ON THE FRONTLINES
(CONTINUED)
On March 27, in the presence of Father Bugnini, poor Cardinal Larraona exposed before the Fathers the reform plan for the Ordinary of the Mass.
While the Lercaros, Dopfners, and others approved of it with delight, the "Roman" Cardinals struck back: Godfrey analyzed the text, refuted some of its sophistries, and rejected, one after another, all the proposed deletions and modifications. Ottaviani uttered a forceful non placet :
There are so many changes that it looks like a revolutionary reform and will amaze the Christian people.
Browne stated the principle:
The sanctification of man [...] is carried out in the Mass by the very exercise of the act of oblation or sacrifice, the supreme act of the virtue of religion. The Innovators have forgotten this truth and have emphasized the reading of the word of God and the celebration of the meal.
As for Father Philippe, he explained that the concelebration, in light of the doctrine proposed by Pius XII, attenuated the unique and hierarchical role of the priest, identified in the Mass with Christ the Priest; and it diminished the main fruit of propitiation and impetration for the living and the dead, because that fruit "was not the same in a single concelebrated Mass as in several Masses celebrated by various priests." Giving his vote, Archbishop Lefebvre first said: Placet juxta MODUM according to the observations of the most eminent Cardinals Godfrey, Ottaviani, Browne and Father Philippe.
It was a "yes" to a reform, that of the premiss, but a "no" to a revolution. The reform commission, he said later, had to act under the authority of the Pope, but as soon as the changes were made, they had to stop there for a certain time, because continuous change produces less appreciation of the dignity and value of the liturgical rites of the Church, both among the priests and among the faithful.
On March 30, 1962, he opposed the innovations in the liturgy of the mission countries, proposed in the scheme of Cardinal Agagianian, because they destroyed the unity of the rite and of the liturgical language, which is, for our faithful of the regions of mission, a very strong argument in favor of the faith, in the face of the diversity of the Protestant rites, which is a sign of their division.
He illustrated that truth with two facts:
When the Congregation of Propaganda Fide gave us the faculty to translate into the vernacular the chants of the solemn Mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo,etc.), all the priests, especially the priests of the indigenous clergy, vehemently denied the usefulness of that translation, because both they and their parishioners knew those songs perfectly and knew that the Latin language is a sign of unity in the faith . On the occasion of the Pan-African Congress in Dakar, the Presidents of the civil governments (Senghor from Senegal, Tsirana from Madagascar, Maga from Dahomey and Yameogo from Upper Volta), gathered in the cathedral for the solemn Mass, unanimously and loudly sang all the canticles Latins, including the graduate, and after the Mass they expressly expressed their joy at this unanimity.
What a great example of unity and brotherhood in prayer and worship before all the Catholics present! Thus, if the principle is accepted that episcopal conferences can act and legislate in matters of liturgy and sacramental rites, even with the approval of the Holy See, there is a real return to national liturgies and rites; all the efforts of two centuries to foster liturgical unity vanish, and Gregorian art and music crumble. [...] «There is a danger of anarchy».
The apostolate of the laity and Christ the King
Let's go to the seventh and last preparatory session. The Archbishop vigorously defended the Reign of Christ the King even over temporal things.
On June 18, regarding the apostolate of the laity, he asked that his dependence on the priestly apostolate be affirmed, and for this he distinguished, like Saint Pius X, two degrees of dependence, depending on whether it is an apostolate in the broad sense "by the sanctification of the profession and of the city", in which the laity are "subject to the supervision of the Bishops", or of an apostolate in the strict sense, in which the laity "depend without any doubt directly and immediately on the authority of the Bishops and of the priests appointed by the Bishops, because then they work in the mission entrusted by Christ to the Bishops». After making this luminous distinction, Monsignor Lefebvre specified that, however, the temporal order could not be separated from the spiritual order, because on the one hand the supernatural order also encompasses the temporal, and on the other hand the clerics cannot be excluded. of the care and possession of temporal things. Finally, he denounced as "the ruin of the true apostolate" the false principle of "First restore the natural order so that it becomes supernatural later."
Our Lord Jesus Christ, he said, never taught that principle, being Himself the restoration of both natural and supernatural order, since His grace heals and elevates at the same time.
Duplicity of Pope John
But John XXIII introduced a second Trojan horse into the preparatory battle: the action of the young Léon-Joseph Suenens, Archbishop of Mechelen, whom he had just appointed as a member of the Central Preparatory Commission, and whom he was going to create Cardinal.
Starting in March 1962, Suenens complained to John XXIII about the "abusive" number of schemes: no less than seventy. John XXIII, who had not given any guidelines for the preparatory work, and who did not want to confront Ottaviani, commissioned Suenens to secretly clear the ground. Suenens's plan was to reuse all the preparatory schemes and rework them within a two-part framework: what the Church had to tell her children about her ad intra, and what she had to tell the world ad extra. The second part was obviously a revolutionary novelty.
The project, ready at the end of April, pleased the Pope and was communicated in mid-May, according to his orders, to some influential Cardinals that John XXIII wanted to join the idea: Cardinals Dópfner, Montini, Siri, Liénart and Lercaro. Wasn't that the beginning of the abandonment of the preparatory schemes? In this way, John XXIII destroyed with one hand what he built with the other: he allowed the preparatory commissions to continue their work, and at the same time programmed their destruction through others.
The Holy Spirit would be in charge of putting things right, Juan thought, if we stick to what the Bishop of Tulle told his parishioners about his conversation on May 7, 1962 with the Pope, about the work of the Central Commission:
The Holy Father follows them with deep interest and a spirit of faith that causes great admiration. It is seen that the Holy Father placed all his hopes in the Holy Spirit and not in human calculations.
That was not all. The Secretariat for Unity did not remain inactive. It asked the experts of its ten sub-commissions to produce suggestions or outlines on topics that were also dealt with by the other commissions, but conceived from an ecumenical point of view, and three special outlines on ecumenism, religious freedom (That topic figured very early on in the list of the Secretariat; Schmidt does not mention it. Father Jéróme Hamer, OP, recounts the genesis of the scheme and the elaboration of its first text, the "Freiburg document", from November 27, 1960 in the bishopric of Freiburg: the That day, the subcommission brought together Their Excellencies Francjois Charriére and Émile de Smedt, Canon Bavaud and Father Hamer. Cf. Vadean II, La liberté religieuse, Unam Sanctam, Cerf, 1967, pp. 53-57.) and the question of the Jews.
The Secretariat communicated the projects dealing with these first three themes to the Ottaviani Theological Commission, which tried to take them into account as little as possible. For this reason, Cardinal Bea asked that a mixed commission with the Theological Commission be constituted (as he had done before with other preparatory commissions). Ottaviani refused.
In order to circumvent this substantive difference without resolving it himself, John XXIII decided, on February 1 , 1962, that the last two plans of the Secretariat, including that of religious freedom, be communicated directly to the Central Preparatory Commission without going through “other commissions”.
A dramatic showdown
Thus it was that on June 19, the penultimate day of the last session, there were two opposing schemes in the program of the Central Commission. The first, chapter IX of the outline "On the Church", prepared by the Theological Commission and directly by Cardinal Ottaviani, dealt with "On relations between Church and State and religious tolerance"; it had nine pages of text and fourteen notes that referred, with numerous citations, to the pontifical magisterium from Pius IX to Pius XII. The other, drawn up by the Secretariat for the Unity of Cardinal Bea (More specifically, by the subcommission chaired by Monsignor Charriére, Bishop of Freiburg and made up of Monsignor Emil de Smedt, Bishop of Bruges, the Belgian Jetóme Hamer, OP, the Canadian A. Baum, AA, and the American Weigel, SJ), it was entitled "On Religious Freedom"; it consisted of fifteen pages of text and five of notes, without any reference to the magisterium of the Church.
When he received these two texts in advance, Archbishop Lefebvre said to himself: The first deals with the Catholic Tradition, but what is the purpose of the second? Nothing less than introducing liberalism, the French Revolution and the constitution of the rights of man into the Church ! That's impossible! Let's see what happens in the session.
He was not wrong. Cardinal Ottaviani began the exposition of his scheme by openly attacking the opposite scheme:
When expounding the doctrine of the relations between the Catholic State and the other religions, it seems to me that it should be pointed out that the Holy Synod [the Council] must follow the indisputable or proper doctrine of the Church, and not the one that the Catholics would most like. non-Catholics or I would give in to their requests. For this reason, I think that the constitution proposed by the Secretariat for Christian Unity should be eliminated from the discussion, since it very clearly reflects the influence of contacts with non-Catholics.
And after illustrating that influence with some examples, he presented his scheme, totally dominated by the concern to protect the Catholic faith and safeguard the temporal common good, founded on the unanimity of the citizens in the true religion. He then distinguished the different situations of the peoples: an entirely Catholic nation, a nation with a plurality of religions, and a non-Catholic State.
In the first case, the principles were applied in an integral way in a system of union between the Church and the State, with the recognition and civil protection of the true religion and, if necessary, a certain tolerance of false cults; in the second model, the Church would enjoy the common right recognized by the State to all religions that are not contrary to natural law; in the last configuration, the Church would ask for simple freedom of action.
Cardinal Bea rose in turn to present his notion of religious freedom, which was valid for the three previous hypotheses and for every man, even for those who "err in faith." Until then, the Church had only defended the rights of her children; Would she claim them now for adherents of all cults? That is what it was all about, Cardinal Bea then explained, highlighting the ecumenical significance of the topic:
Today it is a matter of great interest to non-Catholics, who continually criticize the Church for being intolerant where it is the majority and demanding religious freedom where it is the minority. That objection greatly harms all efforts to bring non-Catholics into the Church. In drawing up this scheme by virtue of its position, the Secretariat has had all these circumstances before its eyes and has asked itself what is the duty of the Church regarding religious freedom and how the latter should be exercised.
How right Ottaviani was! Thus, this scheme had been forged to satisfy the claims of non-Catholics, and it was intended that their demand should become Catholic doctrine. How could Ottaviani have collaborated with him in such an attempt? For the rest, the reading of the scheme showed him his completely subjectivist philosophy, which defended the opposite of the realism of the healthy Thomistic philosophy.
The sincere man —it was read there— wants to fulfill the will of God; now, this will perceives it through the consciousness of it; therefore, he has "the right to follow the dictates of his conscience in religious matters"; now, the nature of man requires him to express his consciousness externally and collectively; therefore, man has the right to express his religion without being prevented by any coercion, alone or in a group, unless this opposes the certain right of a third party or of society as a whole. Finally, this religious freedom "must be sanctioned by a categorical right, and expressed by the civil equality of religions."
Thus the Catholic States were finished in the name of a freedom of conscience expressed in all its crudeness.
In order to justify his affirmations in the face of the past universal contrary practice of the Catholic world, still in force in several countries, the eminent Bea did not hesitate to maintain that «in the current conditions, no nation can properly say “Catholic”, [...] and that none can be considered as alone and separated from the others", which suggested a common international regime of religious freedom (Pius XII ( ci riesce address,December 6, 1953) had accepted the legitimacy of a regime of religious tolerance common to a community of States, whose peoples were differentiated according to religious creed, for the sake of peace. However, the civil right that in this way would be recognized for the members of false cults would only be based on the demands of the common good and not on a natural right of conscience. Cf. Davies, appendix VI. Instead, Cardinal Bea promoted a natural right to civil religious freedom.)
Furthermore, he added, "the State as such does not know the existence and validity of the supernatural order" (Since 1951, the American Jesuit John C. Murray had maintained, in The American Ecclesiastical Review (May 1951, 327-352), that the distinction between true and false religions could not enter directly into the constitutional sphere, was combated in the same magazine by Father Joseph C. Fenton (AER, June 1951, 451 sqq.) and in Rome by Cardinal Ottaviani (address at the Lateran Pontifical Athenaeum, March 3, 1953, in Ottaviani, L'Eglise et la Cité, ed. poligl. Vat. 1963, p. 276).
Finally, the reigning Pontiff wanted "an aggiornamento", "that is, the adaptation to the current conditions of life, and not the reestablishment of what had been possible, and even necessary, in other sociological structures" And Bea concluded:
Our two reports [...] do not agree on the fundamental elements set out in numbers 3 and 8. It is up to the illustrious assembly to pronounce on the matter.
Irritated by his adversary's historicist relativization of the public law of the Church, which he had taught for twenty years, Cardinal Ottaviani saw fit to respond with words that strongly underscored the opposition:
The Commission of the Secretariat for Unity should have sent its scheme (which concerns doctrine and not only sociology, since this "sociology" has a foundation in doctrine) to the Doctrinal Commission to see if it agreed with the Doctrinal Commission . Now we see that there are some issues on which we disagree, and they are doctrinal issues!
That's how they were —Monsignor Lefebvre would comment—, the two of them standing. We, seated, saw two Cardinals who opposed each other, two eminent Cardinals who faced each other on such a fundamental thesis (Cagnon. The best observers underlined the seriousness of that frontal opposition, whose discussion fills 54 folio pages of the Acta: first the long position statements of the Cardinals, and then the votes of all the members (cf. Schmidt, 469).
The Cardinals who spoke next were divided between the two camps.
Frings considered that «the Church no longer needed the secular arm to protect the Catholic faith against the spread of religious errors; the State - he added - cannot prevent the dissemination of a different religion if the temporal common good is not at stake».
Léger thought he could wisely explain, inspired by Father Murray, that «only people can profess a religion, not the State, since it is a function; [...] the State has no competence to determine what is the true religion».
On the contrary, Ottaviani, a realist, predicted that "religious freedom gave the Protestants weapons to conquer Latin America."
Ruffini declared: “Liberty itself is given to us for truth and virtue, not for error and vice; but in practice, out of charity, tolerance is necessary; and as far as the State is concerned [...] and what the most eminent Cardinal Bea has affirmed, that is, that the State as such cannot and should not know and recognize religion, I consider to be completely false».
Larraona believed that it was "naive" to believe that non-Catholics could be attracted by granting them the same freedom as us.
Finally, Browne said: "It seems to me childish to suppose that the doctrine expounded by Leo XIII in his encyclical Immortale Dei is a contingent doctrine."
Cardinal Ruffini asked "that the matter be resolved by consulting our Holy Father the Pope." However, it was passed to the vote, and in this way Monsignor Lefebvre was able to express himself:
Of religious freedom: non placet [...] since it is based on false principles solemnly reproved by the Supreme Pontiffs, for example, Pius IX, who calls this error "delirium" (Dz 1690). Of the Church, chapters IX-X: placet. But the presentation of the fundamental principles could be done more in relation to Christ the King, as in the encyclical Quas prima. [...] Our Council would have as its objective to preach Christ to all men and to affirm that only the Catholic Church belongs to authentically preach Christ: Christ, salvation and life of individuals, families, professional associations and of other civil societies.
The religious freedom scheme does not preach Christ, and therefore appears false. The schema of the Theological Commission exposes the authentic doctrine in the manner of a thesis, and does not sufficiently show the end of that doctrine, which is none other than the Kingdom of Christ. [...] From the point of view of Christ, the source of salvation and life, all the fundamental truths could be expounded in a "pastoral" way, as they say, and in this way even the errors of secularism, of naturalism , materialism, etc.
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