Volume VII of Joseph Ratzinger’s Collected Works, an anthology of his
writings on the Second Vatican Council, was recently published in German. On November
28, 2012, the editor of the Opera Omnia,
Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who is now also prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, presented this latest volume in the series at
the Teutonic College of Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome. This was the place
where German and Austrian Council Fathers used to confer regularly with
theologians and periti, including
then-Father Ratzinger, at special meetings organized by Cardinal Frings of
Cologne. An Italian version of Archbishop Müller’s speech appeared in the
edition of L’Osservatore Romano dated
November 29.
Although the speech ostensibly outlined the
contents of Volume VII and quoted a few familiar passages from a Vatican II
document, it elicited several sharply critical responses from traditional
Catholics, including an unsigned, six-part analysis by a theologian from the
Society of St. Pius X and an essay by historian Roberto de Mattei. What under
other circumstances might have been a routine publishing event proved to be an
informal but revealing moment in the ongoing theological discussions between
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Society of St. Pius
X.
Presentation
of Volume VII
The two main themes of Archbishop Müller’s
speech are stated in the first two paragraphs of the speech: “Joseph Ratzinger,
from the time when he was a theologian, helped to shape the Council and
accompanied it in all its phases…. The Council is an integral part of the
history of the Church, and therefore it can be correctly understood only if
this two-thousand-year context is considered.”
The subtitle of Volume VII, Formulation—Transmission—Interpretation,
marks the phases in Ratzinger’s Council-related work. The young professor of
theology participated in the Preparatory Commissions for the Council as a
theological advisor to Cardinal Frings. During a meeting at the Teutonic
College in October 1962, Ratzinger criticized a conciliar schema (draft document) for describing the “sources” of Revelation
in the plural; he argued that it is more theologically correct to speak of a
single divine wellspring from which both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture
flow. Cardinal Frings adopted this critique and presented it at a General
Assembly. Father Ratzinger was then appointed to two Conciliar Commissions and
continued to help improve what eventually became the Dogmatic Constitution on
Divine Revelation Dei Verbum.
During and immediately after the sessions
of Vatican II, Ratzinger provided “first-hand” reports on the proceedings in
books, articles, lectures, and interviews, thus “stimulating debate” and
facilitating “the reception” of the results of the Council. In the years
between 1966 and 2003 he also wrote commentaries of all four Dogmatic
Constitutions, based on their original, officially approved Latin texts, which
most clearly express the will of the Council Fathers. Archbishop Müller
comments: “Anyone who wants to understand the Council must consider attentively
all the Constitutions, Decrees, and Declarations, because they alone, in their
unity, represent the valid heritage of the Council.”
Finally, while serving as prefect of
the CDF and now as Pope, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has written about how
the Second Vatican Council should be interpreted and implemented. Two
paragraphs from the section of Archbishop Müller’s presentation entitled
“Hermeneutic of renewal in continuity” started a controversy; an English
translation of them follows:
In his Address to the Roman
Curia on December 22, 2005, which sparked considerable interest, Benedict XVI
emphasizes “the hermeneutic of reform in continuity” as opposed to a
“hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” Joseph Ratzinger thus takes up a
position in line with his statements in 1966. This interpretation [i.e. the
first-mentioned hermeneutic] is the only one possible according to the
principles of Catholic theology, in other words, considering the indissoluble
whole made up of Sacred Scripture, the complete and integral Tradition, and the
Magisterium, the highest expression of which is the Council presided over by
the Successor of St. Peter as Head of the visible Church. Besides this sole
orthodox interpretation there is unfortunately a heretical interpretation, that
is, the hermeneutic of rupture, both on the progressive side and on the
traditionalist side. Both sides have in common their rejection of the Council;
the progressives in wanting to leave it behind, as if it were a temporary phase
to abandon in order to get to another church, and the traditionalists in not
wanting to arrive at the Council, as if it were the winter of the Catholic
Church.
“Continuity” signifies permanent correspondence with the
origin, not an adaption of whatever has been, which also can set us on the
wrong path. The oft-quoted watchword aggiornamento
(“updating”) therefore does not mean “secularization” of the faith, which would
lead to its dissolution, but rather the origin proclaimed again and again in
new eras, the starting point from which salvation is given to mankind; aggiornamento therefore signifies “making
present” the message of Jesus Christ.
A historian’s response
On
December 5, Roman historian Roberto de Mattei posted an article in
Italian entitled “The Prefect of the CDF against Benedict XVI?” at the website www.conciliovaticanosecondo.it,
which is devoted to discussion of Vatican II. In it he accuses Archbishop
Müller of declaring “Vatican Council II as the sole and absolute dogma of our
times…based on an entirely personal reading of the famous address of Benedict
XVI to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005.” Professor de Mattei faults the
current prefect of the CDF for pretending that there is a “connection of
absolute continuity between the current position of the Pope and the one that
Father Joseph Ratzinger adopted as a young theologian.… Archbishop Müller says
nothing about the theological development made over the course of fifty years
by Cardinal Ratzinger.” The historian cites an extensive passage from a speech
given by Ratzinger to the Chilean Bishops Conference in July 1988 in which he
criticizes those who view Vatican II as “an end of Tradition, a new start from
zero.” De Mattei concludes with the argument, “The Second Vatican Council is
not a ‘package deal’ to be accepted or rejected in toto. Gaudium et Spes,
for example, appears today to be an outdated document, pervaded with the
nineteenth- and twentieth-century myth of progress.”
With all due respect to an eminent
historian of Vatican II, the professor seems to have misinterpreted Archbishop
Müller’s remarks about “the
hermeneutic of reform in continuity” as the only possible interpretation
according to the principles of Catholic theology. The prefect of the CDF was not saying that Vatican II is the sole
hermeneutic by which to interpret the Catholic faith and the world, the only
lens through which we can legitimately look at them. He was saying, precisely,
that when interpreting the Second Vatican Council and its documents, the
hermeneutic of reform in continuity is the only authentically Catholic
interpretation.
A
syntactical ambiguity in Archbishop Müller’s speech may have caused this
misunderstanding. The disputed sentence ends with the clause: “the highest
expression of which is the Council presided over by the Successor of St. Peter as
Head of the visible Church.” The relative pronoun “which” refers back to
“Magisterium”; indeed, the clause is ecclesiological “boilerplate,” a
description of one form of the Magisterium that has become common parlance in
post-conciliar discussion of teaching authority in the Church. The sentence
also allows a second ingenious interpretation, however: “which” could
conceivably refer back to “the indissoluble whole” (that is, Scripture,
Tradition, Magisterium). This grammatically less likely reading would dangerously
imply that an Ecumenical Council “trumps” everything else in the Church. That
is obviously not true; even an Ecumenical Council is bound by the truths of
Scripture and by the authority of Tradition and cannot remake them in its own
image.
Professor de Mattei is quite right about
one thing, nonetheless: the current prefect of the CDF offered in his
presentation speech an idiosyncratic reading of the Holy Father’s Address to
the Roman Curia at Christmastime 2005, in which the Pope also articulated the
concept of “the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” The following
unedited quotation from that address makes it crystal clear that this
unorthodox interpretation of Vatican II can only be the one favored by
ultra-progressives and innovators.
The
hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar
Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council
as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they
are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found
necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless.
However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises
but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.
These
innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council,
and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move
ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true
spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously
beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest
intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.
In a
word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its
spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on
how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made
for every whim.
The
hermeneutic of rupture described in these three paragraphs plainly cannot be
attributed to the Society of St. Pius X or to other Catholic groups that
questioned the new pastoral teachings or liturgical disciplines introduced by
Vatican II. Therefore when Archbishop Müller talks about a hermeneutic of
rupture “on the traditionalist side” he has ceased presenting the published
works of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and has begun to editorialize.
Of
course the Holy Father himself recognizes that misunderstandings of Vatican II
teaching come from various, even diametrically opposed quarters. In his homily
on the first day of the Year of Faith he remarked, “Reference to the
[conciliar] documents saves us from extremes of anachronistic nostalgia and
running too far ahead.” Benedict XVI recommends the hermeneutic of continuity
to those on both extremes, but he does not apply the expression “hermeneutic of
rupture” to traditional Catholics.
An SSPX response
The
six-part response by an SSPX theologian to the presentation speech by Archbishop
Müller contains a humorous subtitle that sums up its attitude: “Outside the
Vatican II Council, no salvation?” Like Professor de Mattei, the SSPX
theologian assumes that Archbishop Müller is “dogmatizing” the Council, based
on the extremely broad (albeit improbable) reading of the CDF prefect’s
sentence about the Second Vatican Council as “the highest expression” of the
Church. The anonymous author then summarizes his take on the Prefect’s argument
in the form of a syllogism:
— (Major)
Whoever does not accept the integral magisterium of the Church is heretical.
— (Minor)
But the SSPX refuses Vatican II, part of the integral Church teaching.
— (Conclusion)
Therefore, the SSPX is heretical.
“Needless to say,” the SSPX author begins,
“this declaration of Archbishop Müller is not an official statement coming in
the extraordinary form of, say, a decree or an anathema.” He gently complains
that this “is not the first time that Rome is ‘using’ the SSPX” as a foil for
“the arch-modernists.” (Indeed, Cardinal Kurt Koch repeatedly has likened the
doctrinal position of the Society of St. Pius X to that of Martin Luther.)
The SSPX theologian and his General
Superior, Bishop Bernard Fellay, agree completely that in principle “This interpretation (of a
magisterial act in continuity with the past) is the only one possible
according to the principles of Catholic theology, in consideration of the
indissoluble link between Sacred Scripture, the complete and integral
Tradition and the Magisterium.” The
problem is that, in the particulars, Rome sees continuity in teaching where the
SSPX sees discontinuity. If “continuity” exists only subjectively, in the minds
of those currently in authority in the Church, then this logically leads to the
position that “The message of Revelation is of no importance; what counts is to
get along.”
Conclusion
Although it proclaimed no dogmas, the Second
Vatican Council was a teaching event: it taught that there is more to Catholic
theology than Thomism, more to the Catholic Church than the Western Tradition,
and more to Christian life on earth than the visible Catholic Church.
Despite the latest round of misunderstandings in
published statements by members of the CDF and the SSPX, it should be clear
that they agree that:
— The documents of Vatican II require interpretation
in light of the Church’s entire Tradition.
— The documents of Vatican II have often been
interpreted erroneously.
— The solution to differences of opinion about
interpreting the documents of Vatican II can come only from the highest
authority of the Catholic Church.
