THE REAL POST-
CONCILIAR REFORMS

Optimism is not only different from Christian hope, it is often its counterfeit. In reality hope takes up where optimism leaves off. The optimist has no need of hope because he believes that all will be well in a worldly way, hence there is no need of redemption. But the hope-filled man believes he will be redeemed despite having to endure the sufferings of Job.

Christ's guarantee that the gates of hell will not prevail against his Church does not, as has often been pointed out, mean that the Church necessarily flourishes in ways which can be discerned with the human eye. It is one of the signs of spiritual malaise in the Church that some of its leaders insist on translating hope into mere optimism.

Given the devastation which is now apparent on all sides, it is easy to think of the pre-conciliar Church as a sinless paradise and all change as having been for the worse. But genuinely hopeful signs in the contemporary Church can best be seen by recognizing real abuses which existed in the pre-conciliar Church.

Liturgy. No one should wish to return to the days when many priests seemed to rush through a mumbled Mass as quickly as possible, the congregation indeed present mainly as spectators. To say that some Catholics had a deep understanding of the Mass is to forget the fact that the majority did not. They obtained spiritual benefits from the Mass, but the manner of its celebration did not always contribute to this. In principle today's Catholics have greater access to the inner meaning of the Mass.

Ecumenism. Catholics have discovered not only that they have much in common with other Christians, it has become a cliche, albeit a true one, that believers in all churches find more in common with one another than they do with liberals in their own church, a reality which could not have been seen, much less acted upon, in the pre-conciliar period.

Religious Liberty. The lingering belief that the Church would suppress religious liberty if it had the power to do so, and that Catholic theory required union of church and state, has been finally laid to rest. It was a skewed way of looking at the world and an albatross that impeded Catholic influence.

Collegiality. Certain traditional notions of obedience were a distortion, one which, ironically, served the cause of the false "reformers" who were able to invoke the obligation of obedience, or at least of institutional loyalty, against orthodox Catholics resisting illegitimate change. Ecclesiastical authority was sometimes misused before the Council, especially in religious life, and it helped shape a mentality which often did not understand the reasons for things, since blind obedience was deemed itself a fundamental virtue. The orthodox movement within the Church today would be impossible if the traditional idea of obedience were still operative.

The "Emerging Laity." Lay initiative has probably been the single most important development of the post-conciliar Church in terms of the defense of orthodoxy. Although the rights of the laity were treated as a liberal idea at the time of Council, in many ways it has been orthodox laity who have been most effective in exercising those rights. Dissenting movements all enjoy substantial clerical support.

Openness to the World. Dialogue with the world is complex and full of perils, but it is also an obligation which cannot be ignored. For all the abuses perpetrated in the name of psychology and other secular intellectual disciplines, it is impossible to understand the modern world, or the Church's place in it, without assimilating what is true in modern culture.

Social Conscience. Catholics are in general more sensitive to injustice than they once were. It was possible before the Council for otherwise devout people to think there was nothing wrong in being openly racist, for example, or otherwise denying that their faith required them to be concerned about injustice.

The fundamental problem of the post-conciliar Church is not that good fruits have failed to appear but that so many of those fruits have been allowed swiftly to go to rot and so many vendors are offering poisonous counterfeits of the real thing.

James Hitchcock is professor of history at St. Louis University.