The unspoken message of Vatican II. . .

Even for a Lutheran like me, there is much to be commended in the actual conciliar documents of Vatican II.  There is much with which I would disagree, as I suspect most Lutherans would.  The problem is that few are reading or even concerned about what actually was said in the documents of the Council.  It is a church gathering that has taken on its own life quite apart from the actual decrees of the Council or any of its official writings.  Instead of a small step for renewing a church which it seems John XXIII had in mind, the presumption of the Council has been and remains that the Roman Catholic Church must change or die.  Unlike even the actual words of Paul VI, this council has become a spirit or thematic emblem of those who, it seems, hated the Roman Church that was and were determined to remake it in such a way that it looked less like Scripture and tradition and more like the times. 

The folks in the pews found out what Vatican II was when they woke up one morning to a new Mass and the vernacular all over the place and a nightclub rhythm and blues combo set up to accompany it all.  They did not read anything but saw it, with a wince, as they realized they were not in Kansas anymore.  I feel for them.  Their church was stolen from them not by a huge assembly of bishops in Rome but by those who took this as an opportunity to renovate a church they did not like into something new and different.  They thought everyone felt like they did and many of them, Francis, for example, got angry that there were actually people who did not think a wholesale renovation was necessary and who clung to the older forms and shape of the church's life.

In one fell swoop a piety was dismantled, an identity transformed, architecture changed, music was like the radio, and all the things that were once holy became less so and some of things that were once unholy almost became such.  The only problem was when Paul VI actually held the line and reminded Roman Catholics that sex was after love and marriage and for procreation.  In the world of condoms and pills, this was a bridge too far.  Soon Rome became several churches -- the cruel caricature of itself created by its lapse of memory and liturgical discontinuity and doctrinal divergence and the shadow of itself as a steady, steadfast, and slow to change monolith.  The papacy grew in this church body since there was less liturgically and dogmatically to unite them and they had to rally around someone.  It soon too the form of the unassailable external virtue of John Paul II but after him all the cracks were exposed.  Benedict XVI had the eloquence and the integrity but Francis had the media image.  Now we are down to Leo XIV but still asking "will the real Rome please stand up?"

In the meantime we wait.  Will Rome look like Rainbow Fr. Martin or like capa magna Cardinal Burke?  Will the catechism continue to evolve what the churches believe or hold to the sacred deposit once given and passed down?  Will the liturgy wars continue or one side win or will a peace of Rome be convened?  Will Rome continue to look like a gussied up Protestantism on the way to irrelevance or will it be something with whom a Confessional Lutheran like me is actually interested in conversation?  Will Rome end up as the custodian of property and artistic treasures or will it become a means of calling sinners to repentance and those who were once no people into the people of God?

As I said in the beginning, not everything Vatican II actually said was bad.  Some of it was actually quite good.  The problem is that Rome is no more the Church of Vatican II than it is the Church of Vatican I.  It is a church on a voyage of discovery trying to figure out who it is.  If they are blessed and we are lucky, Leo will help them remember who they were so that they can begin to find out who they are.  If not, it was a distraction as the biggest "Protestant" Church in the world reinvents itself as a big tent without much of a central pole to hold it all up.  Can anyone in their right mind imagine Angelo Roncalli waking up and looking at Rome today and saying "This is exactly what I had in mind?"