Vatican II as Hyperobject

Why a strange concept from the mind of an Environmental philosopher might help us make sense of the forever wars

I was thinking about Hyperobjects on my pre-dawn jog this morning.

As one does.

A hyperobject is an idea that is so massive, so all-encompassing, so spread out that you can’t quite encompass it.

But you know it’s real.

Christopher Morton, an environmental philosopher & teacher at Rice University, coined this term to capture the idea of global warming. (He notably refuses to call it “climate change”.) Or to talk about Evolution. Or Oil. Really big ideas that belie clarification and articulation. (An introduction is here if you want more.)

I know I’m being a bit cheeky in borrowing such a conceptual model and layering it over Church stuff. But I can’t shake the idea.

So what exactly is it?

For starters, the concept of hyperobjects gives us a single word to describe something on the tips of our tongues. It’s very difficult to talk about something you cannot see or touch, yet we are obliged to do so, since global warming affects us all.

I can’t see it. I can’t touch it. But I know it exists, and I know I’m part of it. I should care about it.

Additionally, there is a quality to hyperobjects that they have “always already been there” to borrow a phrase from standard-issue postmodern argot, and it is difficult to remember a time in which it was not operative.

And after I thought about hyperobjects I immediately latched on to the hyperobject of hyperobjects if you are a Roman Catholic:

Vatican II, or “The Second Vatican Council” or “The Council”…

All of these tags carry with it a certain valence, a certain power, a certain nuance of or take on an event that continues to reverberate long after it was officially (“officially”) called to a close on December 8, 1965.

You may be inclined to nod in approval, you may even utter “Ecclesia semper reformanda est—the Church must always be reformed), right? Well even that meme is part myth, part real. It was a favorite of the Reformers, who claimed they were channeling the spirit of St. Augustine (or just Augustine)…but there is dispute about that, too.

But you get my point. A lie or a myth repeated often enough can even find its way into a Papal Document. Look at this beauty from Lumen Gentium:

While Christ, holy, innocent and undefiled knew nothing of sin, but came to expiate only the sins of the people, the Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal.

Notice the way in which the idea, once latched on to, gets back-filled into the deposit of faith, as if it is a kind of beautiful ad fontes gem, found fossilized in the amber waiting for its reemergence into the discourse. It has always already been there, ready to be found again. We are just “going back” and restoring that which has been lost or covered up by the accretions of barnacled missteps.

This is the stuff of mythmaking.

So then, “Vatican II” as a hyperobject demands your attention. It will not be ignored. If you are a conservative-minded Catholic, you refer to the “documents” and adhere to a “hermeneutics of continuity.” If you are a progressive-oriented Catholic, you refer to the “spirit” and adhere to a “hermeneutics of disruption.”

If you are a lay Catholic like me, well-read but unlicensed, you just grin and bear it. As always.

To riff on Morton: I can’t see the Council. I can’t touch the Council. But I know it exists, and I know I’m part of the Council. I should care about the Council. The conservatives say it hasn’t been tried yet. The progressives say it hasn’t been tried yet, and the perplexed & exhausted shrug and say “then what the heck happened?”

It’s the elephant in the room.

Morton gives Hyperobjects the following properties:

It is “viscous” — whatever I do, wherever I am, it sort of “sticks” to me. It is “nonlocal” — its effects are globally distributed through a huge tract of time. It forces me to experience time in an unusual way. It is “phased” — I only experience pieces of it at any one time. And it is “inter-objective” — it consists of all kinds of other entities but it isn’t reducible to them.

To restate it:

1.       Viscous—the council always sticks to us

2.       Nonlocal—the work of the council is never done, it “hasn’t been tried, yet”

3.       Phased—documents dancing (“have you even read the docs, bro?”)

4.       Inter-objected—subsequent documents, synods, teachings

Anyone paying attention to “the discourse” around church matters knows that “what Vatican II means” has been the dominant topic since “good Pope John” decided to “open wide the doors”. Even this phrase is fraught with interpretive weight. What did he mean? What did the turn of phrase mean? And must he always be known as “Good Pope John”?

Further, what did his accompanying quip about the “prophets of doom” who “always forecast disaster” mean? Am I one of those prophets? Was the forecast real? Did it happen? What are we to call a disaster? Is it impious to pose these questions?

Legend has it that when someone asked him why he called the council, he walked over to his window, threw it open and said “I want to throw open the windows of the Church so that we can see out and the people can see in.” Did it happen? Did he get it right?

Is the open window so the Holy Spirit enters out into the world, or is the window open so that the world spirit can enter the church? How you interpret this? I’ve personally heard it invoked in myriad ways, and all of this is part of the  mythology of the council, present and part since its inception, and no body, spiritual or otherwise, does mythology quite like the Church of Rome. Unthreading the real from the unreal, the hype, the wishing, the conspicuous displays from the underlying reality is almost impossible. And this is how spirits work, and this is how Hyperobjects confound. The sheer magnitude is a felt one.

Perhaps the term Hyperobjects is a more acceptable way for materialists to talk about spirits. But I sense in the term a way for us to at least try to make some sense. I wasn’t born until after it arrived on the scene. But we as a church now have no memories beyond it, and all the before times are inherently subject to it. “The Council” is always here, always displacing water, always a bone of contention, always invoked whenever anyone tries to talk about the reality of what we are facing.

Hyperobjects like “Vatican II” confound our sensibilities, and do more to obscure than to clarify. I live in the “tomorrow” of the top picture. How is it for you? Is it better? Can we escape this hyperobject?

The Spirit of Vatican II is really the most consequential reality of the hyperobject.