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

[Stone]

THE FOURTH SESSION

September 14 to December 8, 1965

ATHEISM AND COMMUNISM

On December 3,1963, the day before the second session ended, Archbishop Geraldo Sigaud of Diamantina, Brazil, personally presented to Cardinal Cicognani petitions addressed to Pope Paul and signed by more than 200 Council Fathers from forty-six countries. These called for a special schema in which “the Catholic social doctrine would be set forth with great clarity, and the errors of Marxism, socialism, and communism would be refuted on philosophical, sociological and economic grounds.”

There was no reply from the Pope, but eight months later, on August 6, 1964, he published his first encyclical, Ecclesiam suam. In it he called for dialogue with atheistic communism, even though—as he said—there were reasons enough which compelled him, his predecessors and everyone with religious values at heart, “to condemn the ideological systems which deny God and oppress the Church, systems which are often identified with economic, social and political regimes.”

The German-speaking and Scandinavian bishops immediately reacted to the encyclical, declaring in their official remarks on the Church in the modern world schema, that it was “probably desirable” to have a “more distinct treatment in the schema of the problem of atheism, and of dialogue with it.”

On October 21, 1964, during the third session, the section of the schema dealing with atheism—it carefully avoided the word communism—came up for discussion. Cardinal Suenens, after stating that it did not give lengthy enough treatment to the modern phenomenon of militant atheism in its various forms, called for an investigation on why so many men deny God and attack the faith.

Archbishop Paul Yu Pin of Nanking, China, speaking two days later in the name of 70 Council Fathers, asked for the addition of a new chapter on atheistic communism. The Council must not neglect to discuss it, he said, “because communism is one of the greatest, most evident and most unfortunate of modern phenomena.” It had to be treated in order to satisfy the expectations of all peoples, “especially those who groan under the yoke of communism and are forced to endure indescribable sorrows unjustly.”

Josef Cardinal Beran, exiled archbishop of Prague, residing in Rome, received a Czechoslovakian newspaper clipping which boasted that communists had succeeded in infiltrating every commission at the Vatican Council.

On April 7, 1965, while the schema was being revised. Pope Paul founded a Secretariat for Non-Believers, with the purpose of fostering dialogue with atheists. Cardinal Konig of Vienna, who had frequently served in a liaison capacity for the Vatican with the governments of communist countries, was placed in charge.

By September 14, 1965, the opening date of the fourth session, a revision of the atheism section in the schema on the Church in the modern world was in the hands of the Council Fathers, but once again it contained no explicit reference to communism. The silence prompted the circulation of a letter, dated September 29, 1965, signed by 25 bishops, giving ten reasons why Marxist communism should be treated by the Council. A petition in the form of a written intervention requesting such treatment accompanied the letter, which was widely distributed among the Council Fathers.

The letter maintained that eventual silence by the Council on communism, after the latest Popes and the Holy Office had said so much about it, would be “equivalent to disavowing all that has been said and done up till now.” Just as Pope Pius XII was at present being publicly reprimanded—but unjustly—for having kept silent on the Jews, the letter warned, so one could well imagine that “tomorrow the Council will be reproved—and justly so—for its silence on communism, which will be taken as a sign of cowardice and conniving.” This lengthy letter had been written by Bishop Carli and was distributed by Archbishops Sigaud and Lefebvre, but their names were not included among the 25 signatures. They had purposely withheld them because there was great antagonism against them, both in the liberal camp and in the press.

While making a routine phone call to check out various news sources, I learned from Archbishop Sigaud that 450 Council Fathers had signed this written intervention prepared by the International Group of Fathers.

On October 20, 1965, I distributed a news bulletin on this, and three of Rome’s largest daily newspapers, Il Giornale d’ltalia, Il Messaggero, and Il Tempo, promptly ran front page stories.

The joint commission responsible for the schema on the Church in the modern world distributed its new revision on Saturday, November 13, but again it contained no mention of communism in the text. Furthermore, the interventions signed by the 450 Council Fathers asking for explicit treatment of communism were not referred to in the official report prepared by this commission.

That same day Bishop Carli sent a letter of protest to the Council Presidency, responsible for the enforcement of Council rules, and copies of it to the Cardinal Moderators, General Secretariat and Administrative Tribunal, for their information. He called attention to the fact that “450 Council Fathers,” and himself among them, had presented “a certain amendment to the General Secretariat within the prescribed time,” which the commission in making its revision had completely ignored. After quoting several directives from the Rules of Procedure, he stated that they clearly signified that “all amendments must be printed and communicated to the Council Fathers, so that they can decide by vote whether they wish to admit or reject each one.”

He also labeled as illegal the action taken by the joint commission, and charged that “this manner of admitting or rejecting amendments of the Council Fathers—and, in our case, even without giving reasons for doing so—turns a commission of no more than 30 persons into a judicial body against which there is no appeal.” And although the Council Fathers together with the Supreme Pontiff were in reality the true judges, for all practical purposes they were merely being asked by the commission to state whether or not they were pleased with the decisions taken by the commission. This made it appear, he said, that “the commission members, rather than the Council Fathers, constitute the Council.”

As a result of this formal protest, Cardinal Tisserant launched an official investigation.

Since the joint commission had ignored the interventions with the 450 signatures of Council Fathers representing 86 countries, the International Group of Fathers hastily prepared the same amendment in the form of a qualification, since submitting affirmative votes with qualifications would be the last opportunity to amend the text. By letter, dated Saturday, November 13, Council Fathers were invited to sign and submit the qualification during the voting on Monday, November 15. The qualification did not ask for a new condemnation of communism, as the press reported, but only for “a solemn reaffirmation by the Council of the long-standing doctrine of the Church on this matter.”

Distribution of the qualification, however, was severely handicapped, since this was the weekend on which 500 Council Fathers journeyed to Florence in chartered buses to participate in the Dante celebration.

On November 15, while the Council Fathers were voting on the atheism section, I distributed to the press a news release explaining that the 450 signed interventions had disappeared and therefore the International Group of Fathers was making a new try at having its voice heard by submitting a qualification, that morning, nearly identical to the intervention.

Immediately after the morning meeting Father Roberto Tucci, S.J., one of the periti on the joint commission, gave his usual briefing to the Italian reporters and was asked by them what had happened to the written interventions supported by 450 Council Fathers. “I can confirm the fact that the amendment on communism did not reach either the members of the commission or us periti who are part of the commission,” he replied. “There is no intrigue here of any sort; perhaps the petition ran into a red light along the way and was stopped.” Father Tucci’s remark made my story, distributed only an hour earlier, all the more topical, and within 24 hours it appeared on the front pages of Il Giornale d’ltalia, Il Messaggero, Il Tempo, Il Popolo, Il Secolo, Momento-Sera, and L’Avvenire d’Italia, and on the inside pages of Il Giorno, La Stampa, Paese Sera, Corriere della Sera, and Il Unita (communist daily).

On November 16, Air. Gian Franco Svidercoschi, using the pseudonym Helveticus, reported in Il Tempo that a “prelate” who was an “official” of the joint commission had stated that the communism intervention had arrived late, and consequently had not been taken into consideration. This conformed to the story given to the press by Father Tucci, and made the International Group of Fathers responsible for the negligence, since it apparently had not transmitted the signed interventions to the General Secretariat on time.

On November 17, Archbishop Sigaud released a statement to the press, stating that he and Archbishop Lefebvre had personally delivered the signed interventions to the General Secretariat at noon on October 9, within the prescribed time limit. This now shifted the responsibility to the General Secretariat.

On November 18, further details were published in Il Tempo by Mr. Svidercoschi, who meanwhile had done some checking. He reported that the General Secretariat had received the interventions within the time limit on Saturday, October 9, had at once telephoned the secretary of the joint commission to inform him that the amendments had arrived, but stated that they would be held over by the General Secretariat until Monday so that the numerous signatures could be checked. This placed responsibility back on the joint commission, and specifically on its secretariat, since—as Mr. Svidercoschi pointed out—the excuse originally given by that secretariat about the interventions having arrived “late” was no longer valid.

Cardinal Tisserant had in the meantime conducted his own investigation and brought his findings to the attention of Pope Paul.

Prom four different sources I learned that the person who had withheld the interventions from the members of the joint commission was the commission’s secretary, Monsignor Achille Glorieux, of Lille, France, who held nearly half a dozen Vatican positions and had once worked on the staff of L’Osservatore Romano. He was secretary likewise of the Commission on the Apostolate of the Laity.

Someone else on the joint commission later admitted that this commission had tabled other interventions as well, but that it had been stupid” to sidetrack these on communism.

On November 23, at noon, I issued a news release describing Monsignor Glorieux’s role in the matter and personally delivered copies of it to the reporters at the Vatican Press Office. As was to be expected, it came to the attention of Vatican authorities.

That afternoon at five o’clock Pope Paul VI received in audience the bishops of Latin America on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Episcopal Council of Latin America (CELAM) and delivered an address in which he called attention to “Marxist atheism" He identified it as a dangerous, prevalent and most harmful infiltrating force in the economic and social life of Latin America, and stated that it considered “violent revolution as the only means for solving problems.”

On November 24, the morning newspapers ran front page stories on the French prelate who had acted as a “red light” for the interventions on communism, and that same morning the Pope sent the joint commission an order to insert a footnote on the Church’s teaching on communism. The commission acceded and cited the encyclicals of Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI; and the words, “just as it has already done,” were inserted in the schema as follows: “In her loyal devotion to God and men, the Church cannot cease repudiating, just as it has already done, sorrowfully but as firmly as possible, those poisonous doctrines and actions which contradict reason and the common experience of humanity, and dethrone man from his native excellence.” The added words, as the joint commission explicitly stated in its official report to the general assembly, were introduced in order to allude “to the condemnations of communism and Marxism made by the Supreme Pontiffs.”

When making his official report to the general assembly in the name of the joint commission. Archbishop Garrone of Toulouse was obliged by Council authorities to make a public admission of negligence for the sake of setting straight the record. He stated that the interventions on communism had “indeed reached the offices of our commission within the proper time, but were not examined when they should have been, because unintentionally they had not been transmitted to the commission members.”

However, there was immediately evident a confusion of numbers in the various reports prepared by the joint commission. Archbishop Garrone said that 332 interventions had arrived on time. Another report set the total figure at 334, but stated that only 297 of them had arrived on time. When Archbishop Sigaud went to the Council archivist to check the signatures personally, since he had 435 of the 450 names on file, he was told that the original documents were not yet available and that the published figures were to be considered official. But the joint commission had published conflicting figures, and there was no indication which of these were “official.”

Although pleased over the addition of the new words in the body of the text, and over the citation of all the important encyclicals concerning communism in the footnote. Archbishop Sigaud said: “There is a difference between carrying a hat in your pocket, and wearing it on your head.”

On December 3, the International Group of Fathers distributed one last letter to the 800 Council Fathers on its mailing list. The letter gave five reasons why the sections of the Church in the modern world schema touching communism, marriage and war were still unsatisfactory, and closed with an appeal for a negative vote on the entire schema, because it was “no longer possible to obtain partial amendments.”

The drive, however, drew little response, and only 131 Council Fathers cast negative votes on the atheism section. But the International Group of Fathers remained steadfast, and was largely responsible for the 75 negative votes cast against the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern, World during the final and formal vote of December 7th.