There is a phrase Catholics have heard for more than sixty years. “Vatican II changed that.” 

Why don’t we hear Latin anymore? Vatican II.

Why did the Mass change? Vatican II.

Why did Gregorian chant disappear from so many Catholic churches? Vatican II.

Why did practices surrounding Holy Communion change? Vatican II.

Why did sanctuaries change? Vatican II.

Why did so many customs Catholics had known for generations suddenly disappear? 

Again and again, the answer was simply, “Vatican II.”

Those two words became an explanation for almost everything that happened in Catholic life in the years following the Council. But lately I have been wondering whether that explanation is the right one. Not because Vatican II called for no change. It certainly did. But because when we actually sit down and read the documents of the Council, something interesting begins to happen.

We discover that some things commonly attributed to Vatican II are not actually in Vatican II. Other things were permitted by the Council, but what eventually developed went considerably beyond the language of the Council itself. And some things that largely disappeared after Vatican II were things the Council explicitly said should remain.

And so an uncomfortable question begins to emerge. If the Council didn’t say it … where did it come from? And then an even more uncomfortable question: Who was responsible for guarding what happened afterward? Who was standing at the gate? 

As a bishop, I cannot ask that question only about somebody else. Bishops are successors of the Apostles. We have been given a particular responsibility for guarding what has been handed down. And perhaps one of the painful lessons of the years following Vatican II is this:

We left the gate open.

And things came through it that the Council itself never commanded. 

Today I want to look at how that happened. Before Vatican II, before liturgical reform, before any of those controversies, we need to begin with Sacred Scripture. Near the end of his life, St. Paul writes to Timothy. Timothy is one of those men entrusted with carrying the apostolic faith into the next generation. And Paul tells him: “Guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” 

Guard it. That word matters. Paul does not tell Timothy: Improve the deposit. Reinvent the deposit. Adapt its substance to whatever the next generation wants. Make it more fashionable. 

He says: Guard it. Why? Because Timothy did not create what he received. It was entrusted to him. That is the nature of the Catholic faith. We did not invent the Gospel. We received it. We did not invent Sacred Scripture. We received it. We did not invent the sacraments. We received them. We did not invent the apostolic faith. We received it. 

And then each generation is charged with handing it on faithfully to the next.

This is particularly important for a bishop. A bishop is not simply the chief administrator of a Catholic territory. He is not merely the man who implements the newest program coming from somewhere else. A bishop is a successor of the Apostles. That means he receives both authority and responsibility. He is a shepherd. And shepherds have to guard the flock.

The faith does not belong to a bishop. The sacraments do not belong to a bishop. The sacred liturgy does not belong to a bishop as though he were its owner. These things belong to Christ and His Church. The bishop is their servant. And their guardian. Keep that word in mind: Guardian. Because now we come to Vatican II.

The Second Vatican Council opened in 1962 and concluded in 1965. Among its sixteen documents was the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, promulgated on December 4, 1963. And the Council undeniably called for liturgical reform. We need to say that clearly. Those who claim that Vatican II envisioned no reform at all are not reading the document either. 

The Council called for rites to be revised. It desired fuller participation by the faithful. It called for a richer presentation of Sacred Scripture. It allowed greater use of the vernacular. It called for certain repetitions to be removed. It called for some elements lost through the course of history to be restored.

So yes: Vatican II wanted liturgical reform. But here is where we have to make a distinction that has too often been ignored. There is a difference between saying: “The Council called for reform” and saying: “Everything that happened afterward was mandated by the Council.”

Ask many Catholics what happened to Latin after Vatican II and they will say: “The Council got rid of it.” But did it? 

Open Sacrosanctum Concilium. Paragraph 36. The Council says: “The use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”  Preserved. Let that word settle for a moment. Preserved. Not abolished. Not forbidden. Not merely tolerated. Preserved. 

Now, the Council also says that greater use of the mother tongue may frequently be advantageous to the people. So yes, the vernacular was to have a larger place. But greater use of English, Spanish, French, German, Italian or another language does not mean Latin was supposed to disappear.

In fact, go forward to paragraph 54. There the Council says steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass that pertain to them. 

Now compare that with what actually happened. Entire generations of Catholics grew up unable to sing the Gloria in Latin. Or the Credo. Or even, in many places, the Sanctus or Agnus Dei. Many Catholics went decades without hearing Latin at Mass. So we have a simple historical question. 

Vatican II said: Preserve Latin. Yet in many places Latin virtually disappeared. How did we get from one to the other? 

The same thing happens with sacred music. Sacrosanctum Concilium, paragraph 116, says the Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy. And it says that, other things being equal, Gregorian chant should be given: “Pride of place.” Pride of place. Now think about the decades following the Council. In  how many Catholic parishes did Gregorian chant possess pride of place? In how many did it possess any place at all? 

Again, I am not saying other sacred music is forbidden. The Council itself says other forms of sacred music are not excluded. But that isn’t the question. The question is this: How did something the Council told us to give pride of place become something many Catholics came to regard as a relic of the preconciliar Church? Who taught Catholics that? Where did that interpretation come from? And who was responsible for saying: “Wait a moment. That isn’t what the document says”?

This brings us to the Novus Ordo. And here we must be especially precise. The Mass commonly called the Novus Ordo did not simply appear one morning because Vatican II had printed a new Missal. The Council did not produce the 1970 Roman Missal. It produced principles and mandates for liturgical reform. The actual rewording of the liturgy occurred afterward through a process of implementation. And that process can be traced.

On January 25, 1964 – while Vatican II itself was still underway – Pope Paul VI issued the document Sacram Liturgiam. In it he established a special commission charged with carrying out the prescriptions of Sacrosanctum Concilium. 

That body became known as the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. This is important. Because now we can see two different historical moments.

First: The Council promulgates Sacrosanctum Concilium. Then: A body is established to implement it. Those two things are connected. But they are not identical. 

A central figure in the Consilium was Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who served as its secretary. Under Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro as president, the Consilium undertook the task of revising the liturgical rites. And the changes began relatively quickly.

In September 1964, the first major instruction for implementing the liturgical constitution, Inter Oecumenici, was issued. It took effect in March 1965. And already we were moving from the broad directives of the Council to particular decisions about how those directives would be applied. That distinction matters. Because once implementation begins, somebody has to make judgments. 

Somebody has to decide what “simplification” will mean. Somebody has to decide what will be altered. Somebody has to decide how far vernacularization will proceed. Somebody how to decide how altars and sanctuaries will be arranged. Somebody has to produce revised rites. Somebody has to produce revised liturgical books. And those judgments belong to the postconciliar implementation of Vatican II, even when they are undertaken in fulfillment of the Council.

That is precisely the distinction I think Catholics have too often been denied.

And on April 3, 1969, Pope Paul VI issued the Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum. In that document Paul VI explicitly connected the new Missal to the mandate of the Second Vatican Council. So we should not create a false history. The liturgical reform did not happen in opposition to Paul VI. He approved it. He promulgated it. It possesses legitimate ecclesiastical authority. But read Missale Romanum carefully and something else becomes obvious. The resulting Missal involved extensive changes. 

Paul VI himself describes the new arrangement of the Order of Mass. He speaks of changes to the Eucharistic Prayer. He describes the expanded lectionary. He notes that other parts of the Missal were also reviewed and considerably modified – the Proper of Seasons, the Proper of Saints, ritual Masses, votive Masses and many prayers.  

So we can simultaneously say two things. First: Vatican II called for reform of the Roman liturgy. Second: The particular form that reform ultimately took resulted from a major postconciliar process of revision and implementation. That is simply what happened. And a question to ask now is: Which elements came directly from the Council’s mandate, and which came through later judgements about how that mandate should be implemented?

Imagine if, during those years, one simple Catholic habit had taken hold throughout the episcopate. Someone says: “Vatican II says we have to get rid of Latin.” And a bishop answers, “Show me the text.” 

Someone says: “Gregorian chant belongs to the old Church.” The bishop answers: “Show me the text.” 

Someone says: “The spirit of Vatican II demands this.” And the bishop answers: “Show me the text.”

Those four words might have saved the Church from an enormous amount of confusion.

Show me the text.

Because the “spirit of Vatican II” became extraordinarily powerful in the years following the Council. But there is a problem with spirits. They can be difficult to interrogate. Documents are easier. You can open them. You can read them. You can ask: What does it actually say? 

And when what is being introduced cannot be found in the document supposedly authorizing it, a shepherd has a duty to ask more questions. That is what guarding the gate looks like. 

Now let us look at something else. Communion in the hand. Many Catholics today assume that Vatican II changed the manner of receiving Holy Communion. But search Sacrosanctum Concilium. You will not find a mandate for Communion in the hand. So where did the modern practice come from? Here the history is especially revealing.

After the Council, the practice of receiving Communion in the hand had already begun developing in certain places. Rome had to respond to that fact. In 1969, the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship issued an instruction called Memoriale Domini. And the Holy See did something very interesting. 

The bishops of the Latin Church had been consulted about whether the traditional manner of distributing Holy Communion should be changed. The majority did not favor changing the existing discipline. And Memoriale Domini stated that the traditional manner of distributing Holy Communion was to be retained. Think about that. 

In 1969, four years after the Council ended, Rome was not announcing: “Vatican II requires Communion in the hand.” The instruction was saying the traditional practice should remain. But then came the exception. Where the contrary practice had already developed, episcopal conferences could judge the circumstances and seek permission from the Apostolic See. 

And the letter accompanying this arrangement made another fact very important: Even when permission was granted to a bishop’s conference, the individual bishop retained a decisive pastoral responsibility in his own diocese.

Now do you see why this matters to our theme? This is not simply: “Vatican II changed Communion.” It didn’t. The actual history is: A practice developed. Rome responded. The traditional method was reaffirmed. A mechanism for exceptions was created. Episcopal conferences requested permission. Individual bishops then had responsibility for introducing the practice within their dioceses. 

The American story makes the point even more clearly. The United States bishops did not simply come home from Vatican II with authorization for Communion in the hand. In fact, the American hierarchy considered the question more than once. Earlier efforts did not obtain the necessary support. 

It was not until 1977 that the American bishops voted sufficiently in favor of petitioning for the practice, and the Holy See granted the necessary confirmation. 

1977. Vatican II ended in 1965. That is a twelve-year difference. Vatican II did not mandate it. The practice was subsequently permitted through a process involving the Holy See, the national episcopal conference and ultimately the authority and pastoral judgement of diocesan bishops.

Once again: The bishops were standing at the gate. They were not incidental to this history. They were participating in it. 

And there is a pattern here that deserves serious reflection. Sometimes something begins as an exception. Then permission is granted. Then the permission expands. Then the practice becomes widespread. Then a generation passes. And eventually Catholics assume: “This must be what Vatican II wanted.” But a later permission is not the same thing as a conciliar mandate. A discipline subsequently adopted is not the same thing as a teaching of an ecumenical council. 

This distinction becomes even more important when we consider another familiar postconciliar practice.

Today Catholics are accustomed to seeing laypeople assisting with the distribution of Holy Communion. Many parishes call them Eucharistic ministers. But the official title is: Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. 

Did Vatican II command the introduction of lay extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion at parish Masses? No. That development came afterward.

In 1969, an instruction called Fidei Custos provided limited provision of extraordinary ministers in circumstances of necessity. Then in 1973 came another important document: Immensae Critatis. And what reasons did that document give? Situations in which there were not enough ministers for distributing Holy Communion. And to this day the Church’s norms continue to speak in this language.

And once again, bishops had an important responsibility in determining how those provisions were applied.

Now we arrive at the uncomfortable question. Because liturgical reforms do not implement themselves. Documents do not walk into parishes. Abuses do not correct themselves. Liturgical experiments do not restrain themselves. Theological confusion does not clarify itself. Someone has to shepherd. Someone has to teach. Someone has to say: 

“This is permitted.” 

“This is not permitted.” 

“This is what Vatican II actually says.” 

“No, Father, you may not do that.”

“No, this committee may not simply redesign the liturgy according to its own ideas.”

“No, you may not call something Vatican II when Vatican II never said it.”

Whose responsibility was that? Ultimately, in each local Church, the bishop’s. And bishops have to be willing to admit that. We cannot simply blame “the times.” We cannot blame the culture. We cannot blame theologians. We cannot blame liturgists. We cannot blame priests. We cannot blame religious communities. We cannot blame something called “the spirit of Vatican II.”

Eventually, every successor of the Apostles has to ask: Where were the successors of the Apostles? Who was guarding the gate?

And this is where Sacred Scripture becomes extraordinarily important. Because there is a moment in the New Testament when one Apostle believed he had to stand up – even before Peter. Galatians chapter 2. St. Paul writes: “When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face.” Think about that. Peter. The Rock. The one to whom Christ entrusted the keys. And Paul says: “I opposed him to his face.”

Now let us be very clear about what Paul was not doing. Paul was not rejecting Peter’s office. He was not declaring himself pope. He was not establishing a rival Church. He was not denying authority. He was not breaking communion. But neither did Paul think communion meant silence.

He was an Apostle. And being an Apostle gave him responsibilities before Jesus Christ. Paul understood something perhaps bishops need to recover. Respect for Peter does not erase the responsibility of the other Apostles. And communion with the successor of Peter does not transform successors of the Apostles into branch managers. 

A bishop is not merely the local representative of an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. He possesses an apostolic office. That office must always be exercised within the communion of the Church. But it must be exercised. 

And there may be moments when a bishop has to say: “Holy Father, I have concerns.” OR “This is harming my flock.” OR “This is being implemented in a way that appears inconsistent with what the Church herself has handed down.” 

Respectfully. Faithfully. Without rebellion. Without contempt. Without theatrics. But courageously. 

St. Paul did not believe fidelity required silence. Why should a successor of the Apostles believe that today? 

And that leads me to a question I cannot escape. What might the years after Vatican II have looked like if more bishops had stood up early and said: “Show me the text.” 

Latin is disappearing? Show me where the Council demanded that.

Gregorian chant is disappearing? Show me where the Council demanded that.

Every inherited practice is suddenly being regarded as suspect? Show me where the Council said that. 

An extraordinary permission is becoming ordinary practice? Show me what the Church’s actual norms say.

Someone says: “But this is the spirit of Vatican II.” A bishop should have been willing to answer: “Then show me Vatican II.” 

Perhaps then the gate would not have been left open quite so widely. 

And notice the title of this episode. I did not call it: “They left the gate open.” I called it: “We left the gate open.” Why? Because bishops belong to an apostolic succession. 

I may not have been the bishop who made a particular decision in 1969. I may not have been the bishop who allowed an abuse in 1975. I may not have been the bishop who failed to teach clearly in 1980. But I hold the same apostolic office. And therefore I should be willing to examine the history of that office honestly.

Bishops inherited authority. But we also inherited responsibility. And if bishops failed to guard certain things in one generation, bishops in another generation have a responsibility to learn from it. 

When bishops fail to teach clearly, someone else will teach the flock. When bishops fail to interpret a Council according to its texts, other people will create an interpretation. When bishops fail to guard the sacred liturgy, experimentation fills the vacuum. When bishops fail to defend continuity, rupture can present itself as renewal. When bishops remain silent while everything is attributed to “Vatican II,” mythology can eventually replace history. 

And perhaps that is precisely what happened.

And this is where I think something surprising may be happening. Traditional Catholics sometimes blame Vatican II for everything. Progressive Catholics sometimes invoke Vatican II to justify almost everything. Perhaps both groups should open the documents. Because when we do, we may discover that both sides have occasionally attributed things to the Council that are not actually there. 

Perhaps everyone found it easier to say: “Vatican II changed everything.” But councils do not walk into individual parishes and make decisions. People do. Popes make decisions. Dicasteries make decisions. Episcopal conferences make decisions. Bishops make decisions. Priests make decisions. Liturgical committees make decisions. 

Sometimes those decisions are excellent. Sometimes they are mistaken. Sometimes they exceed what was intended. But if we want to understand history, we have to identify who actually did what.

And today we are being told: Read Vatican II. I agree. Please do. Read it. Open Sacrosanctum Concilium. Read paragraph 36. Latin is to be preserved. Read paragraph 54. The faithful should be able to pray or sing their parts of the Ordinary in Latin. Read paragraph 116. Gregorian chant is to have pride of place.

Then look at what happened afterward. And ask: How did we get from there to here? 

And that brings us inevitably to another sensitive question. The older Roman liturgy the Mass used before the postconciliar reform. Today its celebration is restricted. Now again, precision matters. 

Suppose we tell young Catholics: “Go read Vatican II.” And they do. They discover Vatican II saying Latin should be preserved. They discover Vatican II giving Gregorian chant pride of place. They begin looking backward into the Church’s liturgical inheritance. Then perhaps they encounter the older Roman Mass. And something attracts them. The silence. The reverence. The sense of transcendence. The continuity. The unmistakable orientation toward sacrifice and worship. 

What should a bishop do with that young Catholic? Be afraid of him? Treat him as suspicious? Assume he rejects Vatican II? No. Shepherd him. Listen to him. And do not despise him because he discovered and came to love something that nourished countless saints. 

And above all, do not tell him Vatican II demanded the disappearance of things Vatican II itself said should be preserved.

So, the question now is not – How do we turn back the clock? The question is: How do we recover continuity? How do we preserve what should never have been lost? How do we celebrate the sacred liturgy as something received rather than manufactured? How do we recover Latin where the Council asked that it be preserved? How do we recover Gregorian chant where the Council gave it pride of place? How do we restore a profound Eucharistic reverence? 

These are constructive questions. And bishops ought to be asking them.

Because the gate did not disappear in 1970. It is still there. Every generation has its own pressures. Every age has fashionable ideas. Every age has ideologies demanding entrance into the Church. Every generation hears: “The Church must change or she will become irrelevant.” 

But authentic development is not amnesia. Reform is not rupture. And pastoral adaptation cannot mean abandoning the deposit entrusted to us.

Somebody has to know the difference. That is why there are shepherds. That is why there are bishops. And bishops cannot outsource that responsibility. A bishop has to stand at the gate. 

Perhaps we should return once more to St. Paul. Imagine Paul watching confusion spread through one of the churches  entrusted to him. Would he say: “I don’t want to upset anyone”? Would he say: “Everyone seems to be doing it now”? Would he say: “Someone higher up will eventually take care of it”? Would he say: “I have concerns, but saying something might damage my career”? 

Read his letters. That isn’t Paul. Paul could be gentle. Paul could be patient. Paul could encourage. But when something essential was at stake, Paul stood. And when necessary – even before Peter – he spoke. 

Bishops need to recover that kind of courage. Not the courage to become celebrities. Not the courage to create factions. A much quieter and more demanding courage. The courage to be fathers. The courage to guard. The courage to say yes when yes is required. And the courage to say no when no is required.

The courage to ask: Is this what the Church actually teaches? 

Is this consistent with what we received?

And whenever someone claims: “ Vatican II says ….”

The courage to answer – SHOW ME THE TEXT.

Perhaps that is the unexpected gift of looking honestly at the last sixty years. We can learn. We do not have to spend another generation fighting over caricatures of Vatican II. We can actually read it. We can acknowledge mistakes. We can recover treasures unnecessarily lost. We can distinguish genuine development from rupture. We can stop treating tradition and renewal as enemies. And perhaps bishops can recover something essential about our own identity.

We are successors of the Apostles. We did not create the faith. We received it. We did not invent the sacraments. We received them. We did not invent the Church. Christ did. And one day every bishop will answer to Christ for what he did with the flock entrusted to him.

I suspect Christ will not ask us whether the newspapers considered us progressive. Or conservative. Or popular. Or controversial. 

There may be a much simpler question – Did you guard what I entrusted to you?

So perhaps the title of this reflection is also something of a confession:

WE LEFT THE GATE OPEN.

The Council told us to preserve Latin. Much of it disappeared. The Council gave Gregorian chant pride of place. In many places, it vanished. Communion in the hand was not commanded by Vatican II. It spread afterward through a process involving episcopal conferences, individual bishops and permissions from Rome. Extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion were not created by Vatican II. They entered through later provisions. And over time, Catholics came to identify all of these things simply with: Vatican II.

Maybe it is time to tell the history honestly. Maybe it is time for bishops to accept the responsibility that belongs to our office. And maybe it is time for every successor of the Apostles to hear again the words St. Paul gave Timothy: “Guard the good deposit entrusted to you.”

Guard it. The gate is still there. The flock still belongs to Christ. And the successors of the Apostles are still charged with guarding it.

We cannot change yesterday. But we can learn from it. We can recover what should be recovered. We can correct what should be corrected. We can acknowledge where shepherds failed to shepherd. And we can refuse to repeat those failures.

The question now is no longer only – Who left the gate open? 

The more important question is – Who will stand at the gate today?

And when someone approaches that gate claiming the authority of Vatican II, perhaps the first words out of our mouths should be the simplest words of all:

Show me the text.

And may Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Amen.

Bishop Joseph E. Strickland

Bishop Emeritus