Opportunity the church never took

KOLKATA: As the White House struggles to accommodate faith-based organizations in the race to the 2012 US presidential polls on issues like birth control that has been a taboo for all these years, Robert Blair Kaiser, 82, one of the last living persons who was an unusual participant-observer at the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II in the 1960s will be here in Kolkata on September 13 to narrate that the Council was amenable to changes in world view even on birth control to make the church 'up to date'.
"Pope Paul VI had put his blessing on the work of John XXIII's birth control commission but pulled back when advisers warned him that if he accepted its conclusions - that a couple can and should make love, even when they have good reasons not to make a baby - he would lose his moral authority. Paul VI took the Curia's advice - and lost his moral authority," Kaiser says, with sarcasm.
Paul VI's successors John Paul II and Benedict XVI, too, did not abide by the recommendations that emerged from the Council. "Vatican II proclaimed that Christ had to have an African face in Africa and an Asian face in Asia. John Paul II didn't get it. He frowned at efforts in Africa to create an encultured African Church in Africa. In a dozen trips during his papacy, he wasn't promoting the face of an African Jesus so much as he was selling Africans a commodity - papal celebrity: The Pope as hero, the Pope as God," he says.
A strong advocate of making the papal order relevant to modern times, Kaiser has been rallying for the need for change in the Roman Catholic Church for nearly four decades. A Jesuit-turned-journalist, he had covered Vatican II for Time Magazine. He will be in India from September 13 to October 4, addressing congregations in Kolkata, Krishnagar, Barrackpore, Shillong, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi.
"Vatican II set the Church on a course of renewal that has barely begun. It is the most important event in the Church's long history. But it is also a reflection of a historic opportunity lost on a Church bent on preserving its dysfunctional hierarchical system," says Kaiser.
Father Gaston Roberge has invited Kaiser for a talk at St Xavier's College. "Kaiser is one of the last living persons who was close to the Council. He is one of the best informed about what the Council fathers discussed and meant to tell the world. In a view that is shared by millions of Catholics, the Roman Catholic Church was on the cusp of a historic change 50 years ago. Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council, popularly referred to as Vatican II, to discuss ways for the church to have a greater connect with the billion-plus Catholics. Unfortunately, the Church failed to seize on the opportunity and in order to retain absolute control, they did everything they could to make the Church less human and more severe; more a Church of laws than a Church of love, more Roman and less Catholic," says Father Gaston.
However, the papal order in the last five decades could not come out of its rigid structure and shake hands with reality. "Pope John XXIII wanted to make the Church more human. He had a favourite word to describe the process: 'aggiornamento' meaning to 'bring up to date'. It was a pretty bold word for the Pope to use in Rome where nothing ever changed. The top cardinal in Rome, Alfredo Ottaviani, the pro-prefect of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, could not conceive of any of the changes and he did almost everything he could to put roadblocks in the way of Council's major change-projects. The Church is for many an inexorable machine, functioning for the preservation of itself and to the greater glory of the status quo," says Kaiser.
As usual, the bishops toed the Pope's line, they were more Roman than Catholic and did what John Paul told them to do: They silenced independent voices in the Church, tried to make women who felt they had priestly vocations into heretics, and used the threat of excommunication to intimidate Americans in political life. And they drove people out of the Church. Some 80% American Catholics no longer attend Mass regularly. "The only way forward for the Church is to embrace the people instead of power. That is what the Council had ordained half a century ago," adds Kaiser.
The First Vatican Council was convoked by Pope Pius IX and held in 1869-70. Unlike the five earlier General Councils held in Rome which met in the Lateran Basilica and are known as Lateran Councils, it met in the Vatican Basilica, hence its name. The most important decision taken at Vatican I was the definition of papal infallibility. The proceedings were cut short when the Italian Army entered the city of Rome at the end of Italian unification. As a result, only deliberations on the role of the Papacy and the congruent relationship of faith and reason were completed, with examination of pastoral issues concerning the direction of the Church left unaddressed.
The Second Vatican Council addressed relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. It was the second to be held at St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It opened under Pope John XXIII in October 1962 and closed under Pope Paul VI in December 1965. Pope John XXIII called the council to discuss the tremendous challenges that world's bishops confronted in the midst of political, social, economic and technological change. In discussions before Vatican II convened, Pope John often said it was time to open the windows of the Church to let in fresh air. He invited Christians outside the Catholic Church to send observers to the Council.