On the historiography of Vatican-II:
A second book by Mons. Marchetto
by Cardinal Raffaele Farina
Emeritus Archivist-Librarian of the Holy Roman Church
Translated from the 11/8/12 issue of
Editor's Note:
Yesterday afternoon, Nov. 7, a new book by Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, entitled Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II. Per la sua corretta ermeneutica (The Second Vatican Council: For its correct interpretation) (Vatican City, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012, 386 pp), was presented at the Sala Pietro di Cortona in Rome's City Hall.
Participating in the roundtable discussion were Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Pope's Vicar for Rome; Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant'Egidio Community and a cabinet minister in the government of Prime Minister Mario Monti; and Cardinal Raffaele Farina, emeritus Librarian-Archivist of the Holy Roman Church, whose presentation we publish herewith:
I first met Mons. Marchetto in Munich at the first and only international congress organized so far by the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, from Sept. 16-10, 1086. The theme of the congress was "Falschungen in Mittelalter" (Falsifications in the Middle Ages), and the opening remarks were delivered by Umberto Eco on 'The typology of falsification'.
At the time, Eco was basking in the worldwide success of his first novel,
Il nome della Rosa, published in 1980, which was a sort of sublimation of falsification.
Mons. Marchetto arrived in Munich from Madagascar where he had been Apostolic Nuncio for a year, his first diplomatic assignment for the Holy See. The title of his paper in Munich was "The 'fate' of a falsification: Is the spirit of the Pseudo-Isidore hovering over the new Code of Canon Law?" A title which was subtly provocative, suggesting a style of writing and discourse which is not absent from the book we present tonight.
The book is clearly divided into two parts: a brief one about the reception of Vatican II, and a more ample section regarding the hermeneutic - or key to interpreting - Vatican II.
This hermeneutic, after having been examined in the two conciliar Popes, John XXIII and Paul VI, and in some private sources, is identified and described in three categories: the hermeneutic of rupture, the hermeneutic of rupture according to the traditionalists, and the hermeneutic of reform in continuity.
This close examination of the reception of the Council
['reception' in this sense refers to how the teachings of the Council, collectively and individually, have been perceived by the public and those within the Church herself, and whether these teachings have been accepted or rejected based on that perception] = with the exception of the six final presentations in the book which were previously unpublished - anthologizes his writings about the Council in 28 articles published between 1998 and 2011.
In 2005, Mons. Marchetti had published an analogous volume entitled
Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II: Contrappunto per la sua storia (The Second Vatican Council: Counterpoint to its history. that collected 48 articles he had written about Vatican II from 1990-1998,
It was about historiography, as Marchetto rightly notes on Page 300 of the new book, which is a continuation - altogether, 35 years covering the story of how the Council has been reported in the media and in books. There are 52 articles in the new book, most of them Mons. Marchetto's reviews of books or major articles about Vatican II.
Without going into other formal details, let me get into the substance of the book by quoting Benedict XVI. On December 22, 2005, on the occasion of his first Christmas address as Pope to the Roman Curia, he gave an address that reviewed the events of 2005 within the Church. In it, he devoted a considerable part to the subject of Vatican II and its correct interpretation.
Mons. Marchetto's book follows the structure of the Pope's presentation, distributing his material according to a distinction between reception and hermeneutic, and then classifying current opinions as he reviewed them, according to the hermeneutic of rupture [in the progressivist 'spirit of Vatican II'[, the hermeneutic of rupture in the traditionalist sense, and the hermeneutic of continuity, or more precisely, as Benedict XVI first formulated it, the hermeneutic of reform as renewal in continuity.
The term 'reform' carries a very strong weight which I would distinguish from renewal. Reform has to do with 'the purity and integrity of doctrine, without attenuation or distortion' in the words of John XXIII and cited by Benedict XVI.
The distinction between reform and
aggiornamento (updating) ( a term used by both John XIII and Paul VI) was clearly made by Paul VI when he spoke of the need for the Church, before anything else, to reform herself internally, to return to her origins in some way, and consequently - not necessarily in the temporal sense alone - to present herself to the world in a way that would be adequate to confront various situations.
Taking the Council itself and its two Popes as a point of reference, one can identify, although not with absolute precision, a logical and consistent use of the terms
aggiornamento, reform and renewal.
One can define
aggiornamento as the desire of the Church to make herself credible to those who are not in the Church, whereas reform is her intention to make herself credible to herself, to her members.
Aggiornamento has to do with elements linked to time and space, and to the institution - an adjustment to different times and different places or contexts. Reform has to do with elements that are more substantial and more specific - it proposes internal purification of the individual Catholic as well as of the community, seeking to come closer to the ideal of the early Church, liberating the Church from the incrustations she acquired over time and space.
And so, renewal of the Church consists in the double dynamic of
aggiornamento which is external, and reform which is internal, which - although sometimes conditioned by its evolution in time - is always coordinated and guided by the inscrutable action of the Holy Spirit which animates, guards and leads the Church.
After Vatican II, the Church moved from
aggiornamento - the effort to make herself credible to the world (as John XXIII did), to reform - to make herself credible to her own members first. The latter was the patient work undertaken by Paul VI = before the Church can make herself credible to 'others' through
aggiornamento, she had first to be credible to her members, by reforming as needed.
This is the process of renewal -
restauratio et renovatio universae Ecclesiae - that is never completed, for the Church, consisting of reform and
aggiornamento.
I wish also to recall something obvious from the texts of the Conciliar Popes. Benedict XVI speaks of the correct hermeneutic for the Council, namely the right way of reading its texts and of applying them.
But if we consider the application of the Council as it has occurred so far and as it is at present, we face a picture that is more complex and variegated than simply a reading of the texts, and one that is conditioned by events of the global village which necessarily involve even those who do not wish to be involved, much less take responsibility for unforeseen consequences.
'Operative' texts of the Council which have had inadequate or weak applicatory regulation, or which have not had any at all, have created a series of problems and serious situations which have been and continue to be oppressive for the Church.
The conclusion of Vatican II in 1965, the initial dissemination of its texts and their initial application from 1965 to 1975 coincided unfortunately with the general student uprisings of 1968 and the specific ones in the pontifical universities and faculties starting in 1978.
The strong emotive and often explosive charge inherent in the protests contaminated the processes of applying the teachings of the Council. But we can cite other events and other situations which similarly affected the reception of the Council negatively, not everywhere, obviously, and not in the same way or with the same intensity.
What I wish to underscore is the ever-more relevant importance in our time of the management aspect, that indispensable ability to govern, and of the right preparation for those who are in positions of management.
Giovanni Falcone [1939-1992, an Italian magistrate who spent most of his professional life trying to curb the power of the Mafia in Sicily and was eventually killed by the Mafia] once observed, "If you are attentive to substance but not to form, then you will end up not giving a damn about either form or substance".
If it is true, as it is, that in presenting the doctrine of the Church, we must do in accordance with the demand of the times, then we must pay attention to the way in which we do it, to how the Church governs, to the proper preparation of the persons in managerial and administrative positions, so that whatever was established by the Council and the Church are executed precisely in a time and manner that has been previously established.
Mons. Marchetto's reviews of writings about Vatican II, as I said, occupy the major part of the book. They are typical of his style which does not follow the usual form of first going through a systematic description of what the book or article contains followed by specific positive and critical comments.
In general, Marchetto goes straight into his specific criticism, citing the page and the questioned content. To those who are familiar with the subject, he offers a mine - I would call it a factory, because mines can be exhausted - of historico-critical material, especially on the story of the reception of Vatican II and of its hermeneutic.
He concludes the book with half a dozen previously unpublished essays that one reads with great interest as they are rich in content and original perceptions. The author's imprint is clearly scene in his precise choice of themes, the clarity of his discourse which is free of attenuations or of any ambiguity. There is also an interview and a collection of press clippings that can serve as a preparation for the book itself. I ask you to read them first because I believe they will help in a fuller understanding of the entire book.
Let me give a small sampling of the riches in this book. It comes from a long review (pp 180-192) of a book by John O'Malley,
What happened at Vatican II (Italian edition published in 2010).
Marchetto dwells on Chapter i, on the terminology used and analyzed by the author, who refers to 'the spirit of the Council'. The indeterminacy of the word 'spirit' can be concretized and becomes verifiable only when one pays attention to the style of the Council itself, the uniqueness of its literary form and its language, and drawing the consequences therefrom.
"Examining the 'letter' (the form and terminology of the texts)," O'Malley says, "one can arrive at its 'spirit'". Certainly, Marchetto says, if one means that this 'spirit' is that of the documents, we can agree.
But if this 'spirit' "sets apart Vatican II from all other ecumenical Councils, and considers it 'unique'," without considering the doctrinal-dogmatic-pastoral-disciplinary continuity of the extraordinary Magisterium of all the Councils, but rather affirms a rupture with everything that preceded it, we cannot possibly share O'Malley's thinking.
My own hope is that Mons. Marchetto will soon give us a book that is systematic, complete and exhaustive about the history of Vatican -II.
I thought Cardinal Farina did an effective and necessary job of 'defining' and distinguishing the terms aggiornamento, reform and renewal, especially of characterizing Benedict XVI's idea of renewal in continuity as being a synthesis of aggiornamento and reform, so that the Church renews herself continually )Ecclesia semper riformando) both in internal purification and in how she presents herself to the world.
P.S. I was struck by an observation made above by Cardinal Farina:
'Operative' texts of the Council which have had inadequate or weak applicatory regulation, or which have not had any at all, have created a series of problems and serious situations which have been and continue to be oppressive for the Church.
It struck me for the first time that a most obvious deficiency by the powers-that-be at the Vatican after Vatican-II was the failure to issue 'implementing norms' for each of the 16 documents, in the same way, to take the most obvious example, that the CDF has issued implementing norms for John Paul II's motu proprio that transferred competence over sex abuses committed by priests to the CDF, and further implementing norms later on its own guidelines on how to deal with such abuses at the local and diocesan levels.
It was incumbent on the Church leadership to lay down such implementing norms after Vatican-II - it would have pre-empted the open-ended laissez-faire interpretations imposed by the progressivists on public opinion by their sheer dominance of the media.
Why was it not done? Probably because it was not done at previous ecumenical councils. But one very obvious fact of aggiornamento which the hierarchy failed to take seriously was the new and crushingly effective power of the new media in shaping public opinion in the global village - and failing to adjust to that reality, as it continues to be inadequately adjusted to it! No institution can allow the media to shape its message for the public, because it will always be a distorted or, at best, incomplete message. If the Church has an important message to make, she must go out ahead of everyone to transmit that message as promptly and as effectively as it can, using the very technology of media to her advantage.
A secondary oversight was that it was most unrealistic to expect bishops and priests. much less the faithful in general, to grasp on their own what Vatican-II really meant to say through its texts. Churchspeak, no matter how well-intended, is never easy to read, and in the case of Vatican-II, its participants had made it known that some language was left ambiguous in order to get a consensus vote on a specific document. It was the duty of the hierarchy to immediately clarify those ambiguities in implementing norms that should have used mandatory terms unequivocally. For instance, if implementing norms had been issued based on Sacrosanctum concilium, then all the liberal mis-interpretations may have been avoided or at least minimized. Because then, it would have been made clear that the use of Latin was not completely banned, that the local language was not meant to completely replace it, that appropriate music was to be used and Gregorian chant encouraged, and who knows, it might have been pointed out that the New Mass does not invalidate the traditional Mass.
I am not familiar enough with the Catechism of the Catholic Church , but I gather from what I have read about it and from the specific sections I have had to look up over the past seven years, that it quotes liberally from Vatican-II in laying down the doctrine of the Church. Perhaps someone should systematize those quotations into a "practical and correct guide to understanding Vatican-II", to begin with. Or maybe someone somewhere is already working on such an undertaking, supplementing it with Benedict XVI's always illuminating reflections on Vatican-II.
From a Portuguese blog, Fratres in unum.com, to which I was led through Carlota, who writes and translates from Spanish and Portuguese for Beatrice's site, a most interesting and quite surprising excerpt from Prof. Roberto De Mattei's 2011 history of Vatican-II, written from an orthodox centrist point of view...
What the future Council Fathers
expected of Vatican II when
they were asked in 1959:
Moderate reforms, condemnation of Communism,
and new dogmas about the Virgin Mary
by Roberto De Mattei
from
'Il Concilio Vaticano II: Una storia mai scritta'
In the summer of 1959, responses started arriving in Rome from the bishops of the world and the superiors of religious orders and of Catholic universities, to the solicitations of their thoughts regarding the upcoming Second Vatican Council by Cardinal Domenico Tardini (then Vatican Secretary of State).
Sifting through the immense mass of material began in September and was completed by January 1960. Those close to 3,000 letters make up the material in the eight volumes of the
Acta et documenta concilio Vaticano II apparando” [1].
A careful analysis of the material now allows the historian - as, at the time, it allowed the Pope, the Curia, and the Council's Preparatory Commission - to get an overview of the thinking of the worldwide Church hierarchy on the eve of the Council.
The wishes expressed by the future Council Fathers, considered altogether, were not about a radical turnaround, much less a revolution within the Church [2]. While it is true that the anti-Roman tendencies of some bishops appeared clearly in the responses of people like Cardinal Alfrink [3], Archbishop of Utrecht, in general, the future Council participants were interested in moderate 'reform' within the line of tradition.
Majority of the suggestions advocated a condemnation of modern evils, both internal and external to the Church, but above all, of Communism, as well as new doctrinal 'definitions' particularly with regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The British bishops, for instance, wished the Council to denounce the evils of contemporary society, and submitted no proposals for any radical reform [4]. The same with the French bishops who were even then considered the most progressivist, yet what many of them wanted was a condemnation of Marxism and Communism, while a consistent minority sought the declaration of a dogma that would define the mediation of Mary [5].
As for the Belgian bishops, Claude Soetens who analyzed their suggestions, underscored the "rather deceptive nature" of their recommendations "which were hardly suggestive of a true renewal of the Church", confirming the impression that these 1959 responses were different from the attitudes they subsequently took during the Council itself [6].
The Italian bishops, who were the most numerous, wanted the Council to proclaim the dogma of the 'universal mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary' [7]. A second dogma which they wanted declared was about the Kingship of Jesus to counteract an already dominant secularism [8]. Many wanted the Council to condemn doctrinal errors [9], 91 wanted a reiteration of the Church's condemnation of Communism, 57 expressed their objection to existentialist atheism, 47 against moral relativism, 31 against materialism, 24 against modernism [9].
Among the thousands of letters received from around the world, Communism was referred to as the most serious error that the Council ought to denounce.
[And yet, what I have always felt to be an egregious 'defect' of the Council was the deliberate decision to avoid any mention of Communism at all. This has been explained as a choice made in order to facilitate behind-the-scenes negotiations of the Church with the Communist regimes to minimize or alleviate the persecution of Church pastors and faithful behind the Iron Curtain. However meritorious the reason for this deliberate choice, Vatican II thus 'perpetrates' a falsification of history by failing to name the most obvious contemporary threat to human dignity and to Christian principles.]
In the report that summarized the responses, which was later elaborated by the Secretariat of the Preparatory Commissions, Communism also figured as the first error that the Council ought to condemn. [11]
It is interesting to point out to an analogy between the wishes of the Council Fathers and the Cahiers de Doleance [Notebooks of Complaints) published in France for the Estates=General meeting of 1789. Before the French Revolution, none of the 'notebooks' proposed subverting the bases of the
ancien regime, namely the monarchy and the Church.
"None of the Cahiers proposed that the Estates-General should have the purpose of negating all pre-existent power and to re-create this ex novo"," the historian Armando Saitta underxcores. [12] What they were asking for was a moderate reform of these institutions and not their subversion, which resulted when the Estates-General did meet.
Likewise in the case of Vatican II, Fr. O'Malley concluded in his book,
What Happened at Vatican II, "in general, the answers wanted to reinforce the status quo, condemn modern evils, within and outside the Church, and other doctrinal definitions especially regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary" [13]
But the Council did not heed the recommendations presented to the Preparatory Commission, choosing instead to push the claims of a minority who succeeded from the beginning, in taking control of the Council and orient its decision. This is the irrefutable conclusion from an analysis of historical facts.
NOTES:
[1] The 'votes' were collated in the Acta et documenta Concilio Oecumenico Vaticano II apparando — Series I (Antepraeparatoria), cit.. Of the 2594 future Council Fathers, 1988 sent their responses, namely 77% (cf. E. FOUILLOUX), ‹‹ La fase ante-preparatoria (1959-1960) ››, cit., pp. 112-113).
[2] For a global analysis of the votes, see À la veille du Concile Vatican II, cit.,and Le deuxième Concile du Vatican, pp. 101-177. Regarding the Italian bishops, cf MAURO VELATI, 'I consila et vota dei vescovi italiani', in À la veille du Concile Vatican II, cit., pp. 83-97; ROBERTO MOROZZO DELLA ROCCA, "I voti dei vescovi italiani per il Concilio", in Le deuxième Concile du Vatican, pp. 119-137.
[3] AD, I-II, pp. 509-516. Bernard Jan Alfrink (1900-1987), Dutch, ordained in 1924, Archbishop of Utrecht starting 1955, created cardinal in 1960, member of the Preparatory Commission and the Presidential Council of Vatican II. Cf. FABRIZIO DE SANTIS, Alfrink, il cardinale d’Olanda, Longanesi, Milão, 1969; TON H. M. VAN SCHAIK, Alfrink, Een biografie, Authos, Amesterdão, 1997. And on the role of Alfrink in the Council, cf. Actes et Acteurs, pp. 522-553.
[4] Cf. SOLANGE DAYRAS, ‹‹ Les voeux de l’episcopat britannique. Reflets d’une église minoritaire ›› , in Le deuxième Concile du Vatican, pp. 139-153.
[5] CFf. YVES-MARIE HILAIRE, ‹‹ Les voeux des évêques français après l’annonce du Concile ››, in Le deuxième Concile du Vatican, p. 102 (pp. 101-117).
[6] Cf. C. SOETENS, ‹‹ Les vota des évêques belges en vue du Concile ››, in À la veille du Concile Vatican II, cit., p. 49 (pp. 38-52).
[7] Cf. R. MOROZZO DELLA ROCCA, ‹‹ I vota dei vescovi italiani ›› , cit., p. 127.
[8] Cf. ibid.
[9] Cf. ibid., pp. 119-137.
[10] G. TURBANTI, ‹‹ Il problema do comunismo al Concilio Vaticano II ›› , in Vatican II in Moscow, p. 149 (pp. 147-187).
[11] Ibid., p. 150. Specially notorious are the votes that came from the Catholic universities, as for instance, the Ateneo de Propaganda Fide of Rome, which presented a long study in depth by Fr. Cornelio Fabro on the origin and nature of contemporary atheism. (Cf. De atheismo positivo seu constructivo ut irreligiositatis nostri temporis fundamenta, AD, I-I/1, pp. 452-463).
[12] ARMANDO SAITTA, Constituenti e Costituizioni della Francia rivoluzionaria e liberale (1789-1875), Giuffrè, Milão, 1975, p. 3.
[13] J. W. O’MALLEY, S.J., Introduction to Vatican II: Did anything happen?, cit., p. 4
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/11/2012 12:16]