Wicks' book explains how the Second Vatican Council achieved renewal
by Michael Sean Winters, National Catholic Reporter
On Friday, I began my review of Jesuit Fr. Jared Wicks' critically important book Investigating Vatican II: Its Theologians, Ecumenical Turn and Biblical Commitment, and I examined the part of the book that dealt with the role of theologians before the council began and in its early days. Today I shall conclude the review.
Lionel:
AUGUST 27, 2019
The conciliar debate on the issue of revelation also demonstrated that the curial position was the minority position. The draft decree on revelation, as seen from its title — De Fontibus Revelationis — posited the existence of two sources of revelation, Scripture and tradition.
Lionel: Both were rejected. Since Scrupture and Tradition support the Feeneyite interpretation of the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus (EENS).
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But, the "ressourcement" theologians had demonstrated that there was only one source of revelation, Jesus Christ, who speaks to the church in both the Scriptures and in the tradition. This was no mere semantic change. The differences in perspective indicated by the differing approaches would prove profound, especially in terms of ecumenical outreach.Wicks writes that "by the end of 1962 the council had defined itself as an organ of broad renewal of the Catholic church," and the book essentially explains what that renewal was about and how it was achieved.
Lionel: Renewal for the Jesuits at that time meant the rejection of the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus by assuming unknown cases of the baptism of desire(BOD), baptism of blood(BOB) and being saved in invincible ignorance(I.I) were known exceptions to Feeneyite EENS. So there emerged another version of EENS, I call it EENS(Cushingite).It is different from EENS ( Feeneyite) in which BOD, BOB and I.I are not objective exceptions to traditional EENS(Feeneyite).
Today we can avoid EENS( Cushingite) and Vatican Council II(Cushingite) and replace it with EENS ( Feeneyite) and Vatican Council II(Feeneyite).
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If you ever studied a history of the Second Vatican Council, you know that it was fortuitous the first document considered by the council fathers, the draft text on the decree on the liturgy, had been entrusted to scholars and bishops who had been deeply engaged in liturgical renewal in the middle of the 20th century. The text, after some debate, received an overwhelming vote in favor of its adoption in the early weeks of the council.
And, we know, too, that in assessing the council as a whole, most historians and theologians have begun with either Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, or with Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. But Wicks' book makes a convincing case that it is Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, that really is the lens or filter through which we can best grasp the significance of the other documents promulgated before the council finished its work in 1965. It was this renewed approach to Scripture, and the perceived need to ground the conciliar texts in biblical theology, that informed all of the other decrees.
Lionel: The 'renewed approach to Scripture' was really a rejection of Scripture.There are so many Cushingite passages in Vatican Council II. These passages come from the Cushngite error in the Letter of the Holy Office 1949(LOHO).LOHO was a rupture with Scripture and Tradition on EENS. It states that it is not always necessary to be a member of the Catholic Church for salvation. The dogma EENS(Feeneyite) says the opposite. LOHO also suggests unknown cases of BOD and I.I are known exceptions to Feeneyite EENS. This is irrational and heretical.
This new version of EENS, EENS(Cushingite) was accepted at Vatican Council II.A superficial reading of the Council text would indicate that EENS( Feeneyite) has been contradicted. But the Cushingite passages are 'zero cases'. They are only hypothetical.
People usually say that LG 8, LG 14, LG 16, UR 3, NA 2, GS 22 etc are exceptions to the dogmaextra ecclesiam nulla salus(EENS) when they really should be saying that they are not exceptions.
People have been conditioned to see LG 8 etc as exceptions.
They have been conditioned to see LG 8 etc as objective people, known and visible. But there are no such cases.
The conditioning has come from the Letter of the Holy Office 1949(LOHO). The liberal theologians assumed the baptism of desire(BOD), baptism of blood(BOB) and being saved in invincible ignorance (I.I) were exceptions to EENS when they really should have said that they are not exceptions to EENS.
People have been conditioned to see BOD, BOB and I.I as exceptions.
They have been conditioned to see BOD,BOB and I.I as objective people, known and visible, but there are no such cases
So when Ad Gentes 7 says all need faith and baptism for salvation it was an error to mention being saved in invincible ignorance. However the Council Fathers assumed invincible ignorance was an objective example of salvation outside the Church and an exception to EENS( Feeneyite). This was the false reasoning in LOHO.They came to Vatican Council II as Cushingites.
So with Vatican Council II( Cushingite) invincible ignorance is an objective exception to all needing to enter the Church with faith and baptism for salvation.
With Vatican Council II (Feeneyite) invincible ignorance is only a hypothetical case and so it is not a practical exception to EENS ( Feeneyite). It is the same for UR 3, LG 16, GS 22 etc which are all hyothetical and do not contradict the past exclusivist ecclesiology of the Church.
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When the draft texts, or schemas, were sent to the council fathers six weeks before the council was set to open, the already blind Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne turned to his theological advisor, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, to assist him in assessing the drafts and responding to them.
Lionel: Fr. Ratzinger like Fr.Karl Rahner was a Cushingite. They both rejected exclusive salvation in the Catholic Church. They also rejected the Syllabus of Errors etc.
In two papers of the International Theological Commission, Cardinal Ratzinger and the then Fr. Luiz Ladaria sj, interpreted LG 16 and GS 22 as being exceptions to EENS. This is irrational Cushingism.
In March 2016(Avvenire ) again Pope Benedict rejected Feeneyite EENS and replaced it with EENS(Cushingite). He interpreted Vatican Council II with Cushingism. So the Council was a rupture with EENS( Feeneyite), the past ecclesiology and an ecumenism of return.
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Wicks tells the tale:
Ratzinger, realizing that time was short, composed and typed a Latin letter evaluating the seven schemas. When Cardinal Frings received Ratzinger's letter, he found the contents helpful and he simply added the date, the proper salutation to the cardinal secretary of state, and his signature and sent the letter on to the Vatican. The letter judged that only two of the seven schemas were fit for conciliar deliberation, namely, the schema on the liturgy and another on ecumenical openings to the Orthodox churches.
A conciliar star was born. Interestingly, Ratzinger faulted the de Fontibus schema, arguing it had "to be revised so as to avoid speaking authoritatively on issues of dispute among Catholic theologians in good standing." One wishes he had brought forth that concern during the drafting of Veritatis Splendor! More generally, Ratzinger argued the documents should not speak in the neo-Scholastic style of the Roman curia, but should "instead speak the language of Holy Scripture and the holy fathers of the Church."
Lionel: Today Vatican documents are known for their ambiguity and Vaticanese.Since they have to hide the Cushingite theology upon which it is based.Redemptoris Missio, Dominus Iesus etc were all written with Cushingism.It was a Christology without an ecclesiocentric ecclesiology; believing in Jesus without the necessity of membership in the Catholic Church for salvation.
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And the texts should be written so that they "attract separated Christians and will give fresh witness to Jesus Christ in a world in which many people find Christian faith an alien reality." Soon Ratzinger and Karl Rahner were collaborating on an alternate schema on revelation.
Lionel: With Vatican Council II(Cushingite) there is a 'new revelation' in the Catholic Church. The Athanasius Creed is made obsolete when it says outside the Church there is no salvation. Vatican Council II(Cushingite) is interpreted as a rupture with the dogma EENS defined by three Church Councils in the Extraordary Magisterium. The Creeds and Catechisms have a new meaning with Cushingite new theology.There is no more traditional mission based upon exclusive salvation in the Catholic Church supported by Vatican Council II(Feeneyite) and EENS (Feeneyite).
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Let me jump ahead. At the end of the book, Wicks sums up the significance of Vatican II, and specifically of Dei Verbum, and points the church in a direction that might help overcome some of the post-conciliar divisions that have emerged, though not all. He writes:
Many interpreters of Vatican II feature the outward movements urged by the council to move Catholics towards rapprochement with others in ecumenical efforts, interreligious dialogue, and respectful exchanges over salient features of the contemporary world's culture, economics, politics, and struggle for world peace. But the concluding passages of Dei Verbumpoint Catholics toward another movement, that is, inward and downward toward personal ressourcement as one cultivates spiritual self-care by daily nourishment of heart and soul, along with direction and guidance, from lectio divina of scripture. This is a movement going deeply into one's life of faith, where God addresses Christian believers in words of personal grace and rescue, while imparting the very gifts that that empower rejuvenated disciples for their reconciling service of God in the world.
This is a beautiful, and balancing, vision. I think the note that is missing here, and which is equally characteristic of the vision of Vatican II, is the communal element, the sense, rooted in Scripture, that we belong to a people, the people of God, the church. This is seen not only in the ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium for example, but also in the fact that in the decree on the priesthood, Presbyterorum Ordinis, the word "priest" in the singular was consciously never used. The document speaks of the renewal of the presbyterate. This is no mere quibble. At least in the U.S. there has developed a very non-Catholic spirituality of the "me and Jesus" variety that I find at odds with the tradition of the church. But Wicks is undoubtedly correct that Dei Verbum calls all Christians to spiritual renewal by prayerful reading of the Bible.
This was also quite new, or so it seemed at the time. In the years before Vatican II, and indeed in the draft de Fontibus, the tone was one of admonition and danger about lay Catholics reading Scripture. Here, we rub up against the key, and contested, issue of hermeneutics. Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2005 address to the curia, insisted that it was wrong to interpret Vatican II through a hermeneutic of rupture.
Lionel: Cushingism causes the hermeneutic of rupture. Without Cushingism Vatican Council II has a hermeneutic of continuity with the Syllabus of Errors, Feeneyite EENS, traditional ecumenism etc, which are the basis for the proclamation of the Social Reign of Christ the King over all political legislation and the non separation of Church and State.
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Instead, he commended a hermeneutic of reform, which includes elements of both continuity and discontinuity. Some of our conservative friends mistakenly say the pope called for a hermeneutic of continuity but he did no such thing.
Lionel: Agreed. There cannot be a hermeneutic of continuity with Cushingism.Neither can there be a Restoration with Cushingism.
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Wicks' connects this larger issue of hermeneutics to the specific point about the differing approach to revelation in the pre-conciliar draft and the final text:
A first impression of such changes in content and tone might lead one to see Vatican II as breaking with or even rejecting previous church tradition and teaching. But such a conclusion takes no account of how De Fontibus was prepared in isolation from, and even suspicious opposition to, important developments in Catholic theology in the years before Vatican II. Dei Verbum was clearly discontinuous with De Fontibus, prepared three years earlier, but the constitution of 1965 shows notable continuities with central and strong movements of biblical, theological and pastoral renewal among Catholics before Vatican II. There was rupture, but on the small scale of contrast between the council's official preparation and the directions taken [by the council fathers] from late 1962 onwards.
I will note in passing one other instance Wicks cites in which the council created a kind of "rupture" with what went immediately before, but did so by reaching back further in the tradition to find the correctives to the 19th-century hostility to modernity that so distorted Catholic theology and which found its fullest expression in Pope Pius IX's "Syllabus of Errors."
Lionel : Catholic theology was de railed with Cushingism.The Syllabus of Errors was made obsolete.The Letter of the Holy Office 1949 is Cushingite.
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Cardinal Augustine Bea's work leading the newly created Secretariat for Christian Unity shaped all the conciliar documents, but especially three eventual key texts: the decree on ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio; the decree on non-Christian religions, Nostra Aetate; and the decree on religious liberty, Dignitatis Humanae. Fr. Ratzinger at the time noted the discontinuity here, calling the three documents "a kind of counter-syllabus."
Lionel: They are only a kind of counter-syllabus when they are interpreted with Cushingism. With Feeneyism, they do not contradict EENS ( Feeneyite). Vatican Council II is then Feeneyite.Nostra Aetate does not contradict EENS ( Feeneyite) and neither Ad Gentes 7 ( all need faith and baptism for salvation).
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This ecumenical turn receives a large and thoughtful treatment in the book, the way Pope John XXIII's consideration for ecumenical affairs shaped the council and the central role of Bea, longtime rector of the Biblical Institute. Indeed, this ecumenical turn is one of the key filters through which Vatican II should be understood according to Wicks.
Lionel : There is no 'ecumenical turn' when the Council is interpreted with Feeneyite philosophy and theology.
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There is so much else in this book that I have not even touched on, and I have scarcely done justice to the issues I did consider. But I hope I have imparted enough of a sense of Wicks' book to encourage readers to buy it and read it. It was not so long ago that people thought Vatican II had been received and its only authoritative interpretation was complete. This scholarly work shows the degree to which we are all of us still receiving the council and points to the singular fact that the only medicine for the divisions within the church today must be found in continued attention to the documents and history of the Second Vatican Council.
Lionel: The only medicine is accepting Vatican Council II (Feeneyite) since then there is no hermeneutic of rupture with other magisterial documents.Even some of the Council Fathers were Cushingites, the Council can still be interpreted with Feeneyism. It is important for Pope Francis and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to make the change.-Lionel Andrades
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