John Paul II and the battle for Vatican II; report from the Synod.

John Paul II and the Battle for Vatican II 

SUBTITLED "Report from the Synod," Richard Cowden-Guido's John Paul II and the Battle for Vatican II is a well-nigh indispensable book for anyone who wonders what's been going on in the Catholic Church lately. It names names and quotes quotes. Its main flaws are a disposition to make sweeping assertions and a disinclination to footnote. But most of the sweeping assertions are true, and the book's infectious energy is sustained for all its four-hundred-odd pages.

As Cowden-Guido sees it, the Catholic Church is suffering from a serious epidemic of "neo-Arianism" and "Modernism," compounded with "historicism." It takes a while to be sure what he means, but the reader quickly gathers that a good many nominal Catholics, some of them theologians and even bishops, no longer believe in the most fundamental Christian doctrines.

If you only read about it in the newspapers, you might gather that the ferment in Catholicism centers around secondary and tertiary matters--birth control and the extent of papal authority, for example. The truth is that it goes much deeper. In a 1984 review of a book by the Swiss theologian Hans Kung in The New York Review of Books, Thomas Sheehan wrote approvingly: "The dismantling of traditional Roman Catholic theology is by now a fait accompli." He went on: "In Roman Catholic seminaries, it is now common teaching that Jesus of Nazareth did not assert any of the Divine or Messianic claims the Gospels attribute to Him, and that He died without believing He was Christ or the Son of God, not to mention the found of a new religion."

Writing as he was for a secular audience, Sheehan was letting his hair down: The Modernist theologians he was talking about tend to be, he noted, "circumspect about what they say outside professional journals." Cowden-Guido observes that Sheehan confirms the charges of St. Pius X's 1907 anti-Madernist encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, which complained that Modernist theology had smuggled unbelief into the Church. Sheehan's article embarrassed the very people he was praising--but, as Cowden-Guido notes, none of the replies it elicited from liberal Catholics really disputed the facts he asserted.

But unbelief is only part of the problem of the American Church. There is also belief--in everything from radical politics to witchcraft. Furthermore, the American bishops, by and large, have chosen to ignore the riot of heterodoxy, and some of them have actually done their part to promote it. This has forced the Vatican to intervene, with the American media supporting the bishops and the dissidents against the bad guys in Rome.

The Modernists and the "moderates" who shield them do their mischief under the banner of Vatican II, the "spirit" of which they cite without regard for its actual letter (much as political liberals invoke the Constitution as a "living document" whose text needn't be taken too literally). One result has been to make conservative Catholics suspicious of Vatican II--a fact that Cowden-Guido deplores. The Pope deplores it too. Hence last year's Extraordinary Synod, the purpose of which was to clarify and reaffirm the Council's continuity with Catholic tradition--and, by implication, to rebuke the polemical use of the Council as a charter for a break with the past.

The Synod did make it clear that Vatican II had reinforced, not repealed, Catholic orthodoxy. It was a disappointment to liberals, and it got little attention in the media here, which resonate only to stories of "progress." Whether the Modernist crisis can be resolved without open schism remains to be seen. Only a few weeks ago, Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee implicitly attacked the Vatican for the disciplinary measures it has taken against Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle and the liberal theologian Charles Curran.

The story is richly dramatic, and there could hardly be a more fascinating cast of characters: John Paul II; Cardinals Joseph Ratzinger, John O'Connor, Joseph Bernardin; Archbishops Weakland, Hunthausen, Peter Gerety; dissidents Curran, Kung, Rosemary Ruether, Richard McBrien, Andrew Greeley, Mario Cuomo. Cowden-Guido recounts in detail battles over dogma, catechism, liturgy, sex education, abortion, homosexuality, and the independence of Catholic colleges and univerities.

Given the considerable shock-value of the story, it's remarkable that it hasn't been told comprehensively before. But the liberals prefer discretion, and the orthodox Catholic press is reluctant to criticize the bishops, with the exception of The Wanderer, where Cowden-Guido originally addressed many of the subjects covered in this book. He has now brought into the open what orthodox Catholics have been saying privately for years. That is why it is regrettable that his documentation isn't more systematic.

Nevertheless, he has the goods on the Modernist forces, and he has brought together, from an orthodox perspective, the full story of current Catholic ferment. He tells it with unflagging vigor--the vigor of a mind that insists on defining issues that others want to call "complex" when they mean they'd rather keep them murky. That kind of mind is as badly needed as this book.