Sources of Renewal: The Implementation of the Second Vatican Council

by Pope John Paul II, P. S. Falla (translator)

The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously. (Pope John XXIII, Address Solemnly Inaugurating the Second Vatican Council)

Sources of Renewal is Karol Wojtyła’s intense study of the Second Vatican Council’s documents and his ambitious vision of how the Council might best be implemented. Initially published in 1972 and revised after Wojtyła’s election to the papacy, Sources of Renewal lays out the foundation for how Wojtyła, first as Archbishop of Kraków and then as Pope, sought to translate the constitutions, decrees and declarations of Vatican II into the faith and life of the Church. This translation and implementation, he comments, ought to be considered as “the response of faith to the word of God as it proceeded from that Council.… The teaching of Vatican II stands revealed as the image, proper to our time, of the Church’s self-realization.” To this end, Sources of Renewal quotes copiously and studies closely the documents of Vatican II with the intent of answering firmly those questions which press upon all the baptized: What does it mean to be a Christian, to live in the Church and in the modern world?

An absolutely essential book for assessing, interpreting, and understanding the docu­ments of Vatican II, Sources of Renewal also offers a glimpse into the mind of the man who was Pope in the immediate wake of the Council and presents his view of the Council and its implications for the Church as the “sacrament of salvation.”

Genres: Catholic, Theology, Religion

416 pages, Paperback

Published November 13, 2023

About the author

Saint Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus II), born Karol Józef Wojtyła was elected Pope at the Conclave of 16 October 1978, and he took the name of John Paul II. On 22 October, the Lord's Day, he solemnly inaugurated his Petrine ministry as the 263rd successor to the Apostle. His pontificate, one of the longest in the history of the Church, lasted nearly 27 years.

Driven by his pastoral solicitude for all Churches and by a sense of openness and charity to the entire human race, John Paul II exercised the Petrine ministry with a tireless missionary spirit, dedicating it all his energy. He made 104 pastoral visits outside Italy and 146 within Italy. As bishop of Rome he visited 317 of the city's 333 parishes.

He had more meetings than any of his predecessors with the People of God and the leaders of Nations. More than 17,600,000 pilgrims participated in the General Audiences held on Wednesdays (more than 1160), not counting other special audiences and religious ceremonies [more than 8 million pilgrims during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 alone], and the millions of faithful he met during pastoral visits in Italy and throughout the world. We must also remember the numerous government personalities he encountered during 38 official visits, 738 audiences and meetings held with Heads of State, and 246 audiences and meetings with Prime Ministers.

His love for young people brought him to establish the World Youth Days. The 19 WYDs celebrated during his pontificate brought together millions of young people from all over the world. At the same time his care for the family was expressed in the World Meetings of Families, which he initiated in 1994. John Paul II successfully encouraged dialogue with the Jews and with the representatives of other religions, whom he several times invited to prayer meetings for peace, especially in Assisi.

Under his guidance the Church prepared herself for the third millennium and celebrated the Great Jubilee of the year 2000 in accordance with the instructions given in the Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio adveniente. The Church then faced the new epoch, receiving his instructions in the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio ineunte, in which he indicated to the faithful their future path.

With the Year of the Redemption, the Marian Year and the Year of the Eucharist, he promoted the spiritual renewal of the Church. He gave an extraordinary impetus to Canonizations and Beatifications, focusing on countless examples of holiness as an incentive for the people of our time. He celebrated 147 beatification ceremonies during which he proclaimed 1,338 Blesseds; and 51 canonizations for a total of 482 saints. He made Thérèse of the Child Jesus a Doctor of the Church.

He considerably expanded the College of Cardinals, creating 231 Cardinals (plus one in pectore) in 9 consistories. He also called six full meetings of the College of Cardinals. His most important Documents include 14 Encyclicals, 15 Apostolic Exhortations, 11 Apostolic Constitutions, 45 Apostolic Letters. He promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the light of Tradition as authoritatively interpreted by the Second Vatican Council. He also reformed the Eastern and Western Codes of Canon Law, created new Institutions and reorganized the Roman Curia.

In the light of Christ risen from the dead, on 2 April 2005 at 9.37 p.m., while Saturday was drawing to a close and the Lord's Day was already beginning, the Octave of Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday, the Church's beloved Pastor, John Paul II, departed this world for the Father. On April 1, 2011, he was raised to the glory of the altars and on April 27, 2014 canonized.

Reviews

[Bob Lozano · Rating 5 out of 5]

In order to understand Bl. John Paul II, whom many already argue should be acclaimed as “the Great”, one must understand the Second Vatican Council. The reverse is equally true—in order to understand the Second Vatican Council, one must first understand Bl. John Paul “the Great”. It is simply not possible to understand either without reference to the other.

In the late 1960s the Council itself was complete, though the work of implementing the great Council had scarcely begun in earnest. Yet already there were many who insisted on dressing up their own visions of “reform” of the Church by claiming the “spirit of Vatican II” as their authority, claiming that everything had changed.

Into this breach—and it was not possible for any to see, at that time, just how much damage would be caused by then nascent efforts to remake the Church—stepped then-Cardinal Wojtyla, Council Father and pastor of a strong diocese in the bosom of the Soviet bloc; unknown to the world stage, yet not for much longer. While acknowledging that it was important to implement the genuine conciliar reforms, he understood that authentic reform would be impossible without a genuine understanding of the Council itself, of just what the Holy Spirit had provoked in the various acts that led to the calling of the Council, of just how the Council Fathers had responded, and to a lesser extent the reasoning that led them to respond in this manner to the Holy Spirit.

Cdl. Wojtyla was motivated, in part, out of a deep gratitude for the opportunity to participate in what he clearly understood to be a great council. In a sense all ecumenical councils are “great” in that they involve the whole of the Church; yet in another sense some step into greater needs than others. Undoubtedly shaped by his lifetime of experiences encouraging, shaping, evangelizing, and simply living the faith under totalitarian oppression, Cdl. Wojtyla fully embraced all that the Council had set out to do, to prepare the Church for the great battles into which She would soon enter more fully—whether the onslaught of materialism and the “dictatorship of relativism”, both leading to the nihilistic hopelessness that would soon consume the West, or the rise of militant Islam, the fractious divisions within Christianity itself, the caustic rejection of the dignity of man by some and of the very possibility of God by many—the Council, in obedience to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, set out to help the Church to understand Herself more fully, and in doing so to become more fully obedient to God, therefore being more faithful to Her mission.

With that in mind, Cdl. Wojtyla “set out to repay a debt” to “the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ which speaks to the churches (SoR, p10) by helping others to understand the Council, a necessary precursor to undertaking authentic reforms. This book, “Sources of Renewal” (“Sources”), is the fruit of that effort. First published in 1972, the book gained much wider exposure in the second edition, published (with slight revisions) in 1979 shortly after his election as Holy Father. In a sense, this book prepared the foundation for the program of his entire pontificate, which can be understood (at least in some dimensions) through the three-step conciliar framework of “awareness, renewal, and dialogue”, also discussed as “enrichment, conversion, and mission”.
Yet at the time of this book that pontificate was not yet even conceived of; the problem at hand was to prepare the ground for fruitful implementation of the Council. Therefore in “Sources” Cdl. Wojtyla necessarily focused on the first step, on “awareness”, on the “enrichment of faith”.

Structure
In this book Cdl. Wojtya frames the council as an essentially ecclesiological council, one in which the Church strove to more fully understand Herself, resulting in the “Church not only showing clearly what it thinks of itself, but also in what way it wishes itself to be realized” (SoR, p 11). As such, the two most central documents are Lumen Gentium (the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church) and Gaudium et Spes (the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World); it is on these two which this book focuses. Yet the book ranges further, supplementing the primarily synthetic examination of the great themes of the Council with texts from other conciliar documents.

Cdl. Wojtyla begins by examining conciliar initiation, essentially providing background for what the Council would declare. Next is the formation of conscience, as the beginning of truly developing awareness, both in the individual and the Church herself. Finally, the bulk of the book considers the formation of attitudes, which is essentially the bridge to authentic renewal, to conversion.

Fundamental conciliar themes covered include the ad intra and ad extra (two aspects) of the Church, how the Church is both anthro-centric and Christo-centric, as well as the overriding theme of communio in various dimensions. In particular, the dynamic nature of life in the Church, both for the individual and for the Church, is highlighted: “this process of consciousness / redemption / enrichment is always dynamic”, “communio implies a stable immanent dynamism” (SoR p 140). In both the energy is palpable, a sort of “holiness in motion”.

Woven throughout is also the great theme of participatio: “Christ and the Christian encounter each other intimately in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly mission, and it is this participation which forms the essential characteristics of the Christian” (Soc p 270), is one summary.
The structure of the book and the synthetic approach also provides a framework in which the Church can be understood as both ends and means—both as the end towards which all of mankind strains (that is, the eschatological dimensions of the Church), and the means by which each individual can move towards his own proper end, towards God.

Along the way Cdl. Wojtyla discusses some of the common misconceptions and other hermeneutical mistakes made when considering the Council (beyond simply ignoring what the Council actually said, which happens often enough—the book does assume that one is interested in what the Council actually had to say). These include the principle of integration, which is often ignored by both traditionalists and those who don’t like Church doctrines (both within and outside of the Church) alike; the authentic meaning of a pastoral (vs. a doctrinal) council; as well as significant focus on the enrichment of faith in both it’s subjective and objective dimensions.

Finally, the complementary themes of both aggiornamento and ressourcement are woven throughout, in their essentially interdependent and balanced operation. Without understanding both and their relationship to each other, it is simply not possible to begin to understand the Council, which both brought the Church up to date and more strongly attached her to her entire history, to Christ, to her entire reason for being, to her essential nature.

Commentary & Evaluation
To what end does all this strive? Nothing less than the authentic understanding of the Council, to prepare both the Church and the faithful for authentic renewal, and from there to fruitful mission.

In contrast with many of the flawed attempts to interpret the Council, which often imposing a pre-existing outcome upon the Council while ignoring what was actually declared, in Sources of Renewal Cdl. Wojtyla has created a synthesis of conciliar themes using conciliar methods—both fresh and grounded in the entire history of the Church—and in doing so has provided, by example and strenuous effort, a hermeneutic of the council, an interpretive framework by which the Second Vatican Council may be authentically understood.

This conciliar hermeneutic was later enriched by Cdl. Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI by his focus on contrasting the hermeneutic of continuity with that of rupture, as well as his various writings on authentic reform; yet I propose that the conciliar hermeneutic developed by Cdl. Wojtyla remains an essential starting point for understanding how best to reform the Church, even now in the third millennia. It also provides key insights for understanding the pontificate of Bl. John Paul II as well as the fundamentally interdependent pontificate of Benedict XVI.

Given the many misguided attempts at reforms and other problems caused by fundamental misunderstanding of the Second Vatican Council, misunderstandings that persist to this day at many levels within the Church, this book is as necessary today as it was at the time of its writing.