Ratzinger Was Right.

History of Vatican II Vol. IV

Church as Communion,

Third Period and Intersession,

September 1964-September 1965

Edited by Giuseppe Alberigo, English edition edited by Joseph A. Komonchak Orbis and Peeters, $80, 670 pp.

Looking back objectively," Joseph Ratzinger said at Vatican II's close, "we must bear in mind that it is difficult for an assembly of twenty-five hundred men, each accustomed to having the last word, to get used to working together." The bishops at Vatican II, as he put it, "had taken a giant step beyond being a mere sounding board for propaganda" to become a force which the curia had to reckon with. As the fourth volume of The History of Vatican II shows, Ratzinger was right.

For some bishops at the council, holding on to the status quo was the only way to assure the future of the church. In that regard, the third period of Vatican II might be termed the "make or break" session. It saw the final vote on the Constitution on the Church, but only after intense discussion and procedural maneuvering--including appeals to the pope, behind-the-scenes plotting, and papal intervention on the issue of episcopal collegiality--all chronicled in this volume. The third session's packed agenda likewise included debate regarding the Constitution on Divine Revelation, the Decree on Ecumenism, the sensitive issue of religious freedom, and the problematic presuppositions about Jews and the death of Jesus. We learn why some wanted the council to end with this session, while others saw the need for another to complete the council's agenda.

Volume IV pays special attention to the mindset and tactics of a group of about three hundred bishops (many of whom were powerful members of the Roman curia) who supported minority positions at the council. The authors, though, clearly show their own preference for the positions of the "progressive majority, estimated to represent about 80 percent of the bishops." Although I confess to being partial to the majority's positions, I should note that this approach has drawn strong criticism, such as that of Agostino Marchetto, a prelate in the Vatican's Secretariate of State, published in the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano.

Space prevents me from focusing on more than a few of the myriad issues, insights, and nuggets of information presented. One piece of intrigue involves the number of lay auditors allowed at the council, and the details of the heated debate over whether laywomen should be allowed to attend or to speak. This would be the first time female auditors were admitted. Yet no women, even women religious, ever served on any preparatory or conciliar commission, and no women ever served as official periti or experts at the council--although they were actually treated as "experts" in subcommission meetings and the plenary meetings. As Joseph Komonchak notes, "the exclusion of women extended even to the Eucharist until the second day of the third session, September 16, when four women for the first time received Communion at a conciliar Mass." A year earlier, Communion had been denied to two women present at a conciliar liturgy, which attracted much attention in the press. "Cardinal [Leon Jozef] Suenens claimed that he had personally to intervene with Paul VI to allow women to receive Communion from his hand."

The notion of inviting women auditors had been raised during the second session by the male lay auditors and by Suenens, who reminded the assembled bishops that women make up "half of humanity." One archbishop countered that women could not play an active role, citing the Pauline injunction that women are not allowed to speak in the church. Having received requests that women be admitted as auditors from the World Federation of Female Catholic Youth and from the International Union of Catholic Women, the pope took the matter under prolonged study. Less than a week before the start of the third session, Paul VI addressed women religious, announcing that arrangement had been made "so that some qualified and devout women can be present as auditors .... Thus we will have, perhaps for the first time, present at an ecumenical council, a few [obviously] but significant and as it were symbolic women representatives; they will represent you women religious, first, and then Catholic women's organizations so that women will know how much the church honors them in the dignity of their existence and their human and Christian mission." As the History notes, "this has all the appearances of a last-minute decision."

Although the pope welcomed women in his speech opening the third session (September 14, 1964), none was actually there to hear him. On September 20, the pope announced the name of the first female auditor, and three days later came the names of eight women religious and seven other women. Oddly, invitations weren't mailed until September 21. The first woman attended on September 25. "A special coffee bar was installed for the women 'so that they did not mingle with the crowds in the other two' .... The attempt to segregate the women and the men failed, however, from a desire on both sides to converse and to collaborate."

Although there were two war widows in attendance (appointed as witnesses to the horrors of war), there were no actually married women, and only during the fourth and final session was a married couple invited. October 13 of the third session was the first time that a male auditor addressed the council (on the document about the lay apostolate). The moderators of the council had ruled that a woman, who was the first choice of the lay auditors, was unacceptable as a speaker. An initiative to have "a person of special competence" speak to the council about the problem of world poverty began on October 16. Lay auditor James Norris, of the United States, proposed Lady Jackson (Barbara Ward) as the speaker, but that would have to await the fourth session. (The debates about issues that might be considered in the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World had begun--including the understanding of marriage, birth control, and of war and nuclear weapons.)

The minimal lay representation may seem surprising, given the hindsight of Vatican II's reaffirmation of "the priesthood of all believers" and its references to the church as the people of God, which have led many to think of the church as a we--that intrinsically includes all the baptized--rather than a they, identified with the hierarchy. But on October 6 of the third session, Cardinal Fernando Cento introduced the document on the lay apostolate with the observation that "The laity are not simply in the church, rather, together with us, they are the church." The record shows that the council had to grow in its own acceptance of that perspective; it then bequeathed a legacy of unfinished business, which, of course, is still being worked out.

While the History candidly recognizes an "us-against-them mentality" at conciliar deliberations, it also acknowledges that many participants cannot simply be pigeonholed. For example, Cardinal Josef Frings (of the progressive majority) called for less publicity and more secrecy regarding conciliar discussion, and his suggestion was seconded by Cardinals Ernesto Ruffini (of the minority group) and Bernard Jan Alfrink (of the majority). In the debate about Mary and the church, Cardinal Suenens "surprised many people when he twice warned against the danger that an excessive Christocentrism would lead to an anti-Marian minimalism and urged a strengthening of the text to reflect Mary's role today."

The so-called Black Week of November 14-21 receives deserved attention. It saw the suspension of the vote on the document on religious liberty, which was probably wise, given that the bishops did not have time to digest the revised text prepared by John Courtney Murray and Pietro Pavan. It also included papal interventions asking for revisions in the Decree on Ecumenism (not all of which were accepted by the commission), and the genesis of the "Prefatory Explanatory Note," an extraordinary initiative intended to assure a proper interpretation of the teaching about collegiality in section 22 of the Constitution on the Church. It also saw the pope declare Mary as Mother of the Church, despite the fact that the council did not want to include the title in its documents.

The tensions caused by papal interventions are captured in John Courtney Murray's report of a conversation with Carlo Colombo, the pope's confidential theologian, regarding the Declaration on Religious Freedom: "according to the pope the concept of tolerance must be regarded as still valid from the viewpoint of the church: 'It must be emphasized that there is no freedom in regard to God and that our discussion is at the level of civil freedom a coactione [from coercion]; this should be said from the beginning.'" Murray observes that the pope was worried that the preface to the declaration would be "interpreted as a charter of freedom within the church and in relation to the church." In that regard, one might recall Murray's comments after the council: "The conciliar affirmation of the principle of freedom was narrowly limited--in the text. But the text itself was flung into a pool whose shores are wide as the universal church. The ripples will run far." The same might be said for the ripple effect of this book as it is flung into the future of the church.

Bernard P. Prusak is professor and chair in the Theology and Religious Studies Department, Villanova University. His book, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries, was published by Paulist Press in September.