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

[Stone]

THE THIRD SESSION

September 14 to November 21, 1964

DEFEAT FOR THE MODERATORS

In the past decades, a startling phenomenon has been taking place in the United States and Europe: the percentage of young men choosing to  become secular, or diocesan, priests has been decreasing, while the percentage of those choosing to become priests as members of religious orders has been increasing. In the United States, the percentage of secular priests dropped from 73 per cent of the national total in 1925 to 61 per cent in 1965. The percentage of religious order priests rose in the same period from 27 to 39 per cent. In some areas, priests who are members of religious orders outnumber secular priests. In the archdiocese of Chicago, for example, the percentage of secular priests dropped from 59 per cent in 1925 to 46 per cent in 1965, while that of religious order priests rose from 41 to 54 per cent in the same period.

In Germany, similarly, the percentage of secular priests dropped from 92 per cent in 1915 to 78 per cent in i960, while during the same period the percentage of priests belonging to religious orders rose from 8 to 22 per cent.

Bishop Karl Leiprecht of Rottenburg, Germany, a member of the Council’s Commission on Religious, called attention to this trend at the Fulda conference in August, 1963, observing that it would oblige bishops to make greater demands than ever before on religious orders for pastoral work.

The problem, however, was how to obtain greater control over the members of religious orders. The solution proposed by adherents of the European alliance was to stress the importance of apostolic work, calling it a necessity for all religious orders of men and women, even for contemplative orders. The alliance also insisted on basic changes in the structure of religious orders, calling this an “adaptation to modern times.” But the emphasis on apostolic work was such that, in the eyes of the religious orders, the goal in view appeared almost purely utilitarian, without regard for the spiritual life of the individual. And some of the changes suggested made it appear that the aim was to standardize the religious orders, that is, recast them in the same or similar molds. Superiors general naturally considered this as the death knell to their institutes, and so began a struggle for survival.

A severe blow came on January 30, 1963, when the Coordinating Commission delivered instructions to the Commission on Religious drastically to reduce its schema and to make certain changes. The instructions had been prepared by Cardinal Dopfner, who was responsible to the Coordinating Commission for the schema on the religious life, as Cardinal Suenens was responsible to it for the schema on the Church in the modern world. The original schema had been drafted by the Preparatory Commission on Religious and contained thirty-two chapters, including 201 articles and covering no pages. It was very thorough and detailed, dealing with all questions pertaining to the religious life. The Commission on Religious in plenary session reduced this schema to nine chapters within two months of receiving the aforesaid instructions, and referred it back to the Coordinating Commission for approval.

On March 27, 1963, Cardinal Dopfner in his report to the Coordinating Commission said that he was satisfied with the great reduction in size, but not with the title “On Religious,” or with the frequent use of the term “states of perfection.” He suggested three points that should be taken into consideration in improving the text:

1. The text as it stood was lacking in scriptural and theological depth in its presentation o£ the religious life and the evangelical counsels. Nor was sufficient stress laid on appropriate renewal. Too little consideration was given to the Christological and ecclesiological aspects of the religious life.

2. The text did not constitute an adequate response to the wish expressed by all Council Fathers for clear and practical directives for the adaptation of religious orders to modern needs. Too little space was given to this topic.

3. Even though withdrawal from the world was a necessary characteristic of religious orders and must be especially stressed today, there should not be so many warnings against the world and the spirit of the world. 

An effective apostolate was possible only if those engaged in the apostolate knew the modern world and could reach modern man. There was much complaint about the lack of knowledge of the world among members of religious orders, especially the women’s orders. Here there was need for change.

The Coordinating Commission, however, approved the revised schema in substance; whereupon Valerio Cardinal Valeri, president of the Commission on Religious, and a member of the Roman Curia, appointed a committee of five to make the additional changes and additions suggested by Cardinal Dopfner. He cancelled the plenary session of his Commission, originally scheduled for May 1963, considering it unnecessary, and on April 23 presented the revised text to the Secretary General.

Cardinal Dopfner heard of this at once, and was very much annoyed. He again submitted the suggestions that he had originally made, and some new ones besides. This time, however, he and his periti worked them out in detail, with exactly the wording which they wished to have incorporated in the schema. Cardinal Dopfner wrote to Cardinal Valeri that he was enclosing, “by way of example,” some proposals “which could easily be inserted in the existing schema at the places indicated.” His letter arrived after the revised schema had been submitted to the Secretary General, and Cardinal Valeri had to get it back again. The same committee of five was put to work on it, and finally, on May 8, the text was returned to the Secretary General for printing.

Strangely enough, when the printed version appeared, it carried a note to the effect that it had been approved by Pope John XXIII on April 22, 1963. But it had not been in the hands even of the Secretary General by that date, let alone in those of the Pope. This raises the question whether the Pope ever saw the document.

At the time Cardinal Dopfner sent his proposals to Cardinal Valeri, Bishop Gerard Huyghe of Arras, France, also protested and sent proposals of his own. He was a member of the Commission on Religious and was greatly displeased that the scheduled plenary session for May had been canceled. About half of the proposals submitted by Cardinal Dopfner were incorporated in the text, but none of those submitted by Bishop Huyghe; Cardinal Dopfner’s were used because they were considered as elucidating his original report to the Coordinating Commission. Both sets of proposals, however, were mimeographed and sent to all the members of the Commission on Religious. On seeing that his proposals had been ignored, Bishop Huyghe combined them with the unused proposals made by Cardinal Dopfner, as well as with proposals made by two other Commission members (French and Belgian) which had likewise been ignored. He then asked all the bishops of France and all those who attended the Fulda conference to give their support to his combined list.

Bishop Leiprecht, who had been commissioned by Cardinal Dopfner to prepare a written report on the revised schema dated April 22, 1963, for the Fulda conference, maintained that “the Commission members residing in Rome, and also their periti, who had edited the shortened draft, had too much control.” And he concluded that “the schema in its present form is not yet ready to be taken up by the Council Fathers. It is not sufficiently in step with the needs of modern times and of the Council.” The Fulda conference endorsed this view, labeled the schema unsatisfactory, and informed Rome accordingly. The schema did not come up for discussion during the second session.

Toward the end of the second session, on November 29, the Coordinating Commission instructed Iidebrando Cardinal Antoniutti, the new president of the Commission on Religious (Cardinal Valeri had died in July), to shorten the schema still further, and also to prepare an appendix listing “in great detail those observations made by Council Fathers which were not accepted by the Commission, together with the reasons for their rejection.”

Further instructions were issued by the Coordinating Commission on December 28, 1963, and January 15, 1964, and these were sent to Cardinal Antoniutti on January 23. The Cardinal was informed that the schema must now be reduced to propositions which would be voted on in the Council hall, but without discussion. Cardinal Dopfner sent still more proposals on January 24. As a result of these instructions, the schema was reduced to 118 lines of propositions.

The third session opened 011 September 14, 1964, and on September 29 the Roman Union of Superiors General held a meeting to decide what action to take with regard to the propositions. Some superiors general were present. Father Armand Le Bourgeois, Superior General of the Eudists, read a detailed report on the development of the propositions, with an analysis of each of the articles. His conclusion was that the propositions as they stood were unsatisfactory, but could be improved. The matter was then discussed at length, but no decision was reached.

On October 7, the executive committee of the Roman Union met at the generalate of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Present were the superiors general of the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, Benedictines, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Marists and Eudists. An animated discussion took place on policy, and it was unanimously agreed not to reject the propositions, but rather to improve them by submitting qualifications with affirmative votes. In their written report to all other superiors general, they stated that “a massive negative vote” might have unfortunate consequences, and pointed to four specific points which, in their judgment, required amendment. At the same time, they assured the other superiors general that they were perfectly free to take whatever stand they chose on the issues. They also began to prepare interventions on these points, and to draw up qualifications to be printed and distributed before the voting.

On October 23, the Secretary General announced that the report on the propositions would be distributed on the same day, as well as “an appendix to the schema, which, however, will not be matter for discussion.” On receiving the printed copy of the report, the Council Fathers were surprised to find enclosed in the same booklet an amended and lengthened version of the propositions. Some of them asked the Bishops’ Secretariat, headed by Archbishop Perantoni, what it thought of the new version.

The Archbishop thereupon called together his central committee, whose members decided unanimously that the propositions were acceptable. They prepared a circular letter explaining their views, and on November 8 had it delivered to more than 1100 Council Fathers. The letter announced the names of five Council Fathers scheduled to make oral interventions on the propositions, and stated that each one, through the efforts of the Bishops’ Secretariat, had obtained several hundred supporting signatures. Attached to the letter were five qualifications recapitulating the five interventions, which the recipients were invited to sign and submit with their affirmative votes.

On November 10, two days after this letter was delivered, the propositions on the religious life came up for discussion. By this time, the propositions on priests and on missions had already been rejected. There was time for only one speaker that morning, Cardinal Spellman of New York, a member of the Coordinating Commission.

Cardinal Spellman expressed general satisfaction with the text. “If some amendments and clarifications on a few fundamental points are introduced in the text,” he said, “this schema can be accepted by the Council as a basis for a genuine renewal of religious life in the Church.” He pointed out that modernization had “in fact been in progress in religious communities for many years.” The issue now was “a secondary and incidental adaptation, not a changing of the very essence of religious life”; much confusion, he said, existed on that point. “Recently,” he added, “certain things have been written and said about the religious life and its adaptation to modern conditions which seem to contribute to this confusion. They seem to neglect and almost to deny the special witness given to Christ by the religious life. In a word, these things . . . tend to destroy religious life.” In his own archdiocese of New York, he said, there were more than 8000 women in the religious life, and not a few of them were “uneasy because of these things which are being said so confusedly, incautiously and imprudently regarding the modernization of religious life in the Church.” Some Council Fathers and periti took these 1 words as intended for Cardinal Suenens, who had published a book on the subject, The Nun in the World, and who had recently lectured in the United States on the religious life.

Seventeen speakers took the floor on the following day. The first was Jaime Cardinal de Barros Camara of Rio de Janeiro, who said on behalf of 103 bishops of Brazil that the schema was on the whole acceptable.

He pointed out that the doctrinal aspect of the religious life had already been dealt with in Chapter 4 of the schema on the Church, and that the duties of members of religious orders in die external apostolate had been discussed in the schema on the pastoral office of bishops in the Church. It was therefore unnecessary to treat of religious in the schema at any ! great length; it was, however, necessary to determine more clearly the competent authority which should promote and guide the desired renewal of the religious life.

The fourth speaker was Cardinal Dopfner, who severely criticized the propositions and asked for a complete revision. They did not adequately touch the central problems of renewal, he said.

Cardinal Suenens also asserted that the schema was unacceptable because it failed to deal adequately with the problems of adaptation and modernization of the religious life. He spoke especially about congregations of i sisters “in the so-called active life.” They should enjoy the genuine freedom required for apostolic action, he said. The apostolate itself should be defined in the sense of “evangelization,” so that there would be a hierarchy of values in the life of the Sister, each one having some time for such apostolic work. On the practical level, he asked that new rules should be elaborated for convents, so that individual Sisters might cooperate actively and as adults for the good of the whole community. This would avoid the concentration of power in a single Mother Superior on the one hand, and an overly passive, infantile obedience on the other. He advocated balanced structures of government, changes in the system of naming superiors, and general chapters which would more faithfully represent the entire congregation. Antiquated customs should be changed, separation from the world should not prevent a religious from engaging in apostolic work, the distinctive but ridiculous garb of many communities must be changed, practices based on “outdated notions of the inferiority of women should be abandoned, and no Sister should have to travel with a companion.

On the same day, four of the five speakers announced in the circular letter of the Bishops’ Secretariat were given the floor. Father Anastasio del SS. Rosario, Superior General of the Carmelites, and president of the Roman Union of Superiors General, spoke first in the name of 185 Council Fathers, and asserted that the propositions deserved a qualified affirmative vote. Appropriate renewal was definitely needed in the religious life, he said, but it was absolutely necessary to have a clear concept of what this entailed. It entailed, he explained, two essential elements: a return by the members of religious communities to the spirit and fervor which had animated those communities at the time of their foundation; and adaptation to the world and to modern times. Only this twofold norm would provide the necessary “solid and supernatural criteria for the various aspects of renewal,” and could prevent “a restless search after novelty which wants to discard everything.”

Archbishop Perantoni spoke in the name of 370 Council Fathers. He said that the schema as it stood was “good and should be retained as a basis for discussion, despite the opinion of those who had asked for its complete rejection.” He spoke out against the standardization of religious orders, saying that the orders should be regarded “as the expression of diverse charisms in the Church.” He requested the Council to state its high esteem for the lay religious fife,” since religious communities of Brothers and Sisters made such a useful contribution to the pastoral work of the Church by educating the young, caring for the sick and discharging other services.

The next speaker was a French Jesuit, the retired Archbishop Victor Sartre of Tananarive, Madagascar, who spoke on behalf of 265 Council Fathers and also expressed the views of 250 superiors general of religious congregations of women. The schema, he said, had many good elements, “and we hope that it will be approved.” Primacy of place, he said, should clearly be given to the interior and spiritual life of the members, and, any program of adaptation, the spirit of the founders must be loyally preserved, as well as all the particular goals and sound traditions of each community.

He was followed by another Jesuit, Bishop Guilly of Georgetown, British Guiana, who spoke for 263 Council Fathers. The propositions, said Bishop Guilly, merited approval in substance, although they had many weaknesses. For instance, it was “truly amazing” that so little should be said about the contemplative orders. The propositions, he maintained, depicted the modern apostolate “in a much too restricted sense, as an external apostolate.” In the theological and technical terminology of the Church, however, the word “apostolate” designated all activities of Christ’s followers which promoted the kingdom of God on earth. He therefore called for the addition of a distinct proposition in which the Council would express its high esteem for the contemplative institutes and declare their life to be “eminently apostolic.”

On the following day, Auxiliary Bishop James Carroll of Sydney, Australia, spoke in the name of 440 Council Fathers. Fie called for a special paragraph on Brothers engaged in teaching work, thus stressing in a practical way the apostolic character of lay religious. It would also be opportune, he said, for the Council to rectify the ideas of numerous priests and laymen “who do not esteem those who embrace the religious life without embracing the priesthood.”

Never in the history of the Council had a series of speakers been given so much backing. A reaction was inevitable.

Bishop Charue, of Belgium, announced his complete agreement with the conclusion of Cardinal Dopfner. Father Joseph Buckley, Superior General of the Marists, speaking on behalf of 130 Council Fathers, said that the schema was “simply not satisfactory,” and would have to be completely rewritten with the aid of periti “of a more modern mentality and broader experience,” in line with the renewal promoted by the Council. Bishop Huyghe of Arras, France, expressed his “whole-hearted” agreement with everything that had been said by Cardinal Dopfner, Cardinal Suenens Bishop Charue and Father Buckley. “The propositions are inadequate, he said, “because they lack spirit, are too juridical, too exclusively Western, and contain very little for a true renewal of the religious life. ... A new schema should be prepared.”

On the third day, the debate was closed on a motion proposed by Cardinal Suenens. Twenty-six oral interventions had been made, and thirty-six interventions had been submitted in writing. The Secretary General now asked the assembly to vote on the following question: “Do the Fathers desire to proceed to the vote on the twenty individual propositions which make up the schema ‘On the appropriate renewal of the religious life,’ now that the discussion has been completed?” If the majority voted “no,” a new draft would have to be prepared. If the majority voted “yes,” the propositions would be retained, and voting on the individual propositions would follow.

Why did the Roman Union of Superiors General and the Bishops’ Secretariat wish to have the propositions retained and amended, while Cardinals Dopfner and Suenens pressed for their rejection? The underlying reason was the vastly different conception, on either side, of the religious life and its function in the Church. The Roman Union and the Bishops’ Secretariat realized that, in a complete revision of the schema, the ideas of Cardinals Dopfner and Suenens would gain more ground.

They also suspected that the Cardinals might have a substitute schema ready, or nearly ready, to impose upon the Commission on Religious. Thus the retention of the unsatisfactory propositions and their improvement through qualifications became in their eyes the preferred solutions.

As a peritus of the Bishops’ Secretariat explained to me, it was widely felt that Cardinal Dopfner’s conception of the religious life was “lacking in theological depth, clarity and precision.” Cardinal Suenens, he said, “who is much less concerned with theological problems, seems to think of religious mainly in so far as they are useful to the external apostolate.”

It was felt, in other words, that Cardinal Suenens did not give its proper place to the interior life of a religious. It had created an odd impression, the peritus added, that Cardinal Dopfner, of all people, should have attacked the propositions so strongly, “after he had himself, in his capacity as official spokesman of the Coordinating Commission, insisted so emphatically that the text be reduced to its present dimensions.” And when I asked why the Bishops’ Secretariat had collected a total of 1523 signatures for only five interventions, he reminded me that its founders had been silenced by the closing of the debate during the discussion of the schema on the Church. They had feared that this might happen again, and believed that the hundreds of signatures would force the Moderators to give them the floor, as had in fact happened.

When the ballots were distributed on Thursday, November 12, Cardinals Dopfner and Suenens were confident of victory. For days they had been privately assuring Council Fathers that the propositions would certainly be rejected. But to their great surprise, when the results were announced, 1155 had voted in favor of retaining them, and only 882 against them. In the face of this defeat, the Moderator for the day, Cardinal Suenens, had no choice but to announce that the voting on the propositions would take place on the following Saturday and Monday.

The German and Belgian periti, whose job it was to devise strategy for the two Cardinals, had been caught off guard. Impulsively they suggested that all those who shared the Cardinals’ views should now be asked to cast a negative vote on each of the nine proposed ballots, thus in effect rejecting the propositions. But this was only a temporary reaction, for they soon realized that they would never be able to muster sufficient votes to reject the propositions outright. Such tactics would give the Roman Union and the Bishops’ Secretariat a free hand.

The periti of the two Cardinals then decided to draw up and print a series of qualifications of their own, imitating the action taken four days earlier by the periti of the Bishops’ Secretariat. They also prepared a
covering letter, asking their supporters to cast qualified affirmative votes and submit the qualifications prepared by them. Ihe covering letter was , signed by ten Council Fathers, including Cardinal Dopfner, Cardinal Suenens and Bishop Huyghe.

The Bishops’ Secretariat was quite pleased with many of the qualifications prepared by the periti of Cardinals Dopfner and Suenens; it opposed the two Cardinals not so much for what they wanted included in the schema, but rather for what they wanted excluded from it.

The periti of the Bishops’ Secretariat, meanwhile, had not been idle. As they explained in a new letter, dated November 13, “many excellent points came up during the discussion in the Council hall, which most certainly can help make the schema more complete.” They enclosed in their letter a new set of thirteen qualifications, including the five which they had I distributed on November 8. One of the new qualifications called for the 1 preservation of the “authentic concept of religious obedience,” described as “that sublime holocaust whereby a person, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, completely subjects himself and all that he has to the will of Christ, whose place is taken by the superior.” In answer to the great emphasis placed by some speakers on dialogue between subjects and superiors, this qualification pointed out that nothing would remain of I religious obedience “if it is conceived only as a dialogue in which the I superior keeps trying to persuade a subject by explaining to him all the reasons for a given order.”

The periti of the Bishops’ Secretariat distributed their qualifications to more than 1100 Council Fathers in the afternoon of November 13.

Voting was to begin the next day. They had purposely waited until the last minute so that the two Cardinals’ periti would have no time to prepare counter qualifications.

In the voting on each of the first five ballots, there was an average of 930 affirmative votes, 952 qualified affirmative votes, and 68 negative votes. On the very first ballot, 1005 qualified affirmative votes were cast, the largest number on any ballot in the history of the Council. From the voting returns it was impossible, of course, to tell whether the qualifications submitted were mainly those of the Bishops’ Secretariat or of Cardinals Dopfner and Suenens.

Previously, the rule had always been that qualifications must be submitted at the time of voting. But on this particular day, Saturday, Novem¬ber 14, the Moderators decided that such qualifications might be submitted as late as the following Tuesday, provided that the Council Fathers indicated on their ballots that they were casting qualified affirmative votes.

The reason for this sudden change in Council procedure was—to all appearances—a breakdown in Cardinal Dopfner’s and Cardinal Suenens’ distribution plan. Many of the Council Fathers who were supposed to have received qualifications had heard of them, but did not have them by the time the voting began that Saturday morning.

An examination of the qualifications showed that the five which received the largest backing had all been prepared by the periti of the Bishops’ Secretariat. For the rest, it was almost a tie, with qualifications from both sides winning extensive support. Most were incorporated in the schema.

The revised and expanded text, now called a decree, returned to the Council floor on October n, 1965, during the fourth session. The supporters of the views both of the Bishops’ Secretariat and of Cardinals Dopner and Suenens showed their satisfaction with the new text by voting 2126 to 13 in its favor. In the final vote at the public session on October 28, 1965, the Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life received 2321 affirmative votes and only 4 negative votes. It was then promulgated by Pope Paul VI.