How Vatican II renewed South African Catholicism - as perceived by "The Southern Cross" 1962-1968

Abstract

This article is a preliminary attempt to examine the reception of Vatican II, the great reform of the Catholic Church initiated by Pope John XXIII, that occurred between 1962 and 1965, on the Catholic Church in South Africa. As a major primary source, I am using the Southern Cross [hereafter SC], the semi-official, but by no means only Catholic newspaper in South Africa. Local Catholic papers existed in some dioceses, as did UmAfrika, a Zulu paper produced out of Mariannhill near Durban, but none of them had the “official” status or breadth of circulation of SC. Though not owned by the Bishops Conference (SACBC), the SC’s status is such that it can be seen as almost official, so much so that its first lay editor was only appointed in the 1990s. My article tries to trace the view of Vatican II the SC presented, drawing on news reports of the Council, commentaries by local and international scholars (notably Josef Ratzinger, Karl Rahner, Hans Kung, etc) published in its pages as well as editorials, letters to the editor and increasingly articles by informed (or at times ill-informed) Catholic laity. Given that the coverage of Vatican II was considerable, amounting to hundreds of pieces of varying lengths and much of them news agency reports (cf. Henriques 1997: 33-39), I shall inevitably be selective, and focus on how South African Catholics’ attitudes changed as the Council happened. My central thesis is that we can trace a somewhat dramatic shift in the SC’s pages brought about by the Council: from caution and conformity to critical engagement with the theology the Council surfaced, even – with the controversial post-Concilliar Humanae Vitae document on artificial birth control – the first rumblings of genuine Catholic dissent on doctrinal and moral issues outside the ongoing debate on apartheid in South Africa.