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  • "I Don't Think Any Council Father Could Go Back Home the Same." Albert G. Meyer and Preparing for Vatican II:A Case Study of Episcopal Transformation
  • Steven M. Avella

Memories of Vatican II play an important part in how one understands the role and impact of the Council. For some, the early post-conciliar years were a time of optimism and hope, followed by a time of disappointment and bitterness. Another set of memories recalls only the seeming chaos and turmoil Church reform added to an already tumultuous period in American life. The Council shook up American Catholics—many of whom were blissfully unaware of the various and sundry ideas, movements, and intellectual currents that heralded the event. But many adaptations were more organic and continuous. Liturgical adjustments had already begun with the restoration of Holy Week liturgies in the 1950s. Modifications in the attire of religious women, which Pope Pius XII had proposed in 1952, and changing attitudes toward other Christian denominations and Jews had started after World War II. Still, for many, the Council is the fulcrum for unending recollections of before and after. "Remember when churches were full, all nuns wore habits and we avoided meat on Friday?" Among those most profoundly affected by the dynamic of the Council (at least for a time) were the bishops who participated in the historic meetings. An excellent case study of the dramatic changes brought about by the Council can be found in the life of one of the most prominent American prelates at Vatican II, Cardinal Albert G. Meyer of Chicago.

When Cardinal Albert Meyer returned home from the first turbulent session in December 1962, he commented "I don't think any Council Father could go back home the same. In a sense I found the Council to be better than the best retreat I ever made." He attributed his personal "conversion" to the opening address of Pope John: "I would like to mention that in retrospect every bishop will constantly look back on that address and study it in the light of his experience of these past weeks. [End Page 25] I think it is the key to understanding the Council. I think it is the Pope's own key note."1

Albert Gregory Meyer (1903-1965), one of the most important American prelates at the Council, took a leading role in advancing critical conciliar debates on divine revelation, the constitution on the Church, and religious liberty. From the outset, Meyer aligned himself with the moderate-progressive bishops who re-oriented the pre-planned conciliar agenda and the documents that the Roman Curia-dominated preparatory commissions had drafted. His conscientious preparation for every session— as well as cardinalatial status, sober public and private persona, and mastery of Latin—propelled him to the forefront of American participants at Vatican II. After that first session, Meyer spoke carefully but positively of what he had seen on the Council floor, lauding the opportunity to savor the universality of the Church, the presence of Protestant observers and laymen, and the quality and richness of the liturgical celebrations. The Council experience allowed him to take the extraordinary step of revisiting many of his pre-conciliar positions—ideas and beliefs he had not only acquired as a seminarian but had also taught as a seminary professor and scholarly bishop. Meyer died before the Council ended, but by the time a brain tumor took him down, he had made significant strides in being transformed from an "utterly conventional" and somewhat remote Midwestern prelate (Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani referred to him once as "uomo freddo") to a leader who captured the affection of his priests and the respect of colleagues in the American episcopate and the Council floor.

The Pre-Conciliar Meyer: Sentire Cum Ecclesia

Albert Gregory Meyer as a man of the church deeply interiorized the sentiment, "sentire cum ecclesia," roughly translated "to feel with the Church"—a saying he often impressed on Milwaukee's seminarians and priests. Meyer was a product of seminary formation of the anti-Modernist era. When he entered Milwaukee's St. Francis de Sales Seminary in 1917, the institution was transforming itself from an "ethnic" training ground mostly for German...

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