Bishop De Roo was named bishop of Victoria, British Columbia, during Vatican II and participated in all four sessions. (He made it to Rome just in time to participate in the last 10 days of the first session.) He recently retired after serving the people of Victoria for 37-plus years. Since then, he has been on a mission to educate people about the message of Vatican II. He is especially concerned about getting the word out to young people.

“You’re not going to get the young people unless you’re willing to accept modern culture and give it the right to express itself in liturgy. What does the paschal mystery mean to young people in today’s world with all the dilemmas facing them? When most young people go to church, they see what’s happening and they find it boring and insignificant. I’ll never forget the 16-year-old who told us at a general gathering where the gray-hairs were complaining about the young people: ‘Look, what you do that is relevant for today’s world will always be there, but in the meantime, stop giving us answers to questions that nobody’s asking.’”

ML interviewed Bishop De Roo to find out what answers he’s giving.

How do young people understand the church today? What is their image of the church?

Their understanding of the church primarily comes from what they’ve heard; they are pretty well conditioned by the media. It tends to be at the level of democracy, ordination of women and power struggles with the pastors. They have relatively little understanding of the richer doctrinal and scriptural insights. But they are very open to them; they’re really hungry for more information.

What is the story that you think people want to hear about Vatican II?

It depends on the audience. I generally start by inviting the people to tell one another how much they know. I let them realize how much they really already know. It’s amazing how much truth comes out of those audiences. The faith is there in the people. With a little bit of prompting, the people are amazed to hear what they really know. Before, it just hadn’t been fully raised to their consciousness. I let them focus the issues, and then I speak to those issues in terms of my personal experience of Vatican II, and then I tell stories.

Is there a common issue that keeps coming up?

There are a half a dozen issues that come up all the time. Some of them are post-Vatican issues, such as the ordination of women, which is not even a Vatican II issue. Women were not even thought of until the end of Vatican II. Another issue is the question of the power struggle in terms of ministry. What are lay people allowed to do? What will priests allow the laity to do? The main problems of the church today are issues of power and control. Those things naturally come up. Also, the ordination of married men. The Latin rite is the only rite that does not ordain married men, although we’re playing games now, because we ordain Protestant ministers.

What are some of the major issues that have come out of Vatican II?

One major issue, and here is where we have to get renewal on the part of the clergy, is that Vatican II made it very clear that the basic sacrament for ministry is baptism and confirmation, not orders. Lay responsibility does not arise out of a request or an invitation or a command from the priest; it comes out of baptism and confirmation. And until the clergy preach about every minister in church really ministering, then we haven’t really started to abide by this. We still define ministry by sacred actions done by the priest so we still have a far way to go.

What would be the distinction, then, between ordained ministry and lay ministry?

Ordained ministry is a sacrament that relates to the question of order. There must be, in any structured body, leadership for unity, for harmony and for the facilitation of all the membership, but how many priests spend time trying to encourage lay people to minister? As long as it’s about power and control, the lay people are not going to fully enter into the concept of ministry.

There is a temptation by the clergy to bring the best lay talents into shoring up faltering parishes. That’s missing completely the whole point of the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. It misses the concept of Eucharist as action — not object for static devotion. That concept of Eucharist as action is extremely important.

How can we highlight the importance of Eucharist as action?

We must do two things. We have to once again give the Scriptures the foundational role in worship. We are progressing, but we have a long way to go before the proclamation of the Gospel and Scripture is really taken seriously as a liturgical action. We need to focus on the training of proclaimers of the word, and we need to focus on the homily. The homily must regain its pride of place, not as a sermon, not as an occasion to indoctrinate, but as an opportunity to link the Scriptures with our daily experience and tie that in with the paschal mystery. Too many sermons are trying to indoctrinate because some of the clergy say, “People don’t know their religion, so we’re going to teach them catechetics while we have them as a captive audience in church.” That’s missing completely the deeper role of the liturgy as the real education.

Can you explain? When some people talk about liturgy’s role in education, they take it to mean more sermons.

And it is exactly the opposite. The liturgy is not meant for teaching. The liturgy is to help people under the power of the Spirit, of the risen Lord, to enter into the mystery of death and resurrection, the paschal mystery, by linking their lives as spiritual offerings. Remember Paul didn’t have time to baptize; he proclaimed the Gospel. Look at what Paul says in the Letter to the Romans (1:1–4,9; 12:1; 15:16). He emphasizes that the priesthood is primarily the proclamation of the word of God, the preaching of the Gospel, so that everyone may become a spiritual sacrifice. The work of the liturgy, the work that takes place on Sunday, is the linking of humans with the essential work of redemption by the restoration of right relationships with God, with our neighbor and with the whole of creation. That is why the liturgy is the source and the summit of Christian life. The goal of Eucharist to transform the whole of creation is where the linkage with justice comes in.

There certainly has been a movement since Vatican II to restore that linkage between liturgy and the proclamation of justice — in other words, the work that Jesus did in restoring right relationships between people. For instance, in Mark’s Gospel, if you look carefully at what Jesus does, it’s not so much that he is performing miracles; it’s deeper than that. He is restoring right relationships. That is why he goes to the poor and the downcast, to restore God’s original plan distorted by sin.

In other words, the divine is present in the stuff of our sweat and grime and tears here on earth, and in us as members of the Body of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, doing what John says in 14:12, doing even greater works.

We often hear language like that, but in my perception that is not really ingrained in us. We don’t really believe that the stuff of our sweat and grime is where we find divinity.

Good point, because we have not really read those passages from Romans, in which Paul defines his priesthood as proclamation of the Gospel, the laying down of his life, which we should be doing. That’s partly because in our Western world we’ve gotten into our individualism. We’ve lost that cultural concept of the people of God that the Jewish people have kept, faith as a people, as a community, as pilgrims in history. We’re hung up on individualism, on me saving my soul, individually, and my personal relationship with Jesus, which is why so many people want time in church to sit and be quiet. They have missed the whole concept of liturgy.

You have said that you thought the Constitution on Divine Revelation was the foundational document of the entire council.

Yes, because it focused the church on Jesus the Christ and that opened the door to ecumenism. Even if we disagree on doctrines, we can agree that we are all disciples of Jesus. The Eastern concept of paradox has less of a problem with so-called heresy and heretics. The Eastern bishops kept laughing at us for trying to parcel God into nominalistic or intellectual concepts and arguing over whether or not my limited vocabulary is the best expression of a divine mystery. The Easterners believe that it is more mystery and paradox. Two statements of specific doctrinal points which may appear to be at variance with one another can be reconciled in the deeper mystery of Christ. I don’t think we realize how much we are children of the enlightenment. We’ve gone to our heads. The brain sorts and files, but it doesn’t relate. It takes the heart to relate. We are trying to rediscover our hearts but the poor people are locked in their heads, worried about heresy.

What was the most surprising thing that came out of the council?

The council had so many surprises. Certainly one extremely powerful moment came in the vote on collegiality. There had been so much talk against collegiality. The curia was well organized and the impression was given that we were going to split the church right down the middle. Some bishops wanted the pope to stop the whole thing. Eventually, the vote took place and more than 90 percent voted for collegiality. That was such an obvious presence of the Holy Spirit against all human appearances. I’ll never forget that moment.

In the United States, collegiality seems to be taking a back seat to recent regulations from the Vatican regarding translation of the liturgical documents.

Well, there again is the overcentralized church using second-string specialists in the Vatican to control the bishops, who know best in their own countries. The massive submission of the American bishops to some curialists in the Vatican is one of the saddest events in recent history. After what Vatican II said, why should the American bishops contradict themselves and back off? Because someone in the Vatican says jump? It’s very sad. I don’t want to judge; a lot of the American bishops are my personal friends. I have great respect for them individually, but there’s no question about the power and control of the Vatican. It’s scary.

What will get us back on track with the reforms of the council?

We’re not completely off track. There is still a very alive minority of forward-looking lay people who are really on track but are prevented from fully expressing themselves because of the power control at the base of our parishes. Very few parishes encourage the outstanding lay people to speak their mind. The power struggle is a massive issue.

Even so, you sound as if you are still filled with great hope about the vision of the council.

One of the things the council did was to open our eyes to the presence of the Holy Spirit, and as long as the promise of Jesus to send the Holy Spirit holds true, there is always hope. But the hope is not in human weakness; the hope is in the power of the Spirit. And I see the power of the Holy Spirit in a lot of lay people. For instance, when I give the parish retreats, I always focus the retreat on the Holy Spirit. It’s marvelous what happens when people realize we’re really in the hands of the Holy Spirit. ML