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

[Stone]

THE SECOND SESSION
September 29 to December 4, 1963


PREPARING FOR THE SECOND SESSION

If the words of Father Küng were true—that “no one who was here for the Council will go back as he came”—they were no more true for anyone than for the German-speaking bishops and their theologians. They had come to the first session of the Council, hoping that they might win some concessions. They returned home, conscious that they had achieved complete victory. And they were confident that numberless other victories were yet to come.

When early in the first session the Council Fathers elected to office seventeen of the twenty-one candidates for Council Commissions proposed by the more than two hundred United States bishops, it almost seemed as though the Council was looking to them for leadership. But as the weeks of the first session passed, the American bishops gave the impression of being too retiring and too disunited to take over leadership. Was it because their periti had prepared no program for them? There had been nothing retiring or disunited, however, about the bishops from the Rhine countries. They had shown at the first session how important it was to have a specific text to fight for. The schema on the liturgy had been such a text, and the alliance was able to operate effectively because it knew beforehand what it wanted, and what it did not want.

The deadline for amendments to the schema on the Church was February 28, 1963, and the German-speaking bishops and theologians, for their part, set to work immediately. They decided to hold a meeting of all German-speaking Council fathers at Munich on February 5 and 6 to prepare a detailed analysis of the schema and draw up practical suggestions for its revision. Representatives from other European alliance countries were invited to attend the meeting: among others, Bishop Jan van Dodewaard of Haarlem, Holland; Coadjutor Bishop Leon Elchinger of Strasbourg, France; and Father John Schiitte, Superior General of the Divine Word Missionaries, who would be well placed to communicate the views of the alliance to the conference of superiors general in Rome. All this organizational activity centered around Cardinal Dopfner, who was also a member of the Coordinating Commission of the Council, and who communicated to that meeting the decisions arrived at by that Commission at its first session in the Vatican, from January 21 to 27. Two significant decisions made at that session had been to treat the schema on the Blessed Virgin Mary independently of the schema on the Church, and to reduce the latter to four chapters.

The Munich meeting produced a detailed criticism of the schema on the Church, as well as a substitute schema of forty-six articles. It was divided into five chapters, as Cardinal Suenens had suggested, rather than into four chapters, as the Coordinating Commission had decreed. The analysis and substitute schema were sent to Pope John XXIII and Cardinal Ottaviani, President of the Theological Commission, together with a special introduction. This stated that the analysis listed reasons “why it seems that the existing schema must undergo a thorough revision.” It stated further that, in drawing up the substitute schema, the German-speaking Fathers had continually borne in mind the general norms laid down by the Pope on December 5, 1962, at the end of the first session. Those norms had insisted “especially upon the pastoral aspect” of Council decrees. The introduction likewise stated that the German-speaking Council Fathers had also borne in mind the directives of the Coordinating Commission, in particular, “that a connection be shown with the First Vatican Council, that the role of the Supreme Pontiff and his primacy should be recalled and should be presented at the same time from an ecumenical point of view, and that the significance of episcopal collegiality and of the episcopacy itself should be placed in a clear light.”

Each of the' Council Fathers in Austria and Germany received copies of these documents from Cardinal Dopfner under date of February 16.

In addition, they received a commentary on the substitute schema, together with a bibliography of some thirty-five titles of theological works in German and French. The introductory sentence of the commentary explained that the purpose of the schema was to avoid certain shortcomings of the schema on the Church drawn up by the Theological Preparatory Commission. The substitute schema was much shorter, and sought to be more pastoral in tone and to correspond to the spirit of ecumenism. “In no way does it intend to keep silent about or to conceal Catholic truths, not even those which Protestants either doubt or deny. However, it always tries to give consideration to Protestant objections, but without, of course, treating those objections explicitly.”

The German-speaking Council Fathers were now well prepared for the opening debate of the second session, the schema on the Church. Still further preparations were to be made at a second conference held in August of the same year, at Fulda.

It is worth noting that the opening words of the substitute schema, “Lumen gentium” (“Light of nations”), taken from Pope John’s address of September 11, 1962, were subsequently adopted as the opening words and official title of the Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church.