Often mentioned and rebooted, the idea of the Third Vatican Council is actually a proposal born in the late 1970s, which gained momentum in the late 1990s and resurrected under Pope Francis.
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (1927-2012) hoped for a new council as early as 1977. T. BONAVENTURA / CONTRASTO-REA
Rarely does a year go by without an announcement of the hope or desire of Vatican III. Each time, with the hope or fear of a new update, can either push the intuition of Vatican II further or highlight the Council's blind spots. At the beginning of Francis' pontificate, it was Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff who appealed to the pope in Brazilian newspaper columns.
The Synod on the family, which centered the issue in light of the different cultures' conceptions of marriage, can be seen as the beginning of the Third Vatican Council. More recently, that is how the synodal path of the German Church unfolded. Often presented as a novel idea, Vatican III is actually a 45-year-old sea snake.
The origin is very diverse
Fatherhood is the concept of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a prominent Jesuit, biblical scholar and archbishop of Milan from 1979 to 2002, who was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II and since long regarded as the pope of the reformers. In 1999, during a synod of bishops in Europe, Cardinal Martini repeated the words of the Reverend Martin Luther King in 1963 – “ I have a dream ” (an expression also often used by Pope Francis) – to speaking of his dream, all the bishops meet again and repeat "the experience of communion and cooperation that their predecessors (had) at the Second Vatican Council".
While not explicitly talking about Vatican Council III, Cardinal Martini hopes to discuss points that have not been resolved in Vatican II or that will still be worked on: lack of priests, the position of women in the Church. Church, lay ministries, marriage discipline, Catholic sexual fixation, exercise of authority in the Church...
In fact, as the vaticanist Andrea Tornielli wrote in an article a few years ago, Cardinal Martini conceived this dream in the summer of 1977, during a meeting of the magazine Concilium in the United States. The journalist wrote: “The meeting of progressive theologians and historians set the goals of the future council: Pope resigns at the age of 75, the Synod of Bishops no longer consults but has the power to voting, abolishing priestly celibacy, and equalizing women and men in the life of the Church, including the female priesthood.”
Journalist Tornielli also reports that there was a desire for the Third Vatican Council to resurface in the early 1990s… among conservatives close to John Paul II but with intentions opposite to those of Cardinal Martini: to end put an end to the reformers' infighting and curb the audacity of certain bishops' conferences. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine, objected, unable to accept either side, considering the idea of a new council "totally premature".
Pope Benedict XVI corrects
In 2005, six years after Cardinal Martini's " I Have a Dream " Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Martini was then old and sick, with only a handful of votes, unlike a Some unknown Bergoglio was Ratzinger's main competitor in this conclave - and gave his famous address to the Roman Curia on the dispute over interpretation of the Second Vatican Council.
Breaking or continuous? For Benedict XVI, the choice was clear: against “intermittent and discontinuous exegesis,” supported by “the mass media and part of modern theology” blown over embers. of the "spirit of the Council", to go beyond the texts, he advocates "reformed hermeneutics", which he defines as "renovating the Church in continuity" with 2,000 years of history and traditional. A tweak for those who want to go the extra mile.
In 2016, three years after his election, Pope Francis announced that it would take 100 years to take over a council. Like Benedict XVI, he affirmed the need for a ripe time for a Third Vatican Council. But, by inaugurating the synodal project, by sowing the seeds of ecclesial renewal with the desire to strengthen the responsibility of the local Churches (this idea is expressed in the exhortation Evangelii Gaudium ). , the pope's text released at the time of the Amazon synod, venturing into some daring ministries, he set out to realize Cardinal Martini's dream A Vatican III piece by piece?