Pope Emeritus Benedict xvi spoke to the Franciscan University in Steubenville that the Second Vatican Council was not only meaningful, but it was necessary.
What exactly is was the vision of the council? Who/what took up the council or who/what failed the council? Interpretation, misinterpretation of, and reaction to the council created different catholic identities. The struggle for creating a catholic identity has set liberal, conservative, neoconservative and traditionalist Catholics to compete in defining what constituted an authentic Catholic worldview. This identity struggle naturally leads to a power conflict and politics.
Their stand on questions related to Cold War politics, US foreign relations and dictatorships, White nationalism etc did influence the created catholic identity. Many of these identities directly counter the dialogical nature of the church that the council envisioned. Anything that seems pious, churchy and christian is not necessarily catholic or Christian.
Church is a communion. Was the church fragmented that the council was 'necessary'? Not only the socio-economic context, but even the intellectual context made it necessary. If then, how is the dialogue with religions and reasons maintained and continued today? or, rather are they all dumped as unnecessary? Sixty years after the council, have the above mentioned identity competitions de-shaped the clergy and the faithful far away from what the council initiated in the church?
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