IRELAND
Irish Times
RITE & REASON: It is right we celebrate the last Vatican council but there were significant failings also, writes GERARD MOLONEY
NEXT THURSDAY marks a momentous anniversary for the Roman Catholic Church as 50 years ago, October 11th, 1962, the opening session of the Second Vatican Council began.
Bishops gathered to consider the great issues affecting the church. Nothing would be quite the same again. It is still difficult to credit the impact and scale of the council’s achievements.
To have lived through that period of change and hope must have been extraordinarily exciting. It was a good time to be alive and to be Catholic. …
Fifty years on, it is right that we celebrate the many insights and achievements of Vatican II but it is clear that there were significant failings also. The council didn’t address adequately major issues around sexual morality, especially contraception, second unions and homosexuality, which have become a source of increasing division within the church.
It failed to address the problem of clericalism and clerical culture, now brought into sharp relief by the sex abuse scandals.
The church failed to put into practice the principle of subsidiarity – in other words, to devolve power to local churches and not centralise everything in Rome. And so there was a failure of collegiality and a failure to give any real voice or authority, not only to lay people and clergy, but also even to local conferences of bishops.
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