The sky is the most
amazing cerulean blue. Families lounge
on blankets listening to the lyrical passions of the Mariachi music. There is the flash of color and brilliant
white of the Ballet Folklorico
dancers. Away from the stage, children
create chalk designs on the sidewalk leading to the mansion, a place steeped in
the history of El Pueblo de Los Angeles. There is the smell of tacos in the air, a
gustatory salute to the street cuisine of the city. Through a shaded door into a quiet room,
pilgrims make their way in reflective splendor around a labyrinth drawn on a
cloth and laid out on the floor. Back
out in the sunlight, there are voices and languages under a canopy of
trees. In the distance is the dome of
St. Vincent de Paul’s Church, a Los Angeles cultural monument and the second
Roman Catholic house of worship to be consecrated in the city. On this perfect spring day, every act is a
prayer, every word contains a universe of resonance across the City of Angels.
The Catholics of the
city have come to the Doheny campus of Mount Saint Mary’s University to
conclude a three-year series of symposia entitled Vatican II@50, co-sponsored by Loyola Marymount University. The Second Vatican Council was convened a
half century ago by Pope John XXIII and over the course of three years, from
1962-1965, revolutionized the Church in modern times. Vatican II is easily the most important event
in the Catholic Church in the 20th century. It was there in those convocations, synods
and discussions that the Church welcomed a new age. The Council was so significant, so far
reaching and all inclusive, that the ramifications are still being felt and its
missives and documents are still being studied and implemented.
At this event, called Aggiornamento!, the celebration of
culture took center stage. In Los
Angeles, Catholic culture is Latino/a culture because the city, since its
formal inception in 1781, has been decidedly Hispanic. However, Catholic Los Angeles includes
Filipino, Vietnamese, Irish, and many other ethnicities and cultures. The Catholic Church encompasses the world,
and the so-called Third World now accounts for a large percentage of new
Catholics each year. It is significant
that Pope Francis hails from South America, the first pope to originate from
somewhere other than Europe in more than 1200 years.
At the Doheny campus,
all cultures had representation, but there was no doubt the assembled group had
a strong Latino flavor like the city itself.
It was also readily apparent that culture, fellowship, and a celebration
of differences took precedence over dogma or catechesis. Aggiornamento!
was all about celebrating faith community across racial and economic lines.
In all of this spring
weather and celebration, my thoughts wandered to the darker shades of the
labyrinth that is the journey of faith.
Like life, it is often difficult to chart a course through the
minefields of clashing belief systems and points-of-view. Instead, we must follow the turns and twists
of fortune and fate. I wonder if the
bishops and cardinals, the theologians and scholars gathered at that sacred
Council ever imagined the self-proclaimed Islamic State as they drafted the
document “Nostra Aetate,” or “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to
Non-Christian Religions.” It is much the
same as wondering if the founding fathers of America envisioned school
shootings when writing the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Council wrote
regarding other faiths, including Muslims, that “The Catholic Church rejects
nothing which is true and holy in these religions.” They echoed Justin Martyr in the belief that
all religions “reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.” The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
could hardly be considered “enlightened” when they behead non-believers like
journalist and Catholic James Foley, to cite just one of their many victims we
see being slaughtered or burned to death on the evening news.
Jim Yardley, writing in The New York Times on February 21,
2015, said that “Mr. Foley’s death in Syria transformed him into a symbol of
faith under the most brutal of conditions.”
Allegedly and under great duress, Foley converted to Islam in an attempt
to save himself from beheading. However,
James Martin, S.J., editor at America,
“expressed doubts about the genuineness of his conversion.” Those captured and imprisoned with Foley also
said they questioned the conversion.
Some said he engaged his captors in a discussion of Islam and his own
Catholic faith. He often read the Quran
and seemed to relish his prayer sessions five times each day. His mother said he was always interested in
studying other faiths, “but she still strongly believes that her son died a
Christian and that his conversion was an act of practicality.”
Did the convocation at
the Vatican during those years of discussion and change ever envision this kind
of self-proclaimed jihad, or holy war
from their Muslim brethren? The participants
in Vatican II probably had the historical Catholic persecution of Muslims in
mind, namely the Crusades and were attempting to find a way to draft an apology
for past crimes and forge a new direction for Catholic-Muslim relations. “Although in the course of the centuries many
quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems,” commentators
write, “this most sacred Synod urges all to forget the past and to strive
sincerely for mutual understanding.”
However, in a footnote, they assert that there were Muslim Crusades as
well. “Those were ideological wars,”
they wrote. “This Council, as it also
makes clear in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,
wants to disassociate itself from war.”
It would seem now that
the world has a war with Islam, and that no disassociation is possible. The group of radical Muslims presents a
threat not just to Catholics, Jews and other religions and ethnicities, but to
the world. Even Pope Francis has called
for an end to the persecution of Christians in the region. ISIS continues to grow, and their atrocities
become even more bloody and heinous with each passing week. This is difficult to reconcile with lines in
the Vatican II document that state: “Upon
the Moslems, too, the Church looks with esteem.” These radical Islamists fly in the face of
the idea that “On behalf of all mankind, let them make common cause of
safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace, and freedom.”
These were my thoughts
on this beautiful early spring day in Los Angeles. There is a darkness on the horizon, one that
is fraught with danger and uncertainty, that overshadows how we must appreciate
other cultures and other faiths as stated in the documents from that
convocation fifty years ago. The
prescient nature of the Second Vatican Council documents has presented many
challenges to Catholics around the globe.
How do we greet the modern world using precepts and teachings that go
back 2000 years to a simple carpenter’s son who wandered the desert where
modern radicals now blow themselves up in colossal acts of
self-immolation? How do we live in a
world where an offer of an olive branch or a call to recognize a “ray of truth”
in another faith results in the most brutal of murders?
In the self-proclaimed
Islamic State, there is nothing “true or holy.”
In fact, all humanity and compassion have evaporated in the heat from
the fire of self-righteous hate and bigotry.
The day of reckoning is here; the world must respond against such
atrocities.
More than anything,
the situation indicates that faith is a living thing, always changing in
response to a transitory and often brutal world. Faith teaches many lessons in the face of
human and worldly imperfection.
Catholics celebrating an opening of doors to the modern world fifty
years ago know that old habits die hard and new challenges are always
ahead. This is what the participants in Vatican II understood. We must accept
challenges to our beliefs and continue forge on. We must try to find the Imago dei in the faces we meet, even those who appear on CNN each
evening holding a knife to the throat of a helpless and bound victim. Yes, those faces continue to attack the world
with explosives, guns, knives and murderous intent, but if we are to follow the
lessons of Christ, we must still reach out to embrace them, and that might
prove to be too much of a challenge this time.
So on this beautiful
day near downtown Los Angeles, with the Mariachi’s guitars and the trumpets and
the dome of St. Vincent’s, the faithful gather to celebrate, to pray, and to
hope, against all evidence to the contrary, for a better world ahead.
Bibliography
Abbott, Walter M.,
Joseph Gallagher, eds. The Documents of
Vatican II With Notes and Comments by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox
Authorities. Piscataway, NJ: New Century Publishers, Inc., 1966.
Yardley, Jim.
“Debating a Change of Faith Under Brutal Captivity.” The New York Times. New York, NY: The New York Times Co., 21
February, 2015. p. A6.