"Barack Obama and Vatican II" by Theology Professor John W. O Malley S. J.

"The president's persona and the spirit of the council"

John W. O'Malley | MAY 25, 2009, www.americamagazine.org 

"W e have a Vatican II president. Barack Obama, I am sure, does not think of himself in those terms, but when I heard his speech at Grant Park in Chicago the night he was elected, and more recently his commencement address at Notre Dame, that is what immediately struck me...I often hear laments that the spirit of Vatican II is dead in the church. Is it not ironic that not a bishop but the President of the United States should today be the most effective spokesperson for that spirit? To judge from the enthusiastic response he received from the graduates at Notre Dame, his message captured their minds and hearts. Maybe through young Catholics like those at Notre Dame who are responding to Obama’s message the spirit of Vatican II will, almost through the back door, reenter the church. The history of the church has, after all, taken stranger turns than that."
John W. O'Malley, S.J., is university professor, theology department, at Georgetown University and author of What Happened at Vatican II.