Church’s orientation to such problems in the previous century. Above all it
involved a liberalization of the control of the hierarchy over individual
Catholics, and a much needed affirmation of the importance of individual
conscience in spiritual matters. Given how severely the loyalty of the laity was
to be challenged by conservative teachings on birth control immediately after
the council and throughout the reign of Pope John Paul II, this liberalization
was necessary. Without Vatican II the Roman Catholic Church might well
have collapsed in developed Western societies. It is hard to exaggerate the
importance to the faithful of the decrees of this Council, or to make them
comprehensible to non-Roman Catholics. Indeed, most living Roman Catho-
lics, having gown up since the Council, can often barely imagine how illiberal
and restrictive the Church was beforehand. Simple matters of liturgical reform,
such as the priest celebrating mass facing the congregation rather than with his
back to them, as though involved in a secret rite, symbolize but cannot really
convey the changes. Quite specific teachings may also be misunderstood. The
result of Vatican II has been a commitment to ecumenicalism and a declaration
of the validity of religious freedom—such values seem self-evidently correct,
yet were not part of orthodox teaching before the early 1960s.
Politically, Vatican II has often been seen as necessary to prevent a split
between the Roman Catholic Church in America and in Western Europe,
because American Roman Catholics had already adopted or clearly made their
preferences known for the more relaxed and liberal interpretations. It must be
admitted, however, that much of the Church has never lived up to the spirit of
Vatican II; papal authority still oppresses that of local bishops, and the role of
the clergyvis-a`-visthe laity has not been transformed as much as was envisaged.
Furthermore, in the last 20 years serious ‘counter-revolutionary’ and reac-
tionary forces, some deep inside the Vatican bureaucracy, have systematically
attempted to reverse many of the changes. The Roman Catholic Church’s
usual response, historically, to challenges from political society and from
intellectual development has been to throw up walls and try to order its
faithful to turn away from modernity and progress. These conservative forces,
claiming that Christianity is in danger of moral decay from secular society,
would like to repeat these previous attempts at avoidance. Most probably
though, inadequate as it was, the liberalization brought about by the council,
will make such a retreat into a religious and intellectual ghetto impossible to
enforce.
Vichy
The Vichy regime (named after the town in central France where it was set up
in 1940) was the collaborationist civilian French government of unoccupied
France, set up with German support after their invasion of northern and
Vichy