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

[Stone]

THE FIRST SESSION
October 11 to December 8, 1962

WHAT THE FIRST SESSION ACHIEVED

The Council took up the discussion of the all-important schema on the Church at its thirty-first General Congregation, on December 1, exactly one week before the closing of the first session. The first speaker was Cardinal Ottaviani, who, as President of the Theological Commission, wished to make some introductory remarks.

Only three days before, he had pointed out that it would be impossible to complete the discussion of the thirty-six-page schema on the Church in the few days left, and he had therefore asked the Council Fathers to discuss the shorter six-page schema on the Blessed Virgin Mary, as had originally been announced. There would have been no trouble in completing the discussion of that schema, he said, and the happy result would have been that the Council Fathers, “with the assistance of Our Lady,” would then have concluded the first session- “in union and harmony.” But his plea had been ignored.

The Cardinal proceeded to stress the caliber of the membership of the Theological Preparatory Commission, which had prepared the schema on the Church. It had consisted of thirty-one members, with thirty-six consultants from fifteen countries. Most of these men were university professors or professors in major ecclesiastical institutions of learning in different parts of the world. Each had several publications of outstanding importance to his credit, and some of these were used as textbooks in seminaries and universities. As a result, the Theological Preparatory Commission had considered itself intellectually equipped to carry out the weighty task of drawing up a schema on the Church. It had, moreover, borne in mind the pastoral aspect of the Council.

That morning, fourteen Council Fathers came to the microphone. Six of them called for revisions so complete as to be tantamount to outright rejection of the text as it stood. The schema was criticized for being too theoretical, for being too legalistic, for identifying the Mystical Body purely and simply with the Catholic Church, for referring only condescendingly to the laity, for insisting excessively on the rights and authority of the hierarchy, and for lacking a charitable, missionary, and ecumenical approach.

One of the speakers. Bishop De Smedt, summed up his criticism in three epithets: the schema, he said, was guilty of triumphalism, clericalism, and legalism.

The last speaker that day was Bishop Luigi Carli of Segni, Italy. He maintained that certain Council Fathers had carried their ecumenical preoccupations to excess. It was no longer possible, he charged, to speak about Our Lady; no one might be called heretical; no one might use the expression “Church militant”; and it was no longer proper to call attention to the inherent powers of the Catholic Church.

The days that followed witnessed much disagreement among the Council Fathers. Some speakers affirmed the pastoral character of the schema; others denied it. Some said that sufficient importance was given to the laity; others said that the treatment of the subject was too superficial. Valerian Cardinal Gracias of Bombay called for more delicacy in the treatment of Church-state relations. “The text as it stands,” he said, “is an open invitation to governments to martyr us.” Cardinal Bea objected to the manner in which Sacred Scripture was quoted, and he wanted pastoral preoccupations to be apparent from the text itself, and not only from some parenthetical exhortation added to the text.

Cardinal Bacci of the Roman Curia expressed belief that the Council Fathers were in accord on the doctrinal substance of the document, and that the schema would prove satisfactory after some corrections had been made in the style. Bishop Giulio Barbetta of the Roman Curia took issue with Bishop De Smedt, insisting that the text was neither triumphal nor clerical in tone, nor legalistic.

Maronite Bishop Michael Doumith of Sarba, Lebanon, a member of the Theological Commission, severely criticized the chapter on bishops. He said that, just as a mother gives her child a toy with a thousand warnings not to break it, so, too, “they give us, with a thousand cautions, a concept of the episcopacy.” He could not erase from his mind, he said, the painful impression that bishops, according to the schema, were no more than functionaries of the Pope. Bestowal of episcopal consecration on those who were not in charge of a diocese, he maintained, resulted in functionalism and secularization in the episcopacy. Cardinal Alfrink pointed out, in that connection, that some one third of the bishops in the Church were titular, and that no reference was made to them in the schema. (Titular bishops have no diocese of their own.)

On the first day of the debate on the schema, Cardinal Alfrink had called for a careful coordination of texts in order to avoid useless repetition in the Council agenda. This proposal, whose adoption was to alter profoundly the organizational structure of the Council, as well as the future form and content of the schemas, was supported in the following three meetings by Cardinals Leger, Suenens, and Montini.

On December 1, the Secretary General had opened the meeting by saying that the health of the Holy Father was showing improvement — an announcement greeted with loud and prolonged applause. At noon on December 5, Pope John appeared at his window to recite the Angelus, and many Council Fathers left the basilica early in order to see him. He spoke briefly, gave his blessing, and later said that their red robes had made them appear like a gigantic flame in the sun.

On the same day, December 5, carrying out the suggestions of the four cardinals, Pope John founded a new Coordinating Commission “to coordinate and direct the work of the Council.” It was to be composed exclusively of cardinals, with Cardinal Cicognani as President, and Cardinals Lienart, Dopfner, Suenens, Confalonieri, Spellman, and Urbani as members. The European alliance was represented by three members on this powerful six-member Commission, and therefore had control of 50 per cent of the seats. It was growing in influence and prestige, because it had had control of only 30 per cent of the seats in the Council Presidency since the beginning of the Council.

In addition to founding the Coordinating Commission, Pope John under the same date approved the norms which were to govern the Council in the interval between the first and second sessions. The first of these norms stipulated that, during that period, all the schemas should “be subjected once more to examination and improvement” by the Council commissions. This implied, of course, that not only the schema on the Church would have to be revised, but the dogmatic constitutions as well which had been attacked by Father Schillebeeckx and the Dutch bishops.

All the norms were read to the Council Fathers at the morning meeting of December 6, and they were recognized by the liberals as yet another victory over the Curia.

The Council Fathers were surprised to see Pope John walk into the Council hall at midday on Friday, December 7, the last business meeting of the session. He recited the Angelus with them and addressed them at length. He was back again the following day to take part in the solemn ceremonies which marked the close of the first session. He congratulated the Council Fathers on what they had accomplished, and urged them to be diligent in the work that lay ahead. “The first session,” he told them, “was like a slow and solemn introduction to he great work of the Council.” It was also understandable, he said, that in such a vast gathering “a few days” should have been needed to arrive at agreement on topics about which “in all charity and with good reason there existed sharply diverging views.” But even this manifestation of differences had had a providential place in the triumph of truth, “for it has shown to all the world the holy liberty that the sons of God enjoy in the Church.”

The Pope pointed out that modem communications made it possible for the intensive work on the preparation and revision of schemas to continue in the interval before the second session. He asked each bishop, “though preoccupied with pastoral administration, to continue to study and investigate the schemas that have been distributed, and also whatever else may yet be sent. In this way, the session which will begin in the month of September of next year . . . will proceed more surely, more steadily and with greater speed.” If preparations went forward seriously, there were grounds for hope that the Ecumenical Council might end at Christmas, 1963, which would be four hundred years after the conclusion of the Council of Trent.

The German theologian Father Joseph Ratzinger called the absence of any approved Council text at the end of the first session “the great, astonishing, and genuinely positive result of the first session.” The fact that no text had gained approval was evidence, he said, of “the strong reaction against the spirit behind the preparatory work.” This he called “the truly epoch-making character of the Council’s first session.”

Several days before the end of the first session, Father Hans Küng, a Swiss theologian on the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Tubingen, Germany, was invited to speak at the U. S. Bishops’ Press Panel. In his address, he mentioned the fact that Pope John, when asked in a private conversation why he had convoked the Council, had gone to his window, opened it, and said, “To let some fresh air into the Church.” Father Küng asserted jubilantly that what had once been the dream of an avant-garde group in the Church had “spread and permeated the entire atmosphere of the Church, due to the Council.” If for some reason the Council itself were to come to an end, the movement in the Church would not end, he said, and another Council would soon have to be called.

Father Küng was asked to enumerate some of the achievements of the first session. In reply, he said that “many of us” had feared that unfortunate statements might be officially issued by the Council on matters of dogma and ecumenism. So far, however, “all such attempts have been rejected.” This spirit in the Council had brought about a change of atmosphere throughout the Church. “No one who was here for the Council will go back home as he came. I myself never expected so many bold and explicit statements from the bishops on the Council floor.”

Father Kiing called the rejection of the schema on the sources of revelation “a great step in the right direction. It was something all of us in Germany had hoped for. But being a very small minority, we did not dream it possible.” In conclusion, he said that “perhaps the most decisive outcome of the first session is the realization on the part of the bishops that they, and not merely the Roman Curia, make up the Church.”

Bishop Sergio Mendez Arceo of Cuernavaca, Mexico, said at the end of the session, “It has been a most successful Council.” He noted that some Council Fathers had complained that there was too much talking and even too much repetition on the Council floor. “But I feel,” he explained, “that this was necessary, if we were all to find out what the others’ thoughts were. St. Peter’s basilica, where our meetings were held, was like a giant pressure cooker which rapidly and profoundly transformed the outlook of the bishops of the entire world.”

Rejection of schemas and rapid transformations of outlook were the earmarks of the first session of Vatican II.