Leo Cardinal Suenens says the Second Vatican Council finished the work on the Church which was left incomplete by Vatican I.

“Vatican I Stressed the role of the Pope,” the primate of Belgium told a large audience at the Cathedral Center last Friday,” and now Vatican II finished the work on the body for a more complete vision.” The Constitution on the Church stressed the idea of the People of God. It was a spiritual revolution of the Holy Spirit.”

Cardinal Suenens said Vatican II was a significant event. “But if you ask me: ‘Has the council resolved all problems?’ I would say no. Obviously, problems remain and the Church must go on, and there will be in one form or another, a Vatican III and IV.

“This is the debt we must pay to human weakness which must resolve problems in so far as they are present and pressing. But I think I am entitled to say that Vatican II was a significant event, one which has left its mark on all of us, and for which we can render thanks to the Lord. But this very fact obliges the Church to look forward and to report with St. Paul: ‘I have not yet reached perfection, but I press on, hoping to take hold of that for which Christ once took hold of me.’”

In his address, the cardinal, the first Catholic prelate to receive an honorary degree from Emory University, a Methodist institution, said there are two aspects of the council—light and darkness.

“We are still living in the light of Pope John XXIII…he remains the light for other men and the Church.

“The Holy Spirit was really at work in the Council and one of the moments was at the time of the Constitution on the Church.”

He said members of the Church need a sense of balance. “Every 10 years we should stress the opposite of what we did for the past 10 years. We need liturgical prayer, but we need personal, private prayer.

“We need love for Christ and love for His Blessed Mother; we need scripture and we need tradition.”

In discussing the aspect of darkness, Cardinal Suenens said the devil was also at the council and said the confusion brought by changes is a problem. “More than ever we have to live the fullness of our faith,” he commented.

Cardinal Suenens who was a principal speaker at Ministers’ Week at the Candler School of Theology said in a speech on campus that the Church must face the major social problem of the time…the fact that three-fourths of the human race is threatened by hunger and ignorance, living in a condition which ought to be called subhuman.

We cannot bypass this problem as the Levite did on the way to Jericho, leaving humanity wounded and nearly bleeding to death.

No man with a heart can accept the fact that two-thirds of the world, two thousand out of very three thousand men, never achieves that level of human existence which allows the normal flowering of his personality, such as technology confers upon those who are privileged.

We must break at any price the vicious circle which results in the fact that the greater part of mankind is poor because it produces but little, and produces little because it is too poor to produce more.

Cardinal Suenens said the problem of the “Third World” requires an essentially ecumenical approach.” All Christian communities are represented among the wealthier Atlantic nations. All Christian bodies have been involved in one way or another with the colonial phase of recent western history. Most of them have sent their missionaries to these countries and were confronted with the intricate problems of separate evangelization and colonialism.

“The field of world poverty and progress is one in which Christians can work closely together without being immediately confronted with difficult doctrinal and historical problems which could undermine their sense of fellowship.”