“Catholicism after the Council«Here is a topic that, at first glance, carries with it a certain vagueness inherent in the very concept of «Catholicism.» In this concept, the theological notion of the Church and its catholicity is linked to political and sociological elements, such that Christian reality appears in it under a sign that is very characteristic of our era: words ending in «-ism» express the current way of bringing about the fusion and establishing the relationships between the ideal reality and the sociological reality. This fusion is commonly referred to today as «ideology,» usually in a pejorative sense. Thus, the word «Catholicism» implies that the Church, as a communal form of faith, is understood as an ideological phenomenon—a phenomenon that is more familiar to the contemporary mind. In other words: to the extent that this word is used by Catholics to refer to themselves—and this also applies to Protestants, since there is hardly any difference between the denominations on this point—one can see to what extent, without realizing it, Catholics define themselves using the ideological categories of modern thought.

In this sense, one could say that the word «Catholicism,» in its current form, reflects the fusion between the Church and society and, consequently, between the Church and the ideas and ways of life of our time; which, in another respect, perpetuates the confusion with the temporal realm, just as it existed in the Christian empire of the Middle Ages and is now so frequently criticized. If we start from this point of view, the problem will consist in asking how this fusion of Church and world, expressed in the word «Catholicism,» appears as a positive reality after the Council, and whether the Council has examined it critically or positively. This question would be important and instructive, and it would also address a significant aspect of the conciliar issues, since the Council addressed these problems in the Declaration on Religious Freedom, in the fundamental reflection of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, and also—albeit in a more tentative manner at first—in the Decree on the Means of Social Communication. The concept of «Catholicism» in the strict sense has been the focus of its concerns.

Unease in the Church

The question is: What have been the consequences of the Council for Catholics, and what is the spiritual state of the Church after the Council and as a result of it?.

Let’s put it bluntly: there is a certain unease, a feeling of disenchantment and even disappointment, as often happens after moments of joy and enthusiasm when it seems that the world has suddenly changed and when, amid the monotony of everyday life, the hope of something new and completely different—something that will free us from our tedious routines—shines for an instant, only for us to realize, even more painfully, that the ordinary is our destiny and that the everyday remains just that: the everyday. For a moment, the world, in awe, had listened attentively to the Council, toward which it directed its warm sympathy. But it has long since returned to its own affairs. The Church, after all, has remained the Church, and faith has become more difficult, because it has been left more exposed and less protected. The fact is this: whether because a secret aspiration resonated in the enthusiasm of 1962—the supernatural and the eternal, so veiled, were going to be better understood, to be closer, to be less hidden behind the fence of thousands of prescriptions and less obscured by the weight of a past that hangs over what is presented to us as revealed by God—or because some have felt confirmed in secularism and have therefore been led to expect the secularization of the Church.

Furthermore, the faithful are less united than before. For some, the Council has done too little; it has stopped halfway in everything; it is nothing more than a set of compromise solutions full of caveats—a victory of diplomatic prudence over the tempest of the Holy Spirit, who desires not complicated syntheses but the simplicity of the Gospel. For others, the Council is a scandal; the Church has surrendered to the nefarious spirit of an age that no longer knows the things of God because it has stubbornly shut itself off from the things of the earth. They watch with dismay as what was most sacred to them begins to falter. Disoriented, they turn away from a renewal in which they see a diminished Christianity—a dissolution where an increase in faith, hope, and charity would have been needed.

Conversion or Perversion?

With skepticism and apprehension, they compare this reform—riddled with concessions and attacks on the immense gravity and absolute nature of service to Christ—with the reforms carried out in the past, such as the one associated with the name of the great Saint Teresa. Before her conversion, she lived in a progressive convent, where the harsh and antiquated rules of cloistered life had long been interpreted in a broad and modern spirit and where all kinds of visitors were welcomed. She lived in a modern convent where the asceticism of the old rule had long since been replaced by a «more reasonable» way of life, one that better corresponded to the spirit of people at the dawn of the modern era. She was in a modern cloister open to the world and striving to maintain friendly contacts everywhere. But one day she was deeply moved by the presence of Christ; the Gospel rose up before her soul in all its inexorable reality, stripped of all the phrases that disguise it; she felt that this entire modern way of life was an intolerable flight from the grandeur of the true mission and the necessary conversion; she rose up and «was converted,» that is to say: she set aside «aggiornamento» to embark on a renewal that was not a concession, but rather a demand for self-surrender to eschatological dispossession for Christ’s sake—a demand to allow herself to be completely expropriated by Jesus Crucified and to belong entirely to the whole Body of Christ.

The faithful we are speaking of ask themselves: Has the Council not taken the opposite path? Is it not turning its back on conversion and heading toward the perversion of the Church? None of these questions can be simply brushed aside. The great task of the post-conciliar period will consist in having sufficient strength to confront these questions spiritually and answer them. Naturally, this work can only be carried out with the help of the Holy Spirit. In this sense, the scope of the questions raised by our topic goes beyond what can be answered on a theoretical level. For now, we can only examine more closely certain aspects of the malaise we have observed as characteristic of the Church after the Council and, at the same time, specify the tasks that the present moment imposes upon us.

The Church and the World

One aspect of the Council’s new spirit has offended sensibilities to the point of stirring up strong emotions; it has been the attempt to redefine the Church’s relationship with the world and, consequently, the Christian’s relationship with the world.

In his important and widely known work on the Council, published recently, Mario von Galli presents an extremely evocative image showing St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, isolated like an islet from the past amid gigantic skyscrapers. This image seems to symbolize the Church’s situation in today’s world. In times past, churches shaped the character of towns; their tall bell towers rose above everyday life as if to point toward eternity. Today, man erects monuments to his own greatness: modern skyscrapers whose height dwarfs church steeples and blocks the view of the sky. Or rather, that sky is presented as man’s domain: a world that man must explore and seeks to bring under his control. The neo-Gothic cathedral, standing amid steel giants of modern architectural style, also seems to bear overwhelming witness to the fact that Christianity is a thing of the past that can no longer find expression in today’s world—a world to which, moreover, it no longer has anything to say.

Even before the Council, youth movements had expressed a desire to do away with the image of Christianity as a force of the past. Christians were already tired of being viewed—simply because of their faith—as backward and out of touch with the world, and of being mocked by it. And there was a determination to live out Christianity in harmony with this age and to immerse it in the world of our time. Those inspired by this resolve naturally felt a sense of dismay when faced with the papal encyclicals, which were always written in the style of the Curia, using the language of a decadent antiquity, and incorporating elements added by the Byzantine court, the Middle Ages, or the Baroque era—just as they did when faced with a liturgy and pontificals whose style evoked the Byzantine court, the Middle Ages, or the Baroque, reflecting an obsolete splendor and appearing as a living museum of culture and worship through the ages, not as the expression of a worship designed for the people of today; and also in the face of a Catholic theology that seemed tied to the forms of the Middle Ages and that said nothing to modern man. And so on.

Who among us did not rejoice to see that the Council was taking the side of those who wanted to clear the horizon, open the windows to shake off the dust of the past, and let in a breath of fresh air? Later, when the Council, with the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, set out to formulate a new attitude for Christians and the Church toward the world, it became clear that this was about more than simply casting aside outdated forms; it became clear that the issue was being raised in fundamental terms and that this was a deeper debate than one that might arise between traditionalists and advocates of modernity.

The Church as the Incarnation

From a theological perspective, it can be said that this development has taken place in two phases that overlap without having reached full maturity and that, moreover, manifest themselves in the most diverse forms and under various signs, so that they cannot be isolated except in a schematic way. The first phase could be called the phase of the Incarnation. A central aspect of Christianity is rediscovered in the Incarnation, and this becomes the starting point for the entire theological framework. The concept of the Incarnation first and foremost defines the Christian’s relationship with God—the meaning of his or her attitude toward God. God has become flesh, and this means that he has stepped outside of himself, that he has descended, and that he has entered into the flesh of this world. God does not live in the world of pure ideas; He is not like the Platonic world of ideas, separated by an abyss from the world and from matter—which would be merely a shadow of reality—but He has become flesh. He is encountered to the extent that one enters into that movement which consists in descending, in turning toward the world, for it is there that one encounters the God who humbles Himself and descends.

The God of Christians—God made man—is not a God of another world, but precisely a God of this world of ours. The Kingdom of Heaven proclaimed by Christ is, in truth, an act of God that concerns this world and not a place situated beyond it. Thus, the Christian faith has nothing to do with the Stoics’ impassivity or their resigned disdain for the world. The Christ who wept at Lazarus’s tomb, who experienced anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane; the Christ who was indignant at the merchants of religious articles set up in the temple courtyard and who, at the Wedding at Cana, shared in the joy of the guests—does not fit into the Stoic ideal of impassive spirituality. He has placed all the passion of the truly human being in the service of the divine, in the service of that jealous and irascible God, who is nonetheless always a God of love.

This realization has led to a Christianity that is humane, vibrant, and open to the world—in a word, to what has come to be called an “incarnate” Christianity: a Christianity that is not limited to mortification, withdrawal from the world, and anticipation of the hereafter, but rather one that opens itself with compassion to the world and engages with life today, rejoices in all that is beautiful, noble, and great, and discovers in it the imprint of Christian values that must be re-embodied and fulfilled as a responsibility of our time. We see the emergence of slogans such as «integrate» and «baptize»: modern thought must be baptized, just as St. Thomas baptized Aristotle. Today we must do something similar to what the Middle Ages did by making Christian use of the energies of the world at that time.

The cross of Christ

But it is on this point that critics focus, and this brings us to the second phase, which we might call «eschatological.» For, in the meantime, theology has come to realize that the idea of the Incarnation does not hold that absolute position in Scripture that it was on the verge of conquering in Catholic spirituality. In the New Testament, the Christian faith begins rather with faith in the resurrection; theological reflection follows immediately only to expand on the meaning of the preceding events, then reflects on the words of the historical Jesus (the Synoptic Gospels), and finally on the idea of the Incarnation (St. John). Thus, the Incarnation appears only at the end of the New Testament’s development as the foundation of the central theme of the resurrection, which is inseparable from the theme of the cross. Contrary to the optimism inherent in the idea of the Incarnation, in the New Testament the theme of the cross clearly takes precedence over that of the Incarnation; moreover, in Scripture the theme of the Incarnation is already itself a theology of the cross, for the Incarnation already signifies that God gives himself; it is, therefore, the first step—the decisive step—that leads to the cross.

But this corrective element—which thus stands in opposition to the sympathy for the world that flows from a pure theology of the Incarnation—could not have exerted such a widespread influence so quickly had it not been for another new consideration that came to be added to it. He began to wonder, little by little, whether the idea of incarnate Christianity—that is, of a faith and a Church engaged in earthly affairs— might not ultimately lead to a return to the Middle Ages, when the intertwining of the priesthood and the empire represented a higher degree of the incarnation of Christianity—but which, precisely because of this intertwining, appears to us today as extremely suspect and open to criticism. And so we gradually arrive at the notions of the «integration» and «baptism» of the world; the idea of the «worldly» world became fashionable: the task of Christians was seen not as Christianizing the world, but rather as freeing it from its «worldly» character, recognizing the world as the world, leaving it as such, and respecting it.

Related to this is a new view of history that emerged in the address delivered by Pope John XXIII at the opening of the Council. Until then, the Middle Ages had generally been regarded as the ideal Christian era, in which the Church and the world were in perfect harmony—a model to be emulated; by contrast, modern times were portrayed as a great act of desertion comparable to that of the prodigal son, who takes his share of the inheritance and leaves his father’s house only to soon (as during World War II) envy the food of the pigs; this comparison also holds out the hope of a forthcoming return.

The World's Autonomy

And it was precisely at this moment that the modern trend toward the autonomy of the secular world (which, incidentally, also has its roots in the Middle Ages) was viewed as the end of the Christian transformation of the world. That is why the Christian gaze turned forward rather than getting lost in nostalgia for the Middle Ages. It is perhaps in John XXIII that we find the sharpest critique of medieval romanticism—that tendency to look backward, to fear that things will always deteriorate; a tendency that fails to see either the grave dangers of the confusion between the Church and the world, or the new possibilities for freedom of faith arising from this new orientation. All of this leads, in the Pope of the Council, to a theology of hope that might at times appear as naive optimism. “…A resplendent dawn is rising over the Church, and the first rays of the rising sun are already filling our hearts with sweetness,» he said in one of those astonishing phrases from this memorable address that has decisively shaped the spirit of the Council. In John XXIII, it was indeed a form of optimism born of faith, but one that was easily confused with the optimism of progress, so dear to our time. Now, too, a discussion was needed to clarify matters properly.

At the Council, this discussion did not truly get to the heart of the matter, mainly because the theological differences at issue here were almost entirely shrouded in a theologically superficial but, in practice, very effective opposition: the opposition between the tradition of the Curia and modern theology, which has practically prevented the latter from raising its problems and questions. Although the Council’s formulations—which truly clarify many points and allow us to move forward—are prudent, the Council has been nothing more than a very concrete echo of that opposition between the two camps. At the Council, one could discern only the Curia’s tendency and the progressive tendency, and this opposition was framed in terms of “Christianity hostile to the world” and “Christianity open to the world” (even though, in reality, the Curia understands the affairs of this world very well, and even though its political conception of Christianity is part of the criticisms leveled against it in other areas). This simplification was one of the main causes of confusion; it often led to misunderstandings about the Council, but at the same time, it points to a fruitful mission: to fight vigorously for Christian spirituality in today’s world.

The scandal of the cross

It is not the purpose of this exposition—which aims to address the situation of the Church after the Council—to delve into the issues that arise in this regard. But, in any case, we can say this: if, for the Church, opening up to the world means turning away from the cross, this would lead not to renewal, but to its end.

When the Church turns toward the world, this cannot mean that she suppresses the scandal of the cross, but only that she makes it accessible once again in all its nakedness, stripping away the secondary scandals that have been introduced to hide it—scandals with which, unfortunately, the folly of human selfishness covers up the folly of God’s love, creating a false scandal that abusively hides behind the scandal of the Master. In other words, the Christian faith is a scandal to people of all times: that the eternal God cares for us humans and knows us, that the One who is inaccessible has made Himself accessible in the man Jesus, that the One who is immortal has suffered on the cross, that the resurrection and eternal life are promised to us mortals—to believe this is an irritating claim for modern man.

The Christian Scandal

The Council has neither been able nor willing to eliminate this Christian scandal. But, we must add, this primordial scandal—which cannot be eliminated without simultaneously eliminating Christianity itself—has often been overshadowed throughout history by the secondary scandal of those who preached the faith, a scandal that is in no way essential to Christianity, but which is willingly conflated with the primary scandal and takes pleasure in assuming the posture of a martyr when, in reality, one is a victim only of one’s own narrow-mindedness and obstinacy. There is a secondary scandal—complete and culpable—when, under the pretext of defending God’s rights, one defends nothing more than a particular social situation and the positions of power that have been attained within it. There is a secondary scandal—complete and culpable—when, under the pretext of protecting the inviolability of the faith, one defends nothing more than one’s own nostalgia for the past; when one defends—not the faith itself, which existed before that past and its forms—but the forms it took in the past out of a legitimate concern to respond to the needs of the times, forms that are now obsolete and can in no way claim to be eternal.

There is yet another secondary scandal—one that is fully-fledged and culpable—when, under the pretext of guaranteeing the integrity of the truth, academic positions that were established in a particular era are endowed with a sense of permanence, but which have long needed to be revised and reconsidered in light of the demands inherent in what is original and authentic.

A review of Church history would reveal many minor scandals of this kind. Not all the courageous and resolute «nom possumus» have been a suffering endured for the sake of the unalterable boundaries of truth; there are many instances in this realm that were nothing more than obstinacy of one’s own will, resistance to the call of that God who causes us to let go of what we have taken without His will. But the danger lies in these secondary scandals being constantly conflated with the primary scandal, thereby preventing us from reaching it, because the demands of its messengers obscure it. 

Let us say it again: No, the Council has neither been able nor willing to set aside the scandal of the cross; it has sought to make it all the more clearly visible and accessible, while striving to separate it from secondary scandals. This is the true meaning of the «aggiornamento» of Christianity. Yes to the scandal of God, yes to the scandal of a love that goes so far as to seem impossible. No to the scandal of Christians—a scandal that seeks to pass itself off as the scandal of God Himself, and behind which people entrench themselves with their own will. Thus, the Council did not seek a diminished Christian faith, but rather a simpler faith in the deepest sense of the term—without taking away anything from its authentic difficulty, the only thing that can lead humanity to its true greatness.

It is incredibly simple, yet at the same time incredibly difficult for a man to truly love. It can be extremely complicated to solve a particular mathematical or technical problem, but this is not difficult in the same sense as responding to the absolute demand of a great love. Now, faith belongs to the realm of love. If, at times, because of all the transitory elements that have been added to it, faith may have seemed as complicated as an impenetrable equation, the Council has strived to restore its true simplicity: the simplicity of a great love that is at once the easiest and the most difficult thing, for what it demands is nothing more and nothing less than our very being.