The World of Vatican II

You You It was a great place for a meeting and this was going to be the greatest meeting of its kind Since the beginning of Christendom, I was having trouble getting my credentials Wasn't that they were secretive exactly but I think they didn't understand that the press was going to be interested Wasn't charged must have thought this wasn't yet a matter for the outside world What does they say in Rome all things are possible? Did in fact get in? Hope John has told us how the idea of the council came to him He was meeting in his fourth floor office in the Vatican Palace with Dominico Cardinal Tardini Vatican Secretary of State It was 1959 and they were well into a daily briefing on the problems and prospects of Christianity in a world in transition the problems of the church in the emerging nations of Africa and Asia the problems of overcrowding and poverty in the cities of Latin America the challenge of science and materialism of the Western nations the Gaul had just come into power in France and Castro in Cuba and in Russia, they'd just shot a rocket around the moon It's a time of progress and at the same time a time of distress a time of moral confusion a time in need of Christ What to do about it? Hope John surely saw us as having to move away from the limited horizons of the past a council a council Hope John said he said it was out of obedience to an inspiration Felt in the humility of our heart as a sudden direct touch a council He said and he reported that Cardinal Tardini's reaction was immediate and exalted CC1 conchillo Later it was said that he was Restrained but nevertheless positive But it's been reported that Cardinal Tardini in fact thought the whole thing would blow over Up to this time Pope John had been thought of as a gentle old man a papadi passaggio an interim Pope Well -meaning but rather elderly and the church is after all a kind of giant corporation And the Roman Curia is kind of a corner office outfit Conservative and they were not about to rock the bark of Peter But as Catholics know when they're standing every Sunday when they've been sitting and singing when they've been dozing Hope John didn't forget Oh It came from all over the world 2400 of them from Latin America in the Far East from Africa in the US From rich diocese and thread from the ancient Christian centers and from lands just emerging from mission status Places where the church is predominantly Catholic and from places where Christianity is in jeopardy Hope John had called him together for what he called an as yarn a mintho bringing up to date a fresh look at the church A new day a time of renewal a new and ecumenical church opening to the modern world This is Tatsu of Peter Cardinal doi Archbishop of Tokyo Lorient Cardinal of Gomba From the African nation of Tanzania from England Archbishop Thomas Roberts former Archbishop of Bombay Bishop Joseph Keevanuka of Uganda Albert Cardinal Moulton of the United States of America Cardinal Meyer of Chicago Your Cardinal Meyer is coming out of the Chicago house in Rome a Santa Maria de lago.

I was glad to get this drawing of Cardinal Meyer The fact is Cardinal Spelman has always been the spokesman for the American Catholic Church After all, he lives a block away from the time -line building CBS and NBC So I was glad to get this drawing of a mainland Cardinal into my series.

I Didn't draw the whole picture at once I drew the building and waited for the Cardinal and then drew him in milkman was going By I drew in the milkman.

It's about seven in the morning early for an artist but not too early for cardinals and bishops The Vatican sends Cadillacs for the Cardinals, but the bishops go to the council and buses And the knock she out to see a busload of fish Vatican Council to the 21st Ecumenical Council the first Roman Catholic Council since 1870 open on October 11th of 1962 John comes through the port to Brownsville and the people in the square are waiting their handkerchiefs in the shouts of the people There were maybe 400 photographers there I joined the council and they were all gathered in the council And I saw a few of them hanging from the rooftops That night there was another giant procession to salute Pope John as I was working on this the Fountains sprayed water over the painting the fountain pitted these columns for me Ron say Peters they call this kind of thing the work of the Holy Spirit I'm not sure about that, but I think it was providential a kind of thing an artist hopes for The Council open each day with mass Bishops in their meeting place a well -carpentered set of bleachers along both sides of the main aisle This mass was celebrated by Bishop Neil Farron of Derry, Ireland John had astounded some folks by inviting those he called the separated brethren the Protestants and members of the Orthodox Church is including two Russians They sit next to the statue of st.

Peter during the council sessions a drawing of observers at breakfast and another of Archimandre Karekeen Sarcissian of Lebanon interviewed by the Italian press also that evening I saw a Middle -eastern observer looking out over the rooftops of Rome He seemed pleased to be in Rome and I was pleased to be there so I sat down and made a drawing Up over the council when it met were the Pariti these are the guys who know about the church the theologians and the liturgists they're up among the angels and When a bishop needs some advice he called for these guys to come down and straighten them out When the votes were totaled they were told by computers It kind of fractured me to see this computer room smack in the middle of st.

Peter's It's boxed in Pope Gregory the 16th who was ironically one of the more conservative folks I think he was against the railroad coming into Vatican City And the coffee bars Pope John had two coffee bars installed in st.

Peter's one was nicknamed bar Jonah And this one was called bar mitzvah one bishop told me the council speeches are all in a language Most of us don't understand Latin and We're going to see them printed the next day in our own language So the minute the speeches starts he hits with a coffee bar Pope John gave us a chance to meet with 2 ,400 other bishops from all over the world And we should take that chance and besides that he likes that good Italian coffee in the morning So you ask yourself here they are 2400 of them what in the world are they talking about especially in Tokyo for you find They've been Christians in Japan since the 1500s, but those that interested me were in and around Tokyo Japanese intellectuals who came out of World War two Searching for some hope for the future here Cardinal Doi Archbishop of Tokyo officiates at a confirmation ceremony Japanese tend to be confirmed at a later age than most Americans Father John Suzuki is founder of a boys town in Kobe Also directs the Catholic Church's emigration program since World War two many Japanese have become good citizens of such countries as Colombia and South America and the Japanese government was in favor of this immigration policy as Part of a program to relieve population pressure, but in the recent years They have taken the steam out of this and other population controls particularly legalized abortion Japan is finding that they now have not enough young people to man the factories of the new economic mirror When we're talking about populations in the far east we see Photographs of hordes of people all standing in some big square their heads going on forever This crowd is made up of families I made this drawing of a Japanese family and a family in India and one in Thailand and one in Hong Kong Three young Catholic lawyers at Tokyo University students of the eminent Catholic lawyer and diplomat judge Kotaro Tanaka Dr.

Paul Manji Ishimura President of the SAHI Broadcasting Corporation Directed the Japanese propaganda ministry during World War two Silenced by the US after the war he began reading 10 Thomas Aquinas and since then has written 30 books What do they say I asked him the fundamental principle of democracy is the dignity of the human person Without Christianity no one can prove that we have such dignity which is next to God's but above anything else in the universe After the war democracy was presented to us by the United States as a he said as a bunch of flowers But without root what root shall we give to that bouquet? This is the major question of this century for our people Well, I had drawn in the flowers and I drew in the new Japan rising up behind it In both Calcutta and Bombay There are Three million Catholics in India Thomas the Apostle brought the good news in the year 52 He founded a church and then the Portuguese came 1 ,400 years later and said no you're not doing it right so there have grown up in India Major Catholic rights both under Rome.

This is the Latin right Cathedral of st.

Francis of Assisi In the Syrian right Cathedral of st.

Mary's there are very few pews in Indian churches Indians prefer to kneel on the floor One problem of working in India There are a lot of people around who have no pressing business somewhere else and as I made this drawing I found myself making it down a long tunnel of people one of them was this little boy You are a Fatima medal a medal from far away Portugal.

So I drew in the medal and drew the little boy around it He's a member of the Latin right Church and so is judge Anna Chandi Said to be the only woman high court judge in the world Mr.

MF Pinto was a Bombay labor leader and Dr.

Aloysius Suarez is a newspaper editor the editor of the Gowan Tribune He was part of the movement that chased the Portuguese off Indian soil Dr.

B.

S.

Gilani a convert to Christianity from Islam says that the papal encyclicals on social justice drew him into the church He was in jail with Nehru and Gandhi against the British all the way later an Indian delegate to the United Nations But he broke with his government over Christian Mennon's policies Policies which he saw as communist inspired he taught for a while at John Carroll University in Cleveland Leo Rodericks and his family his wife two daughters and their children in their bungalow on the outskirts of Bombay His family interested me for in many ways they speak the history of Christian India Rodriguez his name is spelled Rodriguez.

We would say Rodriguez clearly a Portuguese name, but he pronounces it Rodericks the British had been in India for 200 years But now Indians are discovering that they are in fact Indians not involved with the Western nations and quite the way they once were Christian Indians had dressed as Westerners, but now these women wear the traditional.

Sorry Daughters names are Melanie and Ingrid, but their children's names are Anita Ravi and Aruna if Indian Christians are to shake themselves from reliance on Western culture an important work is that of Father George approached from Vienna He's lived in India for over 30 years He has written a mass in Hindi and with the help of a Hindu dance instructor is teaching girls to dance the Christian message in the traditional Hindu dance form Carol estate has gone communist twice in recent elections.

This is the st.

Vincent de Paul society in our neck I wanted to think that they were hatching plots here to overthrow the communists in the next elections But when I got there, they were just playing cards The new church building near an acumen and they are building houses to rent to the managers of the tire factory up the street to help pay for the church The cross on the top of the church is neon lights up at night the church in the modern world It's not the sort of thing you expect to see in Chicago, but then where else I West side our Lady of Sarros parish was founded in 1874 and reached something of a zenith in American Catholic life in the years Just prior to World War two when the south of Mother Novena was founded here on a typical Friday 70 to 80 ,000 pilgrims would throng into this church and it became Mother Church for 2 ,300 other novena churches all over the US and Canada After the war the neighborhood around the church began to change It had changed often over the years from Irish to Italian to Jewish But the latest newcomers confronted with animosity were unable to put down roots and settle into the old neighborhood patterns The more ethnically oriented churches and synagogues moved on following their parishioners But our Lady of Sarros still stands amidst the population for the most part indifferent to it and sometimes even hostile Maybe we'd be better off with a storefront church the pastor told me But the school meanwhile Still goes on almost as it did before for some reason though They're not Catholics some of the people in this neighborhood want to send it it gets to this school I asked the sister why and she said she didn't know our school is old and there are two new public schools in the area She said I suppose the parents hope that their children will absorb something of the traditional disciplines Here father CM Brissette the pastor and teaches a seventh grade religion class And this is a book report in the hall for instance the fence painting the time turns over to his Eddie Rose well the precinct captain said that his family had lived in the parish since its western boundary had been the Mississippi River His major problem now is to develop political leadership in the area His right -hand man is John miles a president of the 3200 West Van Buren block club for the help of Rosewell He has planted grass and trees in the parkways and raises money to pay the kids to pick up broken bottles He pays a nickel apiece for each bottle they bring in that's not broken This woman has been in the parish all her life But now she has entirely new neighbors and she gets along fine with them They've elected her husband secretary of the block club she gets along fine with her new neighbors, but her old friends won't visit her anymore They're afraid The real estate man says his plate glass windows had been broken by those who thought he was the first to rent a home to a Negro He has begun to adjust to the new neighborhood though.

He carries a statue of st.

Martin de Porez on his desk I don't suppose he always had that there This lady too is making an adjustment to the neighborhood her children go to the Catholic school She's a Baptist she says her son is a Catholic and that's too soon to tell but she that he may be a priest They all go to mass on Sunday and then over to the Baptist Church.

She's running her own ecumenical movement She said her son didn't like the Baptist Church too much shouting, but now since Pope John There's a lot more action with the Catholics, too I Came through Rome in early June of 1963 people were listening to their transistor radios and checking the newsstands Pope John was very ill and moving toward death And in st.

Peter's Square they looked up toward his window I June 3rd about 730 in the evening came the announcement of the death of the architect of a G ornamental The new Pope Paul the sixth seemed in every way a different sort of person than Pope John had been Where John had exuded pastoral humbleness and a kind of deep spiritual wisdom Pope Paul brought to the job a fragile aristocratic priest Italian elegance, but this elegance didn't seem so fragile on the via de la rossa in Jerusalem in January of 1964 What had been planned as a religious experience turned into kind of a mob scene? But the Pope's reminder that the beginnings of Christianity were in the Middle East wasn't lost on Western The next day he visited Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity Kind of updates your idea of Bethlehem those TV cameras He celebrated mass in the grotto the traditional birthplace of Christ And before the day was out he had met with Athena Gores the first the Greek Orthodox Church first such meeting since the 15th century The Holy Spirit was celebrated by Bishop John and St.

Peter Sure, I've been addicted for provision of Copenhagen with service at the altar by the students of the German College in Rome First man out of the council each day was father Edward L.

Heston at Notre Dame University Whose job it was to brief the English speaking press? Communications between the bishops and the people had improved immeasurably since the early days of the council.

Thanks to Father In the Cape Verde Islands moderator for the session was Cardinal Julius Depner of Munich There were many announcements to be made this morning Gene said the voting document on religious liberty would begin tomorrow fathers who wish so -called Bishop's press panel met in the basement of the USO in addition to the press these conferences were often attended by seminarians nuns laymen on the fringes of the council even some of the council fathers Maybe had been in the coffee bar or asleep at any rate They could hear the Council deliberations in their own language This is Monsignor George Higgins of Washington DC who was often a member of the press panel Father Gregory Baum a theologian from Toronto Israel Schenker of Time magazine and Father Thomas Stransky of the Secretariat on Christian Unity Richard Carbrae a Latin scholar from Seattle Mario Carota head of the Christian family movement in Carmel, California now lives on Malta Sister Luke the first American woman observer to the council Here Bishop John Wright of Pittsburgh speaks on the importance of the new African laity to the life of the church And that the important cities in this council may well be the cities of Africa and Asia rather than the European cities important to previous councils It is left sits Archbishop Owen McCann of Cape Town Father Brown of the Saharan that day about the differences between Catholics and Protestants over the importance of Scripture and tradition Bishop Dungu from Uganda the council had changed the church from a reliance on Latin To the home language of the congregation with the missionary church first in mind But the Bishop Dungu pointed out that there are three major languages in Uganda alone These conversations continued on into the evening in the hotels and the restaurants of Rome Here Archbishop Thomas Roberts and his friend Richard Carbrae meet with miss Eileen Egan of New York City together They are working over a positive statement on peace and a conscientious objection October 28 1965 Bishop's vote the declaration on the non -christian religion and particularly Roman Catholics relationship to the Jews Aside from the impetus Pope John gave the most significant early understanding of a need for the council Seems to have come from bishops in the northern European countries Clearly this must have been a reaction to what had happened 20 years before a time of pilgrims purges and terror bombings Also, I would like to suggest that the single most important American ecumenical meeting of recent times Took place in the basement of the First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama Clearly Catholics would never have turned up in a Baptist Church if it hadn't been for Pope John and his Vatican Council Both sides in Selma had become divided into militant and moderate camps Sheriff Clark and Commissioner Baker were in dispute over how to handle this affair and Among Martin Luther King's followers there were those deeply committed to non -violence and those who saw it only as a technique the nuns priests other clergymen and rabbis in Selma Underlined the truly religious character of the human rights movement and at the same time they gained insights into the non -violent roots of Love your enemy which had been pretty well forgotten over the centuries And this more than any other action brought about the right to vote for Negroes in the south The Shabba Who saw the be a key move some You know well who we are the Pope said as he further opened the church to the modern world by coming the United Nations You know our mission we are the bearer of a message for all mankind no more war war never again a Was a chilly but wonderful baseball night an American Sarda night as the Pope celebrated a spectacular mass in Yankee Stadium The last working session took place on December 7th of 1965 Four incredible years in the history of civilization in Christianity at past since Pope John spoke of opening the church to the world Vagio ornamenta Now they are heading home to what is surely a bigger job the renewable men renewal putting to work the ideas and decrees of Vatican Council to This is your captain speaking We are anticipating turbulence ahead, so would you please keep your seat belts fastened? Thank you You