Pave Benedikt er en s\u00e6rdeles dyktig l\u00e6rer og en klar tenker, og beviste dette p\u00e5 nytt da han for noen dager siden (uforberedt) svarte p\u00e5 ti sp\u00f8rsm\u00e5l stilt av prester i en bisped\u00f8mme i Nord-Italia. Sp\u00f8rsm\u00e5la handla om sv\u00e6rt forskjellige ting, men mange syns det siste sp\u00f8rsm\u00e5let var det mest aktuelle (og svaret her det mest interessante); om hvorfor problema, forvirringa og skuffelsene etter Vatikankonsilet har v\u00e6r s\u00e5 store:<\/p>\n
Paven begynner \u00e5 svare p\u00e5 denne m\u00e5ten: We had such great hopes, but in reality things proved to be more difficult. Nonetheless, it is still true that the great legacy of the Council, which opened a new road, is a \u201cmagna carta\u201d of the Church\u2019s path, very essential and fundamental.<\/p>\n But why did this happen? I would like to begin with an historical observation. The periods following a council are almost always very difficult. After the great Council of Nicaea \u2013 which is, for us, truly the foundation of our faith, in fact we confess the faith as formulated at Nicaea \u2013 there was not the birth of a situation of reconciliation and unity, as hoped by Constantine, the promoter of the great Council, but a genuinely chaotic situation of a battle of all against all. <\/font><\/i> In his book on the Holy Spirit, saint Basil compares the Church\u2019s situation after the Council of Nicaea to a nighttime naval battle, in which no one recognizes another, but everyone is pitted against everyone else. It really was a situation of total chaos: this is how saint Basil paints in vivid colors the drama of the period following the Council of Nicaea. …<\/p>\n So it is not now, in retrospect, such a great surprise how difficult it was at first for all of us to digest the Council, this great message. To imbue this into the life of the Church, to receive it, such that it becomes the Church\u2019s life, to assimilate it into the various realities of the Church is a form of suffering, and it is only in suffering that growth is realized. To grow is always to suffer as well, because it means leaving one condition and passing to another.<\/p>\n And we must note that there were two great historic upheavals in the concrete context of the postconciliar period.<\/p>\n The first is the convulsion of 1968, the beginning \u2013 or explosion, I dare say \u2013 of the great cultural crisis of the West. The postwar generation had ended, a generation that, after seeing all the destruction and horror of war, of combat, and witnessing the drama of the great ideologies that had actually led people toward the precipice of war, had discovered the Christian roots of Europe and had begun to rebuild Europe with these great inspirations. But with the end of this generation there were also seen all of the failures, the gaps in this reconstruction, the great misery in the world, and so began the explosion of the crisis of Western culture, what I would call a cultural revolution that wants to change everything radically. It says: In two thousand years of Christianity, we have not created a better world; we must begin again from nothing, in an absolutely new way. Marxism seems to be the scientific formula for creating, at last, the new world. … …<\/p>\n So: in these contexts of two cultural ruptures, the first being the cultural revolution of 1968 and the second the fall into nihilism after 1989, the Church sets out with humility upon its path, between the passions of the world and the glory of the Lord. Along this road, we must grow with patience and we must now, in a new way, learn what it means to renounce triumphalism.<\/p>\n The Council had said that triumphalism must be renounced \u2013 thinking of the Baroque, of all these great cultures of the Church. It was said: Let\u2019s begin in a new, modern way. But another triumphalism had grown, that of thinking: We will do things now, we have found the way, and on it we find the new world.<\/p>\n But the humility of the Cross, of the Crucified One, excludes precisely this triumphalism as well. We must renounce the triumphalism according to which the great Church of the future is truly being born now. The Church of Christ is always humble, and for this very reason it is great and joyful.<\/p>\n It seems very important to me that we can now see with open eyes how much that was positive also grew following the Council: in the renewal of the liturgy, in the synods \u2013 Roman synods, universal synods, diocesan synods \u2013 in the parish structures, in collaboration, in the new responsibility of laypeople, in intercultural and intercontinental shared responsibility, in a new experience of the Church\u2019s catholicity, of the unanimity that grows in humility, and nonetheless is the true hope of the world. … …<\/p>\n Thus it seems to me that we must learn the great humility of the Crucified One, of a Church that is always humble and always opposed by the great economic powers, military powers, etc. But we must also learn, together with this humility, the true triumphalism of the Catholicism that grows in all ages. There also grows today the presence of the Crucified One raised from the dead, who has and preserves his wounds. He is wounded, but it is in just in this way that he renews the world, giving his breath which also renews the Church in spite of all of our poverty. In this combination of the humility of the Cross and the joy of the risen Lord, who in the Council has given us a great road marker, we can go forward joyously and full of hope. <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n
\nI, too, lived through Vatican Council II, coming to Saint Peter\u2019s Basilica with great enthusiasm and seeing how new doors were opening. It really seemed to be the new Pentecost, in which the Church would once again be able to convince humanity. After the Church\u2019s withdrawal from the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it seemed that the Church and the world were coming together again, and that there was a rebirth of a Christian world and of a Church of the world and truly open to the world.<\/p>\n
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