Second Vatican Council - Legacy

Legacy

"By the spirit of Vatican II" is meant to promote the teachings and intentions attributed to the Second Vatican Council in ways not limited to literal readings of its documents, but not in contradiction to the "letter" of the Council (cf. Saint Paul's phrase, "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life").

The spirit of Vatican II is invoked for a great variety of ideas and attitudes. Bishop John Tong Hon of Hong Kong used it with regard merely to an openness to dialogue with others, saying: "We are guided by the spirit of Vatican II: only dialogue and negotiation can solve conflicts."

In contrast, Michael Novak described it as a spirit that "sometimes soared far beyond the actual, hard-won documents and decisions of Vatican II. ... It was as though the world (or at least the history of the Church) were now to be divided into only two periods, pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II. Everything 'pre' was then pretty much dismissed, so far as its authority mattered. For the most extreme, to be a Catholic now meant to believe more or less anything one wished to believe, or at least in the sense in which one personally interpreted it. One could be a Catholic 'in spirit'. One could take Catholic to mean the 'culture' in which one was born, rather than to mean a creed making objective and rigorous demands. One could imagine Rome as a distant and irrelevant anachronism, embarrassment, even adversary. Rome as 'them'." Such views of the Second Vatican Council were condemned by the Church's hierarchy, and the works of theologians who were active in the Council or who closely adhered to the Council's aspect of reform (such as Hans Küng) have often been criticized by the Church for espousing a belief system that the hierarchy considers radical and misguided. As Dei Verbum reads, “Therefore, following in the footsteps of the Council of Trent and of the First Vatican Council, this present council wishes to set forth authentic doctrine on divine revelation and how it is handed on…”, Vatican II did not deny previous councils correctness.

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of Vatican II, in October 2011, the Vatican's website and many other Catholic news organizations announced that the Pope Benedict XVI, had made the period from October 2012 to the end of November 2013 (the Solemnity of Christ the King) a "Year Of Faith" in a solemn declaration, and ordered all parishes and religious institutions to find some manner during that Year of celebrating and reaffirming the Creed (there are now two main Creeds- the shorter Apostle's Creed and the lengthier Niceno-Constantopolitan, or Nicene Creed. The Nicene creed is recited at each Mass, and both are listed and examined in the landmark 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church; they serve as fundamental declarations that a catechumen or a baptized Catholic identifies with the Church).