On the absence of Vatican II

As I've noted elsewhere, my religious formation was at first haphazard and later, though organized, still rather bland and unfulfilling.

I started formal Catholic religious education in fifth grade. Fifth and sixth grades, under the guidance of relatively traditional individuals such as the deacon Mr. Hart and others were educational for a kid who had been brought up in the Church through his dad taking him to Mass every other Sunday and through the prism of his protestant grandmother who had taught in Catholic schools for many years and had many friends in the local clergy.

Someone once made the comment to my mother that my brother and I were more up on Catholic stuff like the sacraments than the kids who had been going to CCD all their lives.

But then in junior high and high school, things changed. The program was not really geared toward learning about the Church, rather it was more along the lines of touchy-feely stuff. Nothing hard, just a lot of moral stuff like 'love your neighbor and help him'. To be honest, I really didn't pay that much attention. I got through confirmation (again, 'good works' was emphasized far more than 'faith') and then I just stopped going...

Sandro Magister's column today on the competing interpretations on the place of the Second Vatican Council brought to mind my religious education's gaping hole and now that I think about it, it becomes more and more clear on what as missing.

Magister looks at Cardinal Ruini's comments on what is considered the standard history of Vatican II and how it is flawed due to its biased interpretation:

One of the other central theses is that Vatican II marked a fundamental rupture between the preceding, preconciliar ecclesial period and the postconciliar period that followed.

Cardinal Ruini challenged this vision at its core. Not only did Vatican II not signal a rupture understood as a “new beginning” in the history of the Church, but such a breaking off “is also theologically inadmissible.”

The ironic thing about how Vatican II is considered to be a break with the Church of the past is how Vatican II's aftermath ignores the catalyst itself of the break.

Looking back again at my religious formation, where was Vatican II? I consider this again and again and the only time I remember hearing about it was in one particular class that was presided over by the high school debate teacher. His session was oriented toward current events and we discussed abortion among other things. Yet even then, Vatican II was just a ship passing out at sea.

Certainly the spirit of Vatican II was with us. One hears stories of religious education in the past and how they hate the Catholic Church because of it. I just shake my head because I cannot fathom such hostility. How could I be hostile toward a void, a non-existent thing? The spirit of Vatican II was alive and well in our confirmation program that was basically about putting together enough public service credits, in going to nursing homes to play the guitar and talk to old people. Certainly, 'good works' are fundamental and I was happy to do them, but when they are carried out in a vacuum of serious religious discussion, they just come across as busy work to fill the time. This spirit has no name, and why should it have a name? After all, was not Vatican II hijacked by Paul VI?

Everyone talks about how Vatican II is supposed to be the great revolution in the Church, bringing it into modernity. I would instead suggest that those people instead use Vatican II as an excuse to ignore Vatican II and the works of the Council Fathers in reaffirming the Magisterium at the end of the second millennium of Christ.