Catechism of the Crisis in the Church, Pt. 5

Fr. Matthias Gaudron

The Angelus continues the installments of Fr. Gaudron's Catechism of the Crisis in the Church. This chapter studies what was so different about the Second Vatican Council compared to other Councils and why it is blamed for so much of the crisis in the Church.

25) When did the Second Vatican Council take place?

Vatican Council II was opened by Pope John XXIII on October 11, 1962. John XXIII died the following year, but his successor, Paul VI, continued the Council and brought it to a close on December 8, 1965.

 

Did the Council last more than three years without interruption? The Vatican Council II comprised four sessions lasting fewer than three months, between which the bishops returned to their dioceses. The first session (October 11 to December 3, 1962), the only one to occur during the pontificate of John XXIII, promulgated no document; it was essentially used to discard the documents prepared by the Preparatory Commission.

 

26) How does Vatican II differ from previous Councils?

Vatican Council II was declared to be no more than a "pastoral" council, one that does not resolve questions of faith, but which gives pastoral directives for the life of the Church. The authorities renounced defining dogmas, and so they renounced the infallibility which appertains to a council. Thus its documents are not infallible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cardinal Montini, the future Paul VI, declared in April 1962: "By means of the next council, the Church proposes to enter into contact with the world....It will try to be...amiable in its language and conduct." And during the Council, Paul VI affirmed in the Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam:

The Church...might content itself with conducting an inquiry into the evils current in secular society, condemning them publicly, and fighting a crusade against them....But it seems to Us that the sort of relationship for the Church to establish with the world should be more in the nature of a dialogue. (§78)

 

 

 

Cardinal Tisserant received formal orders both to negotiate the agreement and to supervise its exact execution during the Council. That is why each time a bishop wanted to broach the question of Communism, the Cardinal, from his table as adviser to the Council moderators, intervened.3

 

On a foggy, frigid winter's evening 1962-63, I attended an extraordinary event at the Strasbourg Community Center for Peace. The Jewish directors secretly received a papal delegate in the basement. At the conclusion of the Sabbath, we were about a dozen to welcome a Dominican dressed in white, the Reverend Fr. Yves Congar, tasked by Cardinal Bea, in John XXIII's name, with asking us, at the threshold of the Council, what we expected of the Catholic Church....

The Jews, for nearly 20 centuries kept on the margin of Christian society, often treated as inferiors, enemies, and deicides, asked for their complete rehabilitation. As direct descendants of Abraham, whence came Christianity, they asked to be considered as brothers, partners of equal dignity, of the Christian Church....

The white-robed messenger, not wearing any symbol or ornament, returned to Rome the bearer of the innumerable requests that reinforced our own people. After difficult debates..., the Council did justice to our wishes. The Declaration Nostra Aetate No. 4 constituted–Fr. Congar and the three drafters of the text confirmed it to me–a veritable revolution in the Church's doctrine on the Jews....

Within a few years, sermons and catechisms had changed....Since the secret visit of Fr. Congar to a hidden room of the synagogue on a cold winter's night, the doctrine of the Church had indeed undergone a total mutation.4

 

 

27) What was the influence of the Council on the crisis in the Church?

The liberal and modernist forces that were already undermining the Church succeeded in taking control of the Council. Thus one can say that Vatican II was the spark that ignited a crisis that had been building for a long time in the Church.

 

 

 

28) How did the liberals take over the Council?

Thanks to the support of John XXIII and Paul VI, the liberal and neo-modernist forces were able to introduce their own ideas into the conciliar texts, to a degree beyond their initial expectations. Before the Council, the preparatory commission had carefully prepared the schemata, which were the echo of the Church's faith. The discussion and voting should have been about these schemata, but they were rejected during the first session of the Council and replaced by new schemata prepared by the liberals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since the position of the German-language bishops was regularly adopted by the European [Rhine] alliance, and since the alliance position was generally adopted by the Council, a single theologian might have his views accepted by the whole Council if they had been accepted by the German-speaking bishops. There was such a theologian: Father Karl Rahner, S.J.8

 

The atmosphere became: "Rahner dixit, ergo verum est."9 I will give you an example. The Doctrinal Commission was made up of bishops, each with his own expert at his side, but also included certain superior generals (of the Dominicans or the Carmelites, for instance). Now, there were two microphones on the table of the Commission, but Rahner practically had one of them to himself alone. Rahner was a little invasive and, in addition, very often the cardinal from Vienna, Franz Koenig, of whom Rahner was the expert, turned toward him and invited him to intervene by saying: "Rahner, quid?" Naturally, Rahner intervened....10

 

"An Italian version certainly poses a special problem because of the presence at Rome of the bonzes and guardians of orthodoxy. On the other hand, I am more than ever fortified in my positions. One might also say that this little lexicon has been written in such a way that these people can understand nothing, and hence will not see what is written against their narrow-mindedness."11

 

 

 

 

At the beginning of Vatican II, I would go the the meetings [of the French bishops] at St-Louis-des-Français. But I was amazed to see how things went. The bishops literally behaved themselves like little boys before the Congars and the other experts who came. Fr. Congar would go up to the head table and without the least reticence would say: "Your Excellency So-and-so, you will make this intervention on this subject. Don't worry, we will prepare the text for you, and you will only need to read it." I couldn't believe my eyes or my ears! And I stopped going to these meetings....13

 

...In the afternoon, the workshops continue. I go to mine, directed by Fr. Congar, on Scripture and Tradition. There are about a dozen of us. We have to prepare the interventions to be made the next day. I am asked to take the second. I do not refuse, provided that Fr. Congar prepare the text for me. That is agreed. He will pass it to me tomorrow in the bus. I get my first look at the text in the bus; I am decided to change nothing. Getting out at St. Peter's, I go to register: I am the twenty-first....14

 

"Continue writing in the same vein, taking advantage of every opportunity. My combat is especially there. I know (and "they" know) that sooner or later, everything that I say and write is the negation of the system. Yes, that is my real combat: in my theological, historical, ecclesiological, and pastoral work. The class I am currently teaching, exactly as if nothing had happened, is a true response; it is my real dynamite under the scribes' armchair."16

After the Council, he declared:

"The Council liquidated what I would call the 'unconditionality' of the system. I mean by system the very coherent ensemble of ideas communicated by the teaching of the Roman universities, codified by Canon Law, and protected by a close, fairly effective surveillance under Pius XII, with reports, warnings, submission of writings to Roman censors, etc.17

 

 

Never before had a Council known such a broad preparation, never before had Catholic opinion been so amply sounded. Not only the bishops, the Catholic universities, and the superior generals of congregations expressed their opinions on the problems examined by the Council, but also a great percentage of Catholic laymen and non-Catholics. Theologians as eminent as Henri de Lubac, J. Danielou, Yves Congar, H. Küng, R. Lombardi, Karl Rahner, and others played an extraordinary role in the preparatory work.18

 

Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Katholischer Katechismus zur kirchlichen Kriese by Fr. Matthias Gaudron, professor at the Herz Jesu Seminary of the Society of St. Pius X in Zaitzkofen, Germany. The original was published in 1997 by Rex Regum Press, with a preface by the District Superior of Germany, Fr. Franz Schmidberger. This translation is based on the second edition published in 1999 by Rex Regum Verlag, Schloss Jaidhof, Austria. Subdivisions and slight revisions made by the Dominican Fathers of Avrillé have been incorporated into the translation.

 

1 "...Ea omnia provide sapienterque constituerent quae ad fidei potissimum dogmata definienda, ad grassantes errores profligandos, ad catholicam propugnandam, illustrandam et evolvendam doctrinam, ad ecclesiasticam tuendam ac reparandam disciplinam, ad corruptos populorum mores corrigendos possent conducere." Pius IX, Bull of Convocation of the First Vatican Council, June 29, 1868, A.A.S., IV, 5.

2 Paul VI, General Audience of January 12, 1966, in Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, IV, 700.

3 Itinéraires, No. 285, p.157. Concerning this agreement, see also France Nouvelle (the French Communist party weekly), No. 900, January 16-22, 1963, p.15; La Croix, February 15, 1963, p.5; Itinéraires, No. 280, pp.1-15; P. Floridi, S.J., Moscow and the Vatican [French] (Paris: France-Empire, 1979), pp.142-48; etc.

4 See also on this subject Le Sel de la Terre, No. 34, pp. 196-217 (and, notably, the account of the secret visit Cardinal Bea made to the American Jewish Committee on March 31, 1963).–Note of the Dominican Fathers.

5 "During the last conciliar session, the bishop of Monaco, Msgr. Rupp, in a widely listened to speech, asked the Council to content itself with adopting these seven requests and to confirm them by its own authority....In reality, the Council did more. Not only did it adopt, in equivalent terms, the seven demands, but it solidly established them...." Msgr. Willebrands, Vatican II: Religious Liberty, collection Unam Sanctam (Paris: Cerf, 1967), pp.241-42.

6 Yves Congar, The Council Day by Day: Second Session [French] (Paris: 1964), p.215.

7 Quoted by Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber (1967; Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books & Publishers, 1985), p.60.

8 Ibid., p.80.

9 "Rahner has spoken, therefore it is true."

10 Yves Congar, Thirty Days [French], No. 3, 1993, p.26. [English version: Fr. Dominic Bourmaud, One Hundred Years of Modernism (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2003), pp. 268-69.]

11 Herbert Vorgrimler, Karl Rahner Verstehen (Fribourg: Herder, 1995), p. 175.

12 Deutsche Tagespost, October 10, 1992, p.2. In German: "Schadenfreude ist die reinste Freude."

13 Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Fideliter, No. 59, p. 53.

14 Msgr. Desmazières, L'Aquitaine (the Bordeaux diocesan weekly), December 1962, p. 580.

15 Yves Congar, O.P., Une vie pour la vérité: Jean Puyo interroge le père Congar (Paris: Centurion, 1975), p. 140.

16 Yves Congar, O.P., manuscript notes from February 1954, quoted by François Leprieur, O.P., Quand Rome condamne (Paris: Plon/Cerf, 1989), p. 259.

17 Congar, Une vie pour la vérité, p. 220.

18 Cited by M. Malinski, My Friend Karol Wojtyla [French] (Paris: Le Centurion, 1980), p. 189.

Footnotes accidentally omitted from Part 3 of "Catechism of the Crisis in the Church," published in The Angelus, July 2007

7 Quoted by Dr. Georg May, Gefahren, die der Kirche drohen (St. Andrä-Woerden: Mediatrix, 1990), p.27.

8 Most Reverend Joseph Doré, Address to the Jewish lodge René Hirschler of B'nai B'rith and published in the diocesan bulletin, July-August 2003, pp.1-3. [Archbishop Doré's address as well as an open letter to him from Fr. Stephen Abraham, SSPX, were published in The Angelus, February 2004.]

9 Acts 2:36-38.

10 "The first Christians are more interested in the Christ of faith than in the Jesus of history" (p. 2988). See Sel de la Terre, No.39, pp.6-26.

11 Most Reverend Dufour, Confirmation homily, published in the Courrier Français, Limoges edition, July 25, 2003, p. 4.

12 "If anyone shall have said that the one true God, our Creator and our Lord, cannot be known with certitude by those things which have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema." Vatican Council I, Constitution Dei Filius (Dz. 1806).