| What Went Wrong with Vatican II: The Catholic Crisis Explained |
| Ralph M. McInerny |
Chapter One
The Forgotten Teachings of the Council
On October 11, 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council in St. Peter's Basilica with a speech full of hope and promise. Recalling the Church's previous councils, the Pope said that Vatican II was called to reaffirm the teaching role of the Church in the world.In calling this vast assembly of bishops, the latest and humble successor to the Prince of the Apostles who is addressing you intends to assert once again the Church's Magisterium [teaching authority], which is unfailing and perdures until the end of time, in order that this Magisterium, taking into account the errors, the requirements, and the opportunities of our time, might he presented in exceptional form to all men throughout the world.15The problem facing us, the Pope pointed out, is the same today as it has ever been: Men stand either with the Church or against Her; and rejection results in bitterness, confusion, and war. Councils testify to the union of Christ and His Church and promulgate a universal truth to guide individuals in their domestic and social lives. Far from being motivated by foreboding and concern for the modern world, Pope John XXIII was full of optimism. Many had come to him lamenting the state of the world, seeing it in steep decline. We live, they implied, in the worst of times. Not so, said John XXIII: We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world was at hand.John XXIII discerned even in troubling modem circumstances possibilities for the Church to fulfill Her mission of preaching the gospel of Christ more effectively. Throughout this opening address, he was filled with exuberant optimism. And he was quite clear about what he wanted the council to accomplish: the defense and advancement of truth. The greatest concern of the ecumenical council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously.17John XXIII said that in our day there is already sufficient clarity about the teaching of the Faith. The emphasis of the council should thus not be doctrinal but pastoral. It should consider how best to convey the truth of Christ to the modern world. He said that errors are best dealt with in a gentler way than heretofore. The same charity should suffuse our dealing with our "separated brethren." Here the Pope strikes the note that will fuel the ecumenical movement among the churches. The closing prayers of his address convey the simplicity and faith of John XXIII: Almighty God! In Thee we place all our confidence, not trusting in our own strength. Look down benignly upon these pastors of Thy Church. May the light of Thy supernal grace aid us in taking decisions and in making laws. Graciously hear the prayers which we pour forth to Thee in unanimity of faith, of voice, and of mind.Lively Debate Characterized the Sessions The Second Vatican Council met in four sessions. The first session opened, with the papal address just recalled, on October 11, 1962, and closed on December 8 of the same year. Pope John XXIII, whose idea the council was, need on June 3, 1963. He had expressed the hope that, if he were not still alive when the council ended, he would watch its joyful conclusion from Heaven. His successor, Paul VI, called for the second session to begin on September 29, 1963, and it ran until December 4, 1963. The third session was held from September 14 to November 21, 1.964. The fourth and final session ran from September 14 to December 8, 1965. Anyone reading the exchanges between the bishops during the sessions of the council must be impressed by the high level of the discussion. For example, the discussion of the Declaration on Religious Liberty was feared by some to fly in the face of earlier Church teaching, obviously a serious reason for caution. Proponents, respecting this concern, were eager to allay it. Participants in the debate opposed one another against a background of a shared concern for the tradition of the Church. Some would, reduce this spirited and often profound exchange to a conflict between liberals and conservatives, but such a reduction misses the depth of the discussion. Some interventions in the council are more impressive than others, of course, but what is lacking from these actual sessions is the kind of ideological dogfight reported at the time in periodicals and shortly thereafter in the multi-volume histories of the council. Reading some of those accounts of the council sessions, especially those written at the time, is not an edifying experience. Even so relatively sober a book as Fr. Ralph Wiltgen's The Rhine Flows into the Tiber portrays the debates as no nobler than a playground quarrel. Perhaps the saddest description is Fr. Wiltgen's account of Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani being silenced: On October 30, the day after his seventy-second birthday, Cardinal Ottaviani addressed the council to protest against the drastic changes which were being suggested in the Mass. "Are we seeking to stir up wonder, or perhaps scandal, among the Christian people, by introducing changes in so venerable a rite, that has been approved for so many centuries and is now so familiar? The rite of Holy Mass should not be treated as if it were a piece of cloth to be refashioned according to the whim of each generation." Speaking without a text, because of his partial blindness, he exceeded the ten-minute time limit which all had been requested to observe. Cardinal Tisserant, Dean of the Council Presidents, showed his watch to Cardinal Alfrink, who was presiding that morning. When Cardinal Ottaviani reached fifteen minutes, Cardinal Alfrink rang the warning bell. But the speaker was so engrossed in his topic that he did not notice the bell, or purposely ignored it. At a signal from Cardinal Alfrink, a technician switched off the microphone. After confirming the fact by tapping the instrument, Cardinal Ottaviani stumbled back to his seat in humiliation. The most powerful cardinal in the Roman Curia had been silenced, and the Council Fathers clapped with glee.19Looking back on it from a distance of thirty-five year reader is more likely to be astonished by the reported reaction of the council Fathers than he is likely to share in it. Fr. Wiltgen was writing in 1977, and his account of the sessions was generally praised for its objectivity, but he, too, operates with the simplistic notions of conservative and liberal. Such accounts as Fr. Wiltgen's - and let me stress that his is as evenhanded as one is likely to find - seek and find a drama in the proceedings that doubtless characterized the politics outside the hall. There are good guys and bad guys, and in the end the good guys win. But it is not in histories of the council, contemporary or otherwise, that the council itself should be sought. Nor are the records of the discussions between the bishops the final word. Where, then, is the council itself to be found? Catholics Cannot Reject the Council Sixteen official council documents emerged from sessions in which schemata were proposed, altered, replaced, argued, and ultimately voted on. Each of the conciliar documents can be parsed back into a written record of such debates and discussion, but there is no need to characterize such debates in terms of obscurantists and enlightened progressives - not even when, as in the case of the Declaration on Religious Liberty, the debate defines itself in terms of such opponents. For in the end, it is the final document that trumps all earlier arguments and discussion. Once voted on and promulgated by the Pope, a conciliar document is no longer the victory of one side or the triumph of a faction: it becomes part of the Magisterium of the Church. There is little doubt that, in the minds of many observers, reporters, and even periti, a struggle was going on between the traditionalists and the innovators. Even if this mirrored a struggle among the Fathers of the council, when the dust settled, when the final vote was taken, when a document was approved and promulgated by the Pope, it was the product of the teaching Church. And in Her role as teacher, the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit. Whatever spirited battles took place in the course of the council, the only spirit that matters is the Holy Spirit, whose influence on the promulgated document is guaranteed. Studying the record of discussions among the bishops, of drafts of documents, and the proposals for change can, of course, aid us in understanding the final approved results. But it is the final documents as approved by the bishops and promulgated by the Pope that contain the official teaching of the Catholic Church. And Catholics have a duty to accept the teaching of a council. The Catechism of the Catholic Church spells out the infallibility of an ecumenical council: "The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of the faithful - who confirms his brethren in the Faith - he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to Faith or morals.... The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium," above all in an ecumenical council.20Consequently, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council are the official teachings of the Church. That is why the more than thirty years that have passed since the close of the council are evaluated by the Church in the light of the council. That is why Paul VI and John Paul II have regarded their papacies as dedicated to the implementation of what was decided during those fateful three years of the council. That is why rejecting the council is simply not an option for Catholics. And that is why Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's schismatic movement involved an internal incoherence. He sought to appeal to earlier councils in order to discredit Vatican II. But that which guarantees the truth of the teaching of one council guarantees the truth of them all. Popes Paul VI and John Paul II exhibited a long patience with Archbishop Lefebvre. Eventually, he undertook to consecrate new bishops in defiance of the Vatican, and no more patience was possible. He was excommunicated. 21 What Vatican II Says About the Pope The same long patience has been shown to dissenting theologians who have undertaken to appoint themselves the final arbiters of Catholic truth and to inform the faithful that they need not accept the teachings of the Holy Father. Often, they justify this dissent by citing "the spirit of Vatican II," which one theologian explains as follows: Vatican Council II was an example of democracy in action. Opinion had been widespread that, with the definition of papal infallibility, councils would no longer be needed or held. After Vatican I, it seemed the Pope would function as the Church's sole teacher. Vatican II, however, showed what could be accomplished in the Church when all the bishops worked together. There was significant input from theologians (some formerly silenced). Protestant observers made an important contribution.22The spirit of Vatican II urges us to balance what the Magisterium says with other points of view throughout the Church. Magisterial teaching is referred to as the "official" teaching of the Church, as if there were another, rival teaching that could trump the Pope. But what does Vatican II itself say about this? After speaking of the college of bishops and the collegiality that characterizes the episcopal office, Vatican 11 declares that not even bishops, acting apart from the Pope, have any authority in the Church: The college or body of bishops has for all that no authority unless united with the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, as its head, whose primatial authority, let it be added, over all, whether pastors or faithful, remains in its integrity. For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as the Vicar of Christ, namely, and as pastor of the entire Church) has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.23Obviously, if even bishops, singly or collectively, have no authority apart from the Pope, no other group in the Church has such authority. No other group has the role of accepting or rejecting papal teaching and advising the faithful that they may rightly reject papal teaching. In a word, according to, Vatican II, the Pope is "the supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful,"24 the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ on earth. He is head of the college of bishops. He can himself, independent of the bishops, exercise the supreme Magisterium. In light of this, there seems simply to be no way to read the teachings of Vatican II and find in them any basis for the postconciliar view promoted by some theologians that papal teaching can be legitimately rejected by Catholics. Yet some theologians continue trying. They suggest that Catholics are bound only by Church teaching that is infallible by dint of being formally and solemnly defined. According to them, such instruments of the Magisterium as encyclicals should be treated with respect, but Catholics have the option of setting their teaching aside. Catholics Must Submit to the Pope Is there any support in Vatican II for such a conception? Is acceptance on the part of the faithful limited to solemnly defined teachings, clearly infallible for that reason? The Second Vatican Council also answers this question clearly and forcefully: This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given in a special way to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra, in such wise, indeed, that his supreme teaching authority be acknowledged with respect, and that one sincerely adhere to the decisions made by him, conformably with his manifest mind and intention, which is made known principally either by the character of the documents in question, or by the frequency with which. a certain doctrine is proposed, or by the manner in which the doctrine is formulated.25Unfortunately, some theologians, particularly moral theologians, for reasons we will examine in subsequent chapters, have simply rejected this clear teaching of Vatican II. They have come to see their role as one of criticizing, passing judgment on, and even dismissing magisterial teaching. There is no surer protection against this attempted usurpation than the documents of Vatican II themselves and particularly the passages just quoted from the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.26 There is, of course, something odd in the effort to quarrel with what are obviously teachings of the Church and therefore require religious assent from Catholics. It is almost as if the aim were to discover how little one need believe. But surely, as Vatican II urges, it should be the mark of Catholics that they take on the mind and heart of the Church and show gratitude for God's great gift of the Magisterium. The calibration of Church teachings that is suggested by distinguishing between the ordinary and extraordinary Magisterium is an important one, but it does not justify any distinction between magisterial, papal teachings that need to be accepted by Catholics and those that do not. Indeed, to advise Catholics to ignore clear magisterial teachings is to advise them to reject the clear teaching of Vatican II. How ironic that the council should be invoked as warrant for dissenting from the Magisterium when it is precisely the council that rules this out. To accept Vatican II is to accept what the council says about the Magisterium and the Catholic's obligation to obey it.As we will soon see, public and sustained rejection of the Magisterium and of this clear teaching of Vatican II - largely by dissenting theologians - has caused and sustained the crisis in the Church. NOTES: 1-14 are found in the Introduction. 15 Floyd Anderson, ed., Council Daybook: Vatican II, Sessions 1 and 2, (Washington: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1965), 25. 16 Ibid., 26. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 29. 19 Ralph W. Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1967), 28-29. 20 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 891. 21 See Kelly, The Battle for the American Church, 411-417. 22 Philip S. Kaufman, Why You Can Disagree and Remain a Faithful Catholic (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 153. 23 Lumen Gentium, no. 22. 24 Lumen Gentium, no. 25. 25 Ibid.26 A 1998 apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II gave force of law to this requirement of Vatican II that theologians be faithful to the Magisterium. Called Ad Tuendam Fidem, the letter made deviation from such teachings as Vatican II a violation of canon law subject to punishments up to and including excommunication. |
| The above excerpt of pages 23-38 is taken with permission from: Ralph M. McInerny. What went wrong with VATICAN II. (Sophia Institute Press, 1998, paperback, 168 pgs) |
| This book is available from:Sophia Institute Press Box 5284 Manchester, NH 03108 1-800-888-9344 |
Provided Courtesy of:
Eternal Word Television Network 5817 Old Leeds Road Irondale, AL 35210www.ewtn.com HOME-EWTNews-FAITH-TELEVISION-RADIO-LIBRARY-GALLERY-CATALOGUE-GENERAL ESPAÑOL ============================================================== "But it is the final documents as approved by the bishops and promulgated by the Pope that contain the official teaching of the Catholic Church. And Catholics have a duty to accept the teaching of a council." ===========================================VATICAN II O’Malley’s "What Happened at Vatican II" accents that it was a multifaceted event with viewpoints, personalities, and interests in frequently tumultuous conflict, and it makes for a rollicking good story. The important thing, he believes, is to understand the “spirit” of the council. "Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition" , by way of sharpest contrast, consists of twenty-two essays on the documents approved by the council. Here the important thing is to understand what the council actually said. (Full disclosure: I have a minor essay in the book.) Enter Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition . The book shamelessly pulls rank on O’Malley by opening with a reflection by Pope Benedict XVI on the proper interpretation of the council. The question is one of hermeneutics, says the pope. There are, he suggests, two quite different ways of understanding the council: “On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call ‘a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture’; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the ‘hermeneutic of reform,’ of renewal in the continuity of the one subject, the Church that the Lord has given us. She is a subject that increases in time and develops, yet always remains the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.” All that having been said, however, O’Malley’s book is much the better read. As Xavier Rynne and the editors of the New Yorker understood, personalities, politics, factional fights, and dark conspiracies make for high drama. Especially when combatants are cast as good liberals versus bad conservatives. More than forty years later, however, the hermeneutic of reform in continuity is prevailing, and serious readers who want to understand the significance of the council will be better served by Lamb and Levering. He emphasizes that Vatican II eschewed the “power language” of earlier councils, with their juridical pronouncements and condemnations, preferring the “humility words” of shared responsibility in the government* of the Church. At the same time, O’Malley’s story is all about power struggles between entrenched Roman conservatism and the bishops who were more accurately reading the signs of the times. *governance is the authority of governing their sections. It does NOT = the authority over Doctrine, of Doctrine or the ability to change or make doctrine O’Malley approvingly quotes the German Jesuit Karl Rahner, who said the first epoch was the brief period of Jewish Christianity; the second, including Hellenism and European Christianity, ran up to Vatican II; and third period, the post-council present, is the epoch of the world Church. O’Malley neatly sums up the reading of Vatican II according to the hermeneutics of rupture: It suggests, indeed, that at stake were almost two different visions of Catholicism: from commands to invitations, from laws to ideals, from definition to mystery, from threats to persuasion, from coercion to conscience, from monologue to dialogue, from ruling to serving, from withdrawn to integrated, from vertical to horizontal, from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to friendship, from rivalry to partnership, from suspicion to trust, from static to ongoing, from passive acceptance to active engagement, from fault-finding to appreciation, from prescriptive to principled, from behavior modification to inner appropriation. The modern world as portrayed by the council is one with which the Church should want to get in tune. There is merit in O’Malley’s linguistic analysis. . What Happened at Vatican II is a 372-page brief for the party of novelty and discontinuity. Its author comes very close to saying explicitly what is frequently implied: that the innovationists practiced subterfuge, and they got away with it. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X are right: The council was a radical break from tradition and proposed what is, in effect, a different Catholicism. The irony is in the agreement between Lefebvre and the liberal party of discontinuity. O’Malley and those of like mind might be described as the Lefebvrists of the left. :o :D ;) The final irony is that if, in the twenty-fifth century, the Second Vatican Council is remembered as a reform council that failed, it will be the result of the combined, if unintended, efforts of the likes of Marcel Lefebvre and John O’Malley in advancing the argument that the council was a radical break from the tradition that is Catholicism. I do not expect they will succeed. it is not in histories of the council, contemporary or otherwise, that the council itself should be sought. Nor are the records of the discussions between the bishops the final word. Where, then, is the council itself to be found? Catholics Cannot Reject the Council Sixteen official council documents emerged from sessions Catholics have a duty to accept the teaching of a council. The Catechism of the Catholic Church spells out the infallibility of an ecumenical council: "The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of the faithful - who confirms his brethren in the Faith - he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to Faith or morals.... The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium," above all in an ecumenical council.20 Consequently, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council are the official teachings of the Church The 'spirit of Vatican II'* urges us to balance what the Magisterium says with other points of view throughout the Church. Magisterial teaching is referred to as the "official" teaching of the Church, as if there were another, rival teaching that could trump the Pope. *'the spirit of Vatican II'is not Church teaching ;the Documents of Vatican II are!* But what does Vatican II itself say about this? After speaking of the college of bishops and the collegiality that characterizes the episcopal office, Vatican 11 declares that not even bishops, acting apart from the Pope, have any authority in the Church: The college or body of bishops has for all that no authority unless united with the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, as its head, whose primatial authority, let it be added, over all, whether pastors or faithful, remains in its integrity. For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as the Vicar of Christ, namely, and as pastor of the entire Church) has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.23 (23 Lumen Gentium, no. 22.) Obviously, if even bishops, singly or collectively, have no authority apart from the Pope, no other group in the Church has such authority. No other group has the role of accepting or rejecting papal teaching and advising the faithful that they may rightly reject papal teaching. In a word, according to, Vatican II, the Pope is "the supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful,"24 (24 Lumen Gentium, no. 25.) the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ on earth. He is head of the college of bishops. He can himself, independent of the bishops, exercise the supreme Magisterium. In light of this, there seems simply to be no way to read the teachings of Vatican II and find in them any basis for the postconciliar view promoted by some theologians that papal teaching can be legitimately rejected by Catholics. Catholics Must Submit to the Pope Is there any support in Vatican II for such a conception? Is acceptance on the part of the faithful limited to solemnly defined teachings, clearly infallible for that reason? The Second Vatican Council also answers this question clearly and forcefully: This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given in a special way to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra, in such wise, indeed, that his supreme teaching authority be acknowledged with respect, and that one sincerely adhere to the decisions made by him, conformably with his manifest mind and intention, which is made known principally either by the character of the documents in question, or by the frequency with which. a certain doctrine is proposed, or by the manner in which the doctrine is formulated.25 Unfortunately, some theologians, particularly moral theologians, for reasons we will examine in subsequent chapters, have simply rejected this clear teaching of Vatican II. They have come to see their role as one of criticizing, passing judgment on, and even dismissing magisterial teaching. There is no surer protection against this attempted usurpation than the documents of Vatican II themselves and particularly the passages just quoted from the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.26 (26 A 1998 apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II gave force of law to this requirement of Vatican II that theologians be faithful to the Magisterium. Called Ad Tuendam Fidem, the letter made deviation from such teachings as Vatican II a violation of canon law subject to punishments up to and including excommunication. ) To accept Vatican II is to accept what the council says about the Magisterium and the Catholic's obligation to obey it. As we will soon see, public and sustained rejection of the Magisterium and of this clear teaching of Vatican II - largely by dissenting theologians - has caused and sustained the crisis in the Church. |
Showing posts with label document. Show all posts
Showing posts with label document. Show all posts
Monday, March 17, 2014
McInerny - What Went Wrong With Vatican II
McInerny - What Went Wrong With Vatican II
What Really Happened at Vatican II by Richard John Neuhaus | Articles | First Things
What Really Happened at Vatican II by Richard John Neuhaus | Articles | First Things
THIS ISA GREAT ARTICLE....I MISS YOU Father Neuhaus
What Happened at Vatican II
by John W. O’Malley
Harvard University Press, 372 pages, $29.95
The Catholic Church counts twenty-one ecumenical councils, beginning with the First Council of Nicea in 325. Shortly after he was elected pope in 2005, Benedict XVI reflected on the confusion that sometimes attends the aftermath of a council. He quotes that great doctor of the Church, Saint Basil, who compared the period after Nicea to a naval battle fought in the darkness of a great storm. Basil wrote: “The raucous shouting of those who through disagreement rise up against one another, the incomprehensible chatter, the confused din of uninterrupted clamoring, has now filled almost the whole of the Church, falsifying through excess or failure the right doctrine of the faith.” Those who have lived through the years since Vatican II will recognize the description. “The question arises,” says Benedict, “Why has the implementation of the council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult?” A very good question, that.
At the end of their introduction to Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition , Lamb and Levering quote George Weigel: “No one knows whether, in the twenty-fifth century, Vatican II will be remembered as another Lateran V”a reforming council that failed”or another Trent”a reforming council that was so successful that it set the course of Catholic life for more than four hundred years.” Of course no one knows for sure. But Lateran V was small potatoes compared with Vatican II. Convened by Julius II in 1512 and concluded by Leo X in 1517, it was an off-again on-again gathering of mainly Italian bishops aimed against Louis XII of France, who had tried to convene an antipapal council at Pisa. In a parody of Lateran V, Erasmus put these words into the mouth of the dead Julius: “I told it what to say. We had two Masses to show that we were acting under Divine inspiration, and then there was a speech in honor of myself. At the next session I cursed the schismatic cardinals. At the third I laid France under an interdict. Then the Acts of the council were drafted into a bull and sent around Europe.” Papal historian Eamon Duffy says that Erasmus’ account “is a caricature, but not all that far wide of the mark.”
There would seem to be little chance of Vatican II being forgotten, even five hundred years from now. Unless, of course, the twentieth century is forgotten, an idea that some may think is not without its merits. It is commonly said, and with good reason, that the Second Vatican Council was the most important religious event of the twentieth century. If media coverage is a measure, it was second only to the war in Vietnam during the four council sessions from 1962 to 1965. It is also said to have been the largest deliberative meeting in history, with more than two thousand participating bishops from around the world, along with hundreds of theological experts ( periti ) and ecumenical observers who did much more than observe.
Four decades later, the arguments are still hot and heavy over what the council said and did. The two books under review represent the main lines of the argument. The very titles are revealing. O’Malley’s What Happened at Vatican II accents that it was a multifaceted event with viewpoints, personalities, and interests in frequently tumultuous conflict, and it makes for a rollicking good story. The important thing, he believes, is to understand the “spirit” of the council. Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition , by way of sharpest contrast, consists of twenty-two essays on the documents approved by the council. Here the important thing is to understand what the council actually said. (Full disclosure: I have a minor essay in the book.)
The main story line of the council was established from the beginning by Xavier Rynne (the pseudonym of the late Fr. Francis X. Murphy) in a series of “Letters from Vatican City” published in the New Yorker . The council, according to Rynne, was an epic battle between stuck-in-the-chancel conservatives and enlightened liberals who were striving mightily to bring a tradition-bound Catholicism into the light of the modern world. In this telling of the story, the key to understanding the council is aggiornamento ”usually translated as updating . Rynne and the thousands of reporters who followed his lead left no doubt that the Second Vatican Council was a great liberal triumph.
O’Malley calls Rynne’s account “delicious” and “gossipy but engrossing,” yet he wants to rise above its strident partisanship. And so, for instance, he eschews references to “conservatives” and “liberals,” preferring to speak of the minority and the majority, while not disguising that he is rooting for the liberal majority. From beginning to end, says O’Malley, the great question was whether the council would “confirm the status quo or move notably beyond it.” He says his purpose is “to provide a sense of before and after.”
“Before and after””that gets to the heart of most of the disputes about the council. Up through the 1980s, self-identified liberals routinely spoke of the pre - Vatican II Church and the post - Vatican II Church , almost as though they were two churches, with the clear implication that a very large part of the preceding centuries had been consigned to the dustbin of history. To describe that depiction of the council, philosopher Robert Sokolowski employs a football metaphor: “The impression was given that the tradition of the Church was not a continuous handing on through the centuries of something received; it was more like a long pass from the apostolic age to the Second Vatican Council, with only distortions in between, whether Byzantine, medieval, or baroque.” That’s an exaggeration, of course, but an exaggeration in the service of an important part of the truth.
In the decades following the council, many liberals made no secret of their belief that aggiornamento was a mandate for radical change, even revolution. They excitedly hailed as renewal what others saw as destabilization and confusion. Some traditionalists farther to the right of center blamed the council itself, employing the logic of post hoc ergo propter hoc” after which, therefore because of which. Liberals, on the other hand, demanded an early convening of Vatican Council III in order to, as they said, complete the revolution. Given the changed climate in the Church after thirty years of the pontificates of John Paul the Great and Benedict XVI, it is not surprising that it has been a long time since we’ve heard progressives calling for Vatican III.
The confusions in the aftermath of Vatican II are beyond denying. O’Malley says he wants to treat the “before and after” of the council, but in fact he limits himself to the before and at the council. Slight attention is paid to the consequences of the changes that he celebrates. Theologians openly dissented from Church teaching and did so with impunity, indeed often being rewarded by the guild of academic theology for their putative courage. Tens of thousands of priests abandoned their ministries, convents were emptied as sisters embraced the vaunted freedoms of the secular world, Gregorian chant was replaced by Kumbaya, the number of seminarians preparing for priesthood plummeted, and not a few of the priests who remained decided on their own that celibacy is optional.
Not incidentally, a majority of Catholics stopped going to Mass every week and decided, or were given to understand by progressive priests, that moral truths taught from the beginning are, at most, advisory in nature. What happened after the council, if not because of the council, is a familiar and mainly depressing story, perhaps too familiar and too depressing in its telling. One wishes Fr. O’Malley had addressed the after in “before and after,” since there were also constructive changes usually ignored in conservative accounts.
A few years ago, Francis Cardinal George of Chicago declared, “Liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project.” There has been surprisingly little dissent from that judgment on the part of the aging members of the Boomer generation who still dare speak the name of their liberal love. They spent their lives pinning their hopes on “the next pope” or “the next council,” but now they seem resigned to the fact that it is not to be. A measure of bitterness is understandable as they contemplate the “reactionary” takeover by John Paul and Benedict.
Perhaps most galling is the spectacle of a younger generation of Catholics inspired by these supposed troglodytes to dream dreams of radical discipleship. As witness, among many other signs, the stunning success of World Youth Day, most recently in Sydney, Australia. The youth were supposed to belong to the progressives, who are now left wondering what went wrong with their children and grandchildren. Then there are the bishops once or twice or thrice in succession to the bishops of those heady days at the council. Whether by conviction or by an astute reading of “the signs of the times””a much quoted phrase from the council”they recognize the need for a re-stabilizing of the Church’s teaching and life. Some are reluctant to call this conservatism, preferring to speak of a “reform of the reform.”
Enter Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition . The book shamelessly pulls rank on O’Malley by opening with a reflection by Pope Benedict XVI on the proper interpretation of the council. The question is one of hermeneutics, says the pope. There are, he suggests, two quite different ways of understanding the council: “On the one hand, there is
an interpretation that I would call ‘a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture’; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the ‘hermeneutic of reform,’ of renewal in the continuity of the one subject, the Church that the Lord has given us. She is a subject that increases in time and develops, yet always remains the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.”
The distinction between conservative and liberal does not quite catch the difference between a hermeneutic of reform and a hermeneutic of rupture. The teaching of the council as advanced by John Paul and Benedict is emphatically liberal in, for instance, its embrace of democracy and its call for a new way of engagement between faith and reason. A great difference between the Lamb and Levering hermeneutic and the O’Malley hermeneutic is that the former is primarily theological and attuned to what is believed to be divinely revealed truth as it has been handed on and its understanding faithfully developed over the centuries. The O’Malley interpretation is dominantly sociological, psychological, and linguistic, aimed at demonstrating how the council moved beyond “the status quo.” For instance, O’Malley rightly notes the council’s vigorous condemnation of anti-Semitism but fails to connect that with its theological treatment of the unique relationship in God’s universal plan of salvation between the Church and the people of Israel.
There are other differences of great consequence. Whether, with Lamb and Levering, one focuses on the texts of the council or, with O’Malley, on the spirit of the council, there are interesting parallels with American legal debates between proponents of “original meaning” and proponents of “the living Constitution.” O’Malley’s living council, so to speak, is wondrously malleable in response to the spirit of the times, or what he takes to be the spirit of the times. Moreover, O’Malley’s interpretation tends to reflect a particular moment in the progressive thought of Europe and America, while Lamb and Levering have in view a universal community through time with now more than 1.2 billion members, and with most of them in the Global South. Thus O’Malley’s account is preoccupied with somewhat parochial European and North American discontents over relationships of power within the Church, while Lamb and Levering keep in view the universal mission of the Church through the centuries.
All that having been said, however, O’Malley’s book is much the better read. As Xavier Rynne and the editors of the New Yorker understood, personalities, politics, factional fights, and dark conspiracies make for high drama. Especially when combatants are cast as good liberals versus bad conservatives. More than forty years later, however, the hermeneutic of reform in continuity is prevailing, and serious readers who want to understand the significance of the council will be better served by Lamb and Levering.
This is not to deny, however, that O’Malley’s account is instructive on several scores. In the long history of church councils, Vatican II was different. While there is continuity in teaching, something remarkable really did happen at the council. The liberal proponents of a hermeneutic of rupture are not making up their argument out of whole cloth. The very calling for a council by John XXIII struck many as strange and puzzling. Unlike the reasons for earlier councils, O’Malley notes, there was no obvious crisis troubling the Church. “In fact, except in those parts of the world where Christianity was undergoing overt persecution, mainly in countries under Communist domination, the Church in the decade and a half since the end of World War II projected an image of vigor and self-confidence.” It is no secret that some at higher levels of the Roman curia thought the pope was making a big mistake, and maybe was becoming just a little dotty.
Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani was the perfect foil for the liberal interpretation of the council. His enthusiasm for the council was conspicuously contained. He was secretary of the Holy Office, later called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (Until Paul VI changed it, the pope was head of that supreme congregation, an arrangement that Benedict has de facto, if not de jure, restored.) The motto that Ottaviani chose for his coat of arms was Semper Idem ””always the same.” Like Rynne, O’Malley, and many others, Ottaviani recognized “the spirit” of the council and he didn’t like it one little bit.
As O’Malley tells it, Ottaviani and those of like mind represented a “long nineteenth century,” going back to Pius IX’s war against modernity and extending through a “reign of terror” during which Catholic thinkers trembled in fear of ecclesiastical censure for having a thought of their own. To be sure, O’Malley exaggerates, but even so orthodox a thinker as George Cardinal Pell of Australia acknowledges that something was very wrong. In the foreword to a recent book on the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, Pell writes: “Certainly most of the Scholastic manuals, written in Latin, which we studied in philosophy in the 1960s, were arid, out of date, impersonal, and mechanistic . . . . Ratzinger’s skepticism about the Thomism of the manuals was shared almost universally among the seminarians of the sixties.” That skepticism was no doubt shared by many, if not most, of the bishops who gathered for the first session of the council in 1962.
Soon the drafts for conciliar texts prepared by Ottaviani and his curial colleagues, which steadfastly adhered to the spirit of Semper Idem , were being sharply criticized, and then rejected one after another. By the second session, in 1963, O’Malley says, the assembled bishops were beginning to feel their oats, having gotten a taste of real “collegiality.” A central theme in his account is that the council witnessed a movement of authority from “the center to the periphery.” The center, of course, is the pope and the curia, with the periphery being the pastors of local churches, the bishops. He emphasizes that Vatican II eschewed the “power language” of earlier councils, with their juridical pronouncements and condemnations, preferring the “humility words” of shared responsibility in the government of the Church. At the same time, O’Malley’s story is all about power struggles between entrenched Roman conservatism and the bishops who were more accurately reading the signs of the times.
In this view, the conservatives were resisting the birth of nothing less than the third epoch of Christian history. O’Malley approvingly quotes the German Jesuit Karl Rahner, who said the first epoch was the brief period of Jewish Christianity; the second, including Hellenism and European Christianity, ran up to Vatican II; and third period, the post-council present, is the epoch of the world Church.
This is presentism on speed. It is also, and despite the global language, a very Eurocentric view of Christian history, ignoring the pre-Islamic Christianity of the Middle East and, along with it, Byzantium and most of the patristic tradition, which figures such as Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar were so mightily laboring to restore under the banner of ressourcement , or renewal. In What Happened at Vatican II , O’Malley acknowledges three dominant themes of the council” aggiornamento, ressourcement, and development of doctrine”but, in his telling, the latter two are always in the service of the first, with aggiornamento bearing a convenient resemblance to the dominant habits of thought in the Society of Jesus as embodied in institutions “in the Jesuit tradition” such as Georgetown University.
O’Malley neatly sums up the reading of Vatican II according to the hermeneutics of rupture:
The modern world as portrayed by the council is one with which the Church should want to get in tune. There is merit in O’Malley’s linguistic analysis. It is striking, for instance, that, in the aftermath of the slaughters of world wars and while much of the world and of the Church was dominated by the evil empire of Soviet Communism, the council could speak in such serene terms of approbation about the modern circumstance. But it is quite another matter how or whether the language employed bears on the doctrine taught.
Some essays in the Lamb and Levering volume weigh in so heavily on the side of the hermeneutics of continuity that one might get the impression that not much happened at Vatican II. Obviously, that is not the case. After allowing that the liberal leaders at the council were sometimes elitist and manipulative, O’Malley gives this telling reflection on how the council is interpreted:
It is almost half a century after the council. The pontificates of Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, along with the scholarly arguments represented by books such as Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition , make it evident that the hermeneutics of continuity is prevailing, if it has not already definitively prevailed. Fr. O’Malley may suspect that is the case. His book has about it the feel of a last-ditch effort to defend the story line of the post-Vatican II Church vs. the pre-Vatican II Church that was popularized by Xavier Rynne all these many years ago. The final irony is that if, in the twenty-fifth century, the Second Vatican Council is remembered as a reform council that failed, it will be the result of the combined, if unintended, efforts of the likes of Marcel Lefebvre and John O’Malley in advancing the argument that the council was a radical break from the tradition that is Catholicism. I do not expect they will succeed.
Richard John Neuhaus is editor in chief of First Things .
THIS ISA GREAT ARTICLE....I MISS YOU Father Neuhaus
What Happened at Vatican II
by John W. O’Malley
Harvard University Press, 372 pages, $29.95
Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition
edited by Matthew Lamb and Matthew Levering
Oxford University Press, 462 pages, $29.95
When asked what he thought about the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai, China’s urbane premier under Chairman Mao, is reported to have replied, “It is too early to say.” Such reticence has been in short supply when it comes to explaining the significance of the Second Vatican Council. Yet hundreds of books and tens of thousands of articles have not yet arrived at a settled consensus. The two books under review nicely represent the depth and sharpness of disagreements. edited by Matthew Lamb and Matthew Levering
Oxford University Press, 462 pages, $29.95
The Catholic Church counts twenty-one ecumenical councils, beginning with the First Council of Nicea in 325. Shortly after he was elected pope in 2005, Benedict XVI reflected on the confusion that sometimes attends the aftermath of a council. He quotes that great doctor of the Church, Saint Basil, who compared the period after Nicea to a naval battle fought in the darkness of a great storm. Basil wrote: “The raucous shouting of those who through disagreement rise up against one another, the incomprehensible chatter, the confused din of uninterrupted clamoring, has now filled almost the whole of the Church, falsifying through excess or failure the right doctrine of the faith.” Those who have lived through the years since Vatican II will recognize the description. “The question arises,” says Benedict, “Why has the implementation of the council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult?” A very good question, that.
At the end of their introduction to Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition , Lamb and Levering quote George Weigel: “No one knows whether, in the twenty-fifth century, Vatican II will be remembered as another Lateran V”a reforming council that failed”or another Trent”a reforming council that was so successful that it set the course of Catholic life for more than four hundred years.” Of course no one knows for sure. But Lateran V was small potatoes compared with Vatican II. Convened by Julius II in 1512 and concluded by Leo X in 1517, it was an off-again on-again gathering of mainly Italian bishops aimed against Louis XII of France, who had tried to convene an antipapal council at Pisa. In a parody of Lateran V, Erasmus put these words into the mouth of the dead Julius: “I told it what to say. We had two Masses to show that we were acting under Divine inspiration, and then there was a speech in honor of myself. At the next session I cursed the schismatic cardinals. At the third I laid France under an interdict. Then the Acts of the council were drafted into a bull and sent around Europe.” Papal historian Eamon Duffy says that Erasmus’ account “is a caricature, but not all that far wide of the mark.”
There would seem to be little chance of Vatican II being forgotten, even five hundred years from now. Unless, of course, the twentieth century is forgotten, an idea that some may think is not without its merits. It is commonly said, and with good reason, that the Second Vatican Council was the most important religious event of the twentieth century. If media coverage is a measure, it was second only to the war in Vietnam during the four council sessions from 1962 to 1965. It is also said to have been the largest deliberative meeting in history, with more than two thousand participating bishops from around the world, along with hundreds of theological experts ( periti ) and ecumenical observers who did much more than observe.
Four decades later, the arguments are still hot and heavy over what the council said and did. The two books under review represent the main lines of the argument. The very titles are revealing. O’Malley’s What Happened at Vatican II accents that it was a multifaceted event with viewpoints, personalities, and interests in frequently tumultuous conflict, and it makes for a rollicking good story. The important thing, he believes, is to understand the “spirit” of the council. Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition , by way of sharpest contrast, consists of twenty-two essays on the documents approved by the council. Here the important thing is to understand what the council actually said. (Full disclosure: I have a minor essay in the book.)
The main story line of the council was established from the beginning by Xavier Rynne (the pseudonym of the late Fr. Francis X. Murphy) in a series of “Letters from Vatican City” published in the New Yorker . The council, according to Rynne, was an epic battle between stuck-in-the-chancel conservatives and enlightened liberals who were striving mightily to bring a tradition-bound Catholicism into the light of the modern world. In this telling of the story, the key to understanding the council is aggiornamento ”usually translated as updating . Rynne and the thousands of reporters who followed his lead left no doubt that the Second Vatican Council was a great liberal triumph.
O’Malley calls Rynne’s account “delicious” and “gossipy but engrossing,” yet he wants to rise above its strident partisanship. And so, for instance, he eschews references to “conservatives” and “liberals,” preferring to speak of the minority and the majority, while not disguising that he is rooting for the liberal majority. From beginning to end, says O’Malley, the great question was whether the council would “confirm the status quo or move notably beyond it.” He says his purpose is “to provide a sense of before and after.”
“Before and after””that gets to the heart of most of the disputes about the council. Up through the 1980s, self-identified liberals routinely spoke of the pre - Vatican II Church and the post - Vatican II Church , almost as though they were two churches, with the clear implication that a very large part of the preceding centuries had been consigned to the dustbin of history. To describe that depiction of the council, philosopher Robert Sokolowski employs a football metaphor: “The impression was given that the tradition of the Church was not a continuous handing on through the centuries of something received; it was more like a long pass from the apostolic age to the Second Vatican Council, with only distortions in between, whether Byzantine, medieval, or baroque.” That’s an exaggeration, of course, but an exaggeration in the service of an important part of the truth.
In the decades following the council, many liberals made no secret of their belief that aggiornamento was a mandate for radical change, even revolution. They excitedly hailed as renewal what others saw as destabilization and confusion. Some traditionalists farther to the right of center blamed the council itself, employing the logic of post hoc ergo propter hoc” after which, therefore because of which. Liberals, on the other hand, demanded an early convening of Vatican Council III in order to, as they said, complete the revolution. Given the changed climate in the Church after thirty years of the pontificates of John Paul the Great and Benedict XVI, it is not surprising that it has been a long time since we’ve heard progressives calling for Vatican III.
The confusions in the aftermath of Vatican II are beyond denying. O’Malley says he wants to treat the “before and after” of the council, but in fact he limits himself to the before and at the council. Slight attention is paid to the consequences of the changes that he celebrates. Theologians openly dissented from Church teaching and did so with impunity, indeed often being rewarded by the guild of academic theology for their putative courage. Tens of thousands of priests abandoned their ministries, convents were emptied as sisters embraced the vaunted freedoms of the secular world, Gregorian chant was replaced by Kumbaya, the number of seminarians preparing for priesthood plummeted, and not a few of the priests who remained decided on their own that celibacy is optional.
Not incidentally, a majority of Catholics stopped going to Mass every week and decided, or were given to understand by progressive priests, that moral truths taught from the beginning are, at most, advisory in nature. What happened after the council, if not because of the council, is a familiar and mainly depressing story, perhaps too familiar and too depressing in its telling. One wishes Fr. O’Malley had addressed the after in “before and after,” since there were also constructive changes usually ignored in conservative accounts.
A few years ago, Francis Cardinal George of Chicago declared, “Liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project.” There has been surprisingly little dissent from that judgment on the part of the aging members of the Boomer generation who still dare speak the name of their liberal love. They spent their lives pinning their hopes on “the next pope” or “the next council,” but now they seem resigned to the fact that it is not to be. A measure of bitterness is understandable as they contemplate the “reactionary” takeover by John Paul and Benedict.
Perhaps most galling is the spectacle of a younger generation of Catholics inspired by these supposed troglodytes to dream dreams of radical discipleship. As witness, among many other signs, the stunning success of World Youth Day, most recently in Sydney, Australia. The youth were supposed to belong to the progressives, who are now left wondering what went wrong with their children and grandchildren. Then there are the bishops once or twice or thrice in succession to the bishops of those heady days at the council. Whether by conviction or by an astute reading of “the signs of the times””a much quoted phrase from the council”they recognize the need for a re-stabilizing of the Church’s teaching and life. Some are reluctant to call this conservatism, preferring to speak of a “reform of the reform.”
Enter Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition . The book shamelessly pulls rank on O’Malley by opening with a reflection by Pope Benedict XVI on the proper interpretation of the council. The question is one of hermeneutics, says the pope. There are, he suggests, two quite different ways of understanding the council: “On the one hand, there is
an interpretation that I would call ‘a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture’; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the ‘hermeneutic of reform,’ of renewal in the continuity of the one subject, the Church that the Lord has given us. She is a subject that increases in time and develops, yet always remains the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.”
The distinction between conservative and liberal does not quite catch the difference between a hermeneutic of reform and a hermeneutic of rupture. The teaching of the council as advanced by John Paul and Benedict is emphatically liberal in, for instance, its embrace of democracy and its call for a new way of engagement between faith and reason. A great difference between the Lamb and Levering hermeneutic and the O’Malley hermeneutic is that the former is primarily theological and attuned to what is believed to be divinely revealed truth as it has been handed on and its understanding faithfully developed over the centuries. The O’Malley interpretation is dominantly sociological, psychological, and linguistic, aimed at demonstrating how the council moved beyond “the status quo.” For instance, O’Malley rightly notes the council’s vigorous condemnation of anti-Semitism but fails to connect that with its theological treatment of the unique relationship in God’s universal plan of salvation between the Church and the people of Israel.
There are other differences of great consequence. Whether, with Lamb and Levering, one focuses on the texts of the council or, with O’Malley, on the spirit of the council, there are interesting parallels with American legal debates between proponents of “original meaning” and proponents of “the living Constitution.” O’Malley’s living council, so to speak, is wondrously malleable in response to the spirit of the times, or what he takes to be the spirit of the times. Moreover, O’Malley’s interpretation tends to reflect a particular moment in the progressive thought of Europe and America, while Lamb and Levering have in view a universal community through time with now more than 1.2 billion members, and with most of them in the Global South. Thus O’Malley’s account is preoccupied with somewhat parochial European and North American discontents over relationships of power within the Church, while Lamb and Levering keep in view the universal mission of the Church through the centuries.
All that having been said, however, O’Malley’s book is much the better read. As Xavier Rynne and the editors of the New Yorker understood, personalities, politics, factional fights, and dark conspiracies make for high drama. Especially when combatants are cast as good liberals versus bad conservatives. More than forty years later, however, the hermeneutic of reform in continuity is prevailing, and serious readers who want to understand the significance of the council will be better served by Lamb and Levering.
This is not to deny, however, that O’Malley’s account is instructive on several scores. In the long history of church councils, Vatican II was different. While there is continuity in teaching, something remarkable really did happen at the council. The liberal proponents of a hermeneutic of rupture are not making up their argument out of whole cloth. The very calling for a council by John XXIII struck many as strange and puzzling. Unlike the reasons for earlier councils, O’Malley notes, there was no obvious crisis troubling the Church. “In fact, except in those parts of the world where Christianity was undergoing overt persecution, mainly in countries under Communist domination, the Church in the decade and a half since the end of World War II projected an image of vigor and self-confidence.” It is no secret that some at higher levels of the Roman curia thought the pope was making a big mistake, and maybe was becoming just a little dotty.
Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani was the perfect foil for the liberal interpretation of the council. His enthusiasm for the council was conspicuously contained. He was secretary of the Holy Office, later called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (Until Paul VI changed it, the pope was head of that supreme congregation, an arrangement that Benedict has de facto, if not de jure, restored.) The motto that Ottaviani chose for his coat of arms was Semper Idem ””always the same.” Like Rynne, O’Malley, and many others, Ottaviani recognized “the spirit” of the council and he didn’t like it one little bit.
As O’Malley tells it, Ottaviani and those of like mind represented a “long nineteenth century,” going back to Pius IX’s war against modernity and extending through a “reign of terror” during which Catholic thinkers trembled in fear of ecclesiastical censure for having a thought of their own. To be sure, O’Malley exaggerates, but even so orthodox a thinker as George Cardinal Pell of Australia acknowledges that something was very wrong. In the foreword to a recent book on the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, Pell writes: “Certainly most of the Scholastic manuals, written in Latin, which we studied in philosophy in the 1960s, were arid, out of date, impersonal, and mechanistic . . . . Ratzinger’s skepticism about the Thomism of the manuals was shared almost universally among the seminarians of the sixties.” That skepticism was no doubt shared by many, if not most, of the bishops who gathered for the first session of the council in 1962.
Soon the drafts for conciliar texts prepared by Ottaviani and his curial colleagues, which steadfastly adhered to the spirit of Semper Idem , were being sharply criticized, and then rejected one after another. By the second session, in 1963, O’Malley says, the assembled bishops were beginning to feel their oats, having gotten a taste of real “collegiality.” A central theme in his account is that the council witnessed a movement of authority from “the center to the periphery.” The center, of course, is the pope and the curia, with the periphery being the pastors of local churches, the bishops. He emphasizes that Vatican II eschewed the “power language” of earlier councils, with their juridical pronouncements and condemnations, preferring the “humility words” of shared responsibility in the government of the Church. At the same time, O’Malley’s story is all about power struggles between entrenched Roman conservatism and the bishops who were more accurately reading the signs of the times.
In this view, the conservatives were resisting the birth of nothing less than the third epoch of Christian history. O’Malley approvingly quotes the German Jesuit Karl Rahner, who said the first epoch was the brief period of Jewish Christianity; the second, including Hellenism and European Christianity, ran up to Vatican II; and third period, the post-council present, is the epoch of the world Church.
This is presentism on speed. It is also, and despite the global language, a very Eurocentric view of Christian history, ignoring the pre-Islamic Christianity of the Middle East and, along with it, Byzantium and most of the patristic tradition, which figures such as Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar were so mightily laboring to restore under the banner of ressourcement , or renewal. In What Happened at Vatican II , O’Malley acknowledges three dominant themes of the council” aggiornamento, ressourcement, and development of doctrine”but, in his telling, the latter two are always in the service of the first, with aggiornamento bearing a convenient resemblance to the dominant habits of thought in the Society of Jesus as embodied in institutions “in the Jesuit tradition” such as Georgetown University.
O’Malley neatly sums up the reading of Vatican II according to the hermeneutics of rupture:
It suggests, indeed, that at stake were almost two different visions of Catholicism: from commands to invitations, from laws to ideals, from definition to mystery, from threats to persuasion, from coercion to conscience, from monologue to dialogue, from ruling to serving, from withdrawn to integrated, from vertical to horizontal, from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to friendship, from rivalry to partnership, from suspicion to trust, from static to ongoing, from passive acceptance to active engagement, from fault-finding to appreciation, from prescriptive to principled, from behavior modification to inner appropriation.In almost all those pairings of different visions of Catholicism, who would not vote for the second? Clearly, the “post-Vatican II Church” wins hands down. O’Malley does not claim that the bishops in council actually voted to launch a new Catholicism. In this version of the spirit over the letter, what the council said is far less important than how it was said. The council was, he says, a “language-event.” The style is the substance is the spirit of the council. Eschewing scholastic language, “it thus moved from the dialectic of winning an argument to the dialogue of finding common ground.” In documents such as Gaudium et Spes , the council employed the genre that ancient Roman authors called ars laudandi , or the panegyric. “Panegyric,” O’Malley explains, “is the painting of an idealized portrait in order to excite admiration and appropriation.”
The modern world as portrayed by the council is one with which the Church should want to get in tune. There is merit in O’Malley’s linguistic analysis. It is striking, for instance, that, in the aftermath of the slaughters of world wars and while much of the world and of the Church was dominated by the evil empire of Soviet Communism, the council could speak in such serene terms of approbation about the modern circumstance. But it is quite another matter how or whether the language employed bears on the doctrine taught.
Some essays in the Lamb and Levering volume weigh in so heavily on the side of the hermeneutics of continuity that one might get the impression that not much happened at Vatican II. Obviously, that is not the case. After allowing that the liberal leaders at the council were sometimes elitist and manipulative, O’Malley gives this telling reflection on how the council is interpreted:
During the council, the media often pilloried “the conservatives” for obscurantism, intransigence for being out of touch, and even for dirty tricks. One thing can surely be said in their favor. They saw, or at least more straightforwardly named, the novel character and heavy consequences of some of the council’s decisions. The leaders of the majority, on the contrary, generally tried to minimize the novelty of some of their positions by insisting on their continuity with tradition. It is ironic that after Vatican II, conservative voices began insisting on the council’s continuity, whereas so-called liberals stressed its novelty.There is indeed irony, but it is not the irony that O’Malley proposes. What Happened at Vatican II is a 372-page brief for the party of novelty and discontinuity. Its author comes very close to saying explicitly what is frequently implied: that the innovationists practiced subterfuge, and they got away with it. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X are right: The council was a radical break from tradition and proposed what is, in effect, a different Catholicism. The irony is in the agreement between Lefebvre and the liberal party of discontinuity. O’Malley and those of like mind might be described as the Lefebvrists of the left.
It is almost half a century after the council. The pontificates of Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, along with the scholarly arguments represented by books such as Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition , make it evident that the hermeneutics of continuity is prevailing, if it has not already definitively prevailed. Fr. O’Malley may suspect that is the case. His book has about it the feel of a last-ditch effort to defend the story line of the post-Vatican II Church vs. the pre-Vatican II Church that was popularized by Xavier Rynne all these many years ago. The final irony is that if, in the twenty-fifth century, the Second Vatican Council is remembered as a reform council that failed, it will be the result of the combined, if unintended, efforts of the likes of Marcel Lefebvre and John O’Malley in advancing the argument that the council was a radical break from the tradition that is Catholicism. I do not expect they will succeed.
Richard John Neuhaus is editor in chief of First Things .
Monday, October 21, 2013
Pope Francis did NOT said NO to Women’s Ordination! John Paul II Said NO, DOGMATICALLY!
Pope Francis did NOT said NO to Women’s Ordination! John Paul II Said NO, DOGMATICALLY!
Many people were upset about Pope Francis answer to the question concerning women’s ordination in his interview with the journalists on the way home from WYD in Rio. Most headlines and comments said that Pope Francis said NO to women’s ordination to the priesthood. That is neither a fair nor an accurate assessment of Pope Francis’ answer to the journalist’s question.
It was NOT Pope Francis who said No to the question of women’s ordination!
It was Pope John Paul II who said NO. And he said it in such a way(with a definitive declaration), that all of his successors would be bound by the same restrictions.
Read the English translation below of what Pope Francis said.
Then I will explain EXACTLY what Pope John Paul II did to accomplished this.
Here is the English translation of the interchange that brought up the question of the women’s ordination.
—————————————————————————————————————–
Anna Ferreira: Holy Father, good evening. Thank you. I would like to say “thank you” so many times: thank you for having brought so much joy to Brazil, and thank you also for answering our questions. We, journalists, are so fond of asking questions. I would like to know, why, yesterday, you spoke to the Brazilian Bishops about women’s participation in our Church. I’d like to understand better: how should this participation be for us, women in the Church? If you … what do you think of the ordination of women? What should our position in the Church be?
Pope Francis: I would like to explain a bit what I said on the participation of women in the Church. It can’t be limited to being altar servers or presidents of Caritas, catechists … No! It must be more, but profoundly more!
Even mystically more, with what I’ve said of the theology of woman.
And, with reference to the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and she said : “No.”
John Paul II said it, but with a definitive formulation. That is closed, that door is closed.
But I’d like to say something about this. I’ve said it, but I repeat it. Our Lady, Mary, was more important than the Apostles, than bishops, deacons and priests.
In the Church, woman is more important than bishops and priests; how, it’s what we must seek to make more explicit, because theological explicitness about this is lacking. Thank you.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Pope Francis’ words concerning women’s ordination were,
“And, with reference to the ordination of women
the Church has spoken
and she said : “No.”
John Paul II said it,
but with a definitive formulation.
That is closed, that door is closed.”
———–
Most people just heard the word ‘NO” in that answer.
And judging by the articles, the media also seems to have only heard the word “No” ( which may be part of the reason why most people heard it that way.).
BUT, what does that answer mean exactly?
Why did Pope Francis say that the Church has spoken and she said no?
His next sentence EXPLAINS how the Church has already addressed this issue and said no;
“John Paul II said it, but with a definitive formulation.”
——————
Most of us would not understand how this explains that the CHURCH HAS SPOKEN AND SHE SAID NO.
Most of us would not realize exactly what Pope Francis was referring to
when he said that John Paul II had said it.
AND most of us would not understand what Pope Francis meant
by the phrase ‘a definitive formulation’.
The explanation for this short but very full and very concise answer:
A Definitive Formulation is the formula used by a pope for speaking ‘ex cathedra’, that is, speaking from the chair of Peter. Speaking from the chair of Peter, ex cathedra, is considered to be infallible.
As stated in Vatican I , speaking ex cathedra means that
◾it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra,
◾he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church,
◾and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable.
◾it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra,
◾he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church,
◾and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable.
The conditions required(the definitive formulation) for ex cathedra teaching are also mentioned in this Vatican decree. (These are listed at the end of this 'paper'.)
In his Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, issued on May 22, 1994,
John Paul II used this ‘definitive formula’ for ex cathedra to state that
'the Catholic priesthood is reserved to men and that the Church cannot ever ordain women.'
SO, THE ANSWER THAT POPE FRANCIS GAVE ON THE SUBJECT ON WOMEN’S ORDINATION was actually referring to the fact that John Paul II had unequivocally defined that the Catholic priesthood is reserved to men alone as an unchangeable, 'infallible' doctrine of the faith .
Since doctrines are considered to be part of the ‘deposit of faith’, they CANNOT be changed.”
Therefore, Pope Francis said, “The Church has spoken and she said no. John Paul II said it."
And THAT is why he said,
“That is closed, that door is closed.”
(Note: Disciplines are not considered to be part of the deposit of faith and these can be changed. The doctrines of the Church are considered to be part of the 'deposit of faith' and cannot be changed in the Catholic Church.)
Pope Francis did NOT close the door on women’s ordination!
It was already closed before he got there.
The door was closed by John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter, Orinatio Sacerdotalis.
Here is a description of the Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalisit taken from the website , The Evangelization Station .
"This may have been John Paul II’s most controversial apostolic letter. In it he announced “in a definitive mode” that the Catholic priesthood is reserved to men, and therefore the Church cannot ever ordain women. By making this announcement in these unquestionable terms, the Pope made it clear that his successors would be bound by the same restriction, since the all-male priesthood was established not by human rules by divine command."
.
Here is the actual statement(underlined below), taken from the Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, that reserves the Catholic priesthood to men alone stating that the Church has NO authority to confer priestly ordination onto women:
“Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
======================================================================
Below, I have copied the Apostolic Letter,Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (with a brief introduction) and the pertinent excerpts from Vatican I documents on infallibility and the conditions required for ex cathedra teaching (the definitive formula).-======================================================================
In this Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II INTENTIONALLY made a definitive statement that the Catholic priesthood is reserved to men. He used the formula (as defined in the First Vatican Council) for teaching 'ex cathedra'.
Ex cathedra makes this an INFALLIBLE doctrine of faith .
(Speaking, ‘ex cathedra’, from the chair (of Peter), defines the statement made by the pope to be infallible DOGMA!)
====================
(all emphasis, italics and highlighting in the Apostolic Letter below are mine)
APOSTOLIC LETTER ORDINATIO SACERDOTALIS OF JOHN PAUL II TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON RESERVING PRIESTLY ORDINATION TO MEN ALONE
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate,
1. Priestly ordination, which hands on the office entrusted by Christ to his Apostles of teaching, sanctifying and governing the faithful, has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone. This tradition has also been faithfully maintained by the Oriental Churches.
When the question of the ordination of women arose in the Anglican Communion, Pope Paul VI, out of fidelity to his office of safeguarding the Apostolic Tradition, and also with a view to removing a new obstacle placed in the way of Christian unity, reminded Anglicans of the position of the Catholic Church: “She holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God’s plan for his Church.”(1)
But since the question had also become the subject of debate among theologians and in certain Catholic circles, Paul VI directed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to set forth and expound the teaching of the Church on this matter. This was done through the Declaration Inter Insigniores, which the Supreme Pontiff approved and ordered to be published.(2)
2. The Declaration recalls and explains the fundamental reasons for this teaching, reasons expounded by Paul VI, and concludes that the Church “does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination.”(3) To these fundamental reasons the document adds other theological reasons which illustrate the appropriateness of the divine provision, and it also shows clearly that Christ’s way of acting did not proceed from sociological or cultural motives peculiar to his time. As Paul VI later explained: “The real reason is that, in giving the Church her fundamental constitution, her theological anthropology-thereafter always followed by the Church’s Tradition- Christ established things in this way.”(4)
In the Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, I myself wrote in this regard: “In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behavior, he emphasized the dignity and the vocation of women, without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time.”(5)
In fact the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles attest that this call was made in accordance with God’s eternal plan; Christ chose those whom he willed (cf. Mk 3:13-14; Jn 6:70), and he did so in union with the Father, “through the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:2), after having spent the night in prayer (cf. Lk 6:12). Therefore, in granting admission to the ministerial priesthood,(6) the Church has always acknowledged as a perennial norm her Lord’s way of acting in choosing the twelve men whom he made the foundation of his Church (cf. Rv 21:14). These men did not in fact receive only a function which could thereafter be exercised by any member of the Church; rather they were specifically and intimately associated in the mission of the Incarnate Word himself (cf. Mt 10:1, 7-8; 28:16-20; Mk 3:13-16; 16:14-15). The Apostles did the same when they chose fellow workers(7) who would succeed them in their ministry.(8) Also included in this choice were those who, throughout the time of the Church, would carry on the Apostles’ mission of representing Christ the Lord and Redeemer.(9)
3. Furthermore, the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, received neither the mission proper to the Apostles nor the ministerial priesthood clearly shows that the non-admission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them. Rather, it is to be seen as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe.
The presence and the role of women in the life and mission of the Church, although not linked to the ministerial priesthood, remain absolutely necessary and irreplaceable. As the Declaration Inter Insigniores points out, “the Church desires that Christian women should become fully aware of the greatness of their mission: today their role is of capital importance both for the renewal and humanization of society and for the rediscovery by believers of the true face of the Church.”(10)
The New Testament and the whole history of the Church give ample evidence of the presence in the Church of women, true disciples, witnesses to Christ in the family and in society, as well as in total consecration to the service of God and of the Gospel. “By defending the dignity of women and their vocation, the Church has shown honor and gratitude for those women who-faithful to the Gospel-have shared in every age in the apostolic mission of the whole People of God. They are the holy martyrs, virgins and mothers of families, who bravely bore witness to their faith and passed on the Church’s faith and tradition by bringing up their children in the spirit of the Gospel.”(11)
Moreover, it is to the holiness of the faithful that the hierarchical structure of the Church is totally ordered. For this reason, the Declaration Inter Insigniores recalls: “the only better gift, which can and must be desired, is love (cf. 1 Cor 12 and 13). The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not the ministers but the saints.”(12)
4. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.
Invoking an abundance of divine assistance upon you, venerable brothers, and upon all the faithful, I impart my apostolic blessing.
From the Vatican, on May 22, the Solemnity of Pentecost, in the year 1994, the sixteenth of my Pontificate.
NOTES
1. Paul VI, Response to the Letter of His Grace the Most Reverend Dr. F.D. Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, concerning the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood (November 30, 1975); AAS 68 (1976), 599.
2. Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Inter Insigniores on the question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (October 15, 1976): AAS 69 (1977), 98-116.
3. Ibid., 100.
4. Paul VI, Address on the Role of Women in the Plan of Salvation (January 30, 1977): Insegnamenti, XV (1977), 111. Cf. Also John Paul II Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici (December 30, 1988), n. 51: AAS 81 (1989), 393-521; Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1577.
5. Apsotolic Letter Mulieris Dignnitatem (August 15, 1988), n. 26: AAS 80 (1988), 1715.
6. Cf. Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, n. 28 Decree Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 2b.
7. Cf. 1 Tm 3:1-13; 2 Tm 1:6; Ti 1:5-9.
8. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1577.
9. Cf. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, nn. 20,21.
10. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Inter Insigniores, n. 6: AAS 69 (1977), 115-116.
11. Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, n. 27: AAS 80 (1988), 1719.
12. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Inter Insigniores n. 6: AAS 69 (1977), 115.
==================================================================================================
Ex Cathedra is (infallibly) defined in the First Vatican Council.
Dogmatic Definition of 1870
Vatican Council, Sess. IV, Const. de Ecclesiâ Christi, c. iv, holds:
We teach and define that it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable.
The conditions required for ex cathedra teaching are mentioned in the Vatican decree:
◾The pontiff must teach in his public and official capacity as spiritual head of the Church universal, not merely in his private capacity as a theologian.
◾He must be teaching some doctrine of faith or morals in a manner that explicitly and solemnly defines an issue.
◾His teaching cannot contradict anything the Church has taught officially and previously.
◾It must be evident that he intends to teach with his supreme Apostolic authority. In other words, he must convey his wish to determine some point of doctrine in an absolutely final and irrevocable way. There are well-recognized formulas that are used to express this intention, such as “We declare, decree and define, . . .”.
◾It must be clear that the Pope intends to bind the whole Church. Unless the Pope formally addresses the whole Church in the recognized official way, he is assumed to not intend his teaching to be ex cathedra and infallible (unless he is reiterating what has always been taught).
◾There will be an anathema attached to the definition that outlines consequences for not assenting to it. For ex., in Pope Pius XII’s infallible definition regarding the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, there are attached these words, viz: “Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.”
◾The pontiff must teach in his public and official capacity as spiritual head of the Church universal, not merely in his private capacity as a theologian.
◾He must be teaching some doctrine of faith or morals in a manner that explicitly and solemnly defines an issue.
◾His teaching cannot contradict anything the Church has taught officially and previously.
◾It must be evident that he intends to teach with his supreme Apostolic authority. In other words, he must convey his wish to determine some point of doctrine in an absolutely final and irrevocable way. There are well-recognized formulas that are used to express this intention, such as “We declare, decree and define, . . .”.
◾It must be clear that the Pope intends to bind the whole Church. Unless the Pope formally addresses the whole Church in the recognized official way, he is assumed to not intend his teaching to be ex cathedra and infallible (unless he is reiterating what has always been taught).
◾There will be an anathema attached to the definition that outlines consequences for not assenting to it. For ex., in Pope Pius XII’s infallible definition regarding the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, there are attached these words, viz: “Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.”
DILECTI AMICI
DILECTI AMICI
Mary
World Youth Days
Novenas
In Memory of Me
Go in Peace
To be a Pilgrim
Journeys of Faith
Viva Papa Francisco
Papa Benedetto, We Love You too
Blessed John Paul II, We Love You
The Incredibles
Man for Others
Catechesis with BXVI
The Rosary
Divine Mercy
Stations of the Cross
3 2us
Mission Jesus
Sunday Evangelium
In the Family
Catholic Catechism
Philosophy and Faith
Word on the Street
TOP CHAT
Does God have a sense of humour
Talks 2us
The Real Christmas
Journey to Freedom
Mind the Gap
- in English, French, German, Italian, Latin & Spanish
Part 1 ♦ - Part 2 ♦
Dear Friends, Good wishes for International Youth Year
1. "Always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you".
This is the exhortation that I address to you young people at the beginning of the present year. 1985 has been proclaimed by the United Nations Organization International Youth Year, and this is of great significance, first of all for yourselves, and also for people of all ages-individuals, communities and the whole of society. It is of particular significance also for the Church, as the custodian of fundamental truths and values and at the same time as the minister of the eternal destinies that man the great human family have in God himself.
Since man is the fundamental and at the same time the daily way of the Church, it is easy to understand why the Church attributes special importance to the period of youth as a key stage in the life of every human being. You young people are the ones who embody this youth: you are the youth of the nations and societies, the youth of every family and of all humanity; you are also the youth of the Church. We are all looking to you, for all of us, thanks to you, in a certain sense continually become young again. So your youth is not just your own property, your personal property or the property of a generation: it belongs to the whole of that space that every man traverses in his life's journey, and at the same time it is a special possession belonging to everyone. It is a possession of humanity itself.
In you there is hope, for you belong to the future, just as the future belongs to you. For hope is always linked to the future; it is the expectation of "future good things". As a Christian virtue, it is linked to the expectation of those eternal good things which God has promised to man in Jesus Christ. And at the same time, this hope, as both a Christian and a human virtue, is the expectation of the good things which man will build, using the talents given him by Providence.
In this sense the future belongs to you young people, just as it once belonged to the generation of those who are now adults, and precisely together with them it has become the present reality. Responsibility for this present reality and for its shape and many different forms lies first of all with adults. To you belongs responsibility for what will one day become reality together with yourselves, but which still lies in the future.
When we say that the future belongs to you, we are thinking in categories of human impermanence, which is always a journey towards the future. When we say that the future depends on you, we are thinking in ethical categories, according to the demands of moral responsibility, which requires us to attribute to man as a person-and to the communities and societies which are made up of persons-the fundamental value of human acts, resolves, undertaking and intentions.
This dimension is also a dimension proper to Christian and human hope. And in this dimension the first and principal wish that the Church expresses for you young people, through my lips, in this Year dedicated to Youth, is this: that you should "always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you".
Christ speaks to young people
2. These words, once written by the Apostle Peter to the first generation of Christians, have a relationship with the whole of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we shall see this relationship more clearly when we meditate upon Christ's conversation with the young man, recorded by the Evangelists. Among the many texts of the Bible this is the one that especially deserves to be recalled at this point.
To the question: "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?", Jesus replies first with the question: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone". Then he goes on: "You know the commandments: 'Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour your father and mother'". With these words Jesus reminds his questioner of some of the main commandments of the Decalogue.
But the conversation does not end here. For the young man declares: "Teacher, all these things I have observed from my youth". Then, writes the Evangelist, "Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said to him, 'You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'"
At this point the atmosphere of the meeting changes. The Evangelist writes that "at that saying his countenance fell, and he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions."
There are still other Gospel passages in which Jesus of Nazareth meets young people - particularly evocative are the two raisings from the dead: of the daughter of Jairus and of the son of the widow of Nain - but we can say without hesitation that the conversation mentioned above is the meeting which is the most complete and richest in content. It can also be said that this meeting has a more universal and timeless character, in other words that in a certain sense it holds good constantly and continually, throughout the centuries and generations. Christ speaks in this way to a young person, a boy or a girl; his conversation takes place in different parts of the world, in the midst of the different nations, races and cultures. Each of you in this conversation is potentially the one he will speak to.
At the same time, all the elements of the description and all the words uttered in that conversation by both sides have a significance which is absolutely essential, and have a specific weight. One can say that these words contain a particularly profound truth about man in general, and, above all, the truth about youth. They are really important for young people.
Permit me therefore to link my reflections in the present Letter mainly to this meeting and this Gospel text. Perhaps in this way it will be easier for you to develop your own conversation with Christ - a conversation which is of fundamental and essential importance for a young person.
Youth is a special treasure
3. We shall begin from what we find at the end of the Gospel text. The young man goes away sorrowful, "for he had great possessions".
There is no doubt that this expression refers to the material possessions of which the young man was owner or heir. Perhaps this is the situation of some, but it is not typical. And therefore the Evangelist's words suggest another way of putting the matter: it is a question of the fact that youth is in itself (independently of any material goods) a special treasure of man, of a young man or woman, and most often it is lived by young people as a specific treasure. I say most often, but not always, not invariably, for in the world there is no lack of people who for various reasons to not experience youth as a treasure. We shall have to speak of this separately.
There are however reasons - and they are also objective reasons - for thinking of youth as a special treasure that a person experiences at this particular period of his or her life. It is a period which is certainly distinguished from the period of childhood (it is precisely the time when one leaves the years of childhood), just as it is also distinguished from the period of full maturity. For the period of youth is the time of a particularly intense discovery of the human "I" and of the properties and capacities connected with it. Before the inner gaze of the developing personality of the - young man or woman, there is gradually and successively revealed that specific and in a sense unique and unrepeatable potentiality of a concrete humanity, in which there is as it were inscribed the whole plan of future life. Life presents itself as the carrying-out of that plan: as "self-fulfillment" .
The question naturally deserves an explanation from many points of view; but to express it in a few words, one can say that the treasure which is youth reveals itself in precisely this shape or form. This is the treasure of discovering and at the same time of organizing, choosing, foreseeing and making the first personal decisions, decisions that will be important for the future in the strictly personal dimension of human existence. At the same time, these decisions are of considerable social importance. The young man in the Gospel was precisely in this existential phase, as we can deduce from the questions he asks in his conversation with Jesus. Therefore also the final words about "great possessions" - meaning wealth - can be understood precisely in this sense: the treasure which is youth itself.
But we must ask the question: does this treasure of youth necessarily alienate man from Christ? The Evangelist certainly does not say this: rather, an examination of the text leads us to a different conclusion. The decision to go away from Christ was definitively influenced only by external riches, what the young man possessed ("possessions"). Not by what he was! What he was, as precisely a young man - the interior treasure hidden in youth - had led him to Jesus. And it had also impelled him to ask those questions which in the clearest way concern the plan for the whole of life. What must I do? "What must I do to inherit eternal life?". What must I do so that my life may have full value and full meaning?
The youth of each one of you, dear friends, is a treasure that is manifested precisely in these questions. Man asks himself these questions throughout his life. But in the time of youth they are particularly urgent, indeed insistent. And it is good that this is so. These questions precisely show the dynamism of the development of the human personality, the dynamism which is proper to your age. You ask yourselves these questions sometimes with impatience, and at the same time you yourselves understand that the reply to them cannot be hurried or superficial the reply must have a specific and definitive weight. It is a question here of a reply that concerns the whole of life, that embraces the whole of human existence.
These essential questions are asked in a special way by those members of your generation whose lives have been weighed down since childhood by suffering: by some physical lack or defect, some handicap or limitation, or by a difficult family or social situation. If at the same time their minds develop normally, the question about the meaning and value of life becomes for them all the more essential and also particularly tragic, for from the very beginning the question is marked by the pain of existence. And how many such young people there are among the multitudes of young people all over the world! In the different nations and societies; in individual families! How many are forced from childhood to live in an institution or hospital, condemned to a certain passivity which can make them begin to feel that they are of no use to humanity!
So can we say that their youth too is a interior treasure? To whom should we put this question? To whom should they put this essential question? It seems that here Christ alone is the competent one to ask, the one whom no one can fully replace.
God is Love
4. Christ replies to the young man in the Gospel. He says: "No one is good but God alone". We have already heard what the young man had asked: "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?". How must I act so that my life will have meaning and value? We could translate his question into the language of our own times. In this context Christ's answer means this: only God is the ultimate basis of all values; only he gives the definitive meaning to our human existence.
Only God is good, which means this: in him and him alone all values have their first source and final completion; he is "the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end". Only in him do values and their authenticity and definitive confirmation. Without him - without the reference to God - the whole world of created values remains as it were suspended in an absolute vacuum. It also loses its transparency, its expressiveness. Evil is put forward as a good and good itself is rejected. Are we not shown this by the very experience of our own time, wherever God has been removed beyond the limits of evaluations, estimations and actions?
Why is God alone good? Because he is love. Christ gives this answer in the words of the Gospel, and above all by the witness of his own life and death: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son". God is good precisely because he "is love".
Mary
Dilecti Amici - Dear Friends
Blessed John Paul II's Apostolic Letter to the Youth of the world in the International Year for Young People, given on Palm Sunday 1985, at the very beginning of World Youth Days.- in English, French, German, Italian, Latin & Spanish
Part 1 ♦ - Part 2 ♦
Dear Friends, Good wishes for International Youth Year
1. "Always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you".
This is the exhortation that I address to you young people at the beginning of the present year. 1985 has been proclaimed by the United Nations Organization International Youth Year, and this is of great significance, first of all for yourselves, and also for people of all ages-individuals, communities and the whole of society. It is of particular significance also for the Church, as the custodian of fundamental truths and values and at the same time as the minister of the eternal destinies that man the great human family have in God himself.
Since man is the fundamental and at the same time the daily way of the Church, it is easy to understand why the Church attributes special importance to the period of youth as a key stage in the life of every human being. You young people are the ones who embody this youth: you are the youth of the nations and societies, the youth of every family and of all humanity; you are also the youth of the Church. We are all looking to you, for all of us, thanks to you, in a certain sense continually become young again. So your youth is not just your own property, your personal property or the property of a generation: it belongs to the whole of that space that every man traverses in his life's journey, and at the same time it is a special possession belonging to everyone. It is a possession of humanity itself.
In you there is hope, for you belong to the future, just as the future belongs to you. For hope is always linked to the future; it is the expectation of "future good things". As a Christian virtue, it is linked to the expectation of those eternal good things which God has promised to man in Jesus Christ. And at the same time, this hope, as both a Christian and a human virtue, is the expectation of the good things which man will build, using the talents given him by Providence.
In this sense the future belongs to you young people, just as it once belonged to the generation of those who are now adults, and precisely together with them it has become the present reality. Responsibility for this present reality and for its shape and many different forms lies first of all with adults. To you belongs responsibility for what will one day become reality together with yourselves, but which still lies in the future.
When we say that the future belongs to you, we are thinking in categories of human impermanence, which is always a journey towards the future. When we say that the future depends on you, we are thinking in ethical categories, according to the demands of moral responsibility, which requires us to attribute to man as a person-and to the communities and societies which are made up of persons-the fundamental value of human acts, resolves, undertaking and intentions.
This dimension is also a dimension proper to Christian and human hope. And in this dimension the first and principal wish that the Church expresses for you young people, through my lips, in this Year dedicated to Youth, is this: that you should "always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you".
Christ speaks to young people
2. These words, once written by the Apostle Peter to the first generation of Christians, have a relationship with the whole of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we shall see this relationship more clearly when we meditate upon Christ's conversation with the young man, recorded by the Evangelists. Among the many texts of the Bible this is the one that especially deserves to be recalled at this point.
To the question: "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?", Jesus replies first with the question: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone". Then he goes on: "You know the commandments: 'Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour your father and mother'". With these words Jesus reminds his questioner of some of the main commandments of the Decalogue.
But the conversation does not end here. For the young man declares: "Teacher, all these things I have observed from my youth". Then, writes the Evangelist, "Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said to him, 'You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'"
At this point the atmosphere of the meeting changes. The Evangelist writes that "at that saying his countenance fell, and he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions."
There are still other Gospel passages in which Jesus of Nazareth meets young people - particularly evocative are the two raisings from the dead: of the daughter of Jairus and of the son of the widow of Nain - but we can say without hesitation that the conversation mentioned above is the meeting which is the most complete and richest in content. It can also be said that this meeting has a more universal and timeless character, in other words that in a certain sense it holds good constantly and continually, throughout the centuries and generations. Christ speaks in this way to a young person, a boy or a girl; his conversation takes place in different parts of the world, in the midst of the different nations, races and cultures. Each of you in this conversation is potentially the one he will speak to.
At the same time, all the elements of the description and all the words uttered in that conversation by both sides have a significance which is absolutely essential, and have a specific weight. One can say that these words contain a particularly profound truth about man in general, and, above all, the truth about youth. They are really important for young people.
Permit me therefore to link my reflections in the present Letter mainly to this meeting and this Gospel text. Perhaps in this way it will be easier for you to develop your own conversation with Christ - a conversation which is of fundamental and essential importance for a young person.
Youth is a special treasure
3. We shall begin from what we find at the end of the Gospel text. The young man goes away sorrowful, "for he had great possessions".
There is no doubt that this expression refers to the material possessions of which the young man was owner or heir. Perhaps this is the situation of some, but it is not typical. And therefore the Evangelist's words suggest another way of putting the matter: it is a question of the fact that youth is in itself (independently of any material goods) a special treasure of man, of a young man or woman, and most often it is lived by young people as a specific treasure. I say most often, but not always, not invariably, for in the world there is no lack of people who for various reasons to not experience youth as a treasure. We shall have to speak of this separately.
There are however reasons - and they are also objective reasons - for thinking of youth as a special treasure that a person experiences at this particular period of his or her life. It is a period which is certainly distinguished from the period of childhood (it is precisely the time when one leaves the years of childhood), just as it is also distinguished from the period of full maturity. For the period of youth is the time of a particularly intense discovery of the human "I" and of the properties and capacities connected with it. Before the inner gaze of the developing personality of the - young man or woman, there is gradually and successively revealed that specific and in a sense unique and unrepeatable potentiality of a concrete humanity, in which there is as it were inscribed the whole plan of future life. Life presents itself as the carrying-out of that plan: as "self-fulfillment" .
The question naturally deserves an explanation from many points of view; but to express it in a few words, one can say that the treasure which is youth reveals itself in precisely this shape or form. This is the treasure of discovering and at the same time of organizing, choosing, foreseeing and making the first personal decisions, decisions that will be important for the future in the strictly personal dimension of human existence. At the same time, these decisions are of considerable social importance. The young man in the Gospel was precisely in this existential phase, as we can deduce from the questions he asks in his conversation with Jesus. Therefore also the final words about "great possessions" - meaning wealth - can be understood precisely in this sense: the treasure which is youth itself.
But we must ask the question: does this treasure of youth necessarily alienate man from Christ? The Evangelist certainly does not say this: rather, an examination of the text leads us to a different conclusion. The decision to go away from Christ was definitively influenced only by external riches, what the young man possessed ("possessions"). Not by what he was! What he was, as precisely a young man - the interior treasure hidden in youth - had led him to Jesus. And it had also impelled him to ask those questions which in the clearest way concern the plan for the whole of life. What must I do? "What must I do to inherit eternal life?". What must I do so that my life may have full value and full meaning?
The youth of each one of you, dear friends, is a treasure that is manifested precisely in these questions. Man asks himself these questions throughout his life. But in the time of youth they are particularly urgent, indeed insistent. And it is good that this is so. These questions precisely show the dynamism of the development of the human personality, the dynamism which is proper to your age. You ask yourselves these questions sometimes with impatience, and at the same time you yourselves understand that the reply to them cannot be hurried or superficial the reply must have a specific and definitive weight. It is a question here of a reply that concerns the whole of life, that embraces the whole of human existence.
These essential questions are asked in a special way by those members of your generation whose lives have been weighed down since childhood by suffering: by some physical lack or defect, some handicap or limitation, or by a difficult family or social situation. If at the same time their minds develop normally, the question about the meaning and value of life becomes for them all the more essential and also particularly tragic, for from the very beginning the question is marked by the pain of existence. And how many such young people there are among the multitudes of young people all over the world! In the different nations and societies; in individual families! How many are forced from childhood to live in an institution or hospital, condemned to a certain passivity which can make them begin to feel that they are of no use to humanity!
So can we say that their youth too is a interior treasure? To whom should we put this question? To whom should they put this essential question? It seems that here Christ alone is the competent one to ask, the one whom no one can fully replace.
God is Love
4. Christ replies to the young man in the Gospel. He says: "No one is good but God alone". We have already heard what the young man had asked: "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?". How must I act so that my life will have meaning and value? We could translate his question into the language of our own times. In this context Christ's answer means this: only God is the ultimate basis of all values; only he gives the definitive meaning to our human existence.
Only God is good, which means this: in him and him alone all values have their first source and final completion; he is "the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end". Only in him do values and their authenticity and definitive confirmation. Without him - without the reference to God - the whole world of created values remains as it were suspended in an absolute vacuum. It also loses its transparency, its expressiveness. Evil is put forward as a good and good itself is rejected. Are we not shown this by the very experience of our own time, wherever God has been removed beyond the limits of evaluations, estimations and actions?
Why is God alone good? Because he is love. Christ gives this answer in the words of the Gospel, and above all by the witness of his own life and death: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son". God is good precisely because he "is love".
As we have said, the question about the value of life, about the meaning of life, forms part of the singular treasure of youth. It comes from the very heart of the riches and the anxieties linked with that plan for life that must be undertaken and carried out. Still more so, when youth is tested by personal suffering, or is profoundly aware of the suffering of others; when it experiences a powerful shock at the sight of the many kinds of evil that exist in the world; finally, when it comes face to face with the mystery of sin, of human iniquity (mysterium iniquitatis). Christ's reply is this: "Only God is good"; only God is love. This reply may seem difficult, but at the same time it is firm and it is true; it bears within itself the definitive solution. How I pray that you, my young friends, will hear Christ's reply in the most personal way possible; that you will and the interior path which enables you to grasp it, accept it and undertake its accomplishment!
Such is Christ in the conversation with the young man. Such is Christ in the conversation with each of you. When you say:"Good Teacher", he asks: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone". And therefore: the fact that I am good bears witness to God. "He who has seen me has seen the Father." Thus speaks Christ, the teacher and friend, Christ crucified and risen: always the same yesterday and today and for ever.
This is the kernel, the essential point of the reply to these questions which you young people put to him through the treasure which is within you, which is rooted in your youth. Your youth opens different prospects before you; it offers you as a task the plan for the whole of your lives. Hence the question about values; hence the question about the meaning of life, about truth, about good and evil. When Christ in his reply to you tells you to refer all this to God, at the same time he shows you what the source and foundation of this is in yourselves. For each one of you is the image and likeness of God through the very act of creation. Precisely this image and likeness makes you put the questions that you must ask yourselves. These questions show how man without God cannot understand himself, and cannot even fulfil himself without God. Jesus Christ came into the world first of all in order to make each one of us aware of this. Without him this fundamental dimension of the truth about man would easily sink into obscurity. However, "the light has come into the world", "and the darkness has not overcome it".
The question about eternal life
5. What must I do so that my life may have value, have meaning? This earnest question comes from the lips of the young man in the Gospel in the following form: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Is a person who puts the question in this form speaking a language still intelligible to the people of today? Are we not the generation whose horizon of existence is completely filled by the world and temporal progress? We think primarily in earthly categories. If we go beyond the limits of our planet, we do so in order to launch interplanetary flights, transmit signals to the other planets and send cosmic probes in their direction.
All this has become the content of our modern civilization. Science together with technology has discovered in an incomparable way man's possibilities with regard to matter, and they have also succeeded in dominating the interior world of his thoughts, capacities, tendencies and passions.
But at the same time it is clear that, when we place ourselves in the presence of Christ, when he becomes the confidant of the questionings of our youth, we cannot put the question differently from how that young man put it: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Any other question about the meaning and value of our life would be, in the presence of Christ, insufficient and unessential.
For Christ is not only the "good teacher" who shows the paths of life on earth. He is the witness to that definitive destiny which the human person has in God himself. He is the witness to man's immortality. The Gospel which he proclaimed with his lips is definitively sealed by the Cross and the Resurrection in the Paschal Mystery. "Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him". In his Resurrection Christ has also become the permanent "sign of contradiction" before all programmes incapable of leading man beyond the frontier of death. Indeed at this frontier they silence all man's questionings about the value and meaning of life. In the face of all these programmes, the various ways of looking at the world and the various ideologies, Christ constantly repeats: "I am the resurrection and the life."
And so, dear brothers and dear sisters, if you wish to talk to Christ and to accept all the truth of his testimony, you must on the one hand "love the world" - for God "so loved the world that he gave his only Son" - and at the same time you must acquire interior detachment with regard to all this rich and fascinating reality that makes up "the world". You must make up your mind to ask the question about eternal life. For, the form of this world is passing away", and each of us is subject to this passing. Man is born with the prospect of the day of his death in the dimension of the visible world; at the same time, man, whose interior reason for existence is to go beyond himself, also bears within himself everything whereby he goes beyond the world.
Everything whereby man, in himself, goes beyond the world - though he is rooted in it - is explained by the image and likeness of God which is inscribed in humanity from the beginning. And everything whereby man goes beyond the world not only justifies the question about eternal life but in fact makes it indispensable. This is the question that people have long been asking themselves, not only in the sphere of Christianity but also outside it. You too must find the courage to ask it, like the young man in the Gospel. Christianity teaches us to understand temporal existence from the perspective of the Kingdom of God, from the perspective of eternal life. Without eternal life, temporal existence, however rich, however highly developed in all aspects, in the end brings man nothing other than the ineluctable necessity of death.
Now there is an opposition between youth and death. Death seems far distant from youth. And it is. But since youth means the plan for the whole of life - the plan drawn up in accordance with the criterion of meaning and value during youth too it is essential to ask the question about the end. Human experience left to itself says the same as Sacred Scripture: "It is appointed for men to die once". The inspired writer adds: "And after that comes judgment". And Christ says: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die". So ask Christ, like the young man in the Gospel: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
On morality and conscience
6. To this question Jesus replies: "You know the commandments", and he immediately lists these commandments, which form part of the Decalogue. Moses received them one day on Mount Sinai, at the moment of the Covenant of God with Israel. They were written on tablets of stone and for every Israelite were the daily indication of the path to be taken. The young man who speaks to Christ naturally knows by heart the commandments of the Decalogue; indeed, he can declare with joy: "All these things I have observed from my youth."
We have to presuppose that in the dialogue which Christ develops with each one of you young people the same question is repeated: "Do you know the commandments?" It will be infallibly repeated, because the commandments form part of the Covenant between God and humanity. The commandments determine the essential bases of behavior, decide the moral value of human acts, and remain in organic relationship with man's vocation to eternal life, with the establishment of God's Kingdom in people and among people. In the words of divine Revelation is inscribed the clear code of morality, of which the tablets of the Decalogue of Mount Sinai remain the key- point, and the culmination of which is found in the Gospel: in the Sermon on the Mount and in the commandment of love.
At the same time this code of morality is written in yet another form. It is inscribed in the moral conscience of humanity, in such a way that those who do not know the commandments, in other words the law revealed by God, "are a law to themselves". Thus writes Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans, and he immediately adds: "They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness".
Here we touch upon matters of supreme importance for your youth and for that plan of life that emerges from it.
This plan accepts the prospect of eternal life first of all through the truth of the deeds on which it will be built. This truth of deeds has its foundation in that twofold presentation of the moral law: the one written on the tablets of the Decalogue of Moses and in the Gospel, and the one inscribed in man's moral conscience. And the conscience "presents itself as a witness" to that law, as Saint Paul writes. This conscience - in the words of the Letter to the Romans - is the "conflicting thoughts" which "accuse or perhaps excuse them". Everyone knows how closely these words correspond to our interior reality: each of us from our youth experiences the voice of conscience.
Therefore when Jesus, in his conversation with the young man, lists the commandments: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour your father and mother", the upright conscience responds with an interior reaction to man's corresponding deeds: it accuses or excuses. But the conscience must not be distorted; the fundamental formulation of the principles of morality must not surrender to deformation by any kind of relativism or utilitarianism.
Dear young friends! The response which Jesus gives to his questioner in the Gospel is addressed to each one of you. Christ asks you about the state of your moral awareness, and at the same time he questions you about the state of your conscience. This is a key question for man: it is the fundamental question of your youth, one that concerns the whole plan of life which must be formed precisely in youth. Its value is the one most closely connected with the relationship of each of you with moral good and evil. The value of this plan depends in an essential way on the authenticity and rectitude of your conscience. It also depends on its sensitivity.
So we find ourselves here at a crucial moment, when at every step time and eternity meet at a level which is proper to man. It is the level of the conscience, the level of moral values: the conscience is the most important dimension of time and history. For history is written not only by the events which in a certain sense happen "from outside"; it is written first of all "from within": it is the history of human consciences, of moral victories and defeats. Here too the essential greatness of man finds its foundation: his authentically human dignity. This is that interior treasure whereby man continually goes beyond himself in the direction of eternity. If it is true that "it is established that people would die only once", it is also true that man carries with him the treasure of conscience, the deposit of good and evil, across the frontier of death, in order that, in the sight of him who is holiness itself, he may find the ultimate and definitive truth about his whole life: "after that comes judgment".
This is just what happens in the conscience: in the interior truth of our acts, in a certain sense, there is constantly present the dimension of eternal life. And simultaneously the same conscience, through moral values, imprints the most expressive seal upon the life of the generations, upon the history and culture of human environments, societies, nations and of all humanity.
In this field how much depends on each one of you!
Such is Christ in the conversation with the young man. Such is Christ in the conversation with each of you. When you say:"Good Teacher", he asks: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone". And therefore: the fact that I am good bears witness to God. "He who has seen me has seen the Father." Thus speaks Christ, the teacher and friend, Christ crucified and risen: always the same yesterday and today and for ever.
This is the kernel, the essential point of the reply to these questions which you young people put to him through the treasure which is within you, which is rooted in your youth. Your youth opens different prospects before you; it offers you as a task the plan for the whole of your lives. Hence the question about values; hence the question about the meaning of life, about truth, about good and evil. When Christ in his reply to you tells you to refer all this to God, at the same time he shows you what the source and foundation of this is in yourselves. For each one of you is the image and likeness of God through the very act of creation. Precisely this image and likeness makes you put the questions that you must ask yourselves. These questions show how man without God cannot understand himself, and cannot even fulfil himself without God. Jesus Christ came into the world first of all in order to make each one of us aware of this. Without him this fundamental dimension of the truth about man would easily sink into obscurity. However, "the light has come into the world", "and the darkness has not overcome it".
The question about eternal life
5. What must I do so that my life may have value, have meaning? This earnest question comes from the lips of the young man in the Gospel in the following form: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Is a person who puts the question in this form speaking a language still intelligible to the people of today? Are we not the generation whose horizon of existence is completely filled by the world and temporal progress? We think primarily in earthly categories. If we go beyond the limits of our planet, we do so in order to launch interplanetary flights, transmit signals to the other planets and send cosmic probes in their direction.
All this has become the content of our modern civilization. Science together with technology has discovered in an incomparable way man's possibilities with regard to matter, and they have also succeeded in dominating the interior world of his thoughts, capacities, tendencies and passions.
But at the same time it is clear that, when we place ourselves in the presence of Christ, when he becomes the confidant of the questionings of our youth, we cannot put the question differently from how that young man put it: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Any other question about the meaning and value of our life would be, in the presence of Christ, insufficient and unessential.
For Christ is not only the "good teacher" who shows the paths of life on earth. He is the witness to that definitive destiny which the human person has in God himself. He is the witness to man's immortality. The Gospel which he proclaimed with his lips is definitively sealed by the Cross and the Resurrection in the Paschal Mystery. "Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him". In his Resurrection Christ has also become the permanent "sign of contradiction" before all programmes incapable of leading man beyond the frontier of death. Indeed at this frontier they silence all man's questionings about the value and meaning of life. In the face of all these programmes, the various ways of looking at the world and the various ideologies, Christ constantly repeats: "I am the resurrection and the life."
And so, dear brothers and dear sisters, if you wish to talk to Christ and to accept all the truth of his testimony, you must on the one hand "love the world" - for God "so loved the world that he gave his only Son" - and at the same time you must acquire interior detachment with regard to all this rich and fascinating reality that makes up "the world". You must make up your mind to ask the question about eternal life. For, the form of this world is passing away", and each of us is subject to this passing. Man is born with the prospect of the day of his death in the dimension of the visible world; at the same time, man, whose interior reason for existence is to go beyond himself, also bears within himself everything whereby he goes beyond the world.
Everything whereby man, in himself, goes beyond the world - though he is rooted in it - is explained by the image and likeness of God which is inscribed in humanity from the beginning. And everything whereby man goes beyond the world not only justifies the question about eternal life but in fact makes it indispensable. This is the question that people have long been asking themselves, not only in the sphere of Christianity but also outside it. You too must find the courage to ask it, like the young man in the Gospel. Christianity teaches us to understand temporal existence from the perspective of the Kingdom of God, from the perspective of eternal life. Without eternal life, temporal existence, however rich, however highly developed in all aspects, in the end brings man nothing other than the ineluctable necessity of death.
Now there is an opposition between youth and death. Death seems far distant from youth. And it is. But since youth means the plan for the whole of life - the plan drawn up in accordance with the criterion of meaning and value during youth too it is essential to ask the question about the end. Human experience left to itself says the same as Sacred Scripture: "It is appointed for men to die once". The inspired writer adds: "And after that comes judgment". And Christ says: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die". So ask Christ, like the young man in the Gospel: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
On morality and conscience
6. To this question Jesus replies: "You know the commandments", and he immediately lists these commandments, which form part of the Decalogue. Moses received them one day on Mount Sinai, at the moment of the Covenant of God with Israel. They were written on tablets of stone and for every Israelite were the daily indication of the path to be taken. The young man who speaks to Christ naturally knows by heart the commandments of the Decalogue; indeed, he can declare with joy: "All these things I have observed from my youth."
We have to presuppose that in the dialogue which Christ develops with each one of you young people the same question is repeated: "Do you know the commandments?" It will be infallibly repeated, because the commandments form part of the Covenant between God and humanity. The commandments determine the essential bases of behavior, decide the moral value of human acts, and remain in organic relationship with man's vocation to eternal life, with the establishment of God's Kingdom in people and among people. In the words of divine Revelation is inscribed the clear code of morality, of which the tablets of the Decalogue of Mount Sinai remain the key- point, and the culmination of which is found in the Gospel: in the Sermon on the Mount and in the commandment of love.
At the same time this code of morality is written in yet another form. It is inscribed in the moral conscience of humanity, in such a way that those who do not know the commandments, in other words the law revealed by God, "are a law to themselves". Thus writes Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans, and he immediately adds: "They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness".
Here we touch upon matters of supreme importance for your youth and for that plan of life that emerges from it.
This plan accepts the prospect of eternal life first of all through the truth of the deeds on which it will be built. This truth of deeds has its foundation in that twofold presentation of the moral law: the one written on the tablets of the Decalogue of Moses and in the Gospel, and the one inscribed in man's moral conscience. And the conscience "presents itself as a witness" to that law, as Saint Paul writes. This conscience - in the words of the Letter to the Romans - is the "conflicting thoughts" which "accuse or perhaps excuse them". Everyone knows how closely these words correspond to our interior reality: each of us from our youth experiences the voice of conscience.
Therefore when Jesus, in his conversation with the young man, lists the commandments: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour your father and mother", the upright conscience responds with an interior reaction to man's corresponding deeds: it accuses or excuses. But the conscience must not be distorted; the fundamental formulation of the principles of morality must not surrender to deformation by any kind of relativism or utilitarianism.
Dear young friends! The response which Jesus gives to his questioner in the Gospel is addressed to each one of you. Christ asks you about the state of your moral awareness, and at the same time he questions you about the state of your conscience. This is a key question for man: it is the fundamental question of your youth, one that concerns the whole plan of life which must be formed precisely in youth. Its value is the one most closely connected with the relationship of each of you with moral good and evil. The value of this plan depends in an essential way on the authenticity and rectitude of your conscience. It also depends on its sensitivity.
So we find ourselves here at a crucial moment, when at every step time and eternity meet at a level which is proper to man. It is the level of the conscience, the level of moral values: the conscience is the most important dimension of time and history. For history is written not only by the events which in a certain sense happen "from outside"; it is written first of all "from within": it is the history of human consciences, of moral victories and defeats. Here too the essential greatness of man finds its foundation: his authentically human dignity. This is that interior treasure whereby man continually goes beyond himself in the direction of eternity. If it is true that "it is established that people would die only once", it is also true that man carries with him the treasure of conscience, the deposit of good and evil, across the frontier of death, in order that, in the sight of him who is holiness itself, he may find the ultimate and definitive truth about his whole life: "after that comes judgment".
This is just what happens in the conscience: in the interior truth of our acts, in a certain sense, there is constantly present the dimension of eternal life. And simultaneously the same conscience, through moral values, imprints the most expressive seal upon the life of the generations, upon the history and culture of human environments, societies, nations and of all humanity.
In this field how much depends on each one of you!
"Jesus, looking upon him, loved him"
7. Continuing our examination of Christ's conversation with the young man, we now enter another phase. It is a new and decisive one. The young man has received the essential and fundamental response to the question: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" and this response coincides with the whole journey of his life up to this point: "All these I have observed from my youth". How ardently I hope that the journey of the life of each one of you up to this point has similarly coincided with Christ's response! Indeed, it is my hope that your youth will provide you with a sturdy basis of sound principles, that your conscience will attain in these years of your youth that mature clearsightedness that during your whole lives will enable each one of you to remain always a "person of conscience", a "person of principles", a "person who inspires trust", in other words, a person who is credible. The moral personality formed in this way constitutes the most important contribution that you can make to life in the community, to the family, to society, to professional activity and also to cultural and political activity, and finally to the community of the Church - to all those spheres with which you are already or will one day be connected.
It is a question here of a full and profound human authenticity and of an equal authenticity of the development of the human personality, female or male, with all the characteristics which make up the unrepeatable features of this personality, and which at the same time and in different ways have an impact on the life of the community and of the various environments, beginning with the family. Each one of you must in some way contribute to the richness of these communities, first of all by means of what he or she is. Is it not in this direction that the youth which is the "personal" treasure of each of you tends? Man sees himself, his own humanity, both as his own interior world and as the specific area of his being "with others", "for others".
Precisely here the commandments of the Decalogue and of the Gospel take on a decisive meaning, especially the commandment of love which opens the human person to God and neighbor. For charity is the "`bond of perfection". Through charity, man and human fraternity come to fuller maturity. For this reason, love is the greatest and the first of all the commandments, as Christ teaches; and in it all the others are included and made one.
My wish for each of you therefore is that the paths of your youth may meet in Christ, that you may be able to confirm before him, by the witness of your consciences, this evangelical moral code, to the values of which so many individuals of noble spirit have in the course of the generations in some way drawn near.
This is not the appropriate place for quoting the confirmations of this fact which run through the whole history of humanity. What is certain is that from the most ancient times the dictate of conscience has guided every human subject towards an objective moral norm which finds concrete expression in respect for the other person and in the principle of not doing to that person what one would not wish done to oneself.
Here we see already clearly emerging that objective morality of which Saint Paul declares that it is "written on their hearts" and that "their conscience also bears witness" to it. The Christian readily perceives in it a ray from the creating Word that enlightens every man; and precisely because he is a follower of that Word made flesh he rises to the higher law of the Gospel which positively imposes upon him - in the commandment of love-the duty to do to neighbor all the good that he would wish to be done to himself. He thus seals the inner voice of conscience with absolute acceptance of Christ and his word.
It is also my hope that, after you have made the discernment of the essential and important questions for you youth, for the plan of the whole life that lies before you, you will experience what the Gospel means when it says: "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him". May you experience a look like that! May you experience the truth that he, Christ, looks upon you with love!
He looks with love upon every human being. The Gospel confirms this at every step. One can also say that this "loving look" of Christ contains, as it were, a summary and synthesis of the entire Good News. If we would seek the beginning of this look, we must turn back to the Book of Genesis, to that instant when, after the creation of man "male and female", God saw that "it was very good". That very first look of the Creator is reflected in the look of Christ which accompanies his conversation with the young man in the Gospel.
We know that Christ will confirm and seal this look with the redemptive Sacrifice of the Cross, because precisely by means of this Sacrifice that "look' reached a particular depth of love. In it is contained an affirmation of man and of humanity such as only he is capable of-Christ the Redeemer and Bridegroom. Only he "knows what is in every man": he knows man's weakness, but he also and above all knows his dignity.
My wish for each of you is that you may discover this look of Christ, and experience it in all its depth. I do not know at what moment in your life. I think that it will happen when you need it most: perhaps in suffering, perhaps together with the witness of a pure conscience, as in the case of that young man in the Gospel, or perhaps precisely in an opposite situation: together with the sense of guilt, with remorse of conscience. For Christ looked at Peter too in the hour of his fall: when he had 3 times denied his Master.
Man needs this loving look. He needs to know that he is loved, loved eternally and chosen from eternity. At the same time, this eternal love of divine election accompanies man during life as Christ's look of love. And perhaps most powerfully at the moment of trial, humiliation, persecution, defeat, when our humanity is as it were blotted out in the eyes of other people, insulted and trampled upon. At that moment the awareness that the Father has always loved us in his Son, that Christ always loves each of us, becomes a solid support for our whole human existence. When everything would make us doubt ourselves and the meaning of our life, then this look of Christ, the awareness of the love that in him has shown itself more powerful than any evil and destruction, this awareness enables us to survive.
My wish for you then is that you may experience what the young man in the Gospel experienced: "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him".
7. Continuing our examination of Christ's conversation with the young man, we now enter another phase. It is a new and decisive one. The young man has received the essential and fundamental response to the question: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" and this response coincides with the whole journey of his life up to this point: "All these I have observed from my youth". How ardently I hope that the journey of the life of each one of you up to this point has similarly coincided with Christ's response! Indeed, it is my hope that your youth will provide you with a sturdy basis of sound principles, that your conscience will attain in these years of your youth that mature clearsightedness that during your whole lives will enable each one of you to remain always a "person of conscience", a "person of principles", a "person who inspires trust", in other words, a person who is credible. The moral personality formed in this way constitutes the most important contribution that you can make to life in the community, to the family, to society, to professional activity and also to cultural and political activity, and finally to the community of the Church - to all those spheres with which you are already or will one day be connected.
It is a question here of a full and profound human authenticity and of an equal authenticity of the development of the human personality, female or male, with all the characteristics which make up the unrepeatable features of this personality, and which at the same time and in different ways have an impact on the life of the community and of the various environments, beginning with the family. Each one of you must in some way contribute to the richness of these communities, first of all by means of what he or she is. Is it not in this direction that the youth which is the "personal" treasure of each of you tends? Man sees himself, his own humanity, both as his own interior world and as the specific area of his being "with others", "for others".
Precisely here the commandments of the Decalogue and of the Gospel take on a decisive meaning, especially the commandment of love which opens the human person to God and neighbor. For charity is the "`bond of perfection". Through charity, man and human fraternity come to fuller maturity. For this reason, love is the greatest and the first of all the commandments, as Christ teaches; and in it all the others are included and made one.
My wish for each of you therefore is that the paths of your youth may meet in Christ, that you may be able to confirm before him, by the witness of your consciences, this evangelical moral code, to the values of which so many individuals of noble spirit have in the course of the generations in some way drawn near.
This is not the appropriate place for quoting the confirmations of this fact which run through the whole history of humanity. What is certain is that from the most ancient times the dictate of conscience has guided every human subject towards an objective moral norm which finds concrete expression in respect for the other person and in the principle of not doing to that person what one would not wish done to oneself.
Here we see already clearly emerging that objective morality of which Saint Paul declares that it is "written on their hearts" and that "their conscience also bears witness" to it. The Christian readily perceives in it a ray from the creating Word that enlightens every man; and precisely because he is a follower of that Word made flesh he rises to the higher law of the Gospel which positively imposes upon him - in the commandment of love-the duty to do to neighbor all the good that he would wish to be done to himself. He thus seals the inner voice of conscience with absolute acceptance of Christ and his word.
It is also my hope that, after you have made the discernment of the essential and important questions for you youth, for the plan of the whole life that lies before you, you will experience what the Gospel means when it says: "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him". May you experience a look like that! May you experience the truth that he, Christ, looks upon you with love!
He looks with love upon every human being. The Gospel confirms this at every step. One can also say that this "loving look" of Christ contains, as it were, a summary and synthesis of the entire Good News. If we would seek the beginning of this look, we must turn back to the Book of Genesis, to that instant when, after the creation of man "male and female", God saw that "it was very good". That very first look of the Creator is reflected in the look of Christ which accompanies his conversation with the young man in the Gospel.
We know that Christ will confirm and seal this look with the redemptive Sacrifice of the Cross, because precisely by means of this Sacrifice that "look' reached a particular depth of love. In it is contained an affirmation of man and of humanity such as only he is capable of-Christ the Redeemer and Bridegroom. Only he "knows what is in every man": he knows man's weakness, but he also and above all knows his dignity.
My wish for each of you is that you may discover this look of Christ, and experience it in all its depth. I do not know at what moment in your life. I think that it will happen when you need it most: perhaps in suffering, perhaps together with the witness of a pure conscience, as in the case of that young man in the Gospel, or perhaps precisely in an opposite situation: together with the sense of guilt, with remorse of conscience. For Christ looked at Peter too in the hour of his fall: when he had 3 times denied his Master.
Man needs this loving look. He needs to know that he is loved, loved eternally and chosen from eternity. At the same time, this eternal love of divine election accompanies man during life as Christ's look of love. And perhaps most powerfully at the moment of trial, humiliation, persecution, defeat, when our humanity is as it were blotted out in the eyes of other people, insulted and trampled upon. At that moment the awareness that the Father has always loved us in his Son, that Christ always loves each of us, becomes a solid support for our whole human existence. When everything would make us doubt ourselves and the meaning of our life, then this look of Christ, the awareness of the love that in him has shown itself more powerful than any evil and destruction, this awareness enables us to survive.
My wish for you then is that you may experience what the young man in the Gospel experienced: "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him".
"Follow me"
8. From an examination of the Gospel text we see that this look was, so to speak, Christ's response to the testimony which the young man had given of his life up to that moment, of having acted according to God's commandments: "All these I have observed from my youth."
At the same time, this "look of love" was the introduction to the concluding phase of the conversation. In Matthew's account, it was the young man himself who opened this phase, since not only did he declare the personal fidelity to the commandments of the Decalogue which had marked all his previous conduct, but at the same time he asked a new question. In fact he asked: "What do I still lack?"
This question is a very important one. It shows that in the moral conscience of a person and more precisely of a young person who is forming the plan for his or her whole life, there is hidden an aspiration to "something more". This aspiration makes itself felt in various ways, and we can also observe it among those who seem to be far from our religion.
Among the followers of non-Christian religions, especially Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, we find that for thousands of years there have been hosts of "spiritual men", individuals who often from early youth leave everything in order to live in poverty and purity in the quest for the Absolute that exists beyond the appearances of material things. They strive to attain a state of perfect liberation, they take refuge in God with love and confidence, and with all their souls try to submit to his hidden decrees. They seem impelled by a mysterious inner voice which makes itself heard in their spirit, as it were echoing Saint Paul's words: "The form of this world is passing away", and which guides them to seek things which are greater and more enduring: "Seek the things that are above." They seek the goal with all their strength, working hard to purify their spirit and sometimes reaching the point of making their lives a gift of love to the godhead. They thus become living examples to the people around them, by their very conduct showing the primacy of eternal values over the elusive and sometimes ambiguous values of the society in which they live.
But it is in the Gospel that the aspiration to perfection, to "something more", finds its explicit point of reference. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ confirms the whole moral law, at the centre of which are the Mosaic tablets of the Ten Commandments. But at the same time he confers upon these commandments a new, evangelical meaning. And, as we have already said, it is all concentrated around love, not only as a commandment but also as a gift: "The love of Christ has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us".
In this new context one also comes to understand the programme of the eight Beatitudes which begins the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel.
In this same context the series of commandments which constitute the fundamental code of Christian morality is completed by the series of evangelical counsels, which in a special way express and make concrete Christ's call to perfection, which is a call to holiness.
When the young man asks about the "more": "What do I still lack?", Jesus looks upon him with love, and this love finds here a new meaning. Man is carried interiorly, by the hand of the Holy Spirit, from a life according to the commandments to a life in the awareness of the gift, and Christ's loving look expresses this interior "transition". And Jesus says: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
Yes, my dear young friends! The Christian is capable of living in the dimension of gift. Indeed, this dimension is not only "higher" than the dimension of mere moral obligations known from the commandments but it is also "deeper" and more fundamental. It bears witness to a fuller expression of that plan of life which we begin to construct in our youth. The dimension of gift also creates the mature outline of every human and Christian vocation, as will be said later on.
At this moment, however, I wish to speak to you about the particular meaning of the words which Christ said to the young man. And I do this in the conviction that Christ addresses them in the Church to some of his young questioners in every generation. In ours too. His words therefore signify a particular vocation in the community of the People of God. The Church finds Christ's "Follow me" at the beginning of every call to service in the ministerial priesthood, which simultaneously in the Catholic Church of the Latin Rite is linked to the conscious and free choice of celibacy. The Church finds the same "follow me" of Christ at the beginning of the religious vocation, whereby, through the profession of the evangelical counsels (chastity, poverty and obedience), a man or woman recognizes as his or her own the programme of life which Christ himself lived on earth, for the sake of the Kingdom of God. By professing religious vows, such individuals commit themselves to bearing a particular witness to the love of God above all things, and likewise to that call to union with God in eternity which is directed to everyone. But there is a need for some to bear an exceptional witness to this before other people.
I limit myself merely to mentioning this matter in the present Letter, since it has already been more fully presented elsewhere and on a number of occasions. I mention it here because in the context of Christ's conversation with the young man it acquires a particular clarity, especially the question of evangelical poverty. I also mention it because Christ's call "Follow me", precisely in this exceptional and charismatic sense, usually makes itself heard in youth; sometimes it is even heard in childhood.
It is for this reason that I wish to say this to all of you young people, in this important phase of the development of your personality as a man or a woman: if such a call comes into your heart, do not silence it! Let it develop into the maturity of a vocation! Respond to it through prayer and fidelity to the commandments! For "the harvest is plentiful" and there is an enormous need for many to be reached by Christ's call "Follow me". There is an enormous need for priests according to the heart of God - and the Church and the world of today have an enormous need of the witness of a life given without reserve to God: the witness of that nuptial love of Christ himself which in a particular way will make the Kingdom of God present among people and bring it nearer to the world.
Permit me then to complete still further the words of Christ the Lord about the harvest being plentiful. Yes, this harvest of the Gospel is plentiful, this harvest of salvation! "But the labourers are few!". Perhaps this is felt more keenly today than in the past, especially in certain countries, as also in certain Institutes of consecrated life and similar Institutes.
"Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest", continues Christ. And these words, especially in our times, become a programme of prayer and action for more priestly and religious vocations. With this programme the Church addresses herself to you, to youth. And you too: pray! And if the fruit of this prayer of the Church comes to life in the depths of your heart, listen to the Master as he says: "Follow me
8. From an examination of the Gospel text we see that this look was, so to speak, Christ's response to the testimony which the young man had given of his life up to that moment, of having acted according to God's commandments: "All these I have observed from my youth."
At the same time, this "look of love" was the introduction to the concluding phase of the conversation. In Matthew's account, it was the young man himself who opened this phase, since not only did he declare the personal fidelity to the commandments of the Decalogue which had marked all his previous conduct, but at the same time he asked a new question. In fact he asked: "What do I still lack?"
This question is a very important one. It shows that in the moral conscience of a person and more precisely of a young person who is forming the plan for his or her whole life, there is hidden an aspiration to "something more". This aspiration makes itself felt in various ways, and we can also observe it among those who seem to be far from our religion.
Among the followers of non-Christian religions, especially Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, we find that for thousands of years there have been hosts of "spiritual men", individuals who often from early youth leave everything in order to live in poverty and purity in the quest for the Absolute that exists beyond the appearances of material things. They strive to attain a state of perfect liberation, they take refuge in God with love and confidence, and with all their souls try to submit to his hidden decrees. They seem impelled by a mysterious inner voice which makes itself heard in their spirit, as it were echoing Saint Paul's words: "The form of this world is passing away", and which guides them to seek things which are greater and more enduring: "Seek the things that are above." They seek the goal with all their strength, working hard to purify their spirit and sometimes reaching the point of making their lives a gift of love to the godhead. They thus become living examples to the people around them, by their very conduct showing the primacy of eternal values over the elusive and sometimes ambiguous values of the society in which they live.
But it is in the Gospel that the aspiration to perfection, to "something more", finds its explicit point of reference. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ confirms the whole moral law, at the centre of which are the Mosaic tablets of the Ten Commandments. But at the same time he confers upon these commandments a new, evangelical meaning. And, as we have already said, it is all concentrated around love, not only as a commandment but also as a gift: "The love of Christ has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us".
In this new context one also comes to understand the programme of the eight Beatitudes which begins the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel.
In this same context the series of commandments which constitute the fundamental code of Christian morality is completed by the series of evangelical counsels, which in a special way express and make concrete Christ's call to perfection, which is a call to holiness.
When the young man asks about the "more": "What do I still lack?", Jesus looks upon him with love, and this love finds here a new meaning. Man is carried interiorly, by the hand of the Holy Spirit, from a life according to the commandments to a life in the awareness of the gift, and Christ's loving look expresses this interior "transition". And Jesus says: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
Yes, my dear young friends! The Christian is capable of living in the dimension of gift. Indeed, this dimension is not only "higher" than the dimension of mere moral obligations known from the commandments but it is also "deeper" and more fundamental. It bears witness to a fuller expression of that plan of life which we begin to construct in our youth. The dimension of gift also creates the mature outline of every human and Christian vocation, as will be said later on.
At this moment, however, I wish to speak to you about the particular meaning of the words which Christ said to the young man. And I do this in the conviction that Christ addresses them in the Church to some of his young questioners in every generation. In ours too. His words therefore signify a particular vocation in the community of the People of God. The Church finds Christ's "Follow me" at the beginning of every call to service in the ministerial priesthood, which simultaneously in the Catholic Church of the Latin Rite is linked to the conscious and free choice of celibacy. The Church finds the same "follow me" of Christ at the beginning of the religious vocation, whereby, through the profession of the evangelical counsels (chastity, poverty and obedience), a man or woman recognizes as his or her own the programme of life which Christ himself lived on earth, for the sake of the Kingdom of God. By professing religious vows, such individuals commit themselves to bearing a particular witness to the love of God above all things, and likewise to that call to union with God in eternity which is directed to everyone. But there is a need for some to bear an exceptional witness to this before other people.
I limit myself merely to mentioning this matter in the present Letter, since it has already been more fully presented elsewhere and on a number of occasions. I mention it here because in the context of Christ's conversation with the young man it acquires a particular clarity, especially the question of evangelical poverty. I also mention it because Christ's call "Follow me", precisely in this exceptional and charismatic sense, usually makes itself heard in youth; sometimes it is even heard in childhood.
It is for this reason that I wish to say this to all of you young people, in this important phase of the development of your personality as a man or a woman: if such a call comes into your heart, do not silence it! Let it develop into the maturity of a vocation! Respond to it through prayer and fidelity to the commandments! For "the harvest is plentiful" and there is an enormous need for many to be reached by Christ's call "Follow me". There is an enormous need for priests according to the heart of God - and the Church and the world of today have an enormous need of the witness of a life given without reserve to God: the witness of that nuptial love of Christ himself which in a particular way will make the Kingdom of God present among people and bring it nearer to the world.
Permit me then to complete still further the words of Christ the Lord about the harvest being plentiful. Yes, this harvest of the Gospel is plentiful, this harvest of salvation! "But the labourers are few!". Perhaps this is felt more keenly today than in the past, especially in certain countries, as also in certain Institutes of consecrated life and similar Institutes.
"Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest", continues Christ. And these words, especially in our times, become a programme of prayer and action for more priestly and religious vocations. With this programme the Church addresses herself to you, to youth. And you too: pray! And if the fruit of this prayer of the Church comes to life in the depths of your heart, listen to the Master as he says: "Follow me
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