But Pope John's agenda for renewal and reform met determined opposition from within his own cabinet, known as the Roman Curia. In his opening address to the council in October of 1962, Pope John complained about close associates whom he called "prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand."

Contrary to those who were insisting that things were bad and getting worse, Pope John proclaimed his faith and his hope in a new order of human relationships that he believed God was bringing about in the modern world.

The Church, Pope John said, desires to "show itself to be the loving mother of all, benign, patient, full of mercy and goodness toward the brethren who are separated from [the Catholic Church]."

The Church, he said, seeks nothing more than to spread everywhere "the fullness of Christian charity ... promoting concord, just peace, and the human solidarity of all."

"The Council now beginning," Pope John continued, "rises in the Church like daybreak, a forerunner of most splendid light. It is now only dawn."

More than 30 years have passed since the dawn that Pope John joyfully announced. In order to understand some of the most important changes in Catholicism since Vatican II and then to prepare for more changes yet to come, I invite you to take a closer look at the council and to reflect with me about some of the major changes the council brought about in the way Catholics understand the nature and mission of their Church. I shall touch upon just five of those changes.

I. In the decades immediately prior to the council and for most of the period following the Reformation, the Catholic Church understood itself primarily in organizational and institutional terms. The word "church" became practically synonymous with the hierarchy and with the ecclesiastical power structure. Thus, to be "loyal" to the Church was to be loyal to the Pope, to the bishops, and to the laws and rules they prescribed for its members.

Criticism of the institution and of its leaders was tantamount to criticism of God, because the Church was identified with the Kingdom of God itself.

The Second Vatican Council challenged and corrected that mentality. The Church is not primarily institutional. It is, first and foremost, a mystery, or a sacrament.

In the words of the late Pope Paul VI, this means that the Church is "a reality imbued with the hidden presence of God." It is a visible sign of the invisible presence of God in the world. In other words, the Church itself is a sacrament. Therefore, the Church has a missionary obligation to practice what it preaches. If the Church is the Body of Christ, it must look and act like the Body of Christ. If it is the People of God, it must look and act like the People of God.

A subsequent world synod of Catholic bishops in 1971 captured the essence of the council's teaching in these words: "While the Church is bound to give witness to justice, it recognizes that anyone who ventures to speak to people about justice must first be just in their eyes."

Four years later Pope Paul VI made the same point in an important document on evangelization: "Modern men and women listen more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if they do listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses."

And, finally, the U.S. Catholic bishops, in a 1986 pastoral letter on the economy, insisted that "All the moral principles that govern the just operation of any economic endeavor apply to the church and its many agencies and institutions; indeed the church should be exemplary."

But these lofty statements of principle aren't just for Catholics alone. They apply to all religious bodies. Indeed, no traditional criticism of religion has been more devastating than the charge of hypocrisy: saying one thing and doing another. Vatican II challenged the Catholic Church to put a stop to this. And so must we all.

II. The council brought about a second major change in the Catholic Church's self-understanding when it insisted that the Church is the whole People of God. It is not composed only of the hierarchy and the clergy. The Church is the entire community of the baptized, marked by a rich diversity of gender, of class, of education, of social status, of race, of ethnicity, and of culture.

Because of the council's teaching on the Church as the People of God, Catholic laywomen and laymen have become directly and meaningfully involved in the ministerial life of their Church in ways unknown to the Church of the pre-Vatican II era. Laity now serve on diocesan and parish councils and exercise formal ecclesiastical ministries in such crucial areas of liturgy, education, and social justice.

The Church that enters the 21st century and the Third Christian Millennium will be an increasingly less clericalized and less authoritarian community than it is today.

Again, this point isn't for Catholics alone. We are all God's people. The future of religion will be a brighter one only if religious people everywhere, and not just their pastoral leaders, take personal responsibility for their faith and for the manifold ways in which their communities of faith interact with the world around them.

III. The Second Vatican Council brought about a third major shift in the way the Catholic Church understands its place in the modern world. No longer limited to preaching the word and celebrating the sacraments, the Church is also called to the service of human needs in the social, economic, and political orders. The Church is to be a servant church.

It is highly instructive that even so conservative a pope as John Paul II has been so forthright about the Church's social teachings. He has written three major encyclicals on social justice and has given numerous addresses all over the world on the gap between rich and poor, and between the powerful and the powerless.

"It is not enough," he said in New Orleans in 1987, "to offer to the disadvantaged of the world crumbs of freedom, crumbs of truth, and crumbs of bread. The Gospel calls for much more. The parable of the rich man and the poor man is directed to the conscience of humanity and, today in particular, to the conscience of America."

The Catholic Church will surely continue to emphasize this message of justice and peace in the years and decades to come. And so, too, will other religious communities.

Indeed, Christians and Jews have always shared a common Hebrew Scripture in which the great prophets -- Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Micah -- challenged Israel and all of us as well to put our faith into action, to live by our pious words, to "let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream," "to beat [our] swords into plowshares and [our] spears into pruning hooks," "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God."

IV. A fourth change in Catholic thinking about the Church is expressed in the conciliar principle that the Church includes more than Catholics alone. The Church is the whole Body of Christ: Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant, and Oriental Christian alike. In a word, the Church is ecumenical, which means, literally, that it embraces "the whole wide world."

The past 25 years and more have been marked by formal ecumenical dialogues, joint prayer, collaboration in social ministry, and cooperation in theological and pastoral education.

Ecumenism will continue to shape the course of Catholic life and mission well into the next century, in all the areas where it has already made its mark. But two major breakthroughs remain to be achieved.

The first will involve some official recognition of, and support for, intercommunion, on however limited a basis. The second will involve some official recognition of the validity of one another's ordained ministries, at least between churches where substantial agreements have already been reached.

The Vatican's discouraging response to the final report of the first Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, known as ARCIC, suggests that changes of this sort may not come very soon, or at least not within the present pontificate of John Paul II. But come they will.

Here again, the challenge is not only for Catholics. Ecumenism is a common effort, under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit who is there for all of us, Christians and non-Christians alike. It is the Holy Spirit who makes all things new. It is the Holy Spirit who creates our common future.

V. A fifth, and final, change wrought by the Second Vatican Council lies in its recognition that the Church is not an end in itself. The Church exists always and only for the sake of something greater than itself; namely, the Kingdom, or reign, of God. In more technical language, the Church is an eschatological community.

In the years before Vatican II, the Catholic Church tended to think of itself as already the Kingdom of God on earth, beyond any need for renewal and reform, and exempt from criticism.

But the council challenged this view, which one bishop, a Belgian, called "triumphalistic." The Church is not yet the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is still in the future. The Church is only its "initial

budding forth." It prepares for the coming of God's reign by its preaching, by its worship, by its witness, and by its service to those in need.

However, the Church that prepares for the coming reign of God is a sinful church on pilgrimage through history, "at the same time holy and always in need of being purified and [of pursuing] the path of penance and renewal," to use the words of the council.

The call to penance, reform, and renewal is also a universal call: not only for Catholics but for non-Catholic Christians and non-Christians alike. No religion is an end in itself. Every religion points beyond itself to the coming reign of God's justice, love, and peace.

Our future is still in process. Like the reign of God, it is "already" but "not yet." We are -- all of us -- an important and indispensable part of the "already." Our hope is to see and experience what is "not yet."

For Christians, that hope is rooted in an unshakable faith in Christ, "who is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever," and an unshakable faith in the Holy Spirit, who makes all things new.

But that hope is not limited to Christians alone. The future that the Church hopes for is the future that we all hope for, when God will be "all in all."

Orley Herron: Father McBrien, that was a wonderful message.

Richard McBrien: Thank you, Orley. You are very kind.

Herron: If you could be elected pope tomorrow -- and some wish you could be elected pope -- what would you do?

McBrien: After I got over the shock of it, and after a lot of the church got over the shock of it, I think one of the first things I would do when I came out on the balcony to give the blessing, Urbi et Orbi, to the city and to the world, would be to smile.

I think one of the messages that John Paul I sent when he came out -- that is the pope who lived only 33 days as pope -- was smiling. He had almost an almost impish grin. People took to him right away. What they have to see in the pope is someone who, first of all, is happy, is not grim and can easily identify with the ordinary folks who are in the church and with the great suffering that is in the world. That is the easy part.

The hard part is to let people know you want to send a message not only to those in the church but to those outside the church that the Catholic Church intends to be a force for good under this papacy. It intends to be, in the words of the Old Testament that I quoted in my talk, an agent of justice. It intends to reach out to those peoples around the world, and there are so many millions who don't have a voice to speak for them, to be the voice of the powerless.

For example, had an incident like the murdering and raping of the Sisters in El Salvador, and then the killing of the Jesuits and their housekeeper and her daughter some years back, happened on my watch, I would have taken the next plane to El Salvador and celebrated a eucharist on that spot. I would have said that they would have to kill me next because I would send other missionaries here; other people would take their place. The church will never give up in its efforts to speak and act on behalf of justice and human rights and peace.

Beyond that, I think I would have to send a message that the Catholic Church, although it has standards and deep moral convictions which it tries to be faithful to, is not primarily a church that stands in judgment of people. It is not a church of don'ts; it is not a church of sitting on top of Mount Olympus saying, "You have done that wrong. This class of people, you are wrong."

The Catholic Church has to be a church that embraces the spirit of Jesus Christ as embodied, for example, in the Pope whose name I invoked many times in my talk, John XXIII. To be able to bring that kind of spirit to the papacy again -- with all due respect to the present pope who has a different personality and a different agenda -- of an all-embracing, all-inclusive, non-judgmental, not hard-line but welcoming kind of spirit, would set the Catholic Church off on a new course. I think it would be more credible and more effective in its mission.

Herron: Do you think they will ever elect a pope with those view points in your life time?

McBrien: John Paul II, as we speak, is already 72 years old. He has had major surgery the past summer of 1992. All of us are mortal, including popes. There will be a new pope somewhere down the line, maybe close at hand, maybe further down, but there will be another pope, if not in our life time, in the life times of most of our viewers.

I think the next pope will be a very different kind of pope from this one. In the history of the Catholic Church, especially over the last century, and this surprises a lot of people because popes name all the cardinals, it is believed the next pope is going to be a carbon copy. It never works out that way. The next pope is never a carbon copy. So the next pope after John Paul II will be a different kind of pope.

Herron: Would you ordain women?

McBrien: I would do it immediately.

Herron: Would you have priests who are married?

McBrien: Well, we already have priests who are married in the Catholic Church in the Eastern Rites and then we have allowed some Episcopal priests to come in and remain married and continue to function in their marriage. I think it is one of the most important reforms that has to be undertaken in the Catholic Church because we are in a desperate situation now. We do not have enough priests and, unfortunately, some of the candidates we are attracting, because of the celibacy rule, are not of the highest quality. We need to break that cycle.

Herron: Thank you very much, Fr. McBrien.