my brothers.” Neither an intellectual nor a highly trained theologian, he does not think in concepts but in terms of fundamental human experiences. In a varied and unusual career, he has absorbed and synthesized these experiences to an extraordinary degree.

 

He denied some of the salient and varied aspects of his character that were apparent to others—out of a deep humility that seemed to spring from his DNA. He really wanted to be remembered, first and only, as “the good shepherd defending truth and goodness.” And despite his roly-poly figure, he walked forth to many places outside the confines of the Vatican, famously to jails, orphanages, government offices, schools, and, of course, churches some 139 times in four and a half years.

Uniquely, John was a pastor to those outside the confines of the Church, as well. Throughout his life and ministry he sought out non-Catholics and non-Christians, an unprecedented act for most popes but a signature trait of his papacy. Ever since, his successors have carried on this tradition with relative vigor over the half-century since the Good Pope’s passing. While in Turkey, John helped rescue and provide for Jews escaping from Nazi Germany. In France after the war, he recoiled in horror when he saw films of Jewish bodies piled high at Buchenwald and Auschwitz, saying, “How can this be? The mystical body of Christ!” Memorably, when a group of Jews visited him after he became pope, John walked up to them and simply repeated the biblical greeting, “I am Joseph, your brother.”

Thus, in his public actions, he lived out the gospel among Jews, Muslims, and other non-Catholics, and “anyone who does not call himself a Christian but who really is so because he does good.”

 

The body of the late John XXIII was transferred from the crypt beneath Saint Peter’s Basilica, where he presided over the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. Forty thousand people attended the reinterment ceremony on June 3, 2001, thirty-eight years to the day of his death.

The only other popes so memorialized and publicly displayed under glass are Blessed Innocent XI, who died in 1689 and was beatified by Pius XII in 1956, and Saint Pius X, who died on the eve of World War I and was canonized in 1954, also by Pius XII.

When his coffin was reopened, his physical remains were remarkably uncorrupted. After less than a day of work on the corpse, those present saw the face of John XXIII. Cardinal Virgilio Noe, who was in charge of the project as the archpriest of Saint Peter’s Basilica and president of the congregation responsible for the “physical plant” of the Vatican, described John’s face as “intact and serene.” He said witnesses, present at the opening of the coffin, were overcome with emotion. “It is a providential coincidence,” he said, “a sign of divine favor and of holiness.”

Some wanted to call it a miracle, proof of the Good Pope’s sanctity. Dr. Gennaro Goglia, an anatomy professor who, in 1963, had injected the pope’s body with a special embalming fluid, eschewed any discussion of miracles. In fact, Goglia described the procedure in this way:

 

We put the bottle containing the liquid on the tripod. We made a small cut in the right wrist and inserted the needle there. I was afraid that the blood would exit through the tube or that the liquid would cause the skin to rupture. . . . At 5 A.M. on June 4 [1963], the operation ended. The liquid had reached all the capillaries, blocking the process of decomposition. We then injected some liters of the liquid into the pope’s stomach, destroyed by cancer, in order to kill the bacteria there.

 

A layer of protective wax was applied to the face, which was nonetheless unmistakably that of Roncalli.

Prior to the Pentecost Sunday Rite, the body was vested in new papal garments of silk, his head covered with a cap bordered with ermine, a trademark look for John. A new ring was placed on his finger. His body was placed within a new bronze-and-glass coffin, then carried into Saint Peter’s Square. It was reportedly the first time a pope’s remains were venerated in the open air. After a solemn outdoor Mass, the coffin was then transported into the basilica, where it was permanently placed beneath the Altar of Saint Jerome in the central nave.

 

The miracle of John’s Second Vatican Council, which became Paul’s council and the Church’s council in the end, is that it occurred. If John had not acted upon the inspiration of a moment—of many moments in his life, of the Holy Spirit acting upon him—the Catholic Church might have become calcified. The Church had survived worse, much worse, than anything that happened in the past few centuries, even the past couple of decades. But John understood that there was no time to lose in moving the Church to reform; events in the world had accelerated beyond what previous generations had experienced—and would continue to do so at a faster and faster clip for the coming fifty years.

From the beginning, as early as 1959, some members of the hierarchy and within the Church at large have challenged the reforms of the council and resisted the movement toward ecumenism, including relations with other Christian denominations and non-Christian religions. The defensive walls of the ancient fortress were breached in the early 1960s, but new walls within the structure have been built over time.

However, the purpose of John’s council was not to make a radical break with the past or to put aside any doctrine. Remember that John himself—Angelo Roncalli of Sotto il Monte—was deeply traditional in matters of faith and morals and orthodox in his understanding of the Catholic faith and Church dogma. Yet he appreciated the need for the theological development and engagement in the contemporary world through the social teaching that had developed in the Church since Leo XIII. His council was to be the most important moment in the history of the Church since the Council of Trent. If nothing else, the liturgy would be reformed as one of the most enduring and outwardly visible signs of the life of the Church for all to see.

Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani of the Congregation of the Holy Office and Archbishop Marcel-Francois Lefebvre of Tulle, France, were two opponents of John’s council—and of Paul VI’s agenda as the successor of the Good Pope. The former worked to reshape the direction of the council legislation every step of the way, until his retirement in 1968. The latter forced a schism under the aegis of his religious order, the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, rejecting Vatican II outright, before his death in 1991.

More subtly and steadily through the decades since the closing of the council in 1965, some bishops and cardinals throughout the world have attempted to mitigate the pace and depth of reforms in their dioceses and the curial agencies. Nevertheless, the council lives on in its teachings and will, over time, continue to be absorbed into the fabric of the Church, just as all such events have throughout the past two millennia. The most obvious and enduring reform, for example, is the liturgy of the Eucharist (the Mass), now being celebrated around the world in the local vernacular and with local cultural markings.

In his moment of history, John stood at the pinnacle of an ancient religious hierarchy during an era of secularism that held the very real potential for mass destruction of peoples across the globe. With both a prayerful humility and an iron will, he moved a massive, entrenched institution toward a more open relationship with and engagement in the world through the gospel. In his person, he represented the dignity of the human being as—in the doctrine of his Church—having been created by God in the divine image and likeness.

Unblinking, and with a smile, he sought to reform and reclaim his cherished Church. Counter to the ecclesial culture that had formed and nurtured him, John emerged as a leader with a surprising agenda that threatened that culture and the institution to which he had given his life. His was an essentially conservative mission to cure and preserve life that required radical surgery to achieve its true end. He worked, masterfully, within the structures in which he had been raised to the pinnacle of power to answer what he felt—or knew—to be the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

In his lifetime he stood against powerful forces of history within and outside Catholicism, and his legacy would be met with efforts at retrenchment—from reactionary elements among both clerical and lay segments of his Church. Nonetheless, he did not stand alone. His favored successor, Giovanni Battista Montini, Pope Paul VI, had assiduously supported John’s initiative and reforming mission as a leader at the council and the logical executor of the project after John’s passing. Cardinal Augustin Bea, and others, also seized the opportunities John presented to them and carried forward the spirit of aggiornamento into all corners and recesses of the Church, high and low, far and wide.

The people (perhaps the laity and religious communities more than many of the members of the hierarchy), in the final analysis, have adopted John’s Church and adapted to it. They are still in the process of absorbing the meanings of the changes along with the enduring verities of his teachings.

The key to John XXIII and his remarkable council, ultimately, is the unity of vision for the Church and her people expressed in the documents that emerged from the historic synod. What took decades to emerge from the deliberations of the Council of Trent—sweeping reforms of liturgy, education, and discipline—took only four years at Vatican II, easily the largest and most diverse council body in the history of the Church.

As Adam was created from the dirt of Eden in the biblical narrative of Genesis, Angelo Roncalli emerged from the mountain soil of Sotto il Monte. Throughout his papacy, John remained a vital, robust, earthy character whose spirituality was simplicity itself. He loved scripture and praying his daily Office, but he equally loved and drew sustenance from the tradition of his Church. Although he traveled far into Eastern Europe and to the doorstep of Asia for his diplomatic assignments, he retained the insularity of his native village and the interiority of a village priest—while robed in the outer garments of worldliness and sophistication he put on and took off with ease. Whether in Paris salons or on the streets of Istanbul or the rural hamlets of Bulgaria, he was always comfortable in his surroundings; even in the precincts of the Vatican he found a home among the priests and workers during his short reign as Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church.

The Johannine spirituality that emerged in the final decade of his life seemed suited for the time. In the morning of the post–World War II age and the increasing chill of the Cold War, he expressed simply and eloquently religious concepts of human dignity, compassion, and peace in the language of the Church and in words and images understood everywhere throughout the world by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

He also articulated his vision for the Church in his overt activities. His religious standard was always conventional and orthodox, though from his earliest years as a priest and teacher in seminary and university, he exhibited a capacity for inclusivity that broadened, almost immediately upon his election as pope, to incorporate the world beyond the Church and its many religions—something for which no other previous Bishop of Rome would ever be remembered.

Other popes have since worn the same red “Shoes of the Fisherman” as John, and others will in the future. It is difficult to imagine that any will be judged by history—or in the hearts of men and women around the world—as having touched his time with as much simple grace and enormous impact as the one the world still calls the Good Pope.