Thursday, October 25, 2012

Problems facing the Church at Vatican Council II

It is perhaps fair to say that the first real task of the Council was to overcome the indolent, euphoric feeling that all was well with the Church, and to bring into the open the problems smoldering within.

In the fall of 1964, then, what concrete problems did the Council face? These problems may be crystallized into the following groups:

1. The problem of divine worship.

2. The problem of centralism in the Church.

3. The problem of relations with non-Catholic Christendom and the ecumenical movement.

4. The problem of new directions in the relations between Church and State, or what might somewhat imprecisely be labeled the end of the Middle Ages, or even the end of the Constantinian era.

5. The problem of faith and science, or, more specifically, the problem of faith and history, which had become a basic problem for faith through the triumph of the method of historical criticism.

6. The problem of the relation of Christianity to the modern ethic of work, to technology, and in general to the new moral problems posed by a technological society.

taken from: Theological Highlights of Vatican II by Joseph Ratzinger, Paulist Press, English Edition, 1966

One can fairly ask whether fifty years after the opening of the Council, these problems have been adequately addressed.

No comments:

Post a Comment