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Some flamboyant manifestations of this activist spirit disturb more traditional Catholics. To protest nuclear arms spending, Seattle's Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen flatly refuses to pay half his income taxes; the Government has garnisheed his salary. In Arizona, two priests and three sisters in the "sanctuary" movement face federal charges of harboring illegal aliens from Central America. In Latin America and the Philippines a scattering of priests have taken up arms with Marxist guerrillas. Father Conrado Balweg of the Communist New People's Army, on the most-wanted list of the Philippine military, proclaims that liberation from oppression is "the essence of the Mass."
The roots of much of this tumultuous activity were planted two decades ago during the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Such an ecumenical council is a policy-setting meeting of the world's bishops presided over by the Pope. In a surprise announcement last Friday, Pope John Paul II said that he was summoning an extraordinary synod of bishops from around the world next Nov. 25 to Dec. 8 to re-examine the changes made by Vatican II. The gathering will involve patriarchs of the Oriental Rites and the presidents of the 101 national and regional conferences of bishops. The purpose: to clarify what the council said and how its decrees are to be interpreted.
The changes wrought by Vatican II were the most radical in Catholic life in centuries. The council decreed that the central act of worship, the Mass, could henceforth be celebrated in the language of the people rather than in Latin. Against centuries of tradition in heavily Catholic countries, it declared for freedom of religious belief without interference from the state. Along with greater social concern, the council urged work toward unity with other Christians and closer relations with Jews. There was to be a greater involvement of the laity in church worship and work.
In terms of the authority of the hierarchy, however, Vatican II decrees were essentially conservative. They enhanced the role of bishops in governing along with the Pope in accordance with "collegiality." They continued to declare that in matters of faith and morals, members were to show "religious submission of mind and will" to their bishops and especially to the Pope. The old magisterial structure emerged substantially intact, although harsh abuses in the exercise of authority were to be eliminated.
John XXIII, who called the council, was succeeded by Pope Paul VI (1963-78), who completed its work, implemented its decrees and then suffered in anguish while the church seemed to begin eroding at the edges. Legions of priests and nuns in the West quit their vocations. Paul's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, reaffirming the church's ban on artificial contraception, was attacked by theologians and largely ignored by married Catholics. Says Neoconservative British Author Paul Johnson: "The fear grew that there was no tenet of the faith of ordinary Catholics that was now immune to reinterpretation . . . or indeed outright abandonment."