No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
The fourth and finalSession of the Vatican Council hascometoanend. The mind of the Council, and therefore of the Church as a whole, is now expressed in the sixteen official documents personally promulgated by the Pope in its name, four in the third Session and the remainder in the fourth. Most of these documents include, in a greater or lesser degree, outstanding new or revived insights into the nature of the Church and its place in the world. Many of them reflect the differing outlooks, in their various phases, of the bishops of the world and of the People of God they represent. Yet, on the whole, we may be deeply grateful for what the Council has given to the Church and to Christianity, as we stand at the beginning of what must be the momentous post-conciliar era. For in a very real sense the documents are seminal, seed planted in the soil of the life of the People of God. A long period of careful cultivation, within the sensus fidelium, now awaits them, before the fruits they may produce can be fully estimated and judged.
What will be the outcome? Will there be a real renewal, the emergence of a far more distinctive Christian character and attitude, manifesting more clearly the radical nature of the Church’s impact on contemporary life, in our own nation and in the world beyond it? Or will the work of the Council remain largely on paper, in its Decrees and Constitutions? That depends on the Holy Spirit, who will not fail, and on a resultant response to spiritual leadership among clergy and laity, which could. At present, at diocesan and parochial level, among priests and people, little of what the Council’s measures might involve is thought out, or the necessary steps to implement them realised.
1 G.T.S. Translation Peace on Earth S.264, page 10.
2 For a very complete study of what is here necessarily only touched upon, see Structures of the Church by Hans Kting, newly translated from the German ‐ Burns and Oates 1965 ‐ This book, written before the Council met, is the most scholarly and comprehensive account in English of the growth in the Church's life of its structures of teaching authority. It anticipates much of the work the Vatican Council is doing. See also a review article, The Church as Institution by Cornelius Ernst, o.p. in New Blackfriars October 1965.
3 Decree C.T.S. Translation Do 351 Chapter I para. 4 page 11.
4 Christian Unity ‐ A Catholic View. Ed. Heenan, J. C.. Sheed and Ward, Stag Book, 1962. page 188Google Scholar.
5 Tablet November 30 1963 page 1302.
6 “The Supernatural Life.” November 6 1965.
7 A distinction used with effect by Michael Novak in The Open Church, and perhaps invented by him.
8 For an account of the debate on this see Rynne Letters from the Vatican City Chapter V page 140, Faber and Faber 1963.
9 The Catholic Herald Nov. 12, p. 2.
10 It is noteworthy that the Decree on Ecumenism directs: (1) That the teaching of theology and other subjects, especially history should be treated from an ecumenical viewpoint; (2) Bishops and priests should in future be equipped with a developed meology on these lines, free from die spirit of polemic, especially in matters bearing on the relations of other Christians widi the Cadiolic Church; (3) The formation priests receive is the most important factor in the education and spiritual formation essential to the faithful and to religious. The Decree on Ecumenism C.T.S. Translation Do 351. Ch. II para. 10.
You have
Access