Benedict XVI: [Failed] Vatican II Was "Meaningful" And "Necessary"

[Stone]

Benedict XVI: [Failed] Vatican II Was "Meaningful" And "Necessary"
The retired pontiff defended the Second Vatican Council in a newly released letter

Oct 21, 2022
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted, emphasis mine]) – Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has written a letter about the Second Vatican Council, describing it as “meaningful and necessary.”

The letter from the emeritus pope – a rare public intervention from the 95-year-old – was sent to Father Dave Pivonka, the president of Franciscan University of Steubenville, to mark the 2022 Annual Conference of the Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation currently being held at the university.

Thanking the university for the conference examining his theological stance, Benedict wrote about the meaning of the Second Vatican Council in the Church today.

The announcement of the Council by Pope John XXIII caused a stir, noted the emeritus pope, saying there were “many doubts as to whether it would be meaningful, indeed whether it would be possible at all, to organize the insights and questions into the whole of a conciliar statement and thus to give the Church a direction for its further journey.”

However, the German Pontiff argued that such concerns were not supported by the Council.

“In reality, a new council proved to be not only meaningful, but necessary,” he wrote. “For the first time, the question of a theology of religions had shown itself in its radicality.”

Continuing, Benedict wrote that “the same is true for the relationship between faith and the world of mere reason. Both topics had not been foreseen in this way before.”

As such, Vatican II “at first threatened to unsettle and shake the Church more than to give her a new clarity for her mission,” Benedict argued.

He doubled down on his support for the Council by writing that “In the meantime, the need to reformulate the question of the nature and mission of the Church has gradually become apparent. In this way, the positive power of the Council is also slowly emerging.”

Furthermore, the emeritus pontiff wrote that with the Council and the new theological attention given to ecclesiology, “the wider spiritual dimension of the concept of the Church was now joyfully perceived.”

But at the same time, he argued, the “concept of the Church as the mystical body of Christ” had “passed its peak.” It was this that prompted him to write his doctoral dissertation, stated Benedict.

While the “the complete spiritualization of the concept of the Church, for its part, misses the realism of faith and its institutions in the world,” Benedict wrote that with “Vatican II, the question of the Church in the world finally became the real central problem.”

The pope’s letter was read out to the conference participants by former Director of the Holy See Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi.

Pope Benedict spent part of his early ecclesiastical career playing a key role in Vatican II, after receiving his doctorate in 1953. During the entirety of the Council, Ratzinger – then just a priest – was theological adviser to Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne.

READ: New biography describes great influence of Joseph Ratzinger in the revolutionary upheaval of Vatican II

Historian Roberto de Mattei, in his history of the council, described Ratzinger as one of the German theologians who “distinguished themselves” as being “in the ‘marching flank’ of progressivism.” The young German priest also worked closely with dissident clerics such as Frs. Karl Rahner, Bernard Häring and Yves Congar during the Council.

De Mattei noted, however, that in later years, Ratzinger rediscovered the “role of tradition and of Roman institutions.”

While the emeritus pontiff described the Council as “necessary” and “meaningful,” such praise for the Council has long been disputed by Catholics.

Liturgist and theologian Peter Kwasniewski wrote of the Council that “it must be remembered with shame and repentance as a moment in which the hierarchy of the Church, to varying degrees, surrendered to a more subtle (and therefore more dangerous) form of worldliness.”

“Moreover,” he continued, “the errors contained in the documents, as well as the many errors commonly attributed to the Council or prompted by it, must be drawn into a syllabus and anathematized by a future pope or council so that the controverted matters may be laid to rest, as former councils have wisely and charitably done in regard to the errors of their times.”

After Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich recently claimed that Vatican II prevented the Catholic Church from becoming “a small sect, unknown to most people,” Catholics rebuffed this argument.