Pope John XXIII Catholic Community in Canal Winchester features a
portrait of the pope in a corner alcove of the sanctuary, his right hand
raised in a gesture of blessing.Monsignor A. Anthony Frecker, the pastor, founded and named the church in 2000.
He calls John XXIII one of his “true-life heroes” for his holiness, simplicity and love of his people.
The pope was less than a month shy of his 77th birthday when he was elected in 1958 by Roman Catholic cardinals, who thought his time at the Vatican would be short and uneventful.
But “they missed the mark when they thought he wouldn’t do anything,” Frecker said.
Pope John called for a Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II, in 1961. More than 2,000 bishops participated in the worldwide meeting convened in October 1962.
Over the next three years, they made changes that transformed the way the church interacted with the modern world.
In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the council, the Vatican has called for a Catholic Year of Faith aimed at reuniting followers with church tenets and encouraging them to have a “living sense” of their faith.
“If you read the (Vatican II) documents, they give you a beautiful understanding of what our church should be,” Frecker said. He said the church, by the time of Pope John’s election, had “become a little stuffy.” When the pope called for the council, he said it was time to “throw open the windows of the church and let the fresh air of the Spirit blow through.”
At the close of the council, churches began switching from celebrating Mass in Latin to using the languages of their parishioners.
Priests turned around to face their congregations in Mass, and altars were brought closer to worshippers.
The wine — the blood of Christ — which had been reserved for the clergy, was offered to the faithful along with the host.
Laypeople were welcomed to participate in ministry. Girls were permitted to serve alongside altar boys. Religious women could trade in habits for secular clothing and reclaim their given names.
Fifty years later, Sister Ruth Caspar (who was known as Sister George Marie from 1955 to 1968) still remembers the years as freeing, empowering and “one of the most-exciting times.”
“My experience was very, very positive,” said Caspar, who taught religious philosophy at Ohio Dominican University on the North Side for more than 30 years.
The council stressed, she said, that “the church is all of us; we are ‘the people of God.’ ”
Sisters were freed to “preach” in new ways and soon embraced social-justice ministries.
“For us, it was liberating. We really viewed ourselves as being spokespersons for the Gospel. How better to do it than to speak out for the oppressed?” said Caspar, a member of the Columbus-based Dominican Sisters of Peace.
The Vatican has offered wide-ranging recommendations to help Catholics meet the call for a year of faith, including studying and following the lives of the saints, reviewing the church’s foundational teachings and studying the documents of Vatican II.
Catholics are encouraged to return to confession and to reach out “in a truly welcoming manner” to people who might have fallen away from the faith, said Don Clemmer, spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The global push started last month and continues until Nov. 24, 2013.
Frecker said the goal is for Catholics to deepen their relationship with Christ and to live their faith more publicly.
A “new evangelization” effort seeks the “re-conversion” of the faithful in Western Europe and the United States, in countries that used to be Catholic but are now secular, Frecker said.
Along with letting in some fresh air, the Second Vatican Council was meant to allow the church to see out and others to see in, said Frecker. Catholics were no longer forbidden to enter Protestant churches, and Catholic-Jewish relations were placed at the forefront.
“The idea was to try to re-establish a relationship between the church and the world,” Frecker said.
As a testament to that idea, the tabernacle holding the consecrated host sits in front of a window in Frecker’s church, which has architecture reminiscent of Pope John’s native northern Italy.
The wood and stained-glass chapel at the Columbus motherhouse of the Dominican Sisters of Peace also calls to mind the era of Vatican II.
Fabric-covered chairs flank and curve around the altar, a layout that never would have been considered in years before the council, Caspar noted.
Some, feeling that the changes came too fast, abandoned the religious life or held to the traditional, she said. Others, like Caspar, felt that the new approach was “life-giving.”
“Congregations like my own ... found the spirit of Vatican II very liberating,” she said. “I don’t think we could ever go back through the window.”