Book looks deep into Vatican II, at the minute level
Michael Sean Winters, National Catholic Reporter
Some Catholics act as if we are still living in the long,
dark shadow cast by the Second Vatican Council. Others think we are
still living in the light cast by the four-year long ecumenical council
that sat from 1962 through 1965. Most Catholics have only known the
post-conciliar church and, regrettably, few Catholics have really taken
the time to study the council or the documents it issued. It should not
surprise that interpretations of the council vary and that those
variances are sources of intra-ecclesial dispute.
Into the arena comes a new book that is hugely enlightening. Jesuit Fr. Jared Wicks' Investigating Vatican II: Its Theologians, Ecumenical Turn and Biblical Commitment adds
hugely to our awareness of what actually transpired at the council, why
its significance is so great – and so complicated – and why none should
be surprised that we, as a church, are still in the process of
receiving its teachings.
Wicks begins by looking at the what he calls the "Tridentine
motivations" of Pope John XXIII in calling the council. Anyone who has
read a good biography of Papa Roncalli will be familiar with much of
this. As a young priest, Roncalli edited the records of St. Charles
Borromeo's visitation of Roncalli's home diocese of Bergamo. Borromeo
was "a colossus of pastoral sanctity," according to Roncalli, who
demonstrated the degree to which Trent was not only a reforming council
but a pastoral one as well. Then, as a diplomat, Roncalli worked in
Bulgaria and Turkey where he encountered other religions, sparking his
ecumenical and interreligious interests that became such a key theme of
Vatican II. What I had not known until Wicks' book is that in the future
pope's early years, the first time Roncalli invoked a theme that would
characterize his Petrine ministry, that of "ecclesial youthfulness," he
did so by borrowing from a lecture given by John Lancaster Spalding, the
bishop of Peoria, Illinois.
Wicks moves on to consider the role of theologians at Vatican II, and
the tale fascinates. Again, we know the general outlines, how the
preparatory documents were largely written by the Vatican curia, who
thought the job of the council was to confirm recent papal teachings and
go home. Bishops outside of Rome, however, were not afraid to consult
theologians who were more forward thinking because they were also more
backward thinking. That is to say, they were unsatisfied with the
neo-Scholastic syllogisms of the Roman school and had turned to the
church fathers, and to the Scriptures themselves, to look for sources of
renewal. This ressourcement theology was viewed with suspicion in Rome:
French theologian Henri de Lubac, for example, had essentially been
silenced in the years before Vatican II.
Lionel: So what ? Vatican Council II when interpreted without the false premise is Traditional. It supports the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus, the past exclusivist ecclesiology and an ecumenism of return.
_______________________________
Silenced, too, was American theologian Jesuit Fr. John Courtney
Murray, although he was not a ressourcement theologian. His crime in the
eyes of the Holy Office was his attempt to legitimize the American
constitutional framework of separation of church and state by
questioning the then-regnant "thesis-hypothesis" framework that only
tolerated separation, but preferred union of church and state when
Catholics were in the majority.
Wicks takes a detailed look at the time between John XXIII's 1959
announcement of the council and its official opening three years later.
French Dominican Yves Congar published a survey of the role of councils
in the life of the church within a month of the announcement, and he
included some of his hopes for the coming one. Congar, arguably the
leading ecclesiologist of the day, would have a profound impact on the
council from start to finish and, lucky for us, he kept a diary, one of
the sources Wicks explores to such advantage. Karl Rahner would be
called upon to help the preparatory commission working on the liturgy,
specifically on the issue of restoring the diaconate. It was a thin
assignment at this early stage, but it was also a foot in the door. De
Lubac and Congar would both be consultors to theological commission,
although its head, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, also the secretary of the
Holy Office, was not seeking any innovation, not then, not ever. His
cardinalatial motto summed up his theological outlook: Semper idem.
Lionel: So what ? Vatican Council II when interpreted without the invisible-visible, objective-subjective confusion is traditional. It supports the Athanasius Creed on outside the Church there is no salvation.
___________________________________
Another German theologian at Bonn gave a widely noticed
lecture on theme of "the council as expressing the collegial nature of
the church's pastoral leadership on the model of the twelve apostles."
The 19th-century First Vatican Council had ended abruptly, issuing the
decrees on papal primacy and infallibility, but never addressing the
episcopate: There was a need to balance this ultramontane ecclesiology.
That theologian would become the peritus, or principal theological
adviser, to Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne, one of the most important
council fathers. The theologian's name was Joseph Ratzinger.
Lionel: He should now know by now that we can interpret Vatican Council II with Feeneyism, instead of his Cushingism and the conclusion is different. The Council is not a rupture with EENS as it was known to the missionaries in the 16th century.His work was in vain.
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Bishops around the world were asked to send in their thoughts about
the topics the council should address, and that invitation was also
extended to theology faculties. Some of these latter, like the
submission from the Lateran University, wanted the council to condemn
some of the theologians who would actually play a pivotal role in
drafting the conciliar texts! The theology faculty of Louvain was more
profound in its approach and, just as important, it had a powerful
patron in Cardinal Leon Joseph Suenens of Malines-Brussels. The faculty
at the Pontifical Biblical Institute also made consequential
contributions, including the proposal to condemn all forms of
anti-Semitism. Two cardinals were alumni of the institute, Bernard
Alfrink of Utrecht and Albert Meyer of Chicago, and another, Jesuit Fr.
Augustine Bea, had long been on the faculty.
Lionel : The Council interpreted without the false premise is traditional.This was not how the Jesuits interpreted it.
_______________________________________
Bea's role as head of the newly formed Secretariat for Promoting
Christian Unity gave him a seat at the table throughout much of the
preparatory period, and he may have been the most influential cardinal
on the shifting, eventual direction of the council away from the curia's
crimped theological and pastoral vision toward both a more robust
embrace of theological sources and a more engaged, even optimistic,
opening to the modern world. Wicks' book is the first I know of in
English to profit from Mauro Velati's publication of the minutes of
meetings and other texts from the early years of the secretariat from
late 1960 through early 1962.
Lionel: Unitatitis Redintigratio 3 refers to hypothetical cases.They are not objective exceptions in 1965-2019 to the ecumenism of return, the old exclusivist ecclesiology and extra ecclesiam nulla salus(EENS). So there is no rational basis for the New Ecumenism in Vatican Council II.Since there is no known salvation outside the Church for us human beings and none mentioned in Vatican Council II, there is no theological basis for the New Ecclesiology and New Theology.
This is bad news for Michael Sean Winters and the liberals.There is no room for the 'spirit of Vatican Council II' when the ecclesiology of the Church is not changed with Vatican Council II.
_________________________________________
Wicks continues the narrative, describing the work of theologians
once the council finally opened on October 11, 1962. No one knew exactly
what was going to happen, whether the curial forces would have their
way or whether a majority of council fathers would coalesce to push the
boundaries. I will let the reader be sure to buy this book to follow the
details that fill in the picture we all knew broadly.
(Catholic University of America Press)
But I will note two things up front. This chapter on the
work of theologians at Vatican II is especially pertinent today because
Pope Francis had made the Synods of Bishops a more regular and more
significant part of his exercise of the Petrine ministry.
Lionel: They are all interpreting Vatican Council II irrationally,' the red is an exception to the blue' for them.This is the liberal reading of the Council mixing up what is invisible as being visible.
______________________________
And, yet, no
one has figured out, so far as I know, how to involve theological
experts in the synod's work. I know one attendee who brought a
theological adviser with him, but that was the exception to prove the
rule. Nor is it clear how the dicastery that prepares the synods chooses
theologians for collaboration. At a time when the theological community
is often divided (and like our Western politics, centrifugal forces
seem to be more powerful than centripetal ones), the choice of
theological experts would be a challenge, but it seems to be one of the
glaring deficiencies of the revamped synods so far.
Lionel : A theologian who interprets Vatican Council II and other magisterial documents without the irrational premise would be saying all need faith and baptism for salvation( Ad Gentes7). So all the natives in the Amazon are oriented to Hell without faith and baptism and there will be no known exception for us human beings.It would mean all the non Catholics in the Amazon would need to accept Jesus in only the Catholic Church to avoid Hell.Would this traditional theology, supported by Vatican Council II, be acceptable for Pope Francis?
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The second point to be made before moving on to subsequent chapters
is this: Wicks writes of the theologians' work as the council began: "It
was no time for the theologians to offer brilliant personal insights,
but instead texts with potential to find wide acceptance among the
council members because of what they could contribute to renewing
Catholic doctrine, catechesis and preaching." My marginal note reads:
"When is it NOT such a time?" And with that, I will pick up the rest of
this review on Monday.
Lionel: The liberal theologians faked it. They eliminated the past ecclesiology with a false premise. So the Church today for the popes is Christological only and not ecclesiocentric.-Lionel Andrades
https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/book-looks-deep-vatican-ii-minute-level
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