To Sanctify the World

August 15, 2022
Weigel (The Next Pope), a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, examines the impact of the Second Vatican Council in this thorough chronicle. Through close readings of the council’s decrees and declarations, Weigel explores why Pope John XXIII took the rare step of convening “all the world’s Catholic bishops” in sessions that lasted from 1962 to 1965, as well as how the proceedings changed the Catholic church. The Second Vatican Council met to address the “challenge to Catholicism posed by the modern world,” which included clerical infighting, reactionary papal policies, and the social dislocations caused by two world wars and the Cold War. Weigel suggests that the church was motivated by a desire to achieve a “revitalized western humanism” and by the belief that the “sacred liturgy should be reformed organically” by returning to its “medieval and patristic forms.” The author challenges conventional readings of documents produced by the council, such as when he asserts that contrary to the populist reputation of the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,” it largely preserves the church’s formal hierarchy even as it emphasizes the laity’s “responsibility” to spread the word of God. Weigel delivers a probing study of the figures and theologies that influenced Catholic policy, though his focus on Western European events gives little mention of how Catholic practices elsewhere influenced the outcome of the council. Still, there is much valuable work in this fluid reevaluation of Vatican II’s origins and impact.

September 1, 2022
The history and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. In his latest, Catholic scholar Weigel, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of Letters to a Young Catholic, examines the ecumenical council that took place between 1962 and 1965. The author begins with a detailed yet concise exploration of the many global changes that led to the council. Though Pope John XXIII, "an essentially conservative and traditional pope," shocked the church by calling for a council, which hadn't taken place since 1870, it should have been clear that modern society--punctuated by world wars, the rise of communism, decolonization, and countless other factors--had changed the landscape so thoroughly that a fresh approach was vital for Catholic survival. Weigel writes that the ultimate purpose of the council was to "empower a revitalized Church to offer the modern world a path beyond incoherence--or, worse, self-destruction--through an encounter with Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God." Once it began, institutionalists lost their bid to steer the council's work toward less important matters of rules and administration. Instead, the council took a decidedly theological turn in order to answer the pressing question of "how God made his purposes known to humanity in a binding way that was authoritative for the Church over time." The council would be thoroughly Christocentric in nature and explore the church's role in a modern world through a Christian viewpoint. Weigel thoroughly analyzes the major documents that resulted from the council's decisions. He then discusses its lasting legacy, especially through the lens of two of its participants: popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Finally, he notes that a 1985 synod most clearly affirmed the meaning of Vatican II as a great gift of grace until "the Church lived fully the truth about itself as a communion of disciples in mission." A readable traditionalist appraisal.

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