Pope Leo XIV has begun a catechesis for the Church on the Second Vatican Council. He has encouraged Catholics to read the Council documents that continue to shape the life of the Church in the world today. In that spirit, a brief excerpt from the various documents will be posted for each day of Lent. In this penitential season, may the riches of the Council bring us to a deeper embrace of Church teaching and convert us to a stronger commitment to live the Gospel in the world today.
The reflections begin with one of the later documents of the Council, “Nostra Aetate,” the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. Some scholars propose that the work of the Council participants over three years (1962-1965) brought about their conversion to promote the document’s significant shift in the Church’s self-understanding.
Excerpts from the documents are taken from Austin Flannery, O.P., Vatican Council II, Volume 1, The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, New Revised Edition, 1996. Edits have been made to reflect a more inclusive language.
“In this age of ours, when people are drawing more closely together and the bonds of friendship between different peoples are being strengthened, the Church examines with greater care the relations she has to non-Christian religions. Ever aware of her duty to foster unity and charity among individuals, and even among nations, she reflects at the outset on what people have in common and what tends to promote fellowship among them” (N.A. #1)
“People look to their different religions for an answer to the unsolved riddles of human existence. The problems that weigh heavily on the hearts of people are the same today as in the ages past… What is the meaning and purpose of life? What is upright behavior and what is sinful?… And finally, what is the ultimate mystery, beyond human explanation, which embraces our entire existence, from which we take our origin and towards which we tend?” (N.A. #1)
“The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, the precepts and doctrines which, although differing in many ways from her own teaching, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all people. Yet she proclaims and is in duty bound to proclaim without fail, Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life (Jn 1:6). In him whom God reconciled all things to himself (2 Cor 5:18-19), people find the fullness of their religious life” (N.A. #2)
“As holy Scripture testifies, Jerusalem did not recognize God’s moment when it came (cf. Lk 19:42). Jews for the most part did not accept the Gospel; on the contrary, many opposed the spreading of it (Rom 11:28). Even so, the apostle Paul maintains that the Jews remain very dear to God, for the sake of the patriarchs, since God does not take back the gifts he bestowed or the choice he made. Together with the prophets and the same apostle, the Church awaits the day, known to God alone, when all peoples will call on God with one voice and serve him ‘shoulder to shoulder’” (Soph/Zeph 3:9; cf. Is 66:23, Ps 65:4; Rom 11:11-32) (N.A. #4).
We continue to reflect on the teaching of Vatican II. This week on Sunday we will have a final word from the document on Non-Christian Religions. Then we will have several excerpts from the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (D.V.).
“Indeed, the Church reproves every form of persecution against whomsoever it may be directed. Remembering then, her common heritage with the Jews and moved not by any political consideration, but solely by the religious motivation of Christian charity, she deplores all hatreds, persecutions, displays of antisemitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews” (N.A. #4).
“We cannot truly pray to God the Father of all if we treat any people in other than brotherly/sisterly fashion, for all people are created in God’s image… Therefore, the Church reproves as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against people or any harassment of them on the basis of their race, color, condition in life or religion” (N.A. #5).
“Hearing the Word of God with reverence, and proclaiming it with faith, the sacred Synod assents to the words of St. John who says: ‘We proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us – that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ’ (I Jn 1:2-3)… For it wants the whole world to hear the summons to salvation, so that through hearing it may believe, through belief it may hope, through hope it may come to love” (D.V. 1).
“It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will (cf. Eph 1:9). His will was that people should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature (cf. Eph 2:18; 2 Pet 1:4). By this revelation, then, the invisible God (cf. Col 1:15; 1 Tim 1:17), from the fullness of his love, addresses people as his friends (cf. Ex 33:11; Jn 15:14-15), and moves among then (cf. Bar 3:38), in order to invite and receive them into his own company” (D.V. I, 2).
“’The obedience of faith’ (Rom 16:26; cf. Rom 1:5; 2Cor 10:5-6) must be given to God as he reveals himself. By faith one freely commits their intellect and will to God, making ‘the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals’ and willingly assenting to the revelation given by him. Before this faith can be exercised, one must have the grace of God to move and assist them; one must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and ‘makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth’” (D.V. I, 5).
“In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church, the apostles left bishops as their successors. They gave them ‘their own position of teaching authority.’ This sacred Tradition, then, and the sacred Scripture of both Testaments are like a mirror, in which the Church, during its pilgrim journey here on earth contemplates God… The Tradition that comes from the apostles makes progress in the Church, with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on” (D.V. II, 7).
“Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move toward the same goal… Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church. By adhering to it the entire holy people, united to its pastors, remains always faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the ‘brotherhood’, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).
“Seeing that, in sacred Scripture, God speaks through human beings in human fashion, it follows that the interpreter of sacred Scriptures, if they are to ascertain what God has wished to communicate to us, should carefully search out the meaning which the sacred writers really had in mind, that meaning which God had thought well to manifest through the medium of their words… Indeed, the words of God, expressed in the words of humans, are in every way like human language, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on himself the flesh of human weakness, became like human beings” (D.V. III, 12 & 13).
“God, with loving concern contemplating, and making preparation for, the salvation of the whole human race, in a singular undertaking chose for himself a people to whom he would entrust his promises. By his covenant with Abraham and, through Moses, with the race of Israel, he did acquire a people for himself, and to them he revealed himself in words and deeds as the one true, living God, so that Israel might experience the ways of God with human beings” (D.V. IV, 14).
“The Word of God, which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith is set forth and displays its power in a most wonderful way in the writings of the New Testament. For when the time had fully come, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. Christ established on earth the kingdom of God, revealed his Father and himself by deeds and words; and by his death, resurrection and glorious ascension, as well as by sending the Holy Spirit, completed his work. Lifted up from the earth he draws all people to himself, for he alone has the words of eternal life” (D.V. V, 17).
“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (St. Jerome)… Let them (the faithful) remember, however, that prayer should accompany the reading of the sacred Scripture, so that a dialogue takes place between God and human beings. For, “we speak to him when we pray; we listen to him when we read the divine oracles” (St. Ambrose) (D.V. VI, 25).
“The Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. Freedom of this kind means that all people should be immune from coercion on the part of individuals, social groups and every human power so that, within due limits, nobody is forced to act against their convictions nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with their convictions in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others” (D.H. I, 2). The Council at the same time, “leaves intact the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies towards the true religion and the one Church of Christ” (D.H. 1).
“The search for truth, however, must be carried out in a manner that is appropriate to the dignity of the human person and their social nature, namely by free enquiry with the help of teaching or instruction, communication and dialogue. It is by these means that people share with each other the truth they have discovered, or think they have discovered, in such a way that they help one another in the search for truth. Moreover, it is by personal assent that people must adhere to the truth they have discovered” (DH I, 2).
“The Church, therefore, faithful to the truth of the Gospel, is following the path of Christ and the apostles when she recognizes the principle that religious liberty is in keeping with human dignity and divine revelation and gives it her support… Although in the life of the people of God in its pilgrimage through the vicissitudes of human history there has at times appeared a form of behavior which was hardly in keeping with the spirit of the Gospel and was even opposed to it, it has remained the teaching of the Church that no one is to be coerced into believing” (DH II, 12).