From the desk of the pastor for June 28, 2026

The Lord be with you! Now that we have gone over the Second Vatican Council, we are going to examine the pontificates that followed. We start with Pope Saint Paul VI.

Giovanni Battista Montini was a man of profound intellectual gifts and deep spirituality. Before his election, he had served as Archbishop of Milan and earned a reputation as a skilled diplomat and reformer. The cardinals chose him precisely because they recognized he possessed the theological sophistication and diplomatic acumen necessary to shepherd Vatican II to completion. It was a wise choice. Under Paul VI's leadership, the Council promulgated four constitutions, nine decrees, and three declarations.

Yet completing Vatican II was only part of Paul VI's challenge. Even more daunting was the implementation phase. The Council had opened doors; now the Church had to walk through them. The liturgy was reformed. The vernacular replaced Latin. Lay participation in Church life expanded dramatically. Ecumenical dialogue with other Christian communities began in earnest. These changes, though rooted in conciliar documents, created enormous upheaval. Many traditionalists felt the Church was abandoning her heritage. Many progressives wanted change to move even faster. Paul VI stood in the middle, trying to honor both continuity and renewal.

His most controversial moment came in 1968 with the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which reaffirmed the Church's teaching against artificial contraception. This decision proved profoundly divisive. Significant numbers of theologians, priests, and bishops—even many close to Paul VI—believed the Church should allow contraceptive use. Paul VI's reaffirmation of traditional teaching, despite evidence that many in the Church wanted change, revealed something essential about his papacy: he was not simply a reformer seeking to modernize the Church for its own sake. He was a shepherd concerned with preserving what he understood as essential truth, even when that truth was unpopular.

Beyond these headline issues, Paul VI made lasting contributions to ecumenism. He met with Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I and worked toward reconciliation between East and West. He established diplomatic relations with communist nations, seeking to protect Catholics behind the Iron Curtain. He expanded the College of Cardinals to include bishops from across the globe, internationalizing the Church's leadership. He canonized forty-four saints, continuing the Church's connection to sanctity and holiness.

The postconciliar period, however, was turbulent. Paul VI witnessed widespread dissent from Church teaching, declining vocations, liturgical experimentation that sometimes bordered on irreverence, and secularization accelerating across the West. These realities weighed heavily on him. In his later years, he spoke of "the smoke of Satan entering the Church"—language reflecting his deep distress at developments within the Catholic community.

Yet Pope Paul VI possessed both vision and fidelity. He sought to implement Vatican II authentically, refusing both those who rejected the Council entirely and those who wished to remake the Church according to contemporary fashions. He navigated one of the Church's most challenging periods with steadfast commitment to Christ and His truth. May we follow his saintly example in following where God leads.

In His Sacred Heart,

Fr. John