Joseph Ratzinger revisits
a place associated with
his work in Vatican-II
by Alessandro Speciale
Translated from the Italian service of
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI is visiting the international house of the Society for the Divine Word (SVD)in Nemi today, a town not far from Castel Gandolfo, which like is, is also perched above a lake in the Alban Hills south of Rome.
Since 2010, the SVD has named its meeting and retreat center in Nemi Centro Ad Gentes. Not by chance.
The center, in 1965, hosted the Vatican-II Commission on Missions which was drafting the Council decree on missions, Ad Gentes. Working with the Commission were theological consultants including Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, then 38, who returns today as Pope.
The decree
Ad Gentes – ass SVD Fr. Stephen Bevans writes in a 2009 book
Evangelization and Religious Freedom - had an 'unusually turbulent' genesis. A first version, presented to the Council at the end of 1964 and supported by Paul VI, was retracted without being brought to a vote because of opposition, such as that expressed by Fr. Ratzinger at the time.
The then Superior-General of the SVD (an missionary order generally referred to as the Verbites), Fr. Johannes Schütte, was charged with forming a commission to draft a new proposal restating the missionary task of the Church, incorporating suggestions presented by the Council Fathers. Among the experts named to work with the commission were the French Dominican theologian Yves Congar and Joseph Ratzinger.
The commission first met in Nemi in January 1965, at which preliminary meeting Fr. Ratzinger was not present. He participated in the plenary session from March 29 to April 3, when the final draft of the decree
Ad Gentes was drawn up.
When Fr. Schütte presented the draft decree to the plenary of the Council in December 1965, it was approved with 2394 votes for and only 5 against/ (This was the best voting record for any of the 16 Council documents).
The SVD center was renovated in 2010, at which time the Verbites invited the Pope to revisit them. They renewed the invitation this year on the occasion of the order's chapter-general. In the words of the SVD procurator-general, "to remember and celebrate the work" of the bishops and consultants who had prepared the decree "on retreat in this center".
In his June 9 letter to the Pope, Fr. Girardi wrote, "We would be very grateful if the Pope could;d come and bless the Center, while at the same time, the participants in the Chapter-General will have the joy of meeting the Holy Father and share some moments of filial veneration and new impetus to continue our missionary service in various local churches around the world where we are present".
Welcoming him to the center will be the newly-elected Superior General, German Fr. Heinz Kulüke. The SVD, founded in 1895 by ....
currently has more than 6,000 priests around the world.
[In my childhood, our parish priest was a Belgian SVD who was also the chaplain of the Catholic school I attended. The Philippines has one of the largest SVD presences in the world, with three SVD seminaries. I've always always found it a bit strange that the Philippines has been considered missionary country all along - perhaps because we are a Third World country - even if we were Christianized in the 16th century and more than 80% of the population is Roman Catholic.]
The following is abridged from the original because I have omitted material already said in the preceding article....
That spring of 1965 -
and Congar's diary notes
by Gianni Valente
Adapted and translated from the Italian service of
"What a place! Everything is very fine: marble and decorative wood...", Dominican Fr. Yves Congar wrote about the SVD center in his Vatican-II diary published posthumously only a few years ago.
The excellent hospitality offered by the SVD when Congar was part of the Vatican II commission which met in Nemi twice to draft the conciliar decree Ad Gentes was noted with ascetic embarrassment by Congar: "A table that is a bit too abundant. Not just that there isn't anything Lenten about it [the second session took place during Lent], but there was a true excess of everything. In the evenings, meals were taken with wine. Obviously, this all helps create an atmosphere of cordiality, and that is why Fr. Schütte does it, but at what expense!"
The OR published the group photo of the Ad Gentes commission seen above, with the signatures of the participants on the Center's register, which unfortunately does not reproduce very well. Joseph Ratzinger's is the last signature, and since it does not enlarge well at all, I used a similar signature from a 1962 document for comparison (a letter written in September 1962 by Fr. Ratzinger to Cardinal Frings reporting on what he had done by way of preimianry work for their pwrticipation in Vatican-II*.
The Pope's visit will doubtless bring back memories of the brainstorming sessions on the great themes concerning the life of the Church in which he took part as a theological consultant during the years 1962-1965.
[He first came to Vatican II as a consultant for the Archbishop of Cologne, Josef Frings, who immediately got him appointed as an official theological expert (peritus) for the Council itself.]
Cardinal Frings, with arguments put together by Fr. Ratzinger, had been one of the leaders in the successful move to withdraw the draft decree on missions prepared by the Vatican-II Preparatory Commission.
Although Fr. Ratzinger was not present at the first meeting of the commission on the missions decree in Nemi, an important text in the working agenda was his paper on the theological foundation of Church missions, «Considerationes quoad fundamentum theologicum missionis Ecclesiae»".
The Latin paper, recently published in the magazine of the Vatican-II study center of the Pontifical Lateran University, is dedicated to the doctrinal principles of mission, and offers relevant points of reflection even today, in view of the coming Synodal Assembly on the New Evangelization and the Year of Faith.
In 1965, Fr. Ratzinger wrote authoritatively that mission "is not a battle to capture other people in order to incorporate them into our own group". He sees mission not as self-actuated by the Church, but that Christ himself through the Church, draws to him and the Father the hearts of men. "No human or religious effort in themselves can save men - all salvation comes from Christ".
The work session in Nemi confirmed the affinity and similar outlook between the Bavarian priest and the French theologian Congar, twenty years his senior. They both rejected the narrow idea of mission which was limited to the traditional idea of bringing the Gospel to pagans. They thought that this reduced everything to technical and jurisdictional problems regarding the formation of new dioceses in mission lands.
The two theologians believed in a unitary perception of mission and its theological sources and then applying it to concrete contexts and circumstances.
Congar, in his Council diary, famously gave way to his feelings even about those with whom he worked (and whom he named openly). "Fr. X is truly an ass", or "Mons. Y says nothing and seems very bored", or "Mons. Z almost does not follow [the discussion] and is of no help at all".
He makes one exception: "Fortunately, there is Ratzinger. He is reasonable, modest, dispassionate, and very helpful", he says in his notes for March 31, 1965.
[My addendum: The second of the three great French theologians who served as periti at Vatican-II, Henri de Lubac, also made observations in his Vatican-II diaries about those he encountered. He said of Joseph Raztinger that 'his powerful intellect is matched by his peacefulness and affability', and of Hans Kueng, that he had 'juvenile audacity' and was 'incendiary, superficial and polemical' in his speech.
All three French periti were made cardinals eventually: Yves Congar (1904-1995) in 1994, Henri de Lubac, SJ (1896-1991) in 1983, and Jean Danielou, SJ (1905-1974) in 1969. Paul VI would also have made de Lubac cardinal in 1969 but he declined at the time because it was required then that a cardinal must be made bishop first. John Paul II waived the requirement for him in 1983. The only other Vatican II peritus to be made cardinal was Joseph Ratzinger in 1977, whom Paul VI elevated at age 50 because of his theological work, well before his mentors De Lubac and Congar. The three French theologians were recognized but at a much older age. I checked and saw that Cardinals Walter Kasper and Kurt Lehmann were both made cardinals in 2001, at age 68 and 65, respectively, but although both are theologians, they became cardinals by virtue of their positions - Kasper as President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Lehmann as chairman of the German bishops' conference.]
Apropos, the following constitute all the other photos I can find of Fr. Ratzinger at Vatican-II - and would be most happy if anyone out there could contribute more:
Top photo and left, bottom photo, with Cardinal Frings; right, with Yves Congar.
The dates of the pictures are uncertain. The photo at extreme left, bottom, is from 1964 (taken from MILESTONES). The one with his brother Georg (center) is supposedly from 1965, and bottom right is from the time period but probably taken in Germany.
*
The 1962 letter comes from photos taken by Simone at the PRF of the travelling exhibit on Benedict XVI organized by the Archdiocese of Cologne in 2007. I translated the letter in the full post with Simone's photos which can be found on
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354506&p=49
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/07/2012 17:57]