Pope Benedict and the Second Vatican Council

There is a fascinating article here where Pope Benedict blames the media for misunderstanding the Second Vatican Council. The problem for him is that the media interpreted the event as a power struggle with in the church and that the change in the liturgy took away from the focus of the liturgy as an act of faith. Now of course it is true that Benedict was there and I was not, and it is very possible if not probable that much of the media misunderstood the event. But what strikes me as being disingenuous about Benedict's attack on the media is that it wasn't just the media. It was the interpretation of many within the church and in the council at the time. In fact, the whole reason he is having to make these claims is the obvious fact that many within the church think of it in exactly those terms!

In other words, there is a fifty year old debate within the church as to what the council meant. Benedict is of course right to interpret the event in the way he thinks best, but to blame it on the media to me is odd. In fact,  the bigger issue is that it ignores the entire historical trajectory of which Vatican II was a part. One of the great movements of the modern church in my mind is just this democratization of the church. These are currents that began in the Enlightenment, but really came to a crescendo in the 20th century. In this century, in the protestant churches power shifted from priests and pastors to become more dispersed in councils and synods. Power shifted from men to more and more to women; from white culture to people of colour and so on. The Catholic church was caught in these currents as well. It seems to me that the real issue is that Benedict, like John Paul II before him, wants to backpedal on this understanding and the media is a good scapegoat.