We Must Have Our Own Vatican II. . .

WHAT MUST THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
DO TO BE SAVED? (5)

In our anti-Roman Catholic fervor through the years we Protestants have insisted that the Roman Catholic Church is impervious to change. Rome never changes, we have charged, perhaps with some justification. But Rome has made some dramatic changes in recent years, especially in their ecumenical council known as Vatican II in 1965. Measured in terms of centuries things happened at Vatican II that were wholly unpredictable and would have shocked the fathers of the church of ages past. Indeed, many were shocked in 1965, and are still shocked, causing some clergy to leave and start independent churches.

The leaders of Vatican II were persuaded after much debate that the Roman Catholic Church would have to make some significant changes if it was to relate to the demands of a 20th-century world. They recognized that the church must change or become irrelevant. They raised the same question about the Roman Church that I am raising about the Churches of Christ in this series: What must the church do to be saved?

In this installment of our series I am saying that for the Churches of Christ to be saved they must have their own Vatican II. It is not likely that we can effect change in our thinking and practice any more easily than the Roman Church. While change comes painfully and with difficulty, people can and will change when they see that they must do so to be saved. If Rome changed, so can we. What is remarkable about Vatican II is that it set in motion some of the very changes the Churches of Christ must make. That may be because there are striking similarities between the two churches. A review of the changes wrought by Vatican II will point up what I mean.

The story of Vatican II began with a document called “Declaration of Religious Liberty,” sometimes referred to as “the American document” because it was drawn up by an American Jesuit priest and theologian, John Courtney Murray. It sought to undo the sectarian spirit of an earlier document known as the “Syllabus of Errors,” in which the Roman Church is depicted as the guardian of all truth while other Christians are viewed as “erring schismatics.” The new document called on the Roman Church to recognize religious freedom for all people, and to create an atmosphere of a free and open search for truth in all its institutions.

Murray’s document, which he nursed as a mother over a sick child through all the perils of debate and aggravated opposition, brought the Roman Church into a “consciousness of civilized mankind,” as Murray put it, and it made the church more accepting of “historical consciousness.” These are insights every Protestant church must gain, certainly Churches of Christ who have a way of ignoring history. For the Roman Church to resolve to be a defender of the cause of freedom, religious as well as political, was a change of staggering import.

But Murray’s document called for specific changes in thought and practice that were after much controversy approved by the council and by the Pope. To recount these will serve to point up some mid-course changes that we should consider making.

1. Doctrine does develop; dogma does change.

We may have as much difficulty admitting this as did the fathers of Vatican II who were as steeped in tradition as ourselves. Murray did not mean, of course, that basic and essential doctrines of the Christian faith change, but that in the general teachings of the church on how to live in a changing world dogma may have to be revised. That the apostles would impose an order or procedure upon the ancient church does not necessarily mean that they would say the same thing to the 20th century church.

In Churches of Christ we need to ask some hard questions about our unchanging practice of male-dominated services, the subjugation of women in ministry, our position on divorce and remarriage, preacher-centered worship, our attitude toward modern biblical research, our polity and various methods of work, worship, and missions.

Murray and the renewal leaders at Vatican II may have first thought it hopeless that the Roman Church would ever conduct mass in English instead of the old Latin. But it was done, to the consternation of many. Could we make some meaningful changes in the way we celebrate the Lord’s supper, such as women presiding and serving? The point is that we must become open to that sort of thing. There is nothing wrong in a church saying, “We once believed that way but we don’t believe that way anymore; we once practiced that but we do so no longer.”

2. Coercion in matters of conscience is utterly inappropriate.

It may surprise you that Roman Catholic authorities at Vatican II supported this resolution: “Truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power.” Sounding more like a Luther or a Campbell than like a Pope, they went on to say in that freedom document, “The exercise of religion, of its very nature, consists before all else in those internal, voluntary and free acts whereby man set the course of his life directly toward God. No merely human power can either command or prohibit acts of this kind.”

If you adjudge this as a welcome change for a church that has often through the centuries dominated by coercive means, you must also grant that we in Churches of Christ have also been coercive. If others have been papacy-dominated and church-dominated, we have been elder-dominated, dogma-dominated, tradition-dominated, editor-dominated. If the Roman Church has its written creeds we have had our unwritten creeds, and unwritten ones can be even more coercive and domineering than written ones.

I dare say we have fired more preachers, missionaries, and college professors for doctrinal infractions than the Pope has defrocked recalcitrant priests in a like period of time. And unlike the Roman church, which quietly moves a dissident priest or professor to another post or merely “silences” him, we shoot our wounded. We leave them stranded in mission fields without support. We fire professors while ignoring the right to due process. Once one is a “liberal” or a “false teacher” he or she has no rights. We shoot those among us that are hurting the most—the divorced, the honest dissenters, the sincere doubters. We bruise and batter those who call for change.

3. We have at times acted” hardly in accord with the spirit of the Gospel and even opposed to it.”

It is amazing that the authorities at Vatican II would look into their history with a critical eye and concede that in their methods they have sometimes been less than Christian, yea even anti-Christian. In this context they went on record declaring that the church should have no special privilege, but only “that full measure of freedom which her care for the salvation of men requires.”

If any church on earth needs to declare to the world that it has often been “hardly in accord with the spirit of the Gospel” and has violated the principles of the very Book it claims to honor, it is the Churches of Christ. While the Roman Church has pilloried the schismatics we have skinned the sects. While we claim to believe in unity, we are the one church in the community that is known to have nothing to do with any other Christians. We are widely known as the people who think they are the only ones going to heaven and the only true Christians. The Roman Catholics in Rome in 1965 looked at themselves and said they had been wrong. Why can’t the Churches of Christ do the same? To be saved we must have our own Vatican II.

4. We extend our hand to all other Christians.

For centuries the Roman Church labeled other Christians as “erring schismatics,” but at Vatican II it went on record as acknowledging all other Christians as true brothers and sisters in Christ. It was especially mindful to reach out to the Eastern Churches (such as the Russian and Greek Orthodox), with whom there has been long centuries of bitter controversy and separation. The Orthodox churches are now seen as part of the universal (catholic) church.

While they were at it Vatican II made peace with the Jews, renouncing the long-standing dogma that all Jews past and present are collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. They conceded that the crucifixion of our Lord cannot be blamed “upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today,” and that the Jews cannot be considered as under some curse. To the contrary, Vatican II said, the Jews are under “God’s all-embracing love” as are all people.

The Churches of Christ have been so rejecting of other Christians that they must do more than sign a document and make a proclamation, though that would help. We must do things like invite “denominational preachers” (a term we should quit using since we are all denominational) into our pulpits and joining with other churches in special programs. Our people would love it! This we can do without approving of any doctrine or practice that we believe to be wrong. We would simply be saying that since we all are following the Lord Jesus Christ the best we know how we want to help you and want you to help us to follow Christ more nearly, to know him more clearly, and to love him more dearly.

We must regard all other Christians as our equals, beginning right now. We must join with them and with each other in a new spirit of dialogue and mutual respect, a new freshness in perspective and interpretation. We must summons the courage to confront the problems of our own history. We must modernize the Churches of Christ, liberating ourselves from the mentality of the 1940’s, and make our religion relevant to our day and time.

Since 1965 fresh air has been blowing through the Vatican windows in Rome. Things are not quite what they once were. Let fresh air blow through the windows of the Churches of Christ. It would be our Vatican II. We can do it. I don’t care if you call it Nashville II—the Editor