On the eve of Vatican-II:
Joseph Ratzinger's (eventually successful)
challenge to the draft document on Revelation
by Gianni Valente
Translated from the Italian service of
Oct. 9, 2012
On October 11, 1962, when John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council with words of exultation ("Gaudet Mater Ecclesiae" - Mother Church rejoices), the Council adventure had already begun earlier for the 35-year-old German theologian Joseph Ratzinger.
The day before the solemn inauguration, Ratzinger, who had just arrived in Rome as the theological consultant to Cardinal Jsef Frings of Cologne, had hardly unpakced his bags.
At the Collegio di Santa Maria dell'Anima, at 5 pm on the dot, he was awaited by all the German-speaking bishops taking part in the Counci, with other Germanophone aliies.
On the eve of the Council opening, Cardinal Frings had asked his consultant to brief the bishops on the schema (draft document proposed by the Council organizers) of a document called
De Fontibus Revelationis )On the sources of Revelation), which had been the first of the schemata sent to the Council Fathers for their preliminary consideration.
Joseph Ratzinger's presentation that afternoon amounted to a substantial criticism of the schema which had seen the light under the constant monitoring of the leading experts of the so-called 'Roman school' of theology, from the Jesuit Sebastian Tromp to the then Prefect of the Holy Office, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani.
But Frings's theological consultant thought that the draft was poorly concxeived, starting with its title which evoked the formulas in current use at the time in theology manuals, where Scripture and Tradition were defined as the 'two sources' of divine Revelation.
Ratzinger believed that the definition inverted the ontological succession between Revelation and the historic forms by which it had been transmitted. In reality, Ratzinger said in his presentation to the bishops, "Revelation is not something that comes after Scripture and Tradition. On the contrary, it is God talking and acting which comes before all the historical formulations of his Word, he being the only source that feeds Scripture and Tradition".
For Ratzinger, this was not just an idle academic point. He said that those who drafted the schema were blinded by the 'phantasm of modernism" and conditioned by the obsession of having to refute the Protestant principle of
sola Scriptura (in effect, trust Scripture alone), which recognizes only the Bible as the rule of faith and Christian practice.
In the drafters' zeal to mark off a distance from the Protestant view, Ratzinger pointed out, they had almost attributed to Tradition the power to define 'contents of the faith' that are not present even implicitly in Sacred Scripture.
He said that such a 'traditionalist' tendency represented a betrayal of what the Church has always thought. He reminded the bishops that the Fathers of the Church had already rejected as gnostic "every idea of a Tradition understood as a collection of statements communicated outside Scripture".
On this point, Ratzinger's proposed solution was clear: The Council Fathers should purge the document on Revelation of "all the formulations that describe Tradition as a principal autonomous source".
They ought to be replaced, he said, with statements that demonstrate "both the close inter-relation between Scripture, Tradition, and the Church's announcements, as well as the profound obligations of the Church towards the words of Scripture".
The following day, at the inaugural rites of the Council, the young Bavarian theologian was comforted by the opening address of John XXIII. In his subsequent accounts of Vatican II, Ratzinver expressed his relief opon hearing the Pope who "avoided all statements that were only negative" but called on the Church to employ 'the medicine of mercy' in its relationship with the modern world.
He was not as impressed by other aspects of the opening liturgy, which, according to him, had reduced the bishops of the Council and everyone present to 'mute spectators' who had no 'active participation'.
The post-script to Joseph Ratzinger's criticism of the draft document on Revelation was that he played a major role in drafting the eventual Council document adopted, Dei Verbum (The Word of God), which continues to be one of the most praised and least controversial of the Vatican II documents.[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/10/2012 00:56]