Rev. Ralph Wiltgen: The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II

[Stone]

THE THIRD SESSION
September 14 to November 21, 1964

THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN WORLD


No schema was more talked about at the Council than that on the Church in the modem world. The inspiration for it came from Pope John XXIII, who unwittingly outlined it in a radio-television address on September 11, 1962, exactly one month before the opening of die Council. The Pope’s mind and heart were filled with the great things which he wished the Council to accomplish. The theme of his address was that Christ had illuminated the Church, and that it was the Church’s mission to illumine the nations.

In his practical and down-to-earth manner, he used a globe, four feet in diameter, as a stage property, to show that he was talking about a very real world. And to make sure that no one would miss his point, he had the Vatican photographer take his picture with the globe at his side, and on the picture he wrote four words, in Latin, summarizing his address, Ecclesia Christi lumen gentium (“Christ’s Church is the light of the nations”).

The Council’s task, Pope John said, was to concern itself with the twofold vitality of the Church. There was first the Church’s vitality ad intra, relating to the internal structure of the Church and, principally, to “the treasures of illuminating faith and sanctifying grace.” Very little of his address, however, was devoted to this aspect of the Church’s vitality. Secondly, there was the Church’s vitality ad extra, relating to situations outside itself, such as the wants and needs of Christians and non-Christians “in the modern world.” The Church, he asserted, had responsibilities and obligations bearing on .every phase of modern life: man’s need for daily bread; the administration and distribution of the world’s goods; underdeveloped nations; civil society and a new political order; war—which was to be detested; peace—which was to be sought after; private property; a more profound application of the principles of brotherhood and love among men and nations; killing; adultery and fornication; the sacred nature of matrimony; the religious and moral aspects of procreation; indifferentism in religion; the use of science and technology to raise the economic and spiritual standards of nations; etc.

This was virtually a complete outline of a schema on the Church in the modern world. What Pope John had done in effect was to touch upon a number of suggestions submitted by Council Fathers during the preparatory stages of the Council.

On December 4, 1962, near the end of the first session, Leo Jozef Cardinal Suenens of Mechelen, Belgium, used many of Pope John’s ideas and some of the same words in proposing to the general assembly that the Church should consider its relations with the world at large— ad extra —“since this Council should aim to make the Church the real light of the nations.” On the following day, Pope John created the Coordinating Commission and appointed Cardinal Suenens to it, giving him the task of drawing up a new schema containing those teachings of the Church that touched directly on the problems of the modern world.

At its first meeting in January, 1963, the Coordinating Commission ruled that the new schema should be called “The effective presence of the Church in the world today,” and that it should have six chapters: on the admirable vocation of man; on the human person in society; on marriage and the family; on the proper promotion of cultural development; on economics and social order; and on the community of nations and peace. It was also decided that some elements for the new schema should be taken from three of the dogmatic constitutions prepared by the Theological Preparatory Commission and rejected during the first session. These dealt with the Christian order; with chastity, matrimony, family and virginity; and with the preservation of the deposit of faith.

Cardinal Suenens, as the promoter of the schema, proposed that the task of drawing it up should be entrusted to a special joint commission composed of all the members of the Theological Commission and the Commission on the Apostolate of the Laity, with Cardinals Ottaviani and Fernando Cento of the Roman Curia as co-presidents. The proposal was adopted. It was further suggested that other elements for the new schema should be drawn from the schema “on social action in the lay apostolate” prepared by the Commission on the Apostolate of the Laity, and from two doctrinal schemas of the Theological Preparatory Commission, “on social order” and “on the community of nations.”

Work on the new schema began in February 1963. Between April 24 and 26, a special session was held to which twenty-three highly qualified laymen were invited, only fifteen of whom were able to attend. The schema was ready before the end of May for presentation at the next meeting of the Coordinating Commission, scheduled for June 4. However, owing to Pope John’s death on June 3, the meeting was postponed for one month.

On July 4, after Cardinal Suenens had pointed out both the positive and the negative aspects of the schema in the Coordinating Commission, the Commission decided that the schema was unsatisfactory. The Cardinal was given another mandate to produce a new text which would elaborate on the doctrinal points contained in Chapter 1. The remaining five chapters were to form a supplement. This, of course, would greatly reduce the authority of the teaching contained in those chapters.

Cardinal Suenens proceeded to call some periti to Belgium to prepare a new draft. Strangely enough, during the second session no action was taken by the joint commission responsible for the schema until November 29, 1963, the day on which eight liberal candidates proposed by the world alliance were added to the commission, making the liberals eight votes stronger. The new draft and the original draft were discussed at length on this day, but inconclusively. Finally, Bishop Pelletier of Trois-Rivieres, Canada, suggested that a central subcommission should be created to coordinate the work of five other subcommissions, which were to prepare further revisions of the five chapters of the supplement. This proposal was unanimously adopted.

The joint commission then elected the following six members for the central subcommission by secret ballot: Bishops SchrofTer and Hengsbach of Eichstatt and Essen in Germany, Bishops Jacques Menager and Ancel of Meaux and Lyons in France, Auxiliary Bishop Mark McGrath of Panama City and Bishop Emilio Guano of Livorno, Italy. These six members were then authorized to add two others, and they chose Bishop Wright of Pittsburgh and Bishop Blomjous of Mwanza, Tanzania. Of these eight, all but Bishop McGrath had originally been elected to Commission seats as European alliance candidates; he had been associated with the alliance, however, from the very first days of the Council.

As a result of this meeting, the new schema was now completely in the hands of the European alliance policy-makers. And since the central subcommission wanted as little resistance as possible from conservative members of the Italian and Spanish hierarchies, it elected Italian-born Bishop Guano to serve as chairman and later to introduce the schema in the Council hall. The eight bishops then indicated the general lines of the new draft. A few days later, the session closed, and the bishops returned to their dioceses.

The bishops had chosen the liberal moral theologian, Father Bernard Haring, C.SS.R., as secretary. Under the chairmanship of Bishop Guano, Father Haring, Monsignor Achille Glorieux, Father Raymond Sigmond, O.P., and Father Roberto Tucci, S.J., met several times during the month of December and in the first part of January, 1964. They determined more exactly the spirit of the schema, the general fines which it should follow, its content, its purpose and the persons to whom it was to be directed. They decided that the first draft should be written in French by Father Sigmond.

In February, the central subcommission met for three days in Zurich, Switzerland. Further changes were suggested. On March 4 and 9, two plenary meetings took place of the joint commission, but the schema and supplement were not approved, and the central subcommission had to start work on them again. The joint commission met again between June 4 and 6, and still further corrections and changes were suggested. It began to look as though the schema and supplement would not be ready by the third session. Finally, it was decided to print the schema despite its imperfections, and circulate it to the Council Fathers. Pope Paul gave his approval on July 3. Because of its position on the official fist, it came to be called “the thirteenth schema.” The supplement was still not ready. The liberal element was not yet strong enough to insert in the schema the teachings contained in the supplement, so it planned to have them inserted through speeches from the Council floor. Meanwhile, the periti began to work overtime on the supplement.

They worked so fast and so well that the 57-page supplement to the 29-page schema was ready for distribution to the Council Fathers on September 30, 1964, two weeks after the opening of the third session.

Queries were at once directed to Council authorities on the significance of the supplement and its origin. Since the front cover bore the official heading of Vatican II documents, and since inside was the statement that “the supplement is not to be discussed in the Council hall,” some explanation was called for. The Secretary General, upon instructions from the Council Presidency or the Moderators, announced that the supplement had been drawn up by the joint commission and “sent to the Secretariat for distribution as a purely private document, having no official status whatsoever.” It had been drawn up “to make known the mind of the commission.” In response to further queries, the Secretary General made a second announcement shortly after, which showed that the supplement had more authority than his initial announcement had indicated. “The supplement was drawn up by the joint commission,” he said, “at the request of the Coordinating Commission . . . However, it is not a Council document and therefore will not be discussed in the hall ”

When the press accused tire Secretary General of conservative “intrigue” and “maneuvering” in making the first announcement, and stated that he had been obliged by the Cardinal Moderators to make the second one, he issued a communique calling these reports “inexact and tendentious.” As Secretary General he never spoke in his own name, he said, “but always in the name of the Moderators or of the Presidency.” In fact, the second announcement had been made on his initiative, after he had received the necessary “authorization of the Moderators.”

Three weeks later, on October 20, the schema finally came up for discussion. By that time, five weeks of the session had passed. The Moderators had postponed the discussion until that date, announcing on October 12 and again on October 13 that the “introductory reports” were not yet ready. The fourth speaker on that first day of discussion was Cardinal Lercaro of Bologna, one of the Moderators. “It seems difficult or well-nigh impossible,” he said, “for a new revision of this schema and its final approval to take place during this session.” Large numbers of Council Fathers had given notice of their wish to speak, he said, and it was also most important and necessary that this schema, on the Church in the modern world, should be discussed in detail on the Council floor. “It is even doubtful that there will be sufficient time for the task if the fourth session takes place next year,” he said.

The enthusiastic applause which greeted this statement must have been most pleasing to Cardinal Suenens, to the eight bishops of the central subcommission and to their periti, for it meant that the Council Fathers were prepared to postpone final deliberation on the schema until the fourth session, an absolute necessity if the teachings contained in the supplement were to be incorporated in the schema itself.

Cardinal Dopfner of Munich spoke next on behalf of eighty-three German-speaking and Scandinavian Council Fathers, expressing wholehearted agreement with Cardinal Lercaro. The Council Fathers, he said, should have all the time they needed to study the text with calm, “so that they might truly make it the crowning achievement of the Council.” These words sounded strange coming from a man who up till this point had been driving the Council Fathers at breakneck speed..

A third Moderator, Cardinal Suenens, spoke on the following day. The schema in general was satisfactory, he said, “for the reasons stated yesterday by the two Moderators.” He then went on to say that it would be fitting “to include in the schema various topics contained in the supplement,” such as the section on matrimony and the family.

Archbishop Heenan of Westminster, England, who by this time had founded the opposition group known as St. Paul’s Conference, called the schema “unworthy of an Ecumenical Council of the Church.” He proposed that it should be taken away from the commission which was now handling it and referred to another commission, to be set up forthwith. “Then, after three or four years, let the fourth and final session of the Council be convened to discuss all the social problems,” he said. The Council, he predicted, which had spent so much time on “theological niceties,” would become “a laughingstock in the eyes of the world if it now rushed breathlessly through a debate on world hunger, nuclear war and family life.”

He also pointed out that, according to instructions, the schema was to be debated, while the supplement was to be passed over without comment in the Council hall. “But if we fail to scrutinize both documents with great care,” he said, “the mind of the Council will have to be interpreted to the world by the periti who helped the Fathers of the commission to draw up the documents. God forbid that this should happen! I fear periti when they are left to explain what the bishops meant ... It is of no avail to talk about a College of Bishops if periti in articles, books and speeches contradict and pour scorn on what a body of bishops teaches.” He warned that “the theories of one or two theologians must not be mistaken for a general agreement among theologians . . Only this “general agreement” enjoyed special authority, he said.

Father Benedict Reetz, Superior General of the Benedictines of Beuron, Germany, answered Archbishop Heenan the next day and defended the periti, saying that they had “labored and sweated over the schema,” and that they “need not be feared but rather loved and praised, especially for the supplement, from which very much should be taken and added to the schema itself.” His only criticism was of the Latin, which he called “disgraceful.”

Bishop Charue of Namur, Belgium, said that the world was waiting for this schema, and that therefore “we cannot wait four years.” It should be published the following year, even if the supplement had to be completed later.

Cardinal Meyer of Chicago and Cardinal Bea of the Curia both had general praise for the schema, but said that it was too naturalistic and needed a more profound theological and scriptural basis. Cardinal Leger of Montreal and Cardinal Lienart of Lille said much the same.

Maronite Patriarch Paul Meouchi of Lebanon felt that the structure of the schema was not logical, its style uncertain and its content repetitive. It gave the impression, he said, that the Church had been founded to conduct charitable works and busy itself with social, economic and political affairs. And it seemed to presuppose a conception of history in which Providence played no part. He insisted on a radical revision of the text.

Archbishop Raymond-Marie Tchidimbo of Conakry, Guinea, considered the schema “mediocre” and “directed exclusively to the peoples of Europe and the Americas.” It contained no reference at all to the problems of Africa, such as those resulting from colonialism and racial discrimination.

Archbishop William Conway of Armagh, Ireland, said that the schema contained “only a fraction of what the Church has to say to the modern world.” This fact, he said, should be clearly stated at the very beginning of the schema, for otherwise people would ask, “Do you have nothing else to tell us? Is this all?” He expressed great surprise that the schema should have “so little to say about conditions in areas where the Church lies in chains and lives in silence.” He was also surprised that the document should say nothing about the commercialization of sex and the desecration of human love in so many of the communications media.

Archbishop Morcillo Gonzales of Madrid wondered why the schema was silent on problems such as those of “human labor, the elevation of the whole man to his natural and supernatural perfection, the right of migration, the flood of sensuality and sexuality, atheism . . ., the progress of new nations toward liberty . . ., the extreme poverty and famine which now afflict great multitudes of men.” The schema “either says nothing about them, or speaks of them only in a whisper, as if they were far removed from the modern world.” He, too, called for a complete revision of the schema.

Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle of Washington, D.C., speaking on behalf of the United States bishops, said that it was necessary to devote a paragraph to the problem of racial discrimination. He wanted precise theological reasons given, constituting an open condemnation of racial discrimination, which he called “one of die most deplorable and repugnant crimes of mankind today.”

Discussion of the schema ended on November 10, eleven days before the end of the session. When the assembly was asked whether the schema was suitable as a basis for further discussion, the vote was 1579 to 296 in favor. On December 30, the Coordinating Commission ruled that the supplement, at least in substance, should be included in the schema. This decision was formally conveyed to Cardinals Ottaviani and Cento, co-presidents of the joint commission, by a letter dated January 2, 1965, and signed by Cardinal Cicognani, president of the Coordinating Commission.

When the Council Fathers received the latest revision of the schema during the summer, it consisted of 79 pages instead of 29, as previously. Explaining the great difference in size, the central subcommission stated that the new draft consisted basically of three elements. First there was the original draft. Then there were the oral and written interventions, totalling 830 pages, which had been very carefully examined. And finally, “in accordance with the wishes expressed by many Council Fathers, the supplement accompanying the previous text has been inserted in the new text, at least in substance.”

It had been a long, hard battle, but once again the liberals, aided by the Moderators, had succeeded in getting their way.