Books Todays divided church has roots in Vatican II
HISTORY OF VATICAN
II, VOLUME III Edited by Giuseppe Alberigo Orbis/Peeters, 532
pages, $80 |
By GARY MacEOIN
Pope John XXIII died in June 1963, seven months after the close of
the first session of a council he had hoped would synchronize the church with
the modern world. Aggiornamento (updating) was the word he
used.
John wanted a pastoral council with no anathemas. The curia would
have none of it. At the opening of the Second Vatican Council in October 1962,
it presented 70 documents in Latin, enough to fill 2,000 folio pages. These 70
schemas, more than twice the volume of texts issued from all previous councils
put together, renewed the anathemas of Trent and Vatican I, as well as the
wholesale denunciation of the contemporary world already found in Pius
IXs Syllabus of Errors.
The 2,500 bishops flown in from all parts of the globe, separated
by a babel of languages, and without training or experience in acting as a
group, might easily have been stampeded into giving a blanket approval to the
curial program. Some wanted the pope to intervene. But John knew this would
defeat his project. He simply repeated in his opening address and in other
talks in the early days of the council what he had said when he first announced
the council in January 1959. It was up to the bishops themselves to run the
assembly.
Suspension of meetings for a few days permitted the emergence of
two blocs, a majority who shared the popes concept of
aggiornamento and a minority convinced that the popes ideas were
mistaken and dangerous, perhaps even heretical. The rest of the first session
produced little more than a decision to reduce the schemas from 70 to 20 (later
17, and finally 13), and to have the surviving documents completely rewritten
to express the view of the majority.
The curia, however, did not give up. With an ailing pope and the
bishops dispersed, it quickly organized a sabotage strategy. It ignored the
popes orders to have revised schemas sent to the bishops by Easter. On
Johns death in June, the work slowed to a halt. When Paul VI was elected
to succeed John, the curia rejoiced. He would provide a modernization of
structures, not the reform in depth envisaged by aggiornamento.
The present volume is the story of the success of the curial
strategy. While Paul named four moderators to direct the council proceedings,
he not only chose one to represent the minority, but left the moderators
without clearly defined functions. The minority introduced a flood of mostly
frivolous amendments to the schema on the liturgy, forcing more than a hundred
votes that consumed almost the entire session. The only other document
completed and promulgated was the schema on the communications media. A text
that pleased nobody because of its superficiality, it was approved by bishops
for whom the subject was of marginal interest, so that they would have
something to show at the end of two sessions of the council.
Even more decisive victories for the minority were Pauls
actions on two projects presented by the majority. One was to create a council
of bishops from all countries to constitute a legislative or decision-making
body for the church, transforming the curia into a civil service. The other was
the issue of reform of the curia.
In both cases Paul simply removed the issues from the
councils agenda and made decisions clearly contrary to the expressed
desires of the majority. The Synod of Bishops would be a strictly advisory
body, to meet if and when the pope called it, and to offer advice only on
issues specified by the pope. As for curial reform, it was to be carried out by
the curia itself. Paul would later repeat this overriding of the will of the
majority by reserving to himself a decision on contraception.
Such is the story told in this third volume of a five-volume
definitive history of the council written under the guidance of some 50 of the
worlds leading church historians. It is being published simultaneously in
Italian, Portuguese, German, French, Spanish and English. Although a few
documents are still not available to historians, it is unlikely that anything
will later emerge to alter the conclusions recorded here.
The story -- not always an edifying one -- is on the whole well
told. It could have been improved by more rigorous editing to eliminate
repetitions. I was also frequently frustrated by a failure to explain the
nature of the action taken on an issue. Thus, on page 465 we are told that
debates led to some conclusions on collegiality, the
restructuring of seminaries, the participation of the laity in the general
congregations of the council, and concelebration -- but there is no
indication of what these conclusions were. It would also help if we had a
sentence to describe an individual when first mentioned. Who, for example, is
Hien (page 405), for whom no first name is given and who is not even listed in
the Index of Names?
This book, nevertheless, is extremely important. It helps us to
understand both the success and the failure of Vatican II. If we are living
today in a deeply divided church, it is because an overwhelming majority was
given a vision of aggiornamento, then denied the reality.
Gary MacEoins e-mail address is
gmaceoin@compuserve.com
National Catholic Reporter, September 22,
2000
|