ARTICLES

It Appeared They Could Change the Faith

Cardinal Ratzinger on Vatican II

Editor's Note: The following story is excerpted from chapters 10 and 11 of Milestones, Memoirs 1927-1977, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and published by Ignatius Press. The 156 page book costs $12.95. To order, call (800) 651-1531, or visit Ignatius' website at www.ignatius.com.

While my relationship with Cardinal Wendel, the archbishop of Munich, had not been wholly without complications, a very straightforward and even affectionate understanding developed at once between the archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Frings, and me... Meanwhile, John XXIII had announced the Second Vatican Council and thereby reanimated and, for many, intensified even to the point of euphoria the atmosphere of renewal and hope that had reigned in the Church and in theology since the end of the First World War despite the perils of the National Socialist era.... As a member of the Central Preparatory Commission, the Cardinal [Frings] was sent the drafts of texts ("schemata") that were to be presented to the Council Fathers for their discussion and vote after the assembly had convened. He now began to send me these texts regularly in order to have my criticism and suggestions for improvement. Naturally I took exception to certain things, but I found no grounds for a radical rejection of what was being proposed, such as many demanded later on in the Council and actually managed to put through. It is true that the documents bore only weak traces of the biblical and patristic renewal of the last decades, so that they gave an impression of rigidity and narrowness through their excessive dependency on scholastic theology. In other words, they reflected more the thought of scholars than that of shepherds. But I must say that they had a solid foundation and had been carefully elaborated.

Finally the great hour for the Council arrived. Cardinal Frings took his secretary, Father Luthe, and me, as his theological adviser, to Rome. He worked things so that I was named a peritus (or official Council theologian) toward the end of the first session....

The first question was what the Council should begin with, what its proximate task ought to be. The Pope had given only a very wide-ranging description of his purpose in calling a council, and this left the Fathers with an almost unlimited freedom to give things concrete shape. The Pope's view basically amounted to this: The faith, while remaining the same in its contents, was to be proclaimed to our era in a new way, and, after a period of demarcations and defensive maneuvers, we were now no longer to condemn but to apply the "medicine of mercy." There was implicit agreement that the Church herself should be the main theme of the gathering, which would thus take up again and conclude the work of the First Vatican Council, which had been prematurely interrupted in 1870 by the Franco-Prussian War. Cardinals Montini and Suenens presented plans for a vast theological outline of the work of the Council, in which the theme of the Church was to be divided into the two questions "the interior life of the Church" and "the Church vis-ý-vis the world." This second part of the theme would permit the great questions of the present to come to the fore under the perspective of the relationship between Church and "world."

The reform of the liturgy in the spirit of the liturgical movement was not a priority for the majority of the Fathers, and for many not even a consideration. Thus, for example, in his outline of themes after the beginning of the Council, Cardinal Montini -- who as Paul VI would be the real pope of the Council -- said quite clearly that he did not see the reform of the liturgy as a substantial task in the Council. The liturgy and its reform had, since the end of World War I, become a pressing question only in France and Germany, and indeed above all from the perspective of the purest possible restoration of the ancient Roman liturgy, to which belonged the active involvement of the people in the liturgical event. These two countries, which at that time enjoyed theological leadership in the Church (and we must of course add Belgium and the Netherlands), had during the preparation phase succeeded in putting through a schema on the sacred liturgy, which quite naturally found its place in the general theme of the Church. The fact that this text became the first subject for the Council's discussions really had nothing to do with the majority of the Fathers having an intense interest in the liturgical question. Quite simply, no great disagreements were expected in this area, and the undertaking was viewed as a kind of practical exercise to learn and test the method of conciliar work. It would not have occurred to any of the Fathers to see in this text a "revolution" signifying the "end of the Middle Ages", as some theologians felt they should interpret it subsequently. The work was seen as a continuation of the reforms introduced by Pius X and carried on carefully but resolutely by Pius XII. General expressions such as "the liturgical books should be revised as soon as possible" (no. 25) were understood in this sense: as the uninterrupted continuation of that development which had always been there and which, since Popes Pius X and Pius XII, had received a definite profile from the rediscovery of the classical Roman liturgical traditions, which was, of course, to overcome certain tendencies of Baroque liturgy and nineteenth-century devotional piety and to promote a new humble and sober centering of the authentic mystery of Christ's presence in his Church. In this context it is not surprising that the "model Mass" now proposed, which was supposed to (and in fact did) take the place of the traditional Ordo missae, was in 1967 rejected by the majority of the Fathers who had been called together to a special synod on the matter. Some publications now tell us that some liturgists (or perhaps many?) who were working as advisers had had more far-reaching intentions from the outset. Their wishes would surely not have received the approval of the Fathers. Nor were such wishes expressed in any way in the text of the Council, although one can subsequently read them into some general statements.

The debate on the liturgy had taken place calmly and without serious tension. A dramatic controversy, however, did begin when the document on "The Sources of Revelation" was presented for discussion. By "sources of revelation", what was meant was Scripture and tradition; their relationship to one another and to the Magisterium had been dealt with solidly in the forms of post-Tridentine scholasticism according to the custom of the textbooks then in use. In the meantime, the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation had made itself at home in Catholic theology. By its very nature, this method has no patience with any restrictions imposed by an authoritative Magisterium; it can recognize no authority but that of the historical argument. From its perspective, the concept of "tradition" had itself become questionable, since this method will not allow for an oral tradition running alongside Scripture and reaching back to the apostles-and hence offering another source of historical knowledge besides the Bible. This impasse is indeed what had made the dispute on the dogma of Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven so difficult and insoluble.

Thus, with this text, the whole problem of modern biblical interpretation was up for debate and, beyond it, also the fundamental question of the relationship between history and spirit [Geist] within the context of faith. The concrete form of the debate was determined by an alleged historical discovery that the T¸bingen dogma specialist J. R. Geiselmann believed he had made in the 1950s. In the Acts of the Council of Trent he had found that the initial formulation suggested for the decree issued at that time had stated that revelation was contained "partially in Scripture and partially in tradition." The definitive text, however, avoided this "partially/partially", replacing it with an "and": in other words, Scripture and tradition together communicate revelation to us. From this, Geiselmann concluded that Trent had wanted to teach that there can be no distribution of the contents of faith into Scripture, on the one hand, and tradition, on the other, but rather that both Scripture and tradition, each on its own, contain the whole of revelation, hence that each is complete in itself. At this point what interested people was not the alleged or real completeness of tradition; the interesting thing was the announcement that, according to Trent, Scripture contains the deposit of faith whole and entire. There was talk of the "material completeness" of the Bible in matters of faith.... It was now asserted that the inevitable consequence of this realization was that the Church could not teach anything that was not expressly contained in Scripture, since Scripture was complete in matters of faith. And, since the interpretation of Scripture was identified with the historical-critical method, this meant that nothing could be taught by the Church that could not pass the scrutiny of the historical-critical method.... This new theory, in fact, meant that exegesis now had to become the highest authority in the Church; and since, by the very nature of human reason and historical work, no agreement among interpreters can be expected in the case of such difficult texts (since here acknowledged or unacknowledged prejudices are always at work), all of this meant that faith had to retreat into the region of the indeterminate and continually changing that characterizes historical or would-be historical hypotheses. In other words, believing now amounted to having opinions and was in need of continual revision. The Council, naturally, had to oppose a theory developed in this manner; but the catchword "material completeness", along with all its consequences, now remained in the Church's public awareness much more firmly than the Council's actual final document. The drama of the postconciliar era has been largely determined by this catchword and its logical consequences....

But I would at least like to sketch the essence of my thoughts on the matter. Revelation, which is to say, God's approach to man, is always greater than what can be contained in human words, greater even than the words of Scripture.... [B]oth in the Middle Ages and at Trent it would have been impossible to refer to Scripture simply as "revelation", as is the normal linguistic usage today. Scripture is the essential witness of revelation, but revelation is something alive, something greater and more: proper to it is the fact that it arrives and is perceived-otherwise it could not have become revelation. Revelation is not a meteor fallen to earth that now lies around somewhere as a rock mass from which rock samples can be taken and submitted to laboratory analysis. Revelation has instruments; but it is not separable from the living God, and it always requires a living person to whom it is communicated. Its goal is always to gather and unite men, and this is why the Church is a necessary aspect of revelation. If, however, revelation is more than Scripture, if it transcends Scripture, then the "rock analysis" -- which is to say, the historical-critical method -- cannot be the last word concerning revelation; rather, the living organism of the faith of all ages is then an intrinsic part of revelation. And what we call "tradition" is precisely that part of revelation that goes above and beyond Scripture and cannot be comprehended within a code of formulas. In the general atmosphere dominant in 1962, which had taken over Geiselmann's theses in the form I have described, it was impossible for me to explain the perspective I had gained from the sources, a perspective, moreover, that had already been misunderstood in 1956. My position was simply aligned with the general opposition to the official schema and considered to be one more vote in favor of Geiselmann....

It now became clear that Rahner's schema could not be accepted, but the official text, too, was rejected by a narrow margin of votes. The theme, therefore, had to be postponed. The Constitution on Divine Revelation could be completed only in the final period of the Council after some very complex debates, but the final product was one of the outstanding texts of the Council and one that has yet to be truly received. Practically the only thing that had any effect was what trickled down into popular opinion as the allegedly new viewpoint of the Fathers. We still have before us the task of communicating what the Council actually said to the Church at large and, beyond that, of developing its implications....

...General interest in theology, which had already been great in Germany, now began to grow under the pressure of frequently exciting news about discussions among the Fathers. Now and then, on returning from Rome, I found the mood in the Church and among theologians to be quite agitated. The impression grew steadily that nothing was now stable in the Church, that everything was open to revision. More and more the Council appeared to be like a great Church parliament that could change everything and reshape everything according to its own desires. Very clearly resentment was growing against Rome and against the Curia, which appeared to be the real enemy of everything that was new and progressive. The disputes at the Council were more and more portrayed according to the party model of modern parliamentarism. When information was presented in this way, the person receiving it saw himself compelled to take sides with one of the parties.... Something else, however, with deeper implications, was also happening. If the bishops in Rome could change the faith (as it appeared they could), why only the bishops? In any event, the faith could be changed -- or so it now appeared, in contrast to everything we had previously thought. The faith no longer seemed exempt from human decision making but rather was now apparently determined by it. And we knew that the bishops had learned from theologians the new things they were now proposing. For believers, it was a remarkable phenomenon that their bishops seemed to show a different face in Rome from the one they wore at home. Shepherds who had been considered strict conservatives suddenly appeared to be spokesmen for progressivism. But were they doing this all on their own? The role that theologians had assumed at the Council was creating ever more clearly a new confidence among scholars, who now understood themselves to be the truly knowledgeable experts in the faith and therefore no longer subordinate to the shepherds. For, how could the bishops in the exercise of their teaching office preside over theologians when they, the bishops, received their insights only from specialists and thus were dependent on the guidance of scholars?... Behind this tendency to dominance by specialists one could already detect something else: the idea of an ecclesial sovereignty of the people in which the people itself determines what it wants to understand by Church, since "Church" already seemed very clearly defined as "People of God." The idea of the "Church from below", the "Church of the People", which then became the goal of reform particularly in the context of liberation theology, was thus heralded.

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