John Paul II meets Vatican II

The Council intended to restore Christian unity and to renew the Catholic Church . . .

Bishop James Conley remembers the exact moment he heard his call to the priesthood. It came from the mouth of Pope John Paul II during a Mass in Des Moines on Oct. 4, 1979. The Holy Father, on his first visit to America as pope, challenged men in the audience to seriously consider the priesthood.

“I’m a JPII vocation,” said Bishop Conley, an auxiliary bishop in Denver. “I had only been a Catholic for four years when I saw him. I ended up going to Rome and working in the Vatican for 12 years. I was very much influenced by Pope John Paul II.”

Legacy

As the Church prepares to commemorate what would have been John Paul’s 90th birthday on May 18, Catholics are pondering his legacy: a vocations boom, World Youth Days, the fall of Communism, his international travel, greater Christian unity, the Catechism, the Theology of the Body, and much more.

Most who have studied John Paul’s entire papacy, however, seem to agree that his greatest legacy may be his 26-year effort to implement the Second Vatican Council. As a young bishop, the future pope attended every session of the Council, which laid the theological groundwork for many of John Paul’s initiatives.

When Pope John XXIII opened the Council in 1962, his inspiration was to restore unity among all the Christian churches and to renew the Catholic Church. In fact, Orthodox and Protestant observers were invited to all sessions.

Ralph Martin

“In the past, councils had been called to fight heresies or define new doctrines, but this council was to bring about a renewal in the Church, to make it more effective in the modern world,” said Ralph Martin, a member of Legatus’ Ann Arbor Chapter and director of graduate theology programs in the New Evangelization at Detroit’s Sacred Heart Seminary.

“There were three major rediscoveries,” Martin explained. “The first was the rediscovery of the universal call to holiness. Holiness was not just for priests and nuns, but for everyone. The second rediscovery was that the Church was not just an organization but a communion of love. The third was the rediscovery of the power of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost.”

Call to holiness

Vatican II produced 16 documents. Observers note that four of these documents would have the strongest impact on John Paul’s papacy. The first was Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation).

“In this document, Catholics were called to reclaim Sacred Scripture as the source of all spiritual renewal,” said Sr. Sara Butler, professor of dogmatic theology at New York’s Dunwoodie Seminary.

Protestants often complain that Catholics don’t know their Bible. The Council agreed. In fact, all of John Paul’s encyclicals begin with biblical text, which he then proceeds to unpack.

“This had never been done before his pontificate,” said Sr. Butler. “Prior to this, popes would only quote Scripture within an encyclical.”

The second document to influence the Holy Father was Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), the foundational document of Vatican II.

Bishop James Conley

“The main theme of this document is the universal call to holiness,” Bishop Conley explained. “Pope John Paul II took this and ran with it. We are all called to be saints. Before Vatican II there had been a divide between the clergy and the laity.”

John Paul worked on many fronts to implement this idea of universal holiness. He canonized single and married lay people, which serves to encourage holiness among the laity. World Youth Days called young people to greater sanctity. He wrote On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, which recognized the “feminine genius” and called women to grow in holiness while embracing their God-given femininity. He also encouraged lay movements within the Church.

“Many of the lay movements had been fermenting before Vatican II,” said Bishop Conley. “But they really flourished afterwards. No one intended this. In fact, it caught the Church off guard. It was really a work of the Holy Spirit.”

Religious freedom

John Paul also made it a point to hold synods with bishops every three years in order to recover the ancient tradition in which the pope and his bishops exercised their teaching and pastoral role together, as taught in Lumen Gentium.

The third Vatican II document to influence his papacy was Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World).

“He was actively involved in this document,” said Sr. Butler. “It deals with the question of politics, the social order, the dignity of the human person and the family in relation to the state.”

Gaudium et Spes teaches about the “law of the gift”— that a person can only realize him or herself through the sincere gift of self to another.

“As a philosopher, Pope John Paul II taught that we are social beings,” Sr. Butler explained, “and we can only be fulfilled through interrelationships. This reflects the Trinity.”

The fourth influential Council document was Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Freedom).

Religious freedom was an integral part of John Paul’s teaching, particularly as one who had lived under fascist and communist regimes. When the Pope traveled to Poland in 1979, he spoke about religious freedom as a universal right. Most historians agree this visit was the first crack in the wall that brought down communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Click here for a related story

Throughout his 26-year pontificate, John Paul demonstrated that the Council had built on 2,000 years of Catholic teaching and tradition.

“His pontificate made clear that Vatican II was to be understood as a council in continuity with the Church’s tradition, not a rupture with that tradition,” papal biographer George Weigel told Legatus Magazine. “The Church was to engage the modern world with its own distinctive resources of mind, heart and spirit.”

Martin concurs.

“Christian society as it had been known in Western Europe is gone,” he said. “We are now a minority surrounded by pagan society. John Paul said that we need to rediscover the ardor of the first Christians, the power of the Holy Spirit that activates Christians to be witnesses for Christ. You cannot keep Christ for yourself. You must proclaim Him.”

These are marching orders for the JPII generation.

Sabrina Arena Ferrisi is a Legatus Magazine staff writer.

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John Paul’s Cause

The Congregation for the Cause of Saints is investigating a possible miraculous healing of a French nun through the intercession of Pope John Paul II. Sister Marie Simon Pierre has testified that she was cured of Parkinson’s on the night of June 2, 2005. She had been praying for John Paul’s intercession that night. The Vatican’s Medical Commission and Theological Commission are evaluating this case.

Pope Benedict XVI waived the customary five-year waiting period after John Paul II’s death to initiate the beatification process. One approved miracle is necessary for beatification. Another is needed for canonization.

—Sabrina Arena Ferrisi