On October 11 the Church celebrated the feast of Pope St. John XXIII. The date, Oct. 11, is the date in 1962 when the Second Vatican Council was first called into session by Pope John. I was a novice at the time, in an era where we had no radio, no television, no newspapers. So it was a little hard to keep up with what was happening in Rome. But the feeling of something new in the air was permeating even our novitiate wing. Yesterday's feast caused me to reflect on some of the earthquake-size effects of the Council, effects which are all the results of Pope John's inspired and courageous idea of calling an ecumenical council. The following are some thoughts I've been mulling over recently, and which seem to me to fit in nicely with the whole idea of Vatican Two.
WHAT IS GOD'S ROLE?
When I was a kid in the 1950's it seemed to me that one of God's important tasks was to prevent people from getting into heaven. Mortal sin (eating a baloney sandwich on Friday, missing one mass on Sunday) would give God all the ammunition He needed to say "Gotcha! No heaven for you!"
You think I'm kidding? When the first drafts of the council documents were being drawn up, Cardinal Ottaviani, one of the most powerful men in Rome, insisted that the Church reaffirm the belief that a child who had died before receiving baptism could never go to heaven, but would be relegated to limbo. He got overruled by the theologians who were drawing up the documents, and then the council fathers overwhelmingly rejected the notion that unbaptized babies do not go to heaven (something millions of bereaved mothers had known all along anyway). This vote must have saddened God-The-Goalkeeper, who suddenly was required to allow innocent infants into heaven. It certainly saddened the good Cardinal, who held a grudge against certain theologians for the rest of his life.
In New Jersey, when you apply for a driver's license or a renewal, you have to produce several documents, such as a birth certificate, or a valid passport, each document being worth a certain number of points. When you show up at the DMV office with enough points in hand, then you can qualify for your license. God the Goalie is like a worker at the Department of Motor Vehicles: He checks to see if you have enough points to qualify for heaven. Think of it! First and foremost, you have to have a valid Baptismal certificate to get in! I realize that there are many theological nuances that the Church has come up with to allow God to let the largest possible number of people into heaven, but these fine distinctions have not always made it down into the pews.
A FAMILIAR BUT ODD GOD
In a post on this blog several years ago I suggested that when I'm singing the psalms at Morning Prayer, especially "All you nations sing out your joy to the Lord" and "All nations will come and praise you, O God," that I can feel the presence of millions of Buddhists and Hindus, Muslims and Jews. Well, one reader wrote in my comments column that this was "psychobabble" and an example of the sickness that was destroying our Catholic faith. I felt sorry for this guy who was so threatened by the thought that non-Catholics might be loved and saved by God. The fellow saw correctly that my image of all nations coming to worship on Mount Zion would mean that God had abandoned his role of Goalkeeper in favor of the role of a loving Father who loves all his creatures,,unconditionally with no bounds at all -- the "abba" God that Jesus presented to us.
It seems to me that there are plenty of people in my generation who still find comfort in the old certainties, where an infallible Church told you what to believe, and you didn't question things like innocent children being kept out of heaven because they were lacking a baptismal certificate. I think that Good Pope John did all of us a favor by asking the council fathers to take a long, loving but critical look at the Church's teachings in terms of our scriptural and historical roots but also through the lens of twentieth-century scholarship and theology. He was an optimist who believed that the Holy Spirit is still at work in the Church today. May he keep interceding for all of us, that we can keep deepening our understanding of God's unfathomable love for us and for all of creation.
Saint John XXIII, pray for us!
For your next blog post, you should write about the massive decline in entrants into the seminaries, convents, and the large number of church closures since this new orientation introduced by the Good Pope. Perhaps tie it in with a scripture quote...maybe MT 7:16.
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