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

[Stone]

THE FOURTH SESSION
September 14 to December 8, 1965

ALIGNMENTS ON THE SCHEMA ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

The four setbacks which the liberals had suffered during Black Week made them realize that their control over the Council was not so absolute as they had imagined. And the conservatives, for their part, drew fresh courage from the liberals’ perplexity. Bishop Carli of Segni, of the International Group of Fathers, quickly published a lengthy article on Black Week in which he quoted from the article of Father Schillebeeckx and from the remarks made by Father John Courtney Murray, S.J. Had the minority not taken action on the text on religious freedom, he said, that schema, “so full of serious defects, would no doubt have been approved by a very large majority.” Every commission, and even the general assembly itself, he said, should always be prepared to reconsider its stand right up to the very last.

In a letter dated December 18, 1964, the International Group sent fifteen pages of suggested amendments to the schema on religious freedom to all Council Fathers on their mailing list, reminding them that the deadline for submitting amendments was January 31. When a fourth edition of the schema was published in June, 1965, the group circulated another letter with twenty additional pages of amendments. And on August 13, Archbishop Sigaud of Diamantina, Brazil, Archbishop Lefebvre, Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, and Abbot Jean Prou, Superior General of the Benedictines of Solesmes, France, met at Solesmes to prepare additional strategy. They determined topics and selected speakers for five interventions on the schema, and they decided to send the gist of their proposals to the Pope should those proposals not be incorporated in the schema as a result of the discussion and voting.

Certainly no Council Fathers were harder to please than the leaders of the International Group. Bishop Carli alone, for example, had submitted fifty-two amendments on an early draft of the schema on ecumenism. It was difficult, therefore, for those revising the schema on religious freedom to determine what points the Bishop considered of major or of minor importance. The same was true of all other amendments regularly prepared and circularized by the International Group.

The three aforementioned prelates sent Pope Paul a letter dated July 25, 1965. They drew attention to the fact that the Rules of Procedure provided that reports might be read to the general assembly before the vote by Council Fathers representing both the majority view and the minority view in Council commissions. But it was not regular Council practice, they said, for the minority view in commissions to be heard. They requested that this rule be enforced in particular for the schemas on religious freedom, divine revelation, the Church in the modern world and the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions. They also made the following requests: that such speakers be given sufficient time to prepare their main arguments; that the spokesman for the minority view be selected by the minority; that the names of the majority and minority speakers be published long enough in advance for objections and supporting arguments to be directed to them; that their reports be printed and distributed to the Council Fathers, and that each speaker be given a short time for rebuttal.

Cardinal Cicognani, Vatican Secretary of State, replied to Bishop Carli on August 11, stating that Pope Paul had given careful attention to the proposals. “I must inform Your Excellency, however,” he went on, “that some surprise was occasioned by the fact that the request had been presented on behalf of an ‘International Group of Fathers, with similar views bn theological and pastoral matters,’ that is, by a particular group within the Council. This initiative might be deemed to authorize the official foundation of other ‘alliances,’ to the detriment of the Council assembly.

As Your Excellency can well understand, this would in fact take from Council Fathers that freedom of judgment and of choice which must be ensured over and above every particular interest. It would also lead to the accentuation of tendencies and divisions among the Council Fathers themselves, whereas everything possible should be done to minimize them for the sake of serenity, concord, the happy outcome of the Council and the honor of the Church. The enterprise, therefore, cannot in itself be approved, and it would be well for this ‘Group’ not to function as an organ representing the positions of the Council Fathers belonging to it.”

It should be recalled, in connection with this letter, that the Rules of Procedure of the Council as revised and approved by Pope Paul actually encouraged the formation of groups with similar views on theological and pastoral matters. Thus Article 57, Section 3, provided: “It is most desirable that Council Fathers who intend to present similar arguments should join together and choose one or several of their number to speak on behalf of all.” As far back as August 5, 1964, Archbishop Sigaud had pointed out that the new ruling requiring a speaker to have collected seventy signatures in order to be permitted to speak after closure of debate forced the minority to organize itself, and he had cited Article 57, Section 3, as justifying such action.

Bishop Carli forwarded Cardinal Cicognani’s letter to Archbishop Lefebvre in Paris, who in turn forwarded it to Archbishop Sigaud on August 20 with these comments:

“It seems that the Holy Father or the Cardinal Secretary of State has been frightened by a title which appears to them to designate an association which is highly organized and may easily cause divisions.

“We have never attached any importance to this title, and it makes little difference to us whether we have it or not. What really matters is the desire of a certain number of Council Fathers to give one another mutual support and help in their defense and explanation of the truth. There is nothing about this which is not most legitimate. We can very well eliminate the name. Personally, I see nothing against this. It will not change the reality in any way.

“As far as the freedom of the Council Fathers is concerned, I truly believe that we have never offended against it in the slightest. God knows that we have exerted no moral pressure.” He closed his letter by saying that those who exerted intolerable moral pressure, and who “suffocated” the minority, were rather the national episcopal conferences.

The International Group of Fathers was not the only opposition group under attack. Cardinals Dopfner and Suenens went directly to the Pope to complain about the Bishops’ Secretariat. When that group’s president, Archbishop Perantoni, learned of this, he explained to the Holy Father that his organization had come into being only to ensure a hearing for a minority which the powerfully organized European alliance, protected and promoted by the two Cardinal Moderators, was ignoring. As long as the pressure group of Cardinals Dopfner and Suenens continued, he said, the Bishops’ Secretariat would also be forced to remain in existence.

At a press conference held in Rome on September 13, the day before the opening of the fourth session, Cardinal Dopfner said that the Pope and a large majority of Council Fathers wanted the forthcoming session to be the last one. The work on the remaining schemas was so far advanced, he said, that the session could easily be closed before Christmas “without restricting the liberty of the Council Fathers and without strangulating the Council itself.” He also stressed that the Rules of Procedure would be observed “in their entirety.”

But despite Cardinal Dopfner’s assurances, the Council during the fourth session was in fact “strangulated” more than ever before. This was because the cardinals nearly monopolized prime time. So many of them spoke each day that the interventions of bishops were often read only at a late hour when Council Fathers were either tired or missing from their places. And bishops were repeatedly silenced by closure of debate. Fifty-one cardinals, making up only 2 per cent of the general assembly, delivered 33 per cent of the oral interventions made during the fourth session.

On September 14, 1965, the opening day of the fourth session, the Holy Father announced that, “in accordance with the wishes of the Council,” he intended to establish an episcopal synod composed of bishops to be chosen “for the greater part by conferences of bishops, and approved by us.” The synod, he said, would be convened “by the Roman Pontiff, for consultation and collaboration, when this seems opportune to us for the general good of the Church.” He made it clear, however, that this synod would not supplant the Roman Curia. Just as diocesan bishops needed a chancery office to run their dioceses, he said, “so we too always need the Curia to carry out our Apostolic responsibilities.”

On the following day, Pope Paul formally constituted the Synod of Bishops, thereby fully complying with the wishes of the Council Fathers even before they had given formal approval to their own suggestion.

As the Pope had promised, the fourth session began with the discussion of the revised schema on religious freedom. A total of sixty-six speakers addressed the assembly on this subject between September 15 and 22, 1965.

Because no apparent action had been taken on its letter of July 25 to Pope Paul, the International Group of Fathers drew up a new letter dated September 18, addressed to the Cardinal Moderators. Referring to Article 33, Section 7, of the Rules of Procedure, which provided that a substitute schema or an organic list of amendments might be submitted by fifty Council Fathers at any time, the signers asked for authorization for the reading of a second report on religious freedom to the general assembly, a report “which would completely and systematically explain and defend another manner of conceiving of and declaring this doctrine.” The letter was reproduced and signatures collected, but the Moderators seem to have ignored it.

The general assembly subsequently accepted the fourth edition of the schema “as a basis for the definitive declaration” by a vote of 1997 to 224. When the fifth edition came back to the Council hall for a vote on October 26 and 27, hundreds of qualifications were submitted with affirmative votes. Once again the schema was revised, and on Wednesday, November 17, the sixth edition was distributed to the Council Fathers. They were informed at the same time that they would be asked to vote two days later on whether they were satisfied with the way in which the qualifications had been handled by the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity.

The sixth edition did not completely satisfy the International Group. In a new letter dated November 18, distributed to 800 Council Fathers, the group acknowledged that notable improvements had been made in Article 1 regarding true religion. It argued, however, that the criterion determining the limits of religious freedom should be the common good, and not the preservation of law and order. The State, it maintained, must safeguard the common good as a whole, and not only in part, and the preservation of law and order was only “a part of the common good, as is expressly stated in the schema.” If this “correction” were made in two places in the text, and if in one of those two places the pertinent words of Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris were quoted, then the text would be satisfactory, and the International Group would give it an affirmative vote. The desired changes, however, were not made.

According to the letter, the fundamental thesis of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity was that state neutrality should be considered as the normal condition, and that there should be cooperation between state and Church only “in particular circumstances ” This principle the International Group could not in conscience accept. To justify its stand, the group cited Pope Pius XII’s statement that the Church considered the principle of collaboration between .Church and State as “normal,” and that it considered “as an ideal the unity of people in the true religion, and unanimity of action” between Church and State.

In the balloting which took place on the following day, 246 negative votes were cast on the first ballot, 237 on the second, and 217 on both the third and fourth. In the over-all vote, 1954 voted in favor and 249 cast negative votes. This meant that far more than the required two-thirds majority was in favor of the text as it stood.

On December 3, Monsignor Giuseppe di Meglio, an Italian specialist on international law, circulated a letter stating that the voting figures indicated “that for a notable number of Council Fathers the teaching and practical applications of the schema are not acceptable in conscience. In fact, the fundamental principle of the schema has remained unchanged despite the amendments that have been introduced: that is, the right of error.... Since the declaration on religious freedom has no dogmatic value, the negative votes of the Council Fathers will constitute a factor of great importance for the future studies of the declaration itself, and particularly for the interpretation to be placed upon it.”

Father Courtney Murray described Monsignor di Meglio’s position as the “tolerance” theory, based on the principle that ‘ truth has exclusive rights and error no rights.” Those who held this position, he said, were of the opinion that Catholicism should be the State religion wherever possible. Where this was not possible, non-Catholic religions were merely to be tolerated as the “lesser evil ” By contrast, the supporters of what Father Courtney Murray called “the more contemporary theory of religious freedom were convinced that this freedom was “an exigency of the dignity of the human person. ’ They favored religious freedom not for opportunistic reasons, but because it was sound doctrine.

The sixth edition of the schema received the support of Pope Paul despite the large number of negative votes that had been cast against it. The final and formal vote took place at the public session of December 7. On this ballot, the negative votes dropped to 70, and 2308 Council Fathers voted in favor of the text. It was then promulgated by Pope Paul VI to the accompaniment of great applause.

Nearly all of the 70 negative votes had been cast by the hard core of the International Group of Fathers. And yet, after the voting was done, they were as ready as the next man to accept the promulgated decree. Basically, this was the attitude of all Council Fathers, whether they belonged to the liberal or to the conservative camp; each was convinced that his position on a given topic Was the correct one, the one which would bring greater blessing upon the Church and mankind. But these men, trained in Church law, also realized that both sides could not be right. And ultimately they went along with the majority view, when this finally became clear and was promulgated by the Pope as the common doctrine taught by the Second Vatican Council.