By Bishop Robert E. Tracy

Special To The Georgia Bulletin

The Most Reverend Robert E. Tracy is Bishop of Baton Rouge, La. He is attending the third session of Vatican Council II and graciously consented to send along this dispatch concerning the opening ceremonies.

The first thing to deal with in approaching an experience like a session of an Ecumenical Council is the matter of mood. What is the mood of this Third Session as compared with those of the other two sessions? Let me put it this way: In my view, the first session was, for most of us United States bishops, a period of uncertainty. After all, we were new at this sort of thing. We were looking around and making observations and preparing a stance. It was exhilarating all right, but we were feeling our way just the same.

Ecumenical Councils were gatherings we had learned about in Church History classes. Assemblies to be viewed with awe from afar, making infallible pronouncements, fulminating anathemas and on the whole very formidable, any way you chose to look at them. To find one’s self directly involved in such an historical setting was rather unsettling to say the least at first. So we were all enveloped in a mood of uncertainty as we pulled down the kneelers and picked up the electronic pencils to mark ourselves present at the first session, then the second session.

This was quite a different period. Painters, I understand go through different moods (The Blue Mood, The Green Mood and so forth). Well, so do Council Fathers and our mood during the second session was quite different from the uncertainty of the first. In September 1964, we had found our sea legs and could move about without too much fear of toppling over. The scene had become familiar, not to mention the curious Council procedure, which had never been in the same room with Parliamentary Law. We began to be with it, and I think we succeeded in making ourselves heard in an effective way. In the second session, much of the hearing was obtained in ways that never reached the press but it was effective, nonetheless. Lines were drawn, stances defined and advances made during the second session, but in my view, much of this matter then went to commission and remained there, and there was a stalemate in December, 1963, but now we have the third session and the mood at first is hard to measure or define.

I talked with a wide grouping of experts this morning just after the opening session came to an end at the press center at no. 54 Via Delia Conciliazione. Present were Father Fred McManus, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Novak, Monsignor John Naughton, Baton Rouge press chief. There was no consensus on the prospects for vital significant action at the third session. My own opinion, however, is that we can’t miss a confrontation with extremely vital problems in this session. Personally, I am looking forward to fireworks as we get down to beating out some highly explosive issues like the world collegiality of the bishops, religious liberty, the Jews, and so forth. At any rate all this must wait for further reporting today. Let us confine our remarks to what actually happened at St. Peter’s this morning.

Well, first of all, some new features were well publicized long in advance of the opening session, so you have all heard about them, such as the concelebration of Mass by the pope with 24 bishops from all around the world, including two archbishops from the United States, Archbishop Krol of Philadelphia and Archbishop Shehan of Baltimore.

Then there was the matter of admitting women observers to the Council for the first time in history, and the new rules for speaking in the Aula. All these things were duly reported in the NCWC News Services and there is no need to expand upon them, but let me give you an observer’s view of exactly what happened this morning. Well, my traveling companions, Monsignor Naughton and Monsignor J. J. Gillespie and his brother, Father Augustine Gillespie, on my advice reported to Saint Peter’s at 7:30 a.m., and as I had predicted were ushered to seats much better than my own. I had to content myself with a seat back of the cardinals while my companions were chock-a-block with the Protestant observers, which means that they had ringside seats. But I took great consolation out of the fact that four archbishops who came a little later had to be satisfied with squatting on steps in the aisle -- Archbishops Hakin (Bagdad), Damiano (Camden, New Jersey), Conway (Armagh, Ireland), and Heenan (Westminster, London). This was the batting order on the steps just opposite my position.

The grand ceremony began just a little after 9 a.m. Pope Paul entered the Basilica of Saint Peter’s attended by the usual splendid entourage so customary at papal functions for ages. But there was a difference; the pope is clearly against demonstrations in Saint Peter’s and he blessed the crowd as he passed, thus making it extremely difficult for anybody to clap hands (did you ever try blessing yourself and clapping hand at the same time?). No, the present pope’s mood is distinctly on the side of restraint in external exhibitions. However, this is not the tradition of Rome and traditions are not uprooted but only gradually removed. The impression is that Paul is gradually removing a lot of things.

The ceremony of concelebration was most impressive -- twenty-four bishops all saying Mass at once with the pope himself. How they did it is a question. I would have been petrified. They all stood around the same great altar under the great Bernini Ciborium and said the Mass together, using one Host and one Chalice. However, additional Hosts were consecrated, large ones for the bishops to receive communion and small ones for the faithful to communicate. The text of the Mass was arranged by papal decree. A Low Mass essentially, but with singing at certain points. Beautiful copies of the entire Mass text were distributed to each bishop and there was most impressive participation throughout. It was a truly great historic event harking back to the earliest ages of Christianity and a truly great devotional act which was not lost on the thousands who viewed it with hushed reverence.

After Mass, Archbishop Felici, the official starter at the Council, got up onto his familiar tub and made a pack of announcements in Latin like Cicero might have used addressing the Roman Senate, only more so. Archbishop Felici handles Latin words like a monkey handles a coconut. Then the Holy Father sat down on his throne and set the sights for all of us with a most deeply thought out address.

This is what we had been waiting for. After all, it is the Holy Father who sets the pace at the Council. It is he who decides the matter to be taken up by the Fathers, and it is he who decides the spirit in which the Council is to move. Today we got the word in no uncertain terms. Most important in Pope Paul’s address today were the words, “The hour has sounded in history when the Church which expresses herself in us and from us receives structure and life must say of herself what Christ intended and willed her to be and what the age long meditation of the fathers, pontiffs and doctors in their wisdom has explored with piety and fidelity. The Church must give a definition of herself and bring out from her true consciousness the doctrine which the Holy Spirit teaches her thus must be completed, the doctrine which the first Vatican Council was preparing to enunciate.”

The discussion of this doctrine remains to be completed. The Council has many subjects to treat of, but this seems to us to be the weightiest and the most delicate, and then the Holy Father explained why he had decided on concelebration to start the Council. “We wanted to tune in with Divine Providence in celebrating this historic moment by giving you our brothers in the Episcopate the honor which our Lord desired to show to the Apostles together with Peter.” Now isn’t that as nice a way to put it as you could possibly imagine? “But,” the pope goes on, “Our position in no way defrauds you our Brother Bishops of your due authority. Restrictions are imposed solely for the good of the Church which has proportionately greater need for centralized authority. As its world wide extension becomes more complete, this centralization is more of a service than anything else and will always be balanced by an alert and timely delegation of authority and faculties to local pastors of souls. Dispersed as you are throughout the world you have a need of a center of unity, a principle of unity in faith and Catholicity, a unifying power such as you find in the Chair of Peter. Now the Council has many more important items to treat of; the nature and mission of the pastors of the Church, the Constitutional prerogatives of the Episcopacy, and the relations between the Episcopate and the Holy See, the relations between East and West in the Church, the true nature of hierarchical authority for the sake of our separate brethren, and so forth. But the central objective of the third session remains among its many concerns to investigate and clarify the nature of the Church, thus making of this third session of Vatican II a logical continuation of the First Vatican Council.” The pope goes on in his opening one hour address to salute various groups, the auditors, the guests, etc., who are present at this most solemn opening session, and having addressed himself to all at hand, he finally calls upon everyone to join with him in a fervent Veni Creator Spiritus (Come Holy Ghost).

Thus began the third session of the Second Vatican Council, I think that in this session the fathers will enter the deep waters of the Council, that is, those penetrating questions which will most greatly affect the life of the Church for many years to come. But one thing seems certain, Pope Paul VI has gotten action. The fathers have received schemata which are completed in a tone that will almost certainly win quick approval from the fathers assembled.

There will be battles on some questions still under debate. But many a vital question like collegiality is no longer debatable. It remains only to be voted on, and the result from this corner looks like a landslide.