Has the Vatican War been Lost?

If you understand French, I highly recommend viewing this film while it’s still online:

It is called “La Guerre Perdue du Vatican?” and it is a 2-hour documentary by the French film-maker Patrick Benquet. There are many interesting interviews, from both traditionalists and progressives.

Benquet has strong socialist leanings, and he positions the “cold war” of the Vatican as taking place along the lines of the poor versus the wealthy. Hence liberation theology and the worker-priest movement play a major role in the drama. He interviews an elderly priest who had been a member of the movement until its suppression by Pius XII:

We are not priests of the cult – we are sent by Christ to be witnesses of the good news to the poor (Luke 2) – to bring the good news to the poor. The idea of Pius XII was that a priest is a man for the parish and for worship, full stop. It was tragic for us, because some deep connections, formed from living in solidarity, were entirely broken.

The connections with broader issues such as religious liberty and ecumenism and with the liturgy are well drawn. There is a lot of interesting historical footage, including some truly grim liturgies from both the conservative and progressive sides. There is coverage of the Lefebvrists, the FSSP, Opus Dei and the Legionnaires of Christ.

The film concludes with Pope Benedict at World Youth Day in Madrid, sheltering beneath a white umbrella as a storm rages around the platform he is standing on. An Austrian priest says

If the Church doesn’t ask itself these questions, if it doesn’t connect with modernity, it won’t survive. It will be nothing more than a museum, no longer a living Church.

And the narrator ends the film:

Rome has betrayed the promise of Vatican II. The Church is itself the problem. … The parentheses close again. The Catholic Church turns in on itself, incapable of surviving in the world, incapable of fulfilling the hope of Pope John XXIII.

Yes, the film is tendentious. And if your idea of Catholic social doctrine aligns neatly with that of the Acton Institute (e.g. that St Joseph was a well-off entrepreneur, a carpenter of the upper middle class), you will not like it. It leans somewhat on a ‘spirit of Vatican II’ idea, not just on quotes from conciliar documents. It supports these assertions, however, with extensive interviews from bishops and theologians who were present at the Council, including Archbishop Loris Capovilla, who had been a close friend and private secretary of Cardinal Roncalli, first as Patriarch of Venice and later as Pope John XXIII.

The film is well made and well worth watching for the historical footage alone. As far as I know, it is not available with English dubbing or subtitles. That is unfortunate; I hope someone will make this documentary more widely available.

Jonathan Day

I am a writer and consultant. My church home is the Jesuit Church of the Immaculate Conception (Farm Street Church) in central London, where I serve at the altar and help with adult education at the Mount Street Jesuit Centre. I recently became the chair of Council at Newman University, a small Catholic university in Birmingham. I write here in a purely personal capacity.

Please leave a reply.

Comments

75 responses to “Has the Vatican War been Lost?”

  1. Jordan Zarembo

    Thanks much Jonathan. I’ll be sure to watch it in parts over the next week or two, slowly and with many rewinds. This might well be the one of the greatest tests of my pitiful French.

    What do you mean by “grim liturgies”? Ideologically troubling, poorly celebrated, aesthetically tacky? Some or all of these points? I am interested in learning more of your perspective before jumping into the documentary.

    Reply
    1. Jonathan Day Avatar
      Jonathan Day

      Jordan, I’ll give just a few examples.

      Traditional: at around 21:10 there is a liturgy in St Peter’s; the celebrant (Pope Paul VI?) groans out Gloria in excelsis deo in a thoroughly tuneless way.

      Modern: at about 34:00 we have a “folk liturgy” with guitars and the host given out like crisps at a party. More tuneless singing.

      Traditional: at 35:30 Mgr Lefebvre stands in his mitre and gloves, gesticulating at the people as he condemns modernism.

      Modern: 40:33, a cactus liturgy; and at 45:42, what I can only describe as a circus Mass, complete with costumes

      Traditional: 1:07:00, a cardinal who looks like Chris Grady in cappa magna

      One more sample. At the start of the film, Abbé Philippe Laguérie harangues his flock, denouncing the corrupt world with its “deviance, libertinage, license, turpitudes and sex.” Then he virtually shouts at the interviewer: “It’s finished, my sixty-eighters. Vatican II is finished! It is part of the past, an evil past.”

      Later, at 1:05:23, he says: “The revolution of Benedict XVI was a revolution just as big as the revolution of Vatican II — what’s different is that this revolution takes us back to the essentials.”

      Hearing this “hermeneutic of rupture” I assumed that this guy was an ardent Lefebvrist. But no, he is a leader of the Institut du Bon Pasteur (IBP), a traditionalist organisation supposedly in communion with Rome. Yes, well.

      Reply
      1. Samuel J. Howard

        But no, he is a leader of the Institut du Bon Pasteur (IBP), a traditionalist organisation supposedly in communion with Rome. Yes, well.

        Actually in communion with Rome, unless you’ve recently been given the authority to issue excommunications.

      2. Richard Malcolm

        Abbe Laguérie was part of the SSPX, but was expelled by them in 2004 for criticizing the Campos deal. He founded the IBP in 2006 with other similarly situated traditionalist priests as society of apostolic life under the authority of Ecclesia Dei – so yes, Sam is right: They are fully in communion with Rome.

        But I suspect Jonathan knows all or most of this, and was just slipping in a bit of sarcasm.

      3. Samuel J. Howard

        But I suspect Jonathan knows all or most of this, and was just slipping in a bit of sarcasm.

        Oh certainly, it’s just the double standard that gets to me. It’s unacceptable (reasonably) to speak this way about actually seperated brethren (like Episcopalians) but it’s OK to sneer at fellow members of the Roman Catholic Church in good standing.

      4. Jim McKay

        I think “supposedly in communion with Rome” is not particularly inappropriate for someone who declared “Vatican II is finished! It is part of the past, an evil past.” The attitude is opposite to the willing submission of the min and heart to magisterial teaching, not just dissent from it.

      5. Peter Haydon

        Jonathan
        The Abbé describes the past as “mauvais”, horrible, not evil, “mal”.
        Think of the end of the Our Father, “délivre-nous de Mal.”
        The decline in numbers attending Mass, the discord in the Church and the various scandals would be enough to justify the description “mauvais” without indicating that all the decisions taken were evil. That might be what he thinks but is not, in this case, what he said.
        Incidentally you may have seen in the recent Journal du Pélerin which comes with Lourdes magazine that Bishop Perrier’s last act was to inaugurate a new choir whilst regretting the destruction of much after Vatican II.
        Anyhow thank you for finding this. It was broadcast a little to late in the evening if one had to go to work the next day.

  2. Fr. Allan J. McDonald

    It seems to me that the worker-priest movement was born of a profound sense of clericalism of that period where only the priest could go into the world as a regular worker and make the connections between himself and the workers with the Church. I thought permanent deacons were meant to carry on this work but with today’s sense of the dignity of all the baptized it would no longer seem to be a need for priests to do but for the laity.

    In terms of the survival of the Church, it seems that there is an over emphasis in the quote above on what we must do (this turning inward rather than turning outward, the horizontal gone extreme to the exclusion of the vertical, meaning toward God). I wish I understood French (or it had English subtitles) because it does seem to be a fascinating story being told but without knowing French the ambiance of the film with its dreary music makes it appear to me to be a very pessimistic and thus non-Christo-centric sort of propaganda, but I could be wrong given I can’t understand French. But it does seem dark, moody and negative and seems to betray our central belief that we are after all an Easter people.

    Reply
    1. Brigid Rauch

      I would like to see worker-priests just to get more priests out of the clerical ghetto!

      Reply
      1. Fr. Allan J. McDonald

        Most priests I know are worker priests, a term that implies that what most priests do in their parish isn’t work. That’s a rather sad commentary and could indicate “laity-ism” if I can coin that phrase.

      2. Todd Flowerday

        Perhaps it would be more healthy for priests to have been workers before they were ordained.

    2. Ann Riggs

      Horizontal and vertical elements in the Church, in our lives, and in our liturgies, are not dialectical, but dialogical, two distinct-but-inseparable moments of the same movement toward God. It’s not a zero-sum game; the more we love God, the more we love others, and the more we love others, the more we love and please God. If the horizontal seems to “detract” from the vertical, then neither the horizontal nor the vertical are done well.

      Reply
      1. Fr. Allan J. McDonald

        Go points, it is not either/or but both. But I must say that the horizontal without the vertical is going to make being Church a terrible disappointment, because a goodly number of God’s people in the clergy and laity can be quite disappointing. But the vertical approach without love of neighbor and placing the vertical in the context of God saving “us poor miserable sinners” seems to miss the point of God’s activity in salvation history altogether. If you’ve ever ministered in a prison that allows for Mass, the horizontal approach without the vertical is a bit scary!

    3. Bill deHaas

      Allan – how sad. You obviously know little to nothing about the worker-priest movement; why it came about; its raison d’etre; its prime leaders; etc. and its connection to the WWII period, striking back at the evils of fascism, nazism, etc.

      Deacons were ressourced and reinstituted at VII for reasons and purposes completely different from the worker-priest movement. Worker-priests had nothing to do with *clericalism* – that comment only reveals your ignorance.

      Reply
      1. Fr. Allan J. McDonald

        Bill thanks for the sophomoric insult and lowering the level of the conversation here and I guess I’ll have to say, I’m rubber, you’re glue, everything bounces off me and sticks to you.” God bless.

  3. Hereward Wake

    Maybe I’m just gloomy of late, but both progressives and traditionalists have lost the war in the Vatican. The lukewarm have inherited the earth.

    To derail a little, Fr. Allan brings up an interesting question. Why did the restoration of the diaconate project not catch on very broadly?

    Reply
    1. Bill deHaas

      A few folks have done investigations – a few reasons that have been studied:
      – bishops who have no resources, money, or staff to implement and train deacons
      – bishops who reject the VII re-institution
      – bishops (including USA) who see deacons as threatening priesthood; sending a confusing message to folks about priesthood, etc.

      Reply
      1. Hereward Wake

        An interesting problem. One of the few VII ideas that had a real promise. There have been embraces of far worse mixed messages about the priesthood since then.

    2. Brigid Rauch

      Maybe it’s because deacons are required to take a retroactive vow of celibacy should their wives predecease them?

      Reply
      1. Paul Inwood

        This requirement is being routinely dispensed by Rome when the occasion arises.

      2. Jeffrey Pinyan

        Paul – stats? I know that in certain cases (a deacon with a young child, especially a newborn) deacons are permitted to marry again. How routinely is this requirement dispensed?

  4. Dwayne Bartles

    We are not priests of the cult – we are sent by Christ to be witnesses of the good news to the poor (Luke 2) – to bring the good news to the poor. The idea of Pius XII was that a priest is a man for the parish and for worship, full stop.

    Like Fr. Allan, I can only see this kind of ideology as hearkening back to a strictly pre-Vatican II clerical mentality. Being witnesses, bringing good news, standing with the poor — those are within the competency of the priesthood of all believers, not some special priestly caste. Hard to believe this kind of paleolithic thinking still survives, and on the 50th anniversary of the Council at that.

    Reply
    1. Bill deHaas

      See comment above – you need to read and study the why and wherefores of the movement – and yes, it was primarily prior to VII but led to many of the VII reframing and documents. *paleolithic thinking* – only in your mind.

      Those who don’t understand the past are doomed to repeat the failures of the past – exactly what this film is highlighting and what Todd is pointing out.

      Reply
  5. John Ridgway

    I wish this was in English or with some subtitles as I don’t know any French.

    Reply
  6. Todd Flowerday

    I may see a timid and impulsive hierarchy pull back from reform and renewal, but it’s not the task of any generation to complete the work for a perfect Reign of God, even assuming it were possible.

    God’s call to people remains a constant. If the bishops and curia ignore or subvert it in the name of narcissism or fear, that’s a cause for lament on my part, but it doesn’t mean I pull back from my tasks. Including the criticism of those who have promoted antigospel values.

    Reply
    1. Shane Maher

      Ironic to see that you perceive pullback from reform and renewal. From my perspective, we are in the middle of a time of heightened reform & renewal in the Church. Liturgy is one visible area but we see it in certain other aspects of ecclesiastical life as well e.g. religious communities (LCWR).

      Reply
    2. Todd Flowerday

      I think the title “reform of the reform” says it quite well–it’s not about worship itself, but about undoing the good work others have made on behalf of liturgical renewal.

      I think we are in a typical post-conciliar situation: the Council has put the Church on the path to reform but some believers have cold feet. The pullback from renewal is simple human nature.

      But I also see great opportunity in our age. I don’t have to hang my hat on ousting my adversaries and remaking the Body in my own image, as many conservatives and traditionalists do. I have more than enough to keep me busy, including my own metanoia.

      Reply
      1. Samuel J. Howard

        I think the title “reform of the reform” says it quite well–it’s not about worship itself, but about undoing the good work others have made on behalf of liturgical renewal.

        Nonsense. First off, you’ve got some sort of question begging going on. It’s not about worship itself, because you’re taking as a premiss that it’s not about improving worship. Second, the “reform of the reform” folks are precisely the ones who aren’t seeking to undo all of the reforms… hence the name!

        I don’t have to hang my hat on ousting my adversaries and remaking the Body in my own image, as many conservatives and traditionalists do.

        If you’re not interested in “ousting [your] adversaries and remaking the Body in [your] own image,” what the heck is the point of your constant attacks on people who espouse the “reform of the reform” and “conservatives and traditionalists”? Is your point merely that your group is ascendant and that you’re engaged in consolidation of the gains already made against your adversaries rather than their ouster? That’s hardly standing above the fray.

      2. Todd Flowerday

        “(W)hat the heck is the point of your constant attacks on people who espouse the ‘reform of the reform’ and ‘conservatives and traditionalists’?”

        There are many:

        1. I think many misdiagnose the state of affairs in liturgy and music.
        2. I think there’s a lack of appreciation for the slice of 2,000 bishops who saw a pastoral need to conduct a significant reform of the liturgy.
        3. I don’t think they have their eye on the bigger picture, especially evangelization.
        4. Too much attachment to the unreformed 1962 rite, which should be retired.
        5. Liturgy should be less clergy-centered and more grace-centered.
        6. Many reform2 developments, including the six candlestick-on-the-altar thing, strike me as faddish.

        To be clear, I have many friends among conservative Catholics, and I think they bring a needed perspective to liturgy. However, this isn’t about the ascendancy of ideologies in some sort of tit-for-tat game–it’s about a spiritual discernment for the good of worshipers both on the local level as well as for the universal Church. I’m concerned for the huge lack of intellectual and theological curiosity in much of the commentary I see from traditionalists. I think that both progressives and conservatives would do well to listen more carefully to the other, acknowledge the gifts of each, and move forward in a more harmonious spirit of cooperation. I don’t have a problem using strong language saying it. Unless, of course, you think that we should all be nice about church stuff, smiling and polite and accepting of everyone … ?

  7. Claire Mathieu

    The movie talks about a period open to experiments of all sorts, and I think that the picture of hosts being passed around like chips is one of the illustrations of those boundless experimentations.

    The movie paints a dramatic story and enjoys showing extremes.

    The ending is profoundly pessimistic.

    Reply
  8. Jonathan Day Avatar
    Jonathan Day

    ‘Clericalism’ in the mouths of some traditionalists has become an all-purpose, vapid insult: it seems to mean ‘anything I don’t approve of.’

    One dictionary definition (Merriam-Webster) defines clericalism as ‘a policy of maintaining or increasing the power of a religious hierarchy’. Wiktionary says that is it is ‘political or secular power invested in members of the clergy.’ And the Oxford English Dictionary gives ‘Clerical principles; clerical rule or influence; clerical partisanship.’

    Fr Neuhaus – no progressive he – writes that

    The problem of clericalism is composed of several problems. It is the problem of a caste that arrogates to itself undue authority, that makes unwarranted claims to wisdom, even to having a monopoly on understanding the mind of God. The consequence is the great weakening of the Church by denigrating or excluding the many gifts of the Spirit present in the people who are the Church. The problem of clericalism arises when “the church” acts in indifference, or even contempt, toward the people who are the Church.

    Is the complaint about the worker-priests that they were seeking secular power? Arrogating authority to themselves? It sure doesn’t look like that to me.

    The worker-priests quoted in the film said that they were doing what they did because Jesus had lived as a poor man amongst the poor. The narrator – who is, as I noted, a socialist, and likely biased – claimed that Pope Pius XII stopped the worker-priest movement because he feared it would lead to communism. Pius XII never seemed particularly worried about clericalism.

    Reply
    1. Fr. Allan J. McDonald

      I think that the mentality of the clericalism of the Worker Priests is not as you say a seeking of secular power, although one wonders, I think of the Jesuit, Father Drinan who was elected to Congress in the 1970’s in the USA and asked to step down by Pope John Paul II later. But it indicates an “implicit” clericalism that only a priest can help the laity by working with them in secular jobs and in part this fits Fr Neuhaus’ description of clericalism rather neatly. It also implies that the priest’s work in the parish with its many facets of ministry isn’t adequate enough and that poverty is just a lack of material wealth when in fact it also includes a lack of spiritual wealth and this could in fact be the case for many who are materially rich.
      In our diocese in the 1970’s and in my current parish, our bishop allowed the parochial vicar here to get a law degree from a local university as this, it was thought at the time, would help him to be more effective in his ministry with the poor. What that implies is that being a priest and doing priestly work wasn’t enough, he needed a secular degree to really fulfill his vocation. Now in the name of God, why couldn’t a well formed Catholic lay lawyer do this for the priest? Why does the priest also have to be a lawyer? If that isn’t clericalism, I don’t know what is.

      Reply
      1. Jonathan Day Avatar
        Jonathan Day

        I still don’t read this as clercalism. There is no implication that only a priest can help the laity by working alongside them.

        Perhaps what you are saying is that in the case of the worker priests and of your parochial vicar, taking on secular activity puts the priest “out of place”; he has invaded the “space” of the laity by doing what is rightly theirs to do. Liturgically, this is like criticising a celebrant for leaving the sanctuary to give the sign of peace to lay members of the assembly. In this model, the nave is the place of the laity, the sanctuary (presbyterium) the place of the ordained, and the altar rail keeps the two spaces rigidly separate.

        If a woman comes forward to read the scriptures from the ambo, some will shout “clericalism!” since she is usurping the place of an ordained lector. If the deacon goes into the nave to comfort a crying child, he is taking the place of the layperson who should be able to do that.

        The presumption is that in each case, the “proper” vocation is insufficient – the priests can’t be fulfilled unless they become workers or lawyers, the reader can’t feel she has participated in the Mass unless she comes forward to read.

        I think the presumption is often wrong; what is going on here may not be “clericalism” as much as a blurring of lines that have been drawn too finely. This breaking down of structures is happening throughout society: within the family, where Father is no longer lord of the clan; in the relationship between aristocrats and the rest of us (cf. recent proposals for an elected House of Lords); in business and universities.

        It is especially blurred in the world of communication and publications – in large part because of social media. It is ironic that some of the loudest cries for traditional structures (e.g. restoration of a “real” monarchy) come from bloggers and their (often anonymous) commentators.

        Is this breakdown in structure A Good Thing or A Bad Thing? Whatever it is, it’s not “clericalism”.

      2. Samuel J. Howard

        I think the presumption is often wrong; what is going on here may not be “clericalism” as much as a blurring of lines that have been drawn too finely. … Is this breakdown in structure A Good Thing or A Bad Thing? Whatever it is, it’s not “clericalism”.

        Your complaint that the lines are drawn too finely or that the breakdown in structure is not clericalism is beside the point. Clericalism is a partial explanation for these actions, not the actions themselves.

        It’s perfectly fine for a person not instituted in that office to to substitute for the absent instituted lector. It becomes clericalism not based on the action, but based on the motivation.

        Similarly, anti-clericalism was a force in the French Revolution, or abolition a force behind the American Civil War, but the Revolution was not anti-clericalism and the Civil War not abolition.

      3. Fr. Allan J. McDonald

        Jonathan, there is a mixing of apples and oranges and a misplaced liturgical ecclesiology. Clericalism in the liturgy is if the priest does all the roles including those assigned to the laity, such as bringing a guitar to Mass to lead the singing (which I’ve seen done!) and doing the readings when in fact a lay person should or the priest imposing his personality on the celebration by an affectivity that derails the liturgical rites.
        But in the secular world, where Vatican II teaches the laity have primary responsibility, that is a different ball of wax. Lumen Gentium emphasized that the distinct call of the laity is in the secular world, where they do the work of the Church by the way they live out their everyday lives:

        “It is the special vocation of the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will. They live in the world, in each and every one of the world’s occupations and callings and in the ordinary circumstances of social and family life—. There they are called by God to contribute to the sanctification of the world from within, like leaven, in the spirit of the Gospel, by fulfilling their own particular duties.”

        This mindset would not have been present during the worker priest movement but certainly the worker priest movement was a part of an implicit clericalism that Vatican II taught clergy and laity should no longer exist by showing the profound role of the laity as a priestly people in their own domain.

  9. Cathy Wattebot

    I can’t see clericalism in worker priests – I can remember a few, and they were ordinary people in dress and speech, able to communicate and understand directly. The documentary comments near the end on the difficulties of the lifestyle prescribed in the present by the authorities. With admission to priesthood now restricted by sex, orientation, mandatory celibacy and other tests, there is an inevitable shortage of candidates, who are then put at risk from what the narrator described as isolation and frustration.

    The film conjures up the huge diversity of the French church from Jean Vanier to Lefebvre, and the classic gallic vulgarity of Cardinal Vingt-Trois a few years ago on women: “It’s not enough just to wear a skirt, they need to have something in their heads.” Apparently this remark gave birth to the masthead of the “Skirt Committee” opposing sexism in the church.

    Reply
  10. Jack Rakosky

    Beyond the problem that this film is in French is the problem that Europe is very different from the USA religion wise. Actually it is probably very different from the rest of the world, religion wise. Gutierrez developed liberation theology because he did not find much of Vatican II relevant to Latin America. JPII came along and attacked liberation theology in terms of his experience with communism. He once told Cardinal Mahony that the USA was the only place where Vatican II had succeeded in renewing parish life (I guess that was in comparison to Europe where much of the renewal has taken place outside parishes in the “movements”).

    We still have a Vatican that is very dominated by European thinking and which spends a lot of time selecting American bishops who are tied into that thinking, like that secularism is the real threat to Catholicism. The main threat to Catholicism for many centuries in Europe has been the worldliness of the bishops and Popes, their love of money, status, and power. In recent decades that has come to infect our American bishops. So now we have American Bishops joining with the Religious Right to alienate our youth from Christianity because of the hypocrisy of the clergy in their pursuit of money, status. and power.

    An Orthodox priest a few decades ago told me that the most valuable part of his formation was the several years he spent between seminary and ordination working in a steel mill while he searched for a wife.

    Reply
    1. Paul Inwood

      Jack, I wouldn’t agree that the Vatican is dominated by European thinking. It is dominated by Roman thinking, which is something else altogether.

      Vatican II has certainly succeeded in renewing parish life in most of the European countries, but France is a particular problem (and an exception) because of its traditionally anti-clerical and secularist society, and because of its abysmally low religious practice — much lower than elsewhere. In many country districts the local mayors were Communists, though that has started to change in the past 30 years. Lots of people are unaware of that.

      I don’t find too many differences across Europe from the USA. The most noticeable ones are in terms of scale, and money. The US Church is much larger, and wealthier, than the others (although the German Church is not exactly poor).

      Reply
  11. Chris McDonnell

    Reading Yves Congar’s book ” My Journal of the Council”, published in English for the first time last month (Dominican Press Dublin) gives a very clear insight in to the stresses and strains of the Vatican II debates in the 60s. The centralism of Rome, of the desire then by the Holy Office to exercise a domineering control over the Council Proceedings, is in danger of being repeated. It has not gone away. The paper given by Professor Tracey Rowlands at a Symposiumin in Leeds recently (reported in the Tablet June 30th Pg39) makes depressing reading, with Edward Schillebeeckx among others, criticised for “modernity” indicates the direction that some are now taking. It is a matter of concern that as we approach the 50th anniversary of the start of the Council, that serious attempts are being made to undermine the work of many fine theologians and the overwhelming wishes of the Council Fathers.
    Chris McDonnell UK

    Reply
    1. Dwayne Bartles

      Then again, why should their dead hands still be controlling us half a century later? Surely the directive to “read the signs of the times” does not mean for us to be reading the signs of the mid-20th century in perpetuity. Similarly, theology is going to grow and evolve; it can’t forever be chained to the bygone era of Congar and Schillebeeckx, can it?

      I wouldn’t be the first to observe how quickly progressivism can turn into a strange form of reactionary conservatism (one thinks of the “permanent revolution” in Cuba). But I certainly wouldn’t like to see today’s theologians and liturgists (and laypeople!) shackled to the kind of practices and thinking that prevailed 50 or 60 years ago because they have been etched in stone as “modern.” Sure, way back then one could say — and justifiably — that centralized control was old-fashioned and devolution and collegiality are modern. Eventually, though, even the latter become antiquated, and the signs of the times — our times, or our grandchildren’s — may point in a different direction.

      Reply
      1. Joe O'Leary

        The bygone era of Congar and Schillebeeckx also happens to be that of Vatican II. When I hear Abp Di Noia say that we cannot let Vatican II be interpreted by the liberal theologians who happened to be there, I see an effort to undo the fact that the Conciliar statements were supported by a vast majority at the Council, and that the Vatican since then, as Jonathan’s movie shows, have adopted attitudes discredited at the Council, continuing the curial opposition. Paradoxically, those who pan the Council theologians (including also Rahner, Kung) are themselves unable to find any theologians who can equal them, and are forced to go back to still older figures or to anticonciliar reactionaries whose discourse falls behind that of the council theologians and is parasitic on it. In any case, what is the basis of this antipathy to Congar and Schillebeeckx — it is based on actually studying them?

      2. Brendan McInerny

        Joe –
        I agree with you that antipathy to any theologian is misplaced if not connected with serious study of them. However, Rahner, Schillebeeckx and Conger were 1) not the only theologians at the Council and 2) not the authorities of the Council. In that light, the criticism of ‘liberal interpretations’ of the Council (which of course might not be directed at Schillebeeckx, Rahner, or Congar specifically) may very well be exactly as it sounds, a critique of an interpretation and not necessarily (though of course its possible) a critique of the Council itself. I notice a tendency on my part to misread you as conflating the Council with the Concilium crowd’s interpretation, which I did with your comment below, too.
        The tendency to equate ‘what we like’ with the Council is of course a wide spread phenomenon – except among those who equate it with ‘what we don’t like’.
        As for your comment that “those who pan the Council theologians are unable to to find any theologians who can equal them” and therefore must rely on older figures or “anticonciliar reactionaries”, I am unable to understand what you mean. Who are those who pan the Council theologians? And which theologians used by those who pan Counciliar theologians are an “anticonciliar reactionaries”? Once again I’m left wondering why it is that Schillebeeckx, Congar (and now Rahner and Kung) are “Council theologians” who have no rivals in quality but you don’t mention de Lubac and Ratzinger (except negatively below).

  12. Matt Connolly

    Okay, Dwayne, let me say it. Centralized control is certainly not old fashioned. It renews itself quickly in the fears and greed of those in charge, those we pray for, those we count on the Spirit to guide. Collegiality, better described as faith that the Holy Spirit leads you as well as me even if we disagree, is not a devolution. If we are shackled to the thoughts of 50 years ago, it’s just as bad as clinging to those from 500 years ago, or 1000, or even 2000. Faith implies growth and change, not fear and control and adherance to some imagined previous perfection. And when liturgy doesn’t reflect our present lives and faith, instead of calling us to more it repels us into fastidious feedback loops which do not nurture us nor serve the Lord.

    Rant ended. I feel better. Thanks for listening.

    Reply
  13. Joe O'Leary

    Shackled to the thoughts of 50 years ago … what has time to do with thought? Marx is enjoying a huge comeback just now. Good thought continues to exert a vitalizing influence for centuries, even millennia.

    Maybe Concilium theology has not developed as dynamically as it should have done, perhaps due to the lack of a healthy theological community for discussion (a lack caused in part by the repression of theology by the CDF). But anti-Concilium theology has been more sterile, despite all the surface excitement. It will stand as a black mark against the later de Lubac, Balthasar and Ratzinger that their thought is tainted by hostility to the Council.

    Reply
    1. Brendan McInerny

      I agree with you that time shouldn’t have much influence on the value of ideas. But isn’t that a major component of the thought of the 3 ‘anti-Concilium’ theologians you mention. Perhaps you could be clearer on what’s sterile about de Lubac, Ratzinger, and Balthasar so I can understand your assessment of the two major European theological parties? (And what does ‘dynamic’ mean with respect to theology? and why is it a desired characteristic?)
      In general, I’m highly skeptical that dividing people into such camps is helpful. I know that the two journals often saw themselves as promoting two different ways of doing theology after the Council and two ways of thinking about theology that went into the Council. However, if time shouldn’t invalidate ideas, neither should personal associations (which in some cases weren’t all that strict).
      As to your ‘black mark’ comment, how exactly is it a mark against de Lubac, Ratzinger, or Balthasar? Is it toward the Council itself or toward an interpretation of the Council? It seems in your comment that you’ve sort of blurred the distinction between the Council and Concilium theology – which is one of the things Ratzinger in particular was aiming at yes?

      Reply
  14. Joe O'Leary

    “Sure, way back then one could say — and justifiably — that centralized control was old-fashioned and devolution and collegiality are modern.”

    What a flippant attitude to an Ecumenical Council, as if it were some sort of fashion statement. The Council’s stress on collegiality has deep roots in biblical and patristic thought.

    Reply
    1. Samuel J. Howard

      The problem of course being that if we take your “high view” of the 2nd Vatican Council, we’re placed in an very awkward position regarding the previous councils, which were just as much Ecumenical Councils.

      Reply
      1. Joe O'Leary

        So you espouse the hermeneutics of rupture denounced so often by Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict? If you read Newman on Development, you may find the answer to thie problem, which seems to me artificial.

    2. Samuel J. Howard

      So you espouse the hermeneutics of rupture denounced so often by Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict?

      No, I’ve done exactly the opposite. Development doesn’t make the previous doctrine false though… that’s the whole point of the idea of development. But to have a 2nd Vatican Council with development of doctrine, you have to believe in the idea of development beyond the previous Council. You sit here yelling, “Vatican II, but no further! Respect the Ecumenical Council.” But in fact, we can develop beyond the statements there, just like Vatican II could develop beyond the statements in previous Councils. (And that leaves aside the vast swathes of the council that are merely disciplinary and can therefore be flat out contradicted and rejected.)

      Reply
      1. Joe O'Leary

        Development does not make the previous doctrine false … is what Lefebvrites claim about the Church’s teaching on Judaism, religious freedom, and extra ecclesiam nulla salus. What Ratzinger points out is that the surface contradiction goes with a deeper continuity on the level of principle.

        I do not say “Vatican II and no further” — in fact I hope to see Vatican III in my lifetime. But the retrogressive movements that go against Vatican II lack the marks of authentic development.

        “the vast swathes of the council that are merely disciplinary and can therefore be flat out contradicted and rejected” — another meme directed at burying the Council as event, and burying the Spirit of the Council.

        What the Church in Council decided cannot be flat out contradicted and rejected, though it can be superseded by further decisions of the world’s bishops (and not singlehandedly by the Pope). In any case the vast swathes you refer to are not disciplinary, but pastoral (there is little that is merely disciplinary). The Council expresses the pastoral wisdom of the world’s bishops, and even without a high view of the authority of Councils, that is, even without belief in the Holy Spirit as the guide and preserver in truth of the successors of the Apostles, it would be foolish to mock the gathered wisdom of a “great generation” of pastors and theologians.

      2. Jeffrey Pinyan

        “the vast swathes of the council that are merely disciplinary and can therefore be flat out contradicted and rejected” — another meme directed at burying the Council as event, and burying the Spirit of the Council.

        Then what about those who are guilty of “burying” earlier Councils and their spirits, when past disciplinary measures have been superseded by newer ones?

        What about the disciplinary parts of Vatican II that have been flat out contradicted and rejected, and not by traditionalists seeking to go backwards, but by progressives who perhaps regard these directives as concessions to the past, or out of alignment with the Council’s true spirit?

  15. Joe O'Leary

    “the signs of the times — our times, or our grandchildren’s — may point in a different direction.”

    In the direction of sectarianism, perhaps?

    Or have you any positive indication that a new wisdom, superior to the Council’s, has emerged?

    Reply
    1. Thomas Dalby

      Joe

      “The wisdom of the Council” has always been readily distinguishable from the “wisdom” of the spirit of the Council.

      The current generation of Catholics are taking their ressourcement from a different source to your generation, why do you have a problem with that? Was there a particular revelation imparted to the generation of the Council that has not been granted to Catholics in generations before or after the 1960s?

      Reply
      1. Joe O'Leary

        How can you speak for “the current generation of Catholics” — many of them are versed in the ideas of the Council, especially on the collegial nature of the church, the role of the laity, the church’s mission to the world, the justice-and-peace dimension of its witness to the Kingdom, the spirit of ecumenism, respect for freedom of conscience and religious liberty, the repentant new appreciation of Judaism, the openess to the other religions in the conviction that the Holy Spirit works savingly through them and that they reflect the light of the divine Logos. Others may, as I fear, have fallen back into nostalgia for something dead and archaic served up by the prophets of doom. The “revelation” of Vatican II is as accessible today as in the 1960s, but is covered over by the noisy anticonciliar noises.

      2. Bill deHaas

        What source is this? Ratzinger who has made a 180 degree change from many of his peritus days?

        Of is the *different source* Trent, Vatican I – ignoring the reality that neither Trent nor Vatican I had the same level of knowledge, historical critical methods, or even basic access to church history, biblical expertise, etc. to be used as the *different* source.

        Church reaffirmed and settled the fact that scripture, tradition, and the sensus fidelium are the foundations for church understandings – it is a both/and approach vs. using a time limited period (e.g. Tridentine) as the primary source.

        Yes, there was a particular revelation imparted to the VII generation and leadership – since you can make a statement that there is revelation and then there is how the church expresses and lives out the revelation in any given period of time. Vatican II established that the church changes and grows – we are pilgrims on a faith journey. Revelation did not stop with the end of the apostolic period or even the death of Jesus. Any study of Vatican II indicates that the bishops tried to take earlier church expressions and lived experience, the *truths* of the First Millenium and reframe these to speak to the world (not just the church). Wisdom of the Council and the Wisdom of the spirit of the council – really comes down to who is doing the interpretation, how valid it is, etc.

        The usual meme, Joe.

      3. Thomas Dalby

        Bill

        Forgive me, but you are elevating the scholarship of the century between Vatican I and Vatican II to a dizzying height and in the fifty years after Vatican II scholars have reassessed some (by no means all) of the historical thinking about the first millennium.

        As you say, Bill, the Church reaffirmed and settled the fact that scripture, tradition, and the sensus fidelium are the foundations for church understandings: the fact that many (not all) of the children of the Vatican II generation are looking to different parts of the Tradition of the Church for their inspiration should not be alarming to you, it is just a continuation of the process that the Council set in motion.

        If the Church follows the reactionary path proposed by some of the critics of the new ressourcement, and freezes itself in the mores of the last century, it will be no better able to adapt to the needs of the present and the future than if it had ossified into its preconcilliar form.

      4. Joe O'Leary

        Thomas Dalby, you keep saying that the present generation has a more correct view of the patristic church than the fathers and theologians of Vatican II. Could you specify what you mean by this claim? In particular, could you specify in what way catholic theology today has attained views on the main theme of the Council, ecclesiology, that transcend the historical perspective of Congar et al.?

      5. Thomas Dalby

        With pleasure, Joe: the simple fact is that the study of history and theology has moved on in the fifty years since the Council – conclusions that were drawn from the scholarship of the Concilliar era have been shown to be rather dubious by subsequent scholarship. A good example of this is the anaphora of Hypolitus; recent scholarship places it later than the Roman canon, disputes its authorship and doubts that it was ever used in a liturgical setting.

        To be blunt, no other field of historical research puts any faith in the methods or conclusions of the mid twentieth century: how on earth can you propose that, in the field of religious history, the 1960s had it right while in every other field of historical research the writings of that era are looked upon as salient lessons in how not to do history/anthropology?

      6. Jonathan Day Avatar
        Jonathan Day

        From the revised edition of Brave New World:

        He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather whisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Eliade, was Geertz; some spider-webs, and they were Mary Douglas and Bernard Lonergan and Joseph Campbell. Whisk. Whisk – and where was Maritain, where was Pelikan, where were Martin Marty and Bernard McGinn and Levi-Strauss? Whisk – and those specks of antique dirt called Schmemann and Florovsky, Kluckhohn and Kroeber – all were gone. Whisk – the place where Edward Shils had been was empty. Whisk, Stephen Toulmin; whisk, whisk, Hobsbawm and Isaiah Berlin. Whisk, Georges Duby; whisk, Foucault; whisk, Huizinga…

      7. Thomas Dalby

        Jonathan

        I was always fonder of Orwell than Huxley, your recitation of “four legs good, two legs better” touches my heart.

  16. Joe O'Leary

    Remember how old-fashioned democracy and human rights seemed in the period of Hitler and Stalin, Franco and Mussolini. If certain reactionary attitudes enjoy a febrile vibrancy among the young, that does not justify one in forgetting the wisdom of the past.

    Reply
    1. Samuel J. Howard

      Comparing the young people in the Church today to Nazis and followers of Mussolini is unlikely to win you any friends among said young people.

      Reply
      1. Joe O'Leary

        People who seek to win friends among the young by failing to remind them of their political, ethical, and Christian responsibility of discernment, are properly called seducers of youth.

      2. Thomas Dalby

        There is an essential falsehood at work here, Joe: the theology of the post concilliar liberals is concerned with the obviation of the individual and the emphasis on the action of the individual as part of the larger group/Volk. In many ways, the liberal theology of the last fifty years better mirrors the fascist ideologies of the mid twentieth century than the personalist beliefs of Tridentine Catholicism ever could do.

  17. Chris McDonnell

    A few nostalgic thougthts from a time of renewal, with the last ltwo words being the most important, hence the title

    Spirit led

    We have not gone away.

    There is still an echo from voices
    that once stirred excitement
    in the latter days of John.

    Memories of writing and discussion,
    endless drafts, revisions
    seeking renewal,

    Spirit led.

    Reply
  18. Chris McDonnell

    My first two lines should have read

    A few nostalgic thoughts from a time of renewal, with the last two words being the most important, hence the title.

    Didn’t beat the time frame for corrections…. spelling does after all have a certain social significance!

    Reply
  19. Dominic Montini

    The wisdom of the past goes far beyond a sliver of the 20th Century and the theological powers-that-be at the time’s opinion of the Patristic Church.

    Reply
    1. Todd Flowerday

      Perhaps. But two things. A council is a rather more special occasion than the release of a film documentary. Catholics believe in a sacramental system of God’s grace, not in the tides of human politics.

      Our focus is on something greater than the wisdom of the past. We should be seeking something a bit more than what is mere foolishness in God’s eyes. If godly wisdom led us to believe that we could convert the world and achieve the Great Commission by setting aside human wisdom, I think we had better do it, no matter how much of a rupture it was.

      Reply
      1. Dominic Montini

        Well, then we’d have to figure out what is really just mere human wisdom and what godly wisdom is. Don’t try to knock down a fence without understanding why it was put up in the first place.

      2. Todd Flowerday

        Dominic, I’d say a good place to start understanding, as one example, would be to look at the translation principles of Comme Le Prevoit. There were good reasons why translation was handled in a more thoughtful and discerning way in 1969. What do you think?

      3. Karl Liam Saur

        And, once possessing that understanding, it may still make eminent sense to take the fence down. ONe need not agree with the reasons for the development of the fence in order to understand them sufficiently to decide whether or not to take it down, repair it or replace it.

    2. Joe O'Leary

      Are you saying that the Council did not understand the Fathers? Yet it would be hard to find dogmatic theologians as well versed in the Fathers as Congar, Ratzinger, Danielou, De Lubac, Hugo and Karl Rahner. In what way do you find their understanding of the Patristic Church to be defective?

      Reply
      1. Joe O'Leary

        my last was addressed to Dominic. And is he saying thaat Vatican II unwisely knocked down the wisdom of the past? All this animus against Vatican II is animus against a living developing Church, the Church of Newman. And when teh alternative is inquired after, the most horrendous answers emerge.

  20. Bill deHaas

    The whole Patristic comment makes no sense. You can find the fathers and mothers of the church and their reflections to be contradictory to each other – they also made their reflections given the context that they were living in – that alone makes what they say something that needs to be studied, the context has to be taken into consideration, etc.

    To say that any of the periti or bishops either did not understand or suppressed what various patristic writers said – reveals that they have not read or studied the likes of Rahner, deLubac, Congar, etc. If anything, you can review the notes from folks such as Ottaviani and you will find little evidence that he or his group ever quoted or used the insights from the patristics, etc. It is a Dominic meme.

    Reply
  21. Brendan McInerny

    Not jumping in to defend Dominic (he can speak for himself) but it seems an odd rhetorical tactic to comment on how well Ratzinger and de Lubac knew the Fathers in order to defend the insights of Vatican II and then in another place say that their opposition to the Council (or to a particular interpretation of the Council) is/will be a black mark on them. This is especially odd since many of the criticism leveled at the liberal interpretation of the Council (from those such as Rahner and Schillebeeckx) is at its willingness to ignore ressourcement in the name of aggiornamento.
    It seems to me the post-Council debates are precisely over which element – both of which are present in the Council documents – deserves the greater (or exclusive) emphasis.

    Reply

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