Vatican II opened on 11 October 1962. I had been ordained as a priest four years previously in 1958. Hence, ‘receiving Vatican II’ has been a major inspiration for most of my fifty-four years of service in the ministerial priesthood. Having experienced Catholic life prior to Vatican II, I am able to appreciate what a Spirit-inspired and transforming gift the Council has been to our life, liturgy and theological understanding in the Catholic Church. Moreover, ‘receiving Vatican II’ is an ongoing process. The challenge at present is to keep that process alive and on course and to resist any temptation to backtrack in any way on the fundamental vision and spirit of Vatican II. When I get the impression, as at present, that this seems to be what is happening, it pains me very deeply. It is like discarding or even burying a precious treasure that has been offered to us by the Spirit.
In the fifty years following Vatican II I have had the great privilege of being involved in pastoral work in a variety of challenging and very exciting parish settings. During those years I have also taught and written as a moral theologian. Whenever possible, I have tried to combine both these ministries at one and the same time. I hope that has added a special pastoral dimension to my talks and writings over the years. My hope has been that, in their various ways, these different facets of my ministry have all been inspired by the spirit and teaching of Vatican II. In fact, when I looked back at the end of five years involvement in Clergy In-Service Training and Adult Christian Education, it struck me very forcibly that the kind of work I had been doing was actually a form of remedial education, for myself as well as for others. It had been a case of trying to interiorise the spirit of Vatican II so that I could in turn share it with others. Because of my grass-roots pastoral involvement, many of my writings have dealt with practical issues affecting people’s everyday lives, often touching neuralgic moral issues, including how people have struggled to cope with teaching which they feel is contrary to their own experience or pastorally unhelpful in the complexity of their lives.
After I finally retired from parish ministry, I had more time to trawl through my writings and unpublished papers to see if any of them might still be pastorally helpful to people even in our changed situation of the early twenty-first century. For a while I found it difficult to see how I could give any kind of coherence to the items which I thought might possibly still be helpful to readers today. A hotchpotch of disconnected writings would not make an attractive book. Hence, I struggled for some time with this project, finding it difficult to summon up any enthusiasm for it. Perhaps also the ageing process was affecting my concentration and creativity!
Then the light dawned, thanks to my good friend and former teacher, Ladislas Orsy SJ, an inspired and inspiring canon lawyer, now in his late 80s. In the Epilogue to his Receiving the Council (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2009), he reminds his readers of the resounding cry Adsumus – ‘We are present and attentive to the Spirit’ - of the Bishops at the beginning of each day’s deliberations during the four years of Vatican II. He ends his book with the following proposal:
Whereas the years from 2012 through 2015 will be the fiftieth anniversaries of the Council, they should be solemnly declared the years of the Council – when the entire people, ‘from the bishops to the last of the faithful’ (Lumen Gentium, 2, quoting St Augustine), recalls the memory of the ‘Sacred Council’, studies its determinations, and exposes itself to the transforming light and force of the Spirit – as the Council Fathers did. Over four years again, let the cry Adsumus, ‘we are present and attentive, resound – not within the walls of St Peter’s Basilica but throughout the face of the earth. The Spirit of God will not fail to respond’ (p. 152).
It suddenly struck me that the link unifying all my writings and pastoral experience was the reception of Vatican II. It has been my burning conviction that God’s Spirit was present and active within the Church and the world in a very special way in the Council; and that over the fifty years since then we have been given the privilege and responsibility of being channels of the Spirit enabling Vatican II to be made flesh in real life. That suggested to me an appropriate title for this book, 50 Years Receiving Vatican II. This reception process is something all of us in the Church are involved in and share a responsibility for.
It is not a simple process. It involves struggle. Not all in the Church see Vatican II in the way I do. Tragically, some even look on Vatican II as a disaster. My own belief is that it is greatest gift of the Spirit to the Church in our age. I feel that deeply in my bones, in my heart and in my mind. I know I am not alone in that. In fact, it was also the overwhelming conviction of the vast majority of the bishops attending the Council. So, although my enthusiasm for Vatican II is deeply personal, it is not something purely individualistic and subjective. I feel it links me to the faith of the whole church. This realisation has given me a sense of purpose. Maybe, by sharing some of my writings and reflections over the years since Vatican II, I might be able to make a little contribution to a combined Golden Jubilee process of rekindling the Spirit of Vatican II and giving a new impetus to the reawakening of its vision in the church.
After a talk I gave on one occasion a woman said to me, ‘Thank you for what you said. You put into words what I have always believed but have never been able to express.’ I know I am not an original thinker. I do not come up with new insights or ideas. Nevertheless, in my extensive reading of the Vatican II texts and commentaries and later writings on the Council, I have ‘received’ a definite vision, spirit and meaning of Vatican II. When I have shared that with others whose views and spirituality I respect, they have responded very affirmatively. The fact that they share that same vision confirms me in my belief. If they disagree on certain points and help me to see that there might be more to an issue than I am aware of, that enables me to refine my position. We are a learning Church as well as a teaching Church. That has implications for the respect due to the Magisterium in the Church. However, that is a topic which will dealt with more thoroughly later in this collection.
In a number of my writings, I have asked readers to add the phrase ‘I may be wrong but …’ to every personal judgement I make. That is not just a ‘get out’ clause! But neither is it because I believe that my judgement might well be wrong! In fact, I believe, usually very profoundly, that what I say is true. Yet, I recognize my personal limitations. That is why I constantly pray to the Spirit for the gift of wisdom and for the healing of any blindness in me.
This book is not a systematic study of Vatican II. That would be beyond me, especially at this time in my life. All I am trying to do is share with readers some of what ‘receiving Vatican II’ has meant to me over the years. For much of the time I have been able to combine my teaching and research as a moral theologian with my pastoral ministry in a number of exciting and challenging placements in Liverpool Archdiocese. That has been a wonderful opportunity for what my good friend, Jack Mahoney SJ, has described as ‘making faith-sense of experience and experience-sense of faith’. The pieces in this personal odyssey are largely the result of my trying to be faithful to Jack’s advice. I have tried to listen to the stories of people’s experiences in the light of the story of Jesus as told in the Gospels and at a time in the life of the Catholic Church when the inspired insights of Vatican II have opened our eyes to so much buried treasure in our Christian story down through the ages. Moreover, the experiences of people have been given an added depth as a result of the riches made available to us in our modern age through the explosion of human knowledge and the advances in scientific technology.
This amazing increase in human knowledge has thrown fresh light on who we are as human persons. Moreover, modern technology has changed the nature of human communication with the result that our understanding of our one world has opened up for us entirely new avenues of experience. Such new experience reveals to us entirely new ways of being true to our Christian vision. As the Gospel says, the wise man brings forth from his riches new things and old. A medieval writer makes the same point when he says ‘we see further than our forebears – we are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants’. Dwarfs we may indeed be but we really do see further from our raised vantage point. New horizons have opened up for us.
It was this approach to faith and life that Vatican II opened up for us with its embracing fully the truth of historical consciousness. We are now much more aware of what has, in fact, always been true, namely, that we are makers of history. We do not just exist in history. We exist as history. That is true of ourselves as human persons and of the communities, societies and cultures in which we live. Darwin’s ‘Theory of Evolution’ has opened our eyes to how far reaching is this truth. It is equally true of God’s dealings with our human family and with the whole of creation. And it is certainly true of the Church and our Christian vision. I am further encouraged by the fact that my good friend, Jack Mahoney SJ, has just produced a challenging new book which explores the implications for our Christian faith of living in an evolutionary context: Christianity in Evolution, Georgetown UP, Washington DC, 2011. We can no longer close our eyes to the kind of human persons we are as historical beings. That is how God has made us – and our world. Our Christian faith in the Incarnation is simply recognising that God reveals Godself within history.
I have called this a ‘personal’ odyssey because most of the pieces that follow either give an account of some of my own experiences or those of people whom I have known and respect. Also included are some of my personal reflections on life and ministry in the Catholic Church during the years following Vatican II up to the present. Some are about the kind of pastoral practice I have followed or are examples of the pastoral advice I have offered over the past fifty years. Others are talks I have given to help fellow Catholics receive Vatican II in practice or understand the underlying spirit of the changes it was promoting in the life of the Church and its relationship with other Churches, faiths and the world in general.
I have called it an ‘odyssey’ because I have experienced all I am writing about as part of an ongoing journey. It has not been a journey in a straight line, all plain sailing. There have been plenty of storms on the way, detours and deviations, and the final destination, though assured, is hidden in the distant mists. It has certainly not been a boring, uneventful journey. And it has been an enjoyable journey.
Moreover, my odyssey is very much a shared journey – an ecumenical and inter-faith pilgrimage along with all other human beings. After all, as human beings we are essentially interdependent. The Africans have an expression for it – Ubuntu. And as Christians we are conscious of our interdependence in an even deeper sense. And in the age in which we are living, we are more aware how closely this interdependence links us to all living creatures and the whole of creation. Moreover, the Lord is with us all the way on this odyssey.
Many of the items in this collection have been published previously, as chapters in books, or as contributions to periodicals. On re-reading them, far from finding them ‘past their sell-by date’, I have actually found them rekindling my own commitment and enthusiasm for the spirit of Vatican II. To be perfectly honest, I have found some of them very exciting. I hope at least some readers will be touched in a similar way.
Receiving Vatican II is an ongoing process. It is a long road to take. It does not yet seem to have reached the stage of solving or eliminating most of the pastoral problems discussed. In fact, readers will notice that some of the practical issues keep coming up again and again en route. I was tempted to eliminate all such repetitions. However, on further reflection, I felt that would weaken the text. In the end, I have kept in the text repeated considerations of such neuralgic issues as same-sex relationships, remarriage after divorce, contraception and women priests.
When appropriate, I have taken the liberty of altering the original text, sometimes for the sake of clarity and sometimes because my thinking has developed further or the pastoral scenario had changed. Also, I have added short explanatory introductions to most of the items. I hope these will situate contributions in their original contexts and also point the reader to their wider ramifications.
There are four sections to the book. The first section is by way of an introduction. It is intended to set the tone of the whole work. This is not an abstract volume intended to grace the shelves of academia. It is motivated by a desire to further the process of ‘receiving’ Vatican II in the Church at large. That will not happen unless there is a deep appreciation that Vatican II is truly a personal ‘gift’ given to all of us by God’s Spirit. In this overview I share how that gift has affected me personally. For me to have lived in the age of Vatican II and its aftermath has been an immense privilege.
The second section, ‘Parish and Pastoral Ministry in the light of Vatican II’, looks at some of the implications of Vatican II for parish life and pastoral ministry. As well as reminding readers of the high promise engendered by the 1980 National Pastoral Congress, it includes a thorough examination of the key issue of collaborative ministry and also a theological reflection on reports from various parishes drawn from a professional survey covering a number of dioceses. This section also includes an account and critique of my own very privileged ten-year experience as parish priest in a shared RC/Anglican Church in Widnes.
Since an important part of my personal odyssey has involved my role as a moral theologian, it is natural that there should be a distinct section entitled, ‘Moral Theology after Vatican II’. This includes reflections on my own experience as a moral theologian as well as my appreciation of two of my fellow moral theologians. There are also items on some general and specific issues such as conscience, authority, collegiality, believing in a sinful Church, the divorcedremarried, clerical sex-abuse and HIV/AIDS prevention and condoms.
In the fourth section, ‘The Eucharist and Vatican II’, there are reflections on the role and impact of the Eucharist in the parish and in the wider Church community. It also covers some neuralgic issues linked to ministry and priesthood and the new translation of the Missal and the core principles of person-centred liturgy.
Because experience has played such a major part in my personal odyssey, I decided to include in the concluding section a few examples of some formative experiences from earlier in my life. They are a few extracts from my diary of a two-month visit to India, the Philippines and Peru. The extracts are all taken from my time in the Philippines. I see them as symbolic of the amazing interdependence which lies at the heart our lives as Christians and human persons. Reflecting the fact that I am approaching my 80th birthday, the concluding section also looks at retirement and theology. It closes with a short chapter facing the important question, ‘Are we ready for Vatican III?’
My fervent hope and prayer is that this book will offer something life-giving for the good of all and that it might reawaken enthusiasm for Vatican II in the hearts of those for whom it is but a distant memory or an item of ancient history.
In the course of my personal odyssey I have been fortunate to have had five books published. Sadly they are all now out of print. The first was my doctoral dissertation, written prior to Vatican II. All the others were attempts to express as clearly as I could where I felt the reception of Vatican II was taking the Church, especially in its moral theology and pastoral practice. Hence, they played an important role in my personal odyssey. Moreover, in addition to contributing chapters to various books, I have also had the privilege of having numerous articles published in the following journals and periodicals in the UK and Ireland, The Tablet, The Furrow, The Clergy Review, The Month, Priest and People, New Blackfriars, The Way, and the supplement to The Way.
In my introduction to the various chapters, I acknowledge whenever the content is drawn from the above sources including my three most recently published books listed on the final page. I am most grateful to the publishers, T & T Clark (Continuum) and Darton Longman & Todd and the Porticus Trust for permission to include quotations or longer sections from my writings published by them. I am also very grateful for permission to include articles originally published in the journals and periodicals listed at the end of the previous paragraph.
I would also like to add a special word of thanks to Sister Mary McCallion SND who painstakingly read the whole script and alerted me not only to typos but, even more importantly, to places where my words have not done justice to the truth I was trying to convey. My thanks are also due to Philomena Harvey and Kitty Cannon for providing typing assistance when needed. A lot of very good friends have been very supportive and patient with me during the years I have been working on this project. I will not mention them by name but they know how grateful I am to them for their friendship and encouragement.
Last but not least I would like to thank Columba Press for welcoming this book so graciously and for publishing it at such short notice in time to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II, and to Donal O’Leary, for introducing me to them. I am particularly grateful to Michael Brennan for his initial welcome and especially to Patrick O’ Donoghue and Fearghal O Boyle who have overseen the production process with immense care from beginning to end. Also, to Valerie Devitt and Shane McCoy I extend my thanks for all their help. To Bill Bolger who was responsible for designing the fantastic cover I extend my deepest gratitude.
The striking and very beautiful landscape painting on the front cover is the work of Deirdre Crowley, a well-known Cork artist. I am deeply grateful to Deirdre for accepting my invitation to contribute so significantly to the cover. Deirdre’s uncle, the late Fr Pat Crowley, was a very close friend of mine. He played a key role in my post-Vatican II odyssey. Along with the other members of the Upholland Northern Institute, between 1975 and 1980 we shared in the experience of introducing the riches of Vatican II to priests and laity in the north of England, a steep learning curve for ourselves and all concerned – a truly inspirational experience. Deirdre’s powerful painting captures very vividly the excitement and hopes of the new life generated in the Church through the Spirit-inspired Vatican II experience. It suggests the inextinguishable fire of the Holy Spirit blazing out anew from the inner depths of the Church after Vatican II, a fire bringing warmth and life to everything touched by its flame; also a purifying fire capable of melting the hearts of any resisting the reception of the Sprit-inspired post-Vatican II renewal.
Pat Crowley also gave me the precious gift of being welcomed as a close friend into the families of his brother, Flor and Sally (Deirdre’s parents) and his sister, Kay and Pat Doyle. The love and friendship of both families has enriched me more than I can say. Through them and through my own very precious family and some very special friends, my life has been abundantly blessed. And when I think of all the other wonderful people who touched my life over the years, I am lost for words. Thankfully, the Spirit can cope with that! (Romans 8:26-27).
Kevin T. Kelly
March 2012