Vatican II turning point: The source of revelation

    I wrote the following in a letter from Rome to my family on Oct. 30, 1963:
    “The council is really getting interesting. There is an English press conference that we can attend every day in a building not far from St. Peter’s. About five famous theologians and several American bishops form a panel and answer questions from the press.
    “They have to be pretty sharp to keep up with the Time and Newsweek reporters.
    “Both the theologians and the bishops vary according to the subject being discussed. Bishop Warren Boudreaux from New Iberia was on the panel for several days when they were discussing the schema on the Church. He has a doctorate in canon law and gave a good account of himself.
    “Of course, every time the bishops really get into an argument during the morning session of the council, the reporters have a heyday trying to get all the details from the panel. It is surprising how informed their questions are. Some of the reporters seem to know more theology than a lot of priests.
    “Because of the caliber of the theologians on the panel, attending these conferences is just as worthwhile as listening to lectures at the university – and usually much more interesting.”
A 50-year-old letter
    Looking back, those press conferences were the best theology classes I ever had. There was an American Jesuit theologian, Gustave Weigel, and a Canadian theologian, Gregory Baum, whom I can still see drawing pyramids on newsprint symbolic of traditional church structure and circles symbolic of a universal church that truly would include the voices of the people of God.
    And the press understood, particularly one of them who is still writing on the church today, Robert Blair Kaiser of Time magazine. In 2006 he wrote about how this all played out in his book, “A Church in Search of Itself.”
    By this time in the second year of the Second Vatican Council (1963), the bishops truly had bought into Pope John XXIII’s call for renewal.
Supported new schema
    A turning point had occurred toward the end of the first year’s session when the council fathers had to decide if they were going to support the schema on divine revelation prepared by the Roman Congregation on Doctrine (the Holy Office). That debate so divided them into a majority and a fierce-though-small minority that the bishops began meeting in national groups for updating lectures on Sacred Scripture.
    After a quick lunch following the morning sessions, the American bishops would gather like the seminary students they once were in our auditorium at the North American College to listen to Barnabas Ahern, a famous American Scripture scholar.
    Their learning curve was quick as the debate proved.
    The history of the debate on divine revelation is important because it records a refining of Catholic doctrine with regard to tradition and a new direction for the future, just as the new definition of the church as the “people of God” did. Both steps greatly advanced ecumenism and lay participation in the Church.
    The work of theologians and Scripture scholars in the first half of the 20th Century produced a swing away from the view that the Bible and tradition were two separate, virtually independent, sources of revelation. This view developed in the period following the Council of Trent (1545-1564) during the struggle with Protestantism known as the Counter-Reformation.
    At Vatican II, cardinals from northern Europe and theologians and Scripture scholars argued that the Bible is the source of all revelation, and tradition is the theological explanation and interpretation of what Scripture explicitly states or directly implies. Tradition is the authentic teaching of the church, but that teaching does not include the creation of new revelation. Scripture is the norm to which all doctrine and teaching submits.
    This one-source position of the written Word of God in the Bible, which is officially interpreted by the Church, is closer to the Protestant “Scripture alone” position. It was precisely this closeness that alarmed the Vatican’s curia and its chief spokesman, Cardinal Josef Ottaviani, head of the Holy Office.
‘It is unacceptable’
    When Cardinal Ottaviani presented the Holy Office’s schema for acceptance as the council’s working paper, he was met by a barrage of “non placet’s” (“It is unacceptable”). Cardinal Achelle Lienart of France said that it misconstrued what the Council of Trent said about the relationship of Scripture and tradition; and faith was based not on academic arguments but on the Word of God.
    Cardinal Alfredo Frings of Germany said that in this document one hears not the voice of the good shepherd but the voice of a professor in the textbooks of the 19th century. Cardinal Paul-Émile Leger of Montreal claimed that it was based on fear of error and would be a hindrance to true scholarship.
    Cardinal Joseph Ritter of St. Louis argued that the document was filled with pessimism and negativity and threw suspicion on the work of Catholic exegetes. Pope John XXIII noted in his diary on Nov. 14, 1962 that “the schema does not take into account the specific intentions of the pope in his official discourses.”
    With the approval of the German bishops, the theologians Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) composed an alternative text.
    However, when the vote for acceptance or rejection of the schema was taken, the 1,368 votes to reject, though a majority, fell short of the two-thirds required to kill it and consider alternative schemas. But the next day, Cardinal Gaetano Cicognani, secretary of state, brought a message from Pope John saying that he was changing his rules for the council, and from now on a simple majority could kill a proposed schema. A new schema would be brought back and passed in the final year of the council.
    Everyone thought that this document was crucial. If it were condemnatory, there could be no ecumenical breakthrough. If it insisted on disproved theological concepts like the two sources theory, it would eliminate all of the gains made in Scripture studies for over 50 years. And if changes could not be made by a council, how could they ever be made?
    Furthermore, the tradition of the Church on social, moral and scientific questions in the past has been in error (for example, usury, slavery, the divine right of kings, the Galileo condemnation, freedom of religion, the global condemnation of Jews as responsible for Christ’s death, cruel and unusual punishment, torture, etc.). If Church tradition includes teaching not connected with the Bible, and those teachings are a source of divine revelation, then logically God has inspired error.
    It would seem safer and more truthful to limit our notion of divine revelation to only religious truths taught in the Bible. (The Bible also contains statements about historical and scientific facts that are simply erroneous.)
Bishop Tracy was hopeful
    Baton Rouge Bishop Robert E. Tracy had some rather prophetic final remarks about the Constitution on Divine Revelation: “The principal effects of the constitution, I feel, will be as follows: it will leave a number of important doors open to progress in biblical study since it defines tradition in a wide sense and explicitly endorses the study of literary forms in biblical research; it will make defense of biblical truth more consistent by a wider concept of authorship which it employs; it explicitly encourages ecumenical cooperation in Bible study; it urges greater use of the Bible in the Sacred Liturgy and in teaching and preaching; it will result in having Scripture play a much greater role in the life of the individual Catholic, who will henceforth become far more familiar with holy writ.”
    Father Carville is a retired priest of the Diocese of Baton Rouge and writes on current topics for The Catholic Commentator.