The Future of Catholicism in America by Mark Silk;Patricia O'Connell Killen;

Author:Mark Silk;Patricia O'Connell Killen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL010000, Religion/Christianity/Catholic, REL084000, Religion/Religion, Politics & State
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 2019-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

5

A Pluriform Unity

A HISTORIAN’S VIEW OF THE CONTEMPORARY CHURCH

Joseph P. Chinnici

INTRODUCTION

Now that the Council is over, the real work has begun: transmitting the spirit and letter of the Council into reality in the life and structure of the Church. Everyone who wants to have a serious part in that work needs a steady supply of independent and reliable information in depth about the events and ideas, both in Rome and around the world, which shape the renewal and reform.

These words, written by the Jesuit Daniel O’Hanlon to a layman in Baldwin, New York, one year after the closure of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), capture in large part the task that lay before the Catholic community in the United States in December 1966.1 The author refers to “events and ideas” that would “shape” the ensuing “renewal and reform.” He talks about transmission, the embodiment of “spirit and letter” into “the life and structures of the Church.” Sustaining the Council meant changing attitudes and creating the ritual forms and social networks that shaped people’s lives. A communications officer at the Council, O’Hanlon knew the challenges and opportunities of this implementation firsthand. It was birthed in the religious experience of the Council, and he and his cohorts believed that a fairly unified conciliar vision had emerged. The Holy Spirit seemed to be acting in a new way, crossing boundaries, asking people to open horizontal lines of communication, to risk the familiar patterns of acting so as “to create new structures” that “used the full talents of all, especially those of lesser rank.” One expression of the new pathway would be an ecumenical spirituality, a unifying responsiveness to the Word of God so as to accomplish the “mission of Christ to the world.” The new pathway of ecumenism and a new identity for Catholicism in the modern world had opened up. It did not quite turn out the way Daniel O’Hanlon expected.

Just over thirty years later, in the late summer of 1996, the American Catholic community and the public at large were exposed to a very unusual and intense disagreement between two ranking prelates in the church, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago (1928–1996) and Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston (1931–2017). In many respects, they had similar career trajectories as administrators, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals. They were men of the same generation who helped implement the Council. Both were chosen to be bishops by Pope Paul VI; both were sensitive to and promoters of solid ecumenical relationships. Yet they disagreed as to the interpretation of the Council and its implementation; they disagreed about the state of the church in the United States; they disagreed about the methodology to be used to bridge the severe divides that had opened up not only within the church but within society as a whole. Cardinal Bernardin, the inheritor of a conciliar vision focused on lay participation, dialogue, and social engagement, saw one path forward in the midst of severe polarization: the “invitation to a revitalized Catholic common ground,”

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