Guest Columnist
By MSGR. FRANCIS X. MEEHAN
Each time period carries its own special needs. We are called to read
— as the Bishops of the Second Vatican Council put it — the
“Signs of the Times.”
At that time, over 40 years ago, Bishops from all over the world sensed
the Holy Spirit calling the Church to look outwards.
Two Latin phrases help us to understand that special “sign of the
times.” That is, the Bishops had been searching ad intra (i.e. reflecting
on “inside” concerns such as the nature of the Church, its
rootedness in Jesus, the meaning of the liturgy, and other related subjects).
But the bishops then took to looking ad extra. That is, they looked outside
at issues in our world, and how the Church and how we, as the people of
God, relate to those issues.
The document that ensued became known as the “Pastoral Constitution
on the Church in the Modern World.” It had an opening sentence that
caught the vision: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties
of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way
afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties
of the followers of Christ.”
The entire document, indeed, this sentence, and many other words and actions,
moved all of us. There followed great activity — activity within
the laity, among the bishops, among priests and religious, and within
parishes. Committees were formed, mission statements shifted, documents
produced. Movements sprang up from people in the pews. Teachings from
bishops and popes were integrated into an already rich corpus of Catholic
social teaching: War and peace, civil rights, nuclear weapons, farm workers,
the equality and dignity of women, world poverty, the vulnerable life
of the pre-born child, ecology, capital punishment — all came under
what has become a somewhat catch-all phrase — “Peace and Justice.”
Now, some 43 years later, how does this obvious call of God’s Spirit
continue? With what special emphasis, what nuance? Are there special needs
of our own time? The mission ad extra once enunciated by the Church gathered
in council surely continues. It remains a work of the Holy Spirit hovering
over the People of God.
But one nuance strikes me as needed for our time. It is simply this —
that “peace and justice” not drift outwards to becoming something
separated, as it were, from the heart of the faith and love that must
animate it. “Peace and justice” can, if we are not careful,
end up severed from the very prayer and Eucharist that once allowed it
to flourish.
We, as a Catholic people, as parish priests, as religious, as Catholic
educators from elementary through college, each of us will need to keep
in place, or to re-find when necessary, a more vibrant Catholic spirituality,
a deeper religious literacy, a wider understanding of age-old teachings
on grace and sin, on creation and redemption, on Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, on saints and devotion — and, yes, even a deep rootedness
in the Church, a Church with all its humanity.
Only then will the movement ad extra of the Second Vatican Council reach
its fullness.
Only then will “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties
of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way
afflicted” be taken into the heart of faith, into the heart of a
faithful people, who are, indeed, the followers of Christ.
Msgr. Meehan assists spiritual directors in their work for St. Charles
Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood.