Forty years after his death,
Jesuit cardinal-theologian is rescued
from oblivion by new-movement priests
A seminar on Jean Danielou, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, sponsored by Opus Dei
and the C&L priestly fraternity, breaks the silence that the Jesuits have kept about him. He was ostracized
by his colleagues for criticizing the false interpretation of Vatican II in a 1972 interview with Vatican Radio
Left panel, Jean Danielou at the time of Vatican II, and as a cardinal.
ROME, May 11, 2012 – "Finestre aperte sul mistero" (Windows open to mystery) is the title of the conference held on May 9 at the Opus Dei's Pontifical University of Santa Croce, effectively breaking the public silence on one of the great theologians of the 20th century, the French Jesuit Jean Danielou, made a cardinal by Paul VI in 1969.
A silence that as lasted almost 40 years and began with his death in 1974. For many, the memory of Danielou had been reduced to the mystery of his death from a heart infarct on a May afternoon in the fourth-floor apartment of a prostitute in Paris.
[His friends at the time said that he was visiting the woman on a charitable mission and that no one who knew him could ever think it was for other purposes.]
But the true mystery towards which Danielou had opened the windows as a theologian and spiritual man was that of the Trinitarian God. One of his most important books is called "Essay on the mystery of history" - a history that is not governed by chance nor by necessity, but filled insteaad by the
magnalia Dei, the great wonders of God, one more stupefying than the other.
Today few of his books can be found in bookstores. But they remain works of extraordinary richness and freshness. Simple but very profound, as few theologians have been able to achieve in our time, other than he and that other champion of clarity, Joseph Ratzinger.
Danielou is akin to the present Pope more for the Biblical and historical orientation of his theology, rather than the philosophica; for his expertise in the Fathers of the Church (he was enamoured of Gregory of Nyssa, as Benedict XVI is of Augustine), and for the very central role that he attributed to liturgy.
Danielou, along with his Jesuit colleague and French compatriot Henri de Lubac, was the inspired creator in 1942 of the series of patristic texts entilted
Sources Chretiennes which marked the rebirth of theology in the second half of the 20th century and paved the way for the best output from the Second Vatican Council.
In short, he is an author who must absolutely be rediscovered. At the same time, the questions about his death must be revisited.
Mimì Santoni, the prostitute, says he died falling to the floor face down while he was on his knees. She said "it was a beautiful death for a cardinal". He had visited her to bring money to pay a lawyer who could release her husband from prison. It was the last of the works of charity he had been performing in private for emarginated persons and those in need of help and forgiveness.
The Jesuits conducted closed inquiries in order to determine the facts. They ascertained his innocence. But then they kept silence about anything else about him that raised suspicions.
In fact, a rupture between Danielou and his fellow Jesuits in Paris and the rest of France was the true origin of the oblivion that fell over this great theologian and cardinal. A break that had preceded his death by at least two years.
In fact, since 1972, when Danielou, after decades of living there, moved out of the Jesuit residence of
Etudes, the cutting-edge cultural magazine of tthe French Jesuits, to a nuns' convent, that of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary.
The break was precipitated by an interview given by Danielou to Vatican Radio in which he harshly criticized the 'decadnece' that had devastated so many male and female religious orders because of "a false interpretation of Vatican II".
The interview was interpreted as an accusation against the Society of Jesus itself, whose Superior General at the time was Fr. Pedro Arrupe, who was also the president of the Union of Superiors-General of Religious Orders.
The Jesuit Bruno Ribes, who was the editor of
Etudes, was among the most active in isolating Danielou through a scorched-earth strategy. In fact, their positions were antithetical.
In 1974, the year Danielou died, Ribes aligned
Etudes among those in open disobedience to the teachings of Paul VI's 1968 encyclical
Humanae vitae against artificial contraception.
Ribes collaborated with other progressivist theologians - among them, the Dominicans Jacques Pohier and Bernard Quelquejeu - in the drafting of the law which that very year introduced freedom of abortion in France, when Valery Giscard d'Estaing was president, Jacques Chirac prime minister, and Simone Veil, health minister.
In 1975, Ribes gave up the editorship of
Etudes, subsequently leaving the Society of Jesus and then, the Catholic Church.
Below we reproduce the transcript of the interview that caused the Jesuits to ostracize Danielou. (It must be noted that after 40 years, the decadence of religious orders that he denounced then continues, as shown by the ultra-liberal Leadership Cofnerence of Women Religious in the United States).
'The essential origin of this crisis...'
Interview with Cardinal Jean Danielou
October 23, 1972
Eminence, is there truly a crisis in religious life and could you give us an idea of its extent?
I think there is a very serious crisis of religious life and one cannot speka of renewal but rather of decadence. And I think this crisis strikes the Atlantic area above all. In this respect, Eastern Europe and the nations of Africa and Asia present greater spiritual health.
This crisis is manifest in all areas. The evangelical vows are no longer considered a consecration to God, but seen in a sociological and psychological perspective. There is lip service about not showing any bourgeois tendencies, but on the individual level, poverty is not practised.
They have replaced religious obedience with group dynamics. With the pretext of countering formalism, every regimen for a life of prayer has been adbandoned, and the consequence of this state of confusion is, above all, the disappearance of vocations, because young people demand serious formation. On the other hand, there are the many and scandalous abandonment of the relgious life by priests and religious who have disavowed their solemn pledges to God and the people of God.
Can you tell us what you believe to be the cause of this crisis?
The essential origin of this crisis is a false interpretation of Vatican II. The directives of the Council onthe religious life were very clear: greater faithfulness of religious and consecrated persons to the demands of the Gospel as expressed in the constitutions of each order, while at the same time, adapting the modalities of these constitutions to the conditions of modern life.
The institutions that are faithful to this directive have seen true renewal and have vocations. But in many cases, the directives of Vatican II have been replaced by erroneous ideologies circulated by magazines, conferences, theologians.
Among these errors, one might mention:
- Secularization. Vatican II declared that human values must be taken seriously. It never said that we should enter into the secularized world in the sense that the religious dimension shall no longer be present in civilization!
It's in the name of a false secularization that relgious persons have done away with the habit, that they have abandoned their basic work in order to join secular institutions, replacing adoration of God with social and political activities.
Yet, among other things, this goes counter to the need for spirituality that is manifested in the world today.
[The 1970s saw the flowering of New Age religions and practices in the West, most of them nominally based on traditional Eastern religions but devoid of their religious content.]
- A false conception of freedom that meant the devaluation of the constitutions and rules of the various orders, and the exaltation of spontaneity and improvisation. This is even more absurd since Western society currently suffers from the absence of any discipline in the exercise of freedom. Restoration of firm rules is one of the necessities for religious orders today.
- A false conception of the changes in man and the Church. Although the context has changed, the constitutive elements of man and of the Church are permanent, and the rejection of the constitutive elements of the statutes for the various orders is a fundamental error.
Do you see any remedies for getting out of this ?
I think the only urgent solution is to stop the false orientations adopted by a number of Catholic institutions. This means stopping all experimentation and all decisions that are contrary to the directives of the Council. To be vigilant against books, magazines and conferences in which these erroneous dieas are circulated. To restore in their integrity the practices prescribed by their statutes with the adaptations recommended by the Council.
And where this last is not possible, I think it should be made possible for those members who wish to remain faithful to their statutes and to the directives of Vatican II to constitute their own communities, since religious superiors are held to respect such a desire.
These communities should be authorized to have their own houses of formation. Experience will show if the vocations will be more numerous in the houses of 'strict observance' compared to those of 'selective observance'. And in cases where the Superiors-General oppose such a request, the petitioners should certainly have recourse to the Holy Father.
Religious life is called upon to play a great role in a technological society. The more this society develops, the more it will feel the need for a manifestation of God. And this is precisely the purpose of religious life. But in order to fulfill it, religious men and women must once again find its authentic significance and break radically with a secularization which is destroying it in its essence and prevents it from attracting vocations.
Amazingly prophetic words, which continue to be frighteningly actual! His description of the decadence of religious life is a veritable self-portrait of the ultra-liberal orders represented in the LCWR ['liquor' for short!, I say]. It testifies to the unapologetic modern heterodoxy of the Jesuits that they ostracized an eminent man for speaking the truth they do not want to admit. The 20th-century Jesuits - who live on in the priests who run America and Commonweal magazines and universities like Georgetown - unilaterally decided to ignore the fourth vow Igatius of Loyola asked his spiritual sons to observe: communion with Rome and the Succesor of Peter.
For more details on the figure of Jean Danielou, read the article by Fr. Jonah Lynch in the May, 2012, issue of Avvenire:
www.avvenire.it/Cultura/Pagine/danielou-la-verit%C3%A0-usurp...
Fr. Lynch is the vice-rector in Rome of the Fraternity of San Carlo Borromeo {the priesthood arm of Comunione e Liberazione] which forms priests destined to work as missionaries. The Fraternity co-sponsored the seminar on Danielou, along with the Pontitifical University of Santa Croce.
But Benedict XVI was ahead of the curve
in restituting Cardinal Danielou
I am surprised Magister does not make reference to the following news iten from 2007, which I found in an Italian forum which provides the link (now invalid) to papanews.it, its original source. Here is a translation:
Papa Ratzinger rehabilitates and pays tribute
to Cardinal Jean Danielou, a calumniated theologian
VATICAN CITY, June 2007 - Benedict XVI paid homage today to the memory of the great Jesuit theologian Jean Danielou (in the photo) [sic - which explains why I earlier used the photo they provided for the composite that illustrates this post- an error Flo kindly pointed out in a note below and that I have since corrected].
Danielou was created a cardinal by Paul VI in 1969, but a veil of oblivion fell over him after his death in 1974 at the home of a former prostitute. It was one of the places where he was doing his apostolate, and not for sinning, as the French media insinuated at the time despite the testimonies given at the time.
"He was a holy man and a brilliant priest," said, among many others, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, then superior general of the Dominicans, who said that under the circumstances, the place was "in some ways the ideal place for the death of a cardinal".
Poe Benedict said today, referring to the Jesuit theologian as "an eminent scholar of the Fathers of the Church": "Cardinal Danielou never tired of repeating that there is a mystery, a hidden content in history, namely, the mystery of the works of God which constitute authentic reality in time, hidden behind appearances... But this history that God makes real for man cannot be real without God. Yet to linger in contemplating the great works of God would mean seeing only one aspect of things. Men must also respond." [Unfortunately, the item does not state the occasion on which Benedict XVI said this, so I must research it.]
But Benedict XVI had earlier 'restituted Danielou', citing him in his book JESUS OF NAZARETH' [in Chapter 9, a reference from Danielou's The Bible and Liturgy].
Cardinal Angelo Scola, Patriach of Venice [at the time], recently wrote of Danielou: "In the Catholic world, Jean Danielou deserves the credit for starting a theology that is more open to the phenomenon of religion, normally called as the 'theology of fulfillment' which postulates the fullness of religion in Christianity."
According to Danielou, Scola noted:
other religions are different from Christianity in this: in other religions, it is man who makes an effort to reach God; in Christianity, instead, it is God, the Mystery, who comes to man, who becoming man in Jesus, bridges the abyss that is otherwise unbridgeable, between man and God. But in general, other religions should not be undervalued: depending on the sincerity of adherence to such religions, they express a noble effort and testify to the inevitability of the religious sense. Nonetheless, all these religions, by their own admission, have not been able to reveal to man the face of the Mystery".
This is the theology of a 'dialog in truth' elaborated by the distinguished Jesuit theologian, accepted by Vatican II, and which Pope Benedict XVI wishes to relaunch today.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/05/2012 16:53]