During the final years of the Papacy of Pius XII he
had created very few Cardinals so John XXIII appointed a relatively large
number to bring the number back to its normal strength. However, as the existing Curia Cardinals held
all the important posts – some of them more than one – there was a bit of a
problem. Some of those Cardinals were
very elderly. There was then no
retirement age at seventy-five. Pope
John approached a number of the oldest Cardinals who were heads of various
important Congregations or Departments suggesting that they might relinquish
their positions. After the interview
Pope John was seen standing in some amazement, shaking his head and saying out
loud: ‘But they refused, they refused!
Never in my life did I think anyone would refuse the Pope’.
Pope John’s aim in calling the Second Vatican
Council was to bring about a renewal that would restore ‘the simple and pure
lines that the face of the Church of Jesus had at its birth.’ At the Council Latin was the language that
the bishops were supposed to use in the
discussions. This proved quite a
problem. There are a number of Eastern
Rites in the Church which have never used Latin. Many bishops who belonged to the Latin rite
had great difficulty in understanding the Latin used by their colleagues due to
not only the various accents of the speakers but to poor understanding of the
Latin on their part. The Melchite
Patriarch of Antioch, Maximos IV Saigh, was among those who ignored the
Council’s language barrier and spoke in French.
He reminded the Council that Latin was not the language of the Eastern
Church and he felt it only proper to use a more universal tongue in addressing
so Catholic a gathering. He was among
those who advocated the use of the vernacular in the liturgy where the province
of bishops requested it.
Cardinal Godfrey, who was the Archbishop of Westminster,
spoke firmly in favour of retaining Latin in the Mass. He said: ‘We must elevate the Latin
language.’ The word he used for
‘elevate’ was ‘levare’ the Latin word for ‘increasing in importance.’ But in Italian ‘levare’ means ‘to pick up and
throw away.’ Cardinal Godfrey was
horrified to find himself reported next day in the Italian Newspaper ‘Il Tempo’
‘as having said that the Latin Mass should be abolished’! A number of bishops, including the Cardinal
Archbishops of New York and Los Angeles, also spoke strongly in favour of the
Latin Mass but wanted the clergy to read the prayer of the Church in their
breviaries in their own language if that was their wish. This prompted an Italian Archbishop to
remark: ‘Ah, those Americans! Now they
want the priests to pray in English and the people to pray in Latin!’
The aged Bishop of Mostar, in then Yugoslavia,
Petar Cule, made a passionate and lengthy plea for the name of St. Joseph to be
included in the Eucharist Prayer. The
Cardinal who was presiding interrupted him: ‘complete your holy and eloquent
speech,’ he said, ‘we all love St. Joseph and we hope there are many saints in
Yugoslavia.’ It was this rudeness to
Bishop Cule that prompted Pope John to have the name of St. Joseph inserted in
the Canon of the Mass without any further discussion. It is now included in all the Eucharistic
Prayers. Pope John, who was following
all the debates on closed circuit television in his apartments, knew Bishop
Cule personally. He knew that his nervous
manner of speaking was due to great trauma.
He had suffered through one of the long trials of the communists and was
sentenced to four years in a concentration camp. He and other prisoners were put on a train
which was deliberately wrecked in an attempt to kill all aboard. The bishop survived but both his hips were
broken. In poor health he had made the
great effort to attend the Council and speak up for St. Joseph. His efforts were rewarded and Mary and Joseph
are invoked together in every Mass.
