December 1999 Print

Letter of Archbishop Lefebvre published in Avis du mois (September-October, 1965), the monthly letter of the Superior General of the 5,200-member Congregation of the Holy Ghost.

Some Informative Pages of History: The Council of Trent

At a moment when some of our contemporaries have it in mind to try to portray the present council as a counter-reformation, that is, as a counterbalance to what was exaggerated or circumstantial in the Council of Trent, it is a good thing to re-read a few pages of history which will give us a more accurate appreciation of the facts.

There are some churchmen today who, from the particular conception of the priest at the time of the Council of Trent seek to deduce the need to find a new kind of priest who, they say, would be more in keeping with the Gospel. Such a claim is entirely gratuitous, and opens the way to every kind of initiative, however contrary to the true notion of the priesthood as transmitted by the infallible tradition of the Church.

These pages are taken from the History of the Church (Histoire de l'Eglise) published by Flèche et Martin, vo1. 17, ch. 9.

 

The Relevance of Trent to Today

Four hundred years have passed since the Council and its work remains more relevant than ever. This is a fact which warrants a pause so that the historical importance of this great ecumenical gathering may be assessed. Its importance may be considered in two different lights: that of the centuries which preceded Trent, and that of those which have followed it. With regard to the earlier period, when one considers the immense work done by the Council, the preparatory study it must have necessitated, and the acquired knowledge it displays, one is led to the realization that the decline of the Catholic Church, however obvious it may have been, in the moral domain, was not such as to undermine the purity of doctrine. The bishops and theologians of the Council owe nothing to anti-Protestant reaction. In age they were the contemporaries of Luther and Zwingli. Most of them were older than Calvin and even than Melanchthon. They had received a university education. Their deficiencies, notably in the matter of the history of dogmas, were no worse than those of the Protestant revolutionaries. The soundness of their knowledge of Scripture and patristics was such that the progress which has been made since their time has not made it possible to find them seriously at fault on any single point... The vota scripta, that is the opinions expressed in writing by the theologians and Fathers of the Council, need to be read, pondered and evaluated. That is where one can arrive at a true estimate of their scriptural and patristic learning, their theological vigor, the strength and penetration of their minds and the thoroughness of the preparatory studies which enabled them, when the time came, to formulate the monumental Tridentine dogmatic decrees. Their writings at Trent alone remain an inexhaustible source from which we draw to the best of our ability in our encyclopedic dictionaries and our books on the history of Catholic doctrines. That there is still much to be gained from the documents issued by the Council is proved by the zeal of researchers who still work on them, and the initiatives which were prompted by the celebration of the fourth centenary of the Council's opening.

All this speaks volumes and necessitates the clarification of some historical notions which were current among scholars until quite recently.

The Council of Trent in session

 

Catholic Reform or Counter-Reformation?

It has been and still is customary to refer to the Catholic Reform brought about at Trent as the Counter-Reformation. This name implies a kind of historical triptych, comprising, in order, the following pictures: 1) Before Luther the Church is plunged into a profound and universal lethargy, the Bible is virtually abandoned or is misunderstood; studies are reduced to superficial parroting and ecclesiastical discipline presents a spectacle of the most deplorable laxity. 2) With Luther, the Reformation comes about by means of a dazzling awakening of the evangelical and biblical spirit. 3) Finally, hearing the voice of Luther, the Catholic Church wakes up to its duty, the Council of Trent is summoned and brings about a reform which merits the name of "Counter- ­Reformation."

Now, such a view of the facts conflicts with some irrefutable evidence. As early as 1880, W. Maurenbrecher, writing the history of the Catholic restoration, avoids using the term "counter-­reformation," which implies that the Catholic movement came after the Lutheran one. Quite rightly, too, in 1917 the English historian Edward Hulme entitled one of his books The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution, and the Catholic Reformation in Continental Europe. This manner of speaking is the only correct one, and would be so even if it were established that the Catholic Reformation came after the Protestant revolution, for a revolution cannot be a reform, only an overthrowing. This was ably expressed by another French historian, Lucien Fabvre, who showed that the expressions of "reformation" and "return to the primitive Church" were merely the elements of a myth which appealed to the imaginations of the enemies of the traditional Church. "'Reform' and 'primitive Church,"' he writes, "were convenient words to hide from their own eyes the audacity of their secret desires. What they wanted in reality was not restoration but innovation. Whether those responsible fully realized it or not, what the Reformation actually did was give sixteenth-century man what he wanted, whether confusedly or fully consciously, and that was a religion which was better adapted to his new requirements, and more in harmony with the changed conditions of his social existence."

Sixteenth-century Catholics, then, were not wrong to call the Protestants "innovators." This is also what they are called by the American Protestant historian P. Smith in his book The Age of the Reformation.

So Fabvre does not hesitate, any more than did Edward Hulme, between the two expressions "reform" and "revolution." Despite what they said and thought, the "reformers" were revolutionaries, and their doctrines, which they claimed were a restoration of pure Christianity, were, in the well-known phrase of W. Wundt, nothing but "the reflex action of the century of the Renaissance." And it was because they met the aspirations which were so widespread in the society around them that they achieved the success that history records.

 

Did the Council of Trent Innovate?

But if it has to be agreed that Protestantism was much more a revolution than a restoration, might not the same be said of the Council of Trent? In other words, is the Tridentine Catholic religion really the same as that of the Middle Ages and of the Early Church? If we attribute to the needs of the century of the Renaissance an obscure impulse which in certain countries found expression in the Protestant Reformation, can we escape the conclusion that corresponding need led the Catholic Church, all unknowing, to adaptations, doctrines and practices which, basically, were also innovations?

It is surprising to note that this idea, which goes against our usual way of thinking, had already been expressed, even in connection with dogma, by Ferry in the 17th century, and refuted by Bossuet. This will enable us to define the nature and the limits of the innovations of the Council of Trent, and as a result, to define its historical importance in the field of dogma. We fully accept that the Council of Trent introduced new things. What would have been the point of it otherwise?

These innovations never centered on the basics of Christian doctrine, but on what in theology are called their developments, that is, the logical consequences of dogmas which are already known and universally accepted. It is the role of a Council to make explicit what before was only implicit, to make clear what had remained obscure. It is thus that it advances the knowledge of doctrine. There is no council in history which cannot be said to have innovated, for otherwise it would have served no purpose. But this innovation, as Newman put it so well, is of the kind that must be called a living evolution, not the sort of change which characterizes death. For "there is no corruption if the idea or type of a doctrine remains the same, if it retains the same principles, the same organization, if its later phases are foreseeable from its beginnings, if its final manifestations protect and conserve those which have gone before, and if it retains its power of assimilation and restoration and maintains a vigorous activity from start to finish."

So the changes brought about at the Council of Trent do not constitute a "new religion," but are measures taken to conserve the old one. A tree which grows is no longer the same, yet is still the same. The Tridentine religion was different from that of the Middle Ages, but it was still the same religion, at a different age. All that we say here of dogma can be said of all other aspects of Catholicism—its moral theology, its discipline, its ascetical and mystical doctrine, and its canon law. And as Bossuet again says on the subject of the articles of faith formulated at the Council, if a greater number were decided upon at Trent, it was because those whom it was necessary to condemn had stirred up a greater number of issues, and so that these heresies had no chance of being rekindled, it was necessary to extinguish them down to the last spark. And without going into all that in detail, it is clear that if the Church's decisions are weakened by one iota, Our Lord's promise is contradicted, and with it the whole body of revelation.

 

The Nature of the Importance Attributed to the Council of Trent

Bossuet, and Catholic theology with him, makes a clear distinction between the history of the Council and its doctrinal authority, which are two very different things. Its history includes aspects which are changing, uncertain, sometimes almost verging on the ridiculous. We are aware of the difficulties which had to be overcome in order to assemble the Council, and the opposition which it met, not only from the Protestants but also from some groups of Catholics, even from whole churches, such as the Gallican church at certain moments; and we know of the divisions which came to light at the Council, and the interventions of diplomacy in its debates. But once the Council's decisions were reached, and once, both by papal confirmation and by the consent, at first tacit and then very explicit and formal, of the universal Church, it took on the ecumenical character, all this human side of its history pales into insignificance beside the value of its decrees.

True, the theologians who elaborated them belonged to the most diverse schools—Thomists, Scotists, Nominalists, Augustinians—but after lively, and sometimes stormy discussions, all finally agreed on formulae which were flexible and broad while at the same time precise and firm. They are firm on dogma, but flexible enough to allow a just freedom of opinions. That is how these formulae have become an inexhaustible theme for study and meditation. We find in them both a synthesis of Holy Scripture and a summary of Christian tradition. They are the authorized and infallible commentary on Scripture and Tradition. Theologians may scrutinize them in all their details, and gather all their nuances, in the certainty of finding therein nothing but what is divine, or, if you prefer, a human translation of it, guaranteed by the Holy Ghost in person, which is thus a perpetual nourishment for the Christian Faith. It is also a source of spiritual edification whose riches it would be impossible to exaggerate. Reread and ponder the decree on original sin, the one on justification, rightly considered as the Council's masterpiece, and the decrees on the sacraments: you will find there the most sober and vigorous expression of the Catholic Faith in that it encompasses the work of salvation as a collaboration of divine grace with human freedom, of the infinite love of God with the wretchedness of man. To foster devotion to the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar and to the Sacrifice of the Mass, nothing is more effective than to study the Council's decrees on these two subjects.

To sum up, the Council of Trent is the natural and legitimate successor of all the Councils which preceded it. The theologians and Fathers who debated and voted at it had a wholly medieval formation. Their thinking is the flowering of the thought of the Middle Ages. Further, they were not strangers to the movement of ideas in their own time. They did not wish to adapt, much less to change religion. It is easy to demonstrate that they did not do so, not even without meaning to and without noticing it. The history of their debates is decisive in this respect. All the Council did was to codify dogmas established and accepted long since, indeed one could say from the beginning. As a rule the Council deliberately abstained from deciding questions on which there was disagreement among Catholic theologians. Its only concern was to erect an imposing rampart of the most assured tradition in the face of Protestant innovations. Even in the field of discipline, where its work was also considerable, though less important, all told, than in that of dogma, it invented little. It did little more than generalize a reform already spontaneously begun in many places, in others almost completed.

There can be no doubt that there was, in the Italy of the first half of the 16th century, a host of saintly individuals ardently attached to the work of reform, whose examples and efforts opened the way for the salutary correctives of the Council of Trent. The dates prove that in the majority of cases the activity of these devout servants of Christ began without the Lutheran revolt exercising the slightest influence on them, and that at the very most this revolt accelerated the realization of the holy desires with which they were imbued. That is why it may be said of Italy, as also, incidentally, of Spain, that the Catholic reformation there truly preceded the Protestant revolution, and that it had its roots right back in the Middle Ages.