The Council Opens

Telstar brought the pomp and pageantry, and even a searching closeup of the Pope's joyful if weary expression. Yet the true awe of last week's opening of Vatican Council II lay in seeing and sensing the variety, implicit power, and sheer numbers of the bishops, patriarchs and abbots who paraded into St. Peter's to start history's biggest religious council.

There was Paul Etoga, husky Negro Bishop of Mbalmayo in Cameroun, who had spent all his money on transportation to Rome, and reached the Vatican hungry. There was Pittsburgh's Bishop John Wright, who many Roman Catholic laymen believe will be the next U.S. cardinal. There was a former fisherman (Rufino Cardinal Santos of Manila) and a former count (Ernesto Sena de Oliveira of Portugal). There was Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, Primate of Communist Poland, who raised a finger to his lips to hush those who were cheering him. There were, in all, 2,700 of them--the spiritual leaders of 500 million people. And in the rear of the procession, carried on a gilded throne, its white silk canopy glistening in the sun. came Pope John XXIII, who turned from side to side, his right hand constantly blessing the bobbing heads below him.

The Missing Bishop. Yet if virtually the whole hierarchy of the church was gathered in St. Peter's square, there were notable absences. Josef Cardinal Mindszenty languished through his sixth year of asylum in an upstairs room of the U.S. legation in Budapest. No one came from Red China. Only three of Czechoslovakia's 19 showed up, only 21 of Poland's 51.

But, in what John XXIII took to be a gesture of better relations between Rome and the Communist world, all of East Germany's and most of Yugoslavia's delegations appeared. Lithuania, a country that is mostly Catholic and has been cut off from Rome for years, sent Bishop Petras Mazelis. In the first official contact in five centuries between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, the Orthodox hierarchy in Moscow sent two observers. This break in Orthodox unity angered the Greek Orthodox hierarchy, made that church, which had been wavering, much more firm in its decision not to send observers.

The Present Protestants. Rather spryly, once he was in St. Peter's, Pope John climbed to. his throne under Bernini's baldacchino--"beside St. Peter's tomb," as he noted in the speech that he made after the opening religious rites. In careful Latin, he explained to the bishops the purpose of the council.

The salient point, he said, "is not a discussion of one article or another of the fundamental doctrines of the church that have been repeatedly taught by the fathers and the ancient and modern theologians." But merely calling a council implies change, and the Pope cautiously suggested the shape of the change. "The whole world expects a step forward toward a doctrinal penetration . . . studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought." In effect, he recognized the value of recent Biblical scholarship, invited a new interpretation of doctrine. Closer to the Pope's throne than even the bishops were the 28 non-Catholic Christian observers, and to them he spoke of the "visible unity in truth" of Christians, and of Catholicism's striving "to have men welcome more favorably the good tidings of salvation and prepare and consolidate the path toward unity of mankind."

Next day the Pope gathered before him in the Sistine Chapel the representatives sent to the council by 86 governments. Also attending was the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, G. Frederick Reinhardt. Earnestly John pointed to Michelangelo's great fresco of The Last Judgment. "The seriousness of it gives one much food for thought," he said. "We must indeed render an account to God, we and all the heads of state who bear responsibility for the fate of nations.

"Let them give ear to the anguished cry of 'Peace, peace,' which rises up to heaven from every part of the world," he said, urging governments "to make the sacrifices that are necessary to save the world's peace. Said John: "It is time that something decisive was done."

As the council got down to work, the Vatican Curia was promptly put on notice that this was to be a council of all the church fathers. When Achilles Cardinal Lienart of Lille, second oldest cardinal in point of service, was handed a list of 16 nominees for the first of ten commissions drawn up by the Curia, he said, "These lists are very nice, but they do not tell us anything about the qualifications of these men." He then asked for further details. Pending these, the presiding officer, Josef Cardinal Frings of Cologne, adjourned the meeting.

The significance was clear. The liberal minority was not going to be dominated by the Italian Curia, at the outset had demonstrated its parliamentary ability. Vatican II was clearly going to be a true parliament of the church.

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