Remember Vatican II

I have a simple message for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops: Remember Vatican II. I do. The documents of the Second Vatican Council, which was held between 1962 and 1965, were the text for my freshman theology class at Notre Dame in 1964, and I think they are still around here somewhere. Vatican II, convened by the Good Pope John XXIII, was a breath of fresh air in an institution frozen in time, controlled by a bunch of old Italian Cardinals.

In a blog post at the New York Review, Contraception’s Con Men, Garry Wills reminds those who have deliberately forgotten those documents that they are not the Church. The Church is the laity, the People of God. The bishops are the servants of the Church, meaning the laity, and the pope is the Servant of the Servants of God, meaning that the Pope is merely a servant with respect to the bishops.