Vatican II – What is Renewal?

What exactly did the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council mean by calling for a renewal of the Church? One thing that amazes me is that even after 50 years, people, in general, are still pretty mystified about what Vatican II was all about and what exactly renewal of the Church was meant to be. This is not the fault of the Council itself, necessarily. No, I put the blame on the culture that came out of philosophical modernism at the same time as the Council, which applied false assumptions to what the Church was doing.

Conflicting Concepts of Renewal

You mighthave heard that the council fathers were “at odds over two different concepts: renewal (aggiornamento) and a return to tradition (ressourcement). History shows that there were different camps of thought among the council fathers. There is also no doubt that many of the council fathers were influenced by the modernist heresy to various degrees. But what came out of the Second Vatican Council did not set these two concepts in opposition to each other but as complementary concepts.  Ressourcement and Aggiornamento are the underlying concepts that determine how we understand renewal. So how did the Second Vatican Council understand the renewal of the Church?

The True Renewal of Vatican II

The best understanding of renewal actually comes from an extra-conciliar document. Have you ever read “Pathways of the Church” by Pope Paul VI (the Latin title is Ecclesiam Suam)? This is an awesome document written during the meeting of the council. Pope Paul VI, in his characteristically prophetic way, warns the Church about what would happen if we got this concept of renewal wrong. He carefully defines a proper understanding of renewing the Church.

To renew the Church means to

1. Perform an examination of conscience to find those ways that the Church has been true to its mission and those places where things have gone astray. Pope Paul VI points out that this examination of conscience and renewal is not unique to this age. It is a constant necessity because the Church is a divine institution made up of sinful and ignorant human beings.
2. The goal of this examination of conscience is to take positive action to get back to being the Church that Christ founded. Pope Paul VI points out that the measuring stick of renewal cannot be the modern world. The world is filled with the same sinful humanity that leads the Church astray from its mission. No, the Church belongs to Christ and He is the measure of renewal because he is the measure for the Church.
3. This is not to say that the world is irredeemably evil. The Church is not called to separate from the world, but to go into the modern world and to address modern concerns with the Gospel. Vatican II does not say that the modern world has the answers that the Church needs. It says that the Church has the answers that the modern world needs. The Church needs to know what the concerns of the modern world are, and it needs to know how to speak in a language the modern world will hear. But what the Church needs to say is that Jesus is the answer to all of humanity’s concerns.

This is an authentic understanding of renewal. To constantly purify ourselves in order to become the Church that Christ founded us to be, and to evangelize the world no matter what age we live in. This is the renewal that the Vatican II called us to.