Catholic World News News Feature

A Bishop's Candid Memories Of Vatican II January 22, 1997

In 1992, journalist Kieron Wood conducted a lengthy interview with Bishop Thomas Morris, one of the last surviving Irish bishops to have participated in the Second Vatican Council. Much of that interview was published shortly thereafter in the monthly magazine Catholic World Report.

However, because portions of the interview were quite sensitive, Bishop Morris made the request that they should not be published while he was alive. With the bishop's death last week, that restraint has been lifted.

Catholic World News is pleased to offer previously unpublished portions of the interview:

"I'd been a bishop for two years at the start of the Council. I'd been teaching dogmatic theology and it depended at that time on consulting the authorities, what former councils had decided. But I was quite insular in my outlook on the Church and my theology. I didn't know what sort of issues were likely to come up in Rome. In any case the issues didn't come up that one would have expected.

"It wasn't until we came to the schema on the Church that the newer thinking became apparent-- thinking that we weren't familiar with. I only vaguely guessed at the combination of the North European bishops. I'd heard of a pastoral issued by the bishops of Hollan; the late Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin told me about it; he would have regarded it as too advanced, unorthodox. But I didn't know about the cleavages within the theology schools.

"We got the drafts of the various schemata beforehand. They were labelled sub secreto, so that I didn't even show them to my secretary. I found of course that drafts had been circulated to an awful lot of people besides!

"I was relieved when we told that this Council was not aiming at defining or giving final statements on doctrine, because a statement of doctrine has to be very carefully formulated and I would have regarded the Council statements as tentative and liable to be reformed.

"The first session in 1962 was on the liturgy. I had heard in discussions that the choice of the liturgy schema as the first one was inspired-- or engineered, perhaps - by the North Europeans. They'd scored many such points against the Roman Curia who were supposed to be managing things.

"While it's possible that Pope John XXIII was manipulated in some ways, I doubt that's the case with Paul VI. He took a very personal interest in the Council and used to study documents and would send a message down to the Council Fathers to include such-and-such a thing, to make such-and-such a reservation. These interventions were resented by some of the Council Fathers and more especially by some of the periti (or experts) and there were some occasions where dominant periti would have staged a certain thing.

"A speech was written, perhaps, for a Council Father (he was the only one who could speak), but all the periti were massed in the lobby or on the stairs to hear this statement. They would applaud vigorously and the presiding chairman would say "No applause in church" but that was all stage-managed. But I imagine Paul VI was aware of this to a certain extent. That was why he wanted to correct certain things; he saw them getting out of hand.

"At the opening Mass of the Council, I was near the altar and heard Pope John XXIII speak about the serious difficulties and sufferings of earlier Councils because of undue interference of the civil authorities, Kings and Emperors and so on. I put a note in the margin of the sermon: what about interference by the media?

"It's an almost insuperable temptation for the media to influence the events they report, perhaps by an implication of approval or disapproval. I felt that good Pope John wasn't aware that this would happen, but I saw it happening. I knew the Irish journalists who were reporting and I saw their methods, though they weren't the most reckless of the reporters there.

"There was a confused position about the news of the Council: how much would be released and how much published. The Irish journalists got into the habit of attending the press conferences. I think the Dutch bishops were largely involved in an information office which was set up and issued a regular newsletter, I-DOC. It was nearly always in favour of the liberal position. And that was where several of our Irish reporters received their theological training! They got a good strong diet then of liberal views!

"I feel that, at a lot of points, the implementation of the Council decisions has gone beyond the Council. Earlier on there was a phrase going around: "the Spirit of Vatican II." I think "the spirit of Vatican II" meant the misuse of Vatican II to bolster up some idea of one's own. I think the implementation of the Council has been very uneven throughout the world. A lot depended on what was there before the Council. You don't change the practice in a diocese overnight just because there's been a Council.

"I would have agreed with Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin who wanted to reassure the ordinary people that there was to be no change in the doctrine of the Church and they needn't get worried about that. I wouldn't always have agreed with Archbishop McQuaid; he was too conservative for my taste. But I would certainly have agreed with him in that. It was a good time to reassure people.

"Of course, the strength of Irish Catholicism has been its conservatism. Going back to the beginning of the 18th century, it wasn't the priests that held onto the Faith, it was the people. Ignorant people, faction-fighters, poitin-makers, but people with faith, and from them sprang the priests. But Irish Catholicism is short in a lot of ways. Lack of consistency, for example. We did need to change, but we haven't changed yet. We need prayer, genuine prayer based on a relationship with God, and then a changed attitude to our neighbor. The valley of the squinting windows is an Irish invention and a lack of charity is all too common among the Irish people.

"As to the interpretation of the Council, the theologians are the ones who encourage trends and develop theories and if they don't defend the essentials, then the essentials are in great danger. After all, it has been the theologians who have led the Church astray in so many cases and so many countries.

"But today the theologians have fairly well divided themselves. In America, I wouldn't rely on some of the big theologians at all. I think some of the theologians over there have sold out on the modern favorite questions of morality and sex, abortion, marriage, and they were teaching in important positions. And some of our own Irish theologians would have done us no great good.

"I still think that the lay apostolate is one of the great discoveries of Vatican II. But, on the negative side, I'd say there's been a change in the generalized attitude to authority which may be attributed to the Council. The old, flat condemnation by bishops and the Church was final-- you were condemned, that was the end of you. Now there'ss a growing attitude, I think, of "We-e-ell, things might not be the same in five years' time". And I think some of that would have come from the general discussion and digestion of Vatican II that's gone on.

"I think Pope John XXIII expected the Council to end by the Christmas of 1962, but once it began, it had to be brought to some sort of conclusion. It would be very hard to say it's a pity it happened at all.

"The Council was meant to bring the Church up to date: aggiornamento. But it hasn't percolated down sufficiently to the ordinary folk and it hasn't been taken up with sufficient enthusiasm by hierarchies. It was a brave attempt but I don't think it succeeded in doing that."