August 14, 2012      Martin Mallon  (Ireland)     Martin's previous articles

                          CONGAR AND THE COUNCIL
 

In the introduction to Yves Congar’s excellent book, My Journal of the Council, Eric Mahieu quotes Congar summing up a major problem in the pre-Vatican II church, caused by the Curia and pope claiming “control of everything”, when he writes:  

“On 12 January 1959, Yves Congar wrote to his friend, Christophe-Jean Dumont, OP, director of the Istina Centre as follows: ‘John XXIII? Such a complete conversion would be needed in Rome! Conversion to no longer laying claim to the control of everything: it was that, under Pius XII, that took on unprecedented dimensions and produced a bottomless paternalism and stupidity.’ But then, on 25 January, the new Pope announced his intention to summon an ecumenical Council! Three days later, Congar wrote to his friend, Bernard Dupuy, OP, saying: ‘Clearly, something new is in the air. It is very serious.’” [1]  

Congar was initially enthused by Pope John XXIII’s stated intentions but was unsettled when he discovered the obstructions being raised by the Roman Curia:

“The long-term aim of the reunion of separated Christians, envisaged by the newly elected Pope, and the corresponding aim of an ecclesiological renewal and a pastoral and missionary opening of the Church had, to begin with, filled him with hope; but the resistance of conservative circles in the Roman Curia which were seeking to control the preparation of the Council, subsequently made him uneasy.”[2]  

At this stage Congar felt like a puppet in a strait-jacket “bound by the concilar oath of secrecy”, but he determined to work loyally for the Commisssion if he could be useful. However, his contributions had little effect due to the “preponderence of the conservative environment.”[3]  

However, working on the schema on the Church, De ecclesia, “After centuries of Roman centralisation, which had reached their culminating point in the pontificate of Pius XII, Congar rejoiced to see episcopal collegiality finding its place in a conciliar schema.”[4]  

With John XXIII’s death and Paul VI’s election it was made clear to Congar that he was “fully rehabilitated....Even so, in the following year he was to write in his journal, on 12 March 1964: ‘Personally, I have never been, I am still not, free of  the fears attached to a man who is suspect, sanctioned, judged, discriminated against.”[5] These feelings are common to many who have suffered under oppressive regimes; it is sad to think of our church behaving in the same manner as such a regime.  

The Council was to witness a ferocious “clash within the Conciliar assembly” concerning the chapter in Lumen Gentium on the hierarchy, dealing with “ the episcopate and its relationship with the primacy of the Pope.” Congar fought for the inclusion of the “collegial responsibility of the bishops”. However, according to Mahieu, “pressure was being brought to bear on a Pope who was scrupulous, and anxious to secure unanimous agreement. Accordingly, in order to satisfy the more conservative wing,” Pope Paul VI produced a list of suggested changes which Congar resisted “in order to restrict the addition of expressions that excessively exalted the primacy of the pope.”[6]  

It is difficult to come to a conclusion on whether Pope Paul VI was more conservative than generally believed or if he was just easily influenced by the conservative elements in the Curia, but it is clear that, for whatever reason, he made sure the conservative view was often reflected in the Council documents. In fact, after the Council he overruled the findings of the papally appointed commission on birth control, which advocated the use of artificial contraception, and produced the encyclical Humanae Vitae which forbid the use of artificial contraception.  

Congar’s journal does not finish on 8 December 1965, the date the Council ended, but “on 30 September 1966, on the conclusion, in Rome, of the International Congress of Theology on Vatican II” giving us an insight important  to Congar “of  this more trusting collaboration between bishops and theologians that had come into being during the Council.”[7]

 Interestingly, Mahieu points out that “...the Fathers of Vatican II were to make considerable use of theologians, who recovered a real freedom of speech and a great many of whom ‘exercised a true magisterium’ (21 October 1962). Congar would be able to write that ‘this Council will have been to a considerable extent that of the theologians’ (5 October 1965).”[8]

Unfortunately, bishops no longer consult to the same degree with theologians, unless they are promoting the theology favoured by the Vatican, usually at the expense of the theology of Vatican II. It is unfortunate that today few bishops would be seen consulting theologically with theologians, such as Congar and John Courtney Murray, who had been censored for a number of years by the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith. However, history shows us that it is very often such theologians, whose theology is closer to the truth, whose theology becomes official church policy years after the theologian has been censored or silenced.

 Another important point is that there is a third partner at work with the bishops and theologians, the People of God, and “During the Council, this showed itself in the presence of lay Auditors but also, and to a much greater extent, through public opinion.” Congar did not forget the People of God, he “deemed the sensus fidelium important” and “did not hesitate to enlighten ecclesial public opinion with his articles.”[9]

 It is clear that in the event of another Ecumenical Council a much greater involvement in all areas of the Council would be required for the People of God for the Council’s teachings to be accepted.

 Some conservatives have dismissed Vatican II as being merely a pastoral Council with no doctrine involved, whereas Congar wrote, in 1984, that “The pastoral is no less doctrinal, but it is doctrinal in a way that is not content with conceptualising, defining, deducing and anathematising: it seeks to express the saving truth in a way that reaches out to the men and women of today, takes up their difficulties, and replies to their questions.”[10] Its appears that any future Council would be pastoral as well, as the modern world needs our Church “to express the saving truth in a way that reaches out to the men and women of today, takes up their difficulties, and replies to their questions” more and more. The world is crying out for this today.

 Congar also highlighted that in “the texts of the Preparatory Theological Commission, ‘the SOURCE is not the Word of God: it is the Church itself, and even the Church reduced to the Pope, which is VERY serious’.”[11] Congar wrote this in 1961, yet it can be applied to the Roman Curia today which demonstrates the necessity for another Council which would have the intention of reforming the Curia as a priority.

 Congar noted, ten years after the Council, that the Council had “stopped half-way on many questions. It began a task that is not completed, whether it is a question of collegiality, of the role of the laity, of the missions  and even of ecumenism.”[12]

This demonstrates how essential a new Council is; the work of Vatican II must be brought to completion or at least developed further, but today Rome is trying to reform any developments there have been and to return to the pre-Vatican II Church.

 Congar had an important insight regarding the Council: “The Council has left to historians and theologians the task of developing a theology of the Church, “we” Christians, a communion of disciples built up on a sacramental foundation of which the law specifies the conditions, a theology of local or particular churches, a theology of ministries, of the place of women in the whole life of the Church, a theology of the exact status of the primatial power of the Bishop of Rome with regard to the communion of churches and to collegiality...”[13]

 If Congar was here today he would find it difficult to see where Rome is encouraging this task “of developing a theology of the Church”, but he was correct, especially in relation to women in the Church and papal power in relation to collegiality. This work needs to be done urgently, however, we may have to wait for another Council before such developments are initiated.

 Paul Philibert OP, in Congar’s Ecclesiastical Subtext: Intransigent Conservatism, insists that “By going back to the early sources, Congar and others represented a risk for the power structure that conceived the papal office as a monarchy supported by a dictatorial Roman Curia and always inclined to consider anything done in the Vatican as sharing in the infallibility of the pope.”[14]

 Congar never took his eye off the ball and commenting on the closing Mass of the Council remarked that “...there was something wrong. It was all about the pope. It gave the impression the pope was above the church rather than in it...As he himself says in many places, the Council planted the seeds of a new ecclesiology – a new church. But the obstructionism  of the Roman Curia and of the forces of the right led to too many essential points being expressed as compromises (as, for example, the introduction of the Nota Praevia to Lumen gentium to underscore papal privilege in a document about the People of God)...the ambiguities forced upon the texts by controversies opened the possibility for regressive interpretations of what are genuine developments in the Council’s documents for theology and pastoral life. In too many places, the impression is still given that the church is essentially about the pope or the hierarchy.”[15]

The Associations of Catholic Priests and other associations are doing good work and perhaps their best work will be in influencing the calling of a new Ecumenical Council, the Council's agenda and who will be present and participating in the Council’s workings.