Ponderings of an Old Theologian: Vatican II: A Life-Shaping Event

By Jozef Goethals

Ponderings of an Old Theologian is a book in which the author reflects on his life as a youngster and a seminarian in the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church, as a priest and missionary in the Philippines, and as a resigned priest and lay teacher at a Catholic school. The Second Vatican Council (1962-5) and Pope John XXIII had a life-shaping effect on him throughout his journey.

Early on, he decided to help implement the renewals of Vatican II, and did so as a missionary and a teacher. In simple language, his narrative and reflections cover the development of Catholic thinking through several generations and look at the papacy of Pope Francis as the hope of a real Vatican II Church. The work invites the readers to find how they can make Vatican II relevant in their lives (part memoir, part reflection on Catholic theology).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781649797858

Jozef Goethals

Jozef Goethals was born in Torhout, Belgium, in 1937. After six years of classical humanities at St. Rembert College in his hometown, he joined the international missionary congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM or Scheut Fathers) in 1956. After two years of studying philosophy in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, he spent seven years at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy, where he obtained degrees in theology and missiology and did post-graduate studies. Subsequently, he served as a missionary in the Philippines until 1970. He emigrated to USA, resigned from the ministry, and became a teacher in Baltimore, Maryland. For 32 years, he taught philosophy, religion, and languages at Notre Dame Preparatory School. After his retirement in 2002, he dedicated ten years to his genealogy hobby. He published three family histories on the Goethals family and a manual on Belgian genealogy research. Since 2012, he has published two memoirs, a novel on The Second Vatican Council, and a historical novel on the German occupation of his hometown, which was also published in Dutch in Belgium. He resides in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife, Felicitas.

Book preview

About the Author

Jozef Goethals was born in Torhout, Belgium, in 1937. After six years of classical humanities at St. Rembert College in his hometown, he joined the international missionary congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM or Scheut Fathers) in 1956. After two years of studying philosophy in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, he spent seven years at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy, where he obtained degrees in theology and missiology and did post-graduate studies. Subsequently, he served as a missionary in the Philippines until 1970.

He emigrated to USA, resigned from the ministry, and became a teacher in Baltimore, Maryland. For 32 years, he taught philosophy, religion, and languages at Notre Dame Preparatory School. After his retirement in 2002, he dedicated ten years to his genealogy hobby. He published three family histories on the Goethals family and a manual on Belgian genealogy research.

Since 2012, he has published two memoirs, a novel on The Second Vatican Council, and a historical novel on the German occupation of his hometown, which was also published in Dutch in Belgium. He resides in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife, Felicitas.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the people who stood by me when I had to make life-shaping decisions: my soul mate, Felicitas, and her family, my family, my teachers, and my friends.

Copyright Information ©

Jozef Goethals 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Goethals, Jozef

Ponderings of an Old Theologian

ISBN 9781649797841 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781649797858 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912707

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

This work was written to show how Pope John XXIII and his Second Vatican Council shaped my life.

For a long time, I had asked myself why Pope John and Vatican II had such a fundamental influence on the life decisions I made. I, therefore, had to revisit my life before Vatican II, my years in training for the priesthood, my apostolate as a missionary in the Philippines, my return to the lay state, and my decades as a teacher at a Catholic school. More importantly, I had to revisit what led up to the Council and the documents of the Council themselves. The research provided me with surprising new insights, corrections of long-held convictions, and a better understanding of how Pope John and Vatican II had shaped my life.

It is quite easy, however, to fool oneself when reconstructing more than seven decades of memories and insights. I therefore called on the assistance of some friends to read my manuscript. They gave me encouragement, honest critique, and new ways of looking at my writing.

This book would not have been possible without the help of my brother and sister-in-law Arthur and Rita Goethals. Their support was always there when I faced life-shaping events.

My heartfelt thanks to Yara Cheikh, Raf Decaluwe, Luk Dewulf, Etienne Huyghens, and teacher-colleague Lucy Strausbaugh; my friend-priests Fr. Paul Staes CICM, missionary in Singapore, Fr. Peter Knecht SVD, missionary in Japan, and Fr. James Finley; Anthony Kowalski, Dr. Rene Debrabander, and Dr. Marc Vanderheyden. My thanks also to my faithful collaborator, Ann Hughes of Otter Bay Books, for proofreading the manuscript.

For her patience and encouragement during the research and writing of this work, I thank my wife, Felicitas.

Preface: The Blessings of Old Age

At 85-years-old, you become increasingly more aware that life is transitory, and you develop a tendency to look back. You know you don’t have the time anymore to fashion a new future, and so you tend to hold on to the memories of the past. People who were vital to your world have disappeared; your contemporaries are passing away fast and you become increasingly alone in your world. You are conscious that at the end of this transitory and fleeting life stands death. If you are a believer, eternity is at the door. If you are not a believer in afterlife, death leads to nothingness.

You have seen ideas and trends being born and disappear. Moral dictates that seemed unshakable have lost their power. Standards about right and wrong have given up their robust command and have been replaced by new standards. Gradually, your old views have widened out. You let go of convictions that you have promoted and defended for ages and open up to new views.

Is this the wisdom of the ages consistently ascribed to old people? Is it insight into things as they are that is gained only when one nears the end? At the time of this writing the world is in shock with the coronavirus pandemic. More than ever, we are becoming aware of how fragile human life is and how much we take things for granted: the wonderful feeling of a hug, the dedication of a nurse, the joy of a day at the beach, the thrill of Major League Baseball, or the ease of international travel.

We should remind ourselves how lucky we are to have food, running water and electricity while millions in the world live on a dollar a day and are deprived of life’s basic necessities. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton put it so astutely: Life in this world is designed to distract us from thinking about questions of ultimate importance and particularly from thinking about our mortality.

Old age is often compared to a second childhood. A child feels that all is one, that everything is under control, that all will be well. Is successful aging similar? Do we come to the point where we can let go of things? Can we detach ourselves from views we have cherished and feel that all will be well without them? The Dalai Lama might well be right when he stated: Attachment restrains vision. Does detachment open vision?

There is an extra dimension to my own story of aging. That dimension is my Catholic faith. As my personal history shows, the Catholic faith has been an essential inspiration in my life. As a youngster I became convinced that I was called to be a priest and a missionary. After fifteen years of preparation I happily exercised that ministry. That my faith was challenged is proven by my resignation from the ministry. But I continued that ministry as a layperson at a Catholic school for thirty-two years.

For five decades, my faith was not a block of concrete. As all faith does, it changed: it went from highs to lows, from certainty to doubt, from enthusiasm to despair and to enthusiasm again. During that long struggle I witnessed certainties in the Church being challenged and disappear. New trends of faith were born and died, and I was wondering why.

Now I want to look back. I want to understand why I held on to certain truths while rejecting others, and how this affected the choices I made on my journey.

Even in my darkest moments I always held on to the belief that God would always be there for me. It was a golden thread of a fundamental option that was present throughout my struggles with my faith. With an almost child-like trust I believe that all will be well with my faith and my belief in the Catholic Church. The recurring revelations of pedophile clerics, the threat of a schism against Pope Francis, the exit of so many disappointed Catholics from the Church, and the slow pace of implementation on Vatican II sometimes challenge that trust. Could it be that I have gained the wisdom of the ages in seeing things as they are and living within them in peace?

The inspiration for writing down these ponderings came from a re-reading of Hans Küng’s book What I Believe. In his preface, Küng writes: I am writing for all those who live out their faith but would like to be able to give an account of it, who not only simply ‘believe’ but also want to ‘know’, and therefore expect a view of faith which is grounded in philosophy, exegesis, and history and has practical consequences.

Küng’s words describe exactly what I intend with writing this book: I do want to give account of my faith. I also want to know how that faith developed through my growing up in my family and my immersion in early Catholic education and student activities. Once I answered the call to the ministry, that faith became more central. It was tested throughout my studies, my pastoral life as a missionary and my decades of teaching in a Catholic environment.

In hindsight, my personal story was as tumultuous as the background against which my story played: the history of the Catholic Church before, during, and after Vatican II. I could have saved myself much anxiety and soul pain had I followed the advice of the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond your control.¹ These ponderings have taught me how futile it was to try to control the uncontrollable.

Since the subtitle of this book is Vatican II: A Life-Shaping Event, it has to show how the Council shaped my life. And so, parts of this book will be memoir. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 describe my odyssey from the unfolding of my vocation through my clerical training in the pre-Vatican II church. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 follow my attempts to implement the Council as a missionary and a lay teacher.

The remaining chapters sketch the development of Catholic theology and practice in the past one hundred years. After an introduction of the main issues discussed at the First Vatican Council—papal primacy and infallibility—in chapter 4, we analyze the movements that prepared the second Vatican Council. Chapter 5 and 6, the longest section of the book, traces the preparation and the four sessions of Vatican II and its promulgated documents. Chapters 10 and 11 sketch the decades of implementation and interpretation after the Council, and the pontificate of Pope Francis.

I am writing this book partly for myself. They are reflections about how Vatican II was a life-shaping event in my life. I therefore needed to revisit the pre-Vatican II Church, my clerical training years, my missionary experience in the Philippines, and my decades of teaching at a Catholic school. It required soul searching to retract what led to vital decisions during this journey. It was often difficult to distinguish between the truth and the memories colored by the years. Things are seen through the perspective of an 85-year-old.

This book might be welcome to those Catholics who grew up in the pre-Vatican II Church and are still pining with nostalgia for that church. For most of them, the Second Vatican Council is a faraway memory. Many welcomed the changes while others were shocked, and bemoaned the loss of their old church. I hope that by exploring what happened in Vatican II they get a better understanding of the church they grew up in and realize how their church needed a new springtime.

I am also writing for Catholics who were born after the Council and have only known the present Vatican II Church. For younger generations Vatican II is ancient history. Why would young people today want to read about a church council that happened more than 50 years ago? In many countries Christianity has mostly evaporated among their peers.

For everyone, Vatican II can only be interesting if its reforms are still relevant for today’s Catholic. It will be one of my tasks to show what has been implemented, what has been updated, and what still has to be implemented. In doing so, I hope that I can show that the Second Vatican Council is more relevant than ever in our times.

I am deeply convinced that the Catholic hierarchy has failed to educate all generations of the faithful about what happened during the Council. Many people thought—and still think—that Vatican II was all about the priest facing the congregation during Mass, hearing their native language during the liturgies, and about nuns changing their habits. Without any doubt the liturgical renewal was the place where the Catholics in the pews were experiencing Vatican II in a concrete way.

Yet, in all my years of pastoral ministry and teaching, I have only met a few laypeople who ever had read a Vatican II document or who had been taught about the renewal ideas of the Council. Any hope that Vatican II becomes relevant to the present faithful will be anchored in making all the people of God aware of the serious crisis the Catholic Church is facing and the dire need for church reforms.

Throughout the text I will try to use non-technical language to make things understandable to the average reader. If more technical terminology is unavoidable, I will explain it in footnotes. Sometimes I will have to digress into historical sketches to clarify matters that most Catholics take for granted.

Of the nearly seven decades that cover these ponderings, three were spent in Belgium, Holland, Italy and the Philippines. It will therefore be necessary to elaborate on aspects of the Church in these countries, because they might not be familiar to readers who grew up in the Catholic Church in the United States.

There is no greater joy to a teacher than to receive a note from a former student saying that she decided to become a teacher because of you; or that you thought her to think or made her a lifelong enthusiast for philosophy; or that she took her faith seriously because of your classes.

If these ponderings on the Second Vatican Council inspire some people to search for their own place as apostles of evangelization, all my efforts would be richly awarded.

In concluding this preface, I second what John Wilkins, editor of the Tablet, stated on 12 October 2002: The second Vatican Council was an extraordinary event called by an extraordinary Pope, and it is one of the main reasons why I personally am a Catholic today.

---

Epictetus (A.D. 50-135) was a Greek stoic philosopher whose writings, the Enchoridion and Discourses, were published by his disciple Arrian, Selections of these works were published by Sharon Lebell in The Art of Living, 1995.↩︎

Part One

The Pre-Vatican II Church

Chapter One: Growing Up in

the Catholic Church of the Fifties

From the nineteenth century until well into the twentieth, the reason for the existence of Catholic high schools in Belgium was to produce people who were Catholic humanists. Pius XI’s encyclical on Christian education Divini iliius Magistri (That Divine Teacher) of December 1929 stated that "it is not enough to give religious instruction in the schools: the entire school organization, the teachers, the program, the textbooks etc. have to be permeated by the Christian spirit." Most Catholic secondary schools, sponsored by the local dioceses, were breeding grounds for Christian humanists and priestly vocations: until the 1930s one half of high school graduates chose the priesthood.

In 1950, after seven years of primary education, I began my high school education in such a school: Saint Rembert College in my hometown. As in many European countries, the six years of high school in Belgium were called college or humaniora. I chose Classical Humaniora where Greek and Latin were the primary subjects complemented by four other European languages and the regular secondary education subjects. A program intended to give us a well-rounded classical humanistic education.

The administration was in the hands of priests who, next to a few lay people, taught an array of subjects. Educational counseling was still in its infancy and priests were assigned to provide us with academic, spiritual, and moral formation.

Many graduates in the United States look back at their high school years as the time during which they were trying to figure out who they were. Most of them look back at high school as a stepping-stone to maturity and barely see that time as formative. At graduation they feel to be at the threshold of adulthood but usually it is during their college years that many become real adults.

I have always looked at my years of secondary education as six very formative years. The high quality of the academics gave me a solid base in the humanities that created in me an intellectual curiosity I carried for the rest of my life. The moral and spiritual training generated an interest in religious matters. I realized that religion, in one-way or another, would remain part of my life. Little did I know that religion would become an essential factor in my life’s choices.

It is only in hindsight that we realize how our high school education has provided some of the building blocks for our futures. My classmates and I had most uncritically accepted our moral and spiritual education as normal. We were not aware that the 50s were the end of a traditional era in politics, social developments and religion—in particular the old Catholic Church. As a result, some of the lessons we learned would be challenged in the ensuing decades.

There were four areas that formed the academic, moral, and religious persona I was upon entering a Belgian missionary order in 1956: my home upbringing, the academic and spiritual formation at St. Rembert, and my participation in the Catholic Action organization.

1. 1. Home

An important factor of my growth toward adulthood was my home. I grew up in a house located between the church and the parish priest’s residence. My town was a deanship and the parish priest was The Dean and the ultimate church authority in town. His residence reflected that authority in its size and lack of access. At that time, pastoral counsels were still many years away and lay people did not have much sway over the way Catholicism was practiced.

Lay people had only to pray, pay, and obey. From the pulpit parishioners were told how to behave in all circumstances. Church authority extended not only to moral situations but to all social issues and even political ones. The dean ruled his parish as the bishop ruled the diocese and the pope ruled the entire Church.

As most of the parishioners around them, my parents were good Catholics. This meant they faithfully went to Mass on Sundays, did not eat meat on Fridays, sent their kids to Catholic schools, and voted for the local Christian People’s Party.

They celebrated our first and solemn communions, saw to it that we participated in processions, prayed the rosary, and learned to give up favorite snacks during Lent.

There were other values we learned from our parents. I began high school only five years after the end of WWII. I had vivid child memories of the five years of German occupation and the violent repression after the liberation.² The war experiences taught me life-long lessons: I learned that my parents were always going to be there for me, whatever the circumstances; I learned that people could really hate and were able to treat each other unjustly.

I saw the emaciated skeletal bodies of my neighbors returning from German concentration camps. I saw the hatred of the crowds after the liberation who paraded my relatives through town and who threw people’s belongings in the street. The image of my father trying to paint over the tar swastikas on our house is branded in my memory forever. He was branded as a collaborator because he shaved German soldiers during the war.

But I also witnessed the compassion of my mother towards the two German soldiers who slept in our house for more than three years. I saw goodness in the German soldiers who prevented my father from being deported to Germany as a forced laborer. After four years of German occupation, my parents showed compassion to German refugees and encouraged me to go and help rebuild their devastated country.

Their example of forgiving and forgetting remained with me. Their example of persisting and never letting evil or injustice carry the day, became unconsciously, a component of my own character. Later in life, when I was feeling powerless and isolated, threatened by forces that seemed to want to destroy me, I remembered my parents’ lessons. In the end, persistence and goodness prevail—all the time.

1. 2. Academics

In the 1950s, study options in high school were minimal: once you had chosen a certain track, you stayed in it for six years. A rigorous daily schedule (including Saturdays) began at 7:30 in the morning with obligatory Mass. For six years I avoided the Mass check by serving as an altar boy at the Sisters convent and school for girls. Every day we attended five and a half hours of classes and three and a half hours of study hall in a large poorly lit room with six rows of double desks. On a huge throne the duty-master kept an eye on his 150 subjects. After going home at 7:30 P. M., I still had a couple of hours of homework.

The purpose of the humaniora was to make us into well-rounded Catholic humanists, versed in Western languages, culture and history. The six years of Latin and five years of Greek made sure that our training deserved the name of classical humanities. Next to the classical languages we studied six years of Dutch and French—the two official languages of Belgium—and four years each of German and English. Other required courses over the span of the program were religion, geography, world history, geometry, algebra, biology, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, and art and music history.

After an initial study of Latin and Greek grammar and syntax, we were exposed to the major literary works in all the languages we studied: poetry, plays, novels, and political thought. Not only did this give us a broad humanistic background, but it created in us a lifelong interest in humanity’s search for meaning.

Rote memorization was the main method of learning. I recall the many nights I was memorizing another paragraph of The Aeneid, Cicero’s orations, or a dialogue of Molière’s L’Avare. Tests and quizzes were geared toward regurgitation of memorized material, while writing essays was a rarity. Final semester exams were feared, demanding and comprehensive. Most of the textbooks had been used for generations and were passed on, but mostly we learned to rely on class notes. Textbook publishers had not invented the cash cow of publishing yearly new editions.

Today, our long school days and rigorous educational methods would be considered as bordering on child abuse. Nobody ever talked about self-esteem, and attention deficit disorder was not a disorder yet. It was your problem and was remedied, not by medication, but by a red report card and parental punishment. All in all, the St. Rembert academics generated a love for learning; a love that has persisted throughout my life until today.

1. 3. Spiritual and Moral Training

I don’t remember much of what kind of religious education I received during my years of high school. Religious education in primary school had been limited to the traditional Catechism—an unending list of questions and answers to be memorized. The subjects of religion classes were very much the choice of the priests who were teaching. Besides some church history, most classes were focused on morality. Courses on New and Old Testament were nowhere to be seen. I never saw a Bible as a textbook throughout my high school years. This should not be surprising: Bible reading was not encouraged in the pre-Vatican II Church. It was considered too Protestant.

There was never any doubt that you were at a Catholic institution: every room in the school had a crucifix and a large picture of Pope Pius XII. Participation in religious activities was not a question of choice. All elements of spiritual schooling were an integral part of the program and were under constant supervision. We would not have dreamed of asking a question like, Why do I have to do this?

On Sundays, we had solemn High Mass followed by Vespers in the afternoon. After graduation, some of my classmates concluded that they had attended enough Masses for the rest of their lives and thought they were excused from attending Mass any further.

Every other week we lined up in the chapel for confession. Day students who chose to go to confession in their parish had to bring a confession letter from their parish priest. Periods in the Liturgical Year were celebrated with special events: May and October were dedicated to Mary with special devotions and lots of rosaries. The school also organized pilgrimages to Marian devotion centers. During Lent and the Good Week outside preachers came to give conferences on the meaning of fasting and every Friday we did the Stations of the Cross.

A yearly three-day retreat brought in Jesuits and Redemptorists who, with fire and brimstone, reminded us of the dangers of the world around us. I am sure that most of us remember clearly the recurring story of a boy who had read a forbidden book and died the next day in a car accident in a state of mortal sin. The entire study hall felt guilty as charged and promptly went to confession that day. Finally, they encouraged us to help promote the missions by collecting money, stamps, etc. to help the missionaries with long beards who came every Mission Sunday