RESPONSE

THE FIFTH ANNUAL LECTUREOF THE CATHOLIC COMMON GROUND INITIATIVE

DEALING WITHDIVERSITY

ANDDISAGREEMENTVATICAN II AND BEYOND

Rev. Joseph A. KomonchakThe Catholic UHiversity oj America

Most Reverend Dani el E. PilarczykArc!JbisiJo/J oj C illcill1la ti

FOREWORD

Copyright © 2003by the National Pastoral Life Center

18 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012.

r. Joseph A. Komonchak has earned the distinction of being theforemost interpreter of the Second Vatican Council in the

English-speaking world. In this lecture, his intimate knowledge of thehistory, persons, and developments at the council inform his analysisof the conflicts and disagreements evident in the debates. Rejectingthe notion of simple polarities, he describes what was at stake for theparticipants and how that varied from issue to issue.

Fr. Komonchak describes differences of opinion about tactics,disagreements over the kind of documents that should be written, andwide ranges of opinion within the "conservative" and "progressive"camps. Moreover, the alignment of those camps shifted from issue toissue. Finally, Fr. Komonchak suggests that the council "provides amodel for the kinds of conversations that would enable us to deal non-coercively with our own diversity and our disagreements."

In his appreciative and original response, Archbishop Daniel E.Pilarczyk contends that "reality is essentially binary," and so influencesthe optimist/pessimist polarity which often colors responses to pastoralissues. Within that analysis, the Catholic Common Ground Initiativeis both pessimistic in that it is concerned about divisions in thechurch, and optimistic that "bringing people together for humane con-versation contributes to the well-being of the church."

These churchmen describe in their talks and model in their livesthe civil and informed conversation that is the heart and goal of theInitiative. On behalf of the committee and all who were present at theFifth Annual Lecture, I am very grateful to both speaker and respon-dent for their considerable contributi ons.

Archbishop Oscar H. LipscombChairCatholic Common Ground Initiative

All rights reserved.Printed in the United States of America

ISBN; 1-881307-30-1

Design; Emil AntonucciEditor; Catherine M. Patten, R.S.H.M.

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he Second Vatican Council was a dramatic event. By this I donot mean only that, whatever might have been intended by its

protagonists, it had consequences significant enough to represent aturning-point in the history of modern Catholicism. I mean also thatthe nearly seven years between January 25, 1959, when Pope JohnXXIII announced his intention to convoke an ecumenical council, andDecember 8, 1965, the day it closed, Vatican II was marked by theencounter of persons, the clashes of ideas, the conflicts of purpose, thecoincidences of decisions that make for good tragedy-or comedy. Butthis drama was not fictional but real. While it was unfolding, partici-pants and observers might have known (or thought they knew) whatthe protagonists desired or intended, but they could not know whatwould happen next, whether one protagonist's ideas and purposeswould prevail and another's fail, whether some unforeseen eventwould occur or some third party intervene and utterly change the.course of the drama. To be in Rome at the time was to be at a theatre.

Between his announcement of the council and its opening onOctober 11, 1962, Pope John had set out three main goals for it: thespiritual renewal of the church (its growth in faith and holiness);aggiornamento ("appropriate adaptation of church discipline to the needsand conditions of our times"); and the furtherance of Christian unity.'During almost two years of work, texts were prepared for conciliardebate. Of the practical, pastoral texts, only the schema on the liturgywent much beyond tinkering with church regulations; the texts ondoctrine largely reproduced the orientations and emphases of popesover the previous century and a half, with much emphasis on whaterrors needed to be condemned. When in the spring of 1962, six

REVEREND JOSEPH A. KOMONCHAK DIALING WITH DIVERflTYAND DISAGREEMENTVATICAN II AND BEYONDJoseph A. Komonchak

oseph A. Komonchak was ordained a priest of theArchdiocese of New York in 1963 and earned a L.S.T. at the

Gregorian University in 1964. From 1964 to 1967 he served as acurate at St. Bartholomew's Church in Yonkers, NY, while also teach-ing theology at the College of New Rochelle. In 1967 he joined thetheology faculty of St. Joseph's Seminary, Dunwoodie, NY, where hetaught until 1977. Since then, he has taught theology in theDepartment of Religion and Religious Studies at the CatholicUniversity of America. He is chief editor of He New Dictionary ofHeolo!1Y. Presently working on the history and theology of the SecondVatican Council, he is the editor of the English edition of the History ojVatican II, of which three volumes have been published. He is also theauthor of Foundations in Ecclesiology ( 1995). At the moment he is com-pleting books on Vatican II and on John Courtnay Murray.

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months before the council was to open, the content and character ofthese official texts began to be known, several important churchmentold the pope of their concern that such documents would not achievethe goals he had set out and would greatly disappoint the high hopesfor the council entertained in and outside the church. Some bishopsand theologians began to discuss strategies for improving and even forrejecting some of these texts. When the council opened, then, thestage was set for a dramatic confrontation.

In his opening speech, Pope John XXlll himself pointed outsome contrasting ideas about the purposes of the council. He said thathe disagreed with people he called "prophets of doom," who see noth-ing but prevarication and ruin in the world today and are unwilli ng toadmit that God might be opening a new age for the church; he want-ed a positive presentation of the truth rather than a series of condem-nations ("17 centimeters of condemnations," the pope was said to havemeasured in one document); he did not want a simple repetition offamiliar truths but a faithful representation of the ancient faith in amanner intelligible and attractive to contemporaries-the substance ofthe faith was one thing, he said, and the way in which it is expressedis another; in short, he wanted the council to be pastoral rather thandogmatic. To anyone familiar with the official texts prepared for dis-cussion, it seems obvious that Pope John was inviting the bishops, ifthey agreed, to set a different agenda and to follow a different methodthan the ones that had guided the preparation. The pope's speechitself, then, already outlined the elements of a possible confrontation.

there was the thread of another concern: how much authority for litur-gical reform should be reserved to Rome and how much entrusted tolocal or regional bishops' conferences? Where the hearts and minds ofthe bishops lay became clear when no fewer than 97% of them votedto accept this text as the basis for what the council would decree withrespect to liturgical reform.

More theoretical issues arose when the council turned to thefirst of the doctrinal decrees, a schema on the sources of revelation.Three major areas quickly emerged as points of disagreement. Thefirst concerned the relation between Scripture and Tradition which thedraft was going to settle in favor of the view that Tradition handed onrevealed truths not found in the Scriptures. Critics of the schemaargued that it would prematurely settle an issue still under debateamong scholars and theologians and thus set up a perhaps insuperableobstacle to ecumenical conversation. Supporters claimed that the issuehad already been settled at the Council of Trent and reminded othersthat the first principle of any genuine ecumenical conversation shouldbe stating the truth clearly and firmly.

The second issue concerned the use of the historical-criticalmethod in biblical interpretation. Critics felt that the schema was toosuspicious with regard to the work of biblical scholars and that itwould bring Catholic scholarship back to the poor state in which ithad been before Pope Pius XII issued his encyclical Divino afflanteSpiritu. Defenders of the draft raised examples of recent books and arti-cles in which Catholic scholars were calling into question the histori-cal character not only of many Old Testament stories but even ofevents recorded in the Gospels.

The third issue was more general: the question of what it meantfor the council to be "pastoral," the term Pope John had used in hisopening speech. Some argued that this ran contrary to the whole tra-dition of ecumenical councils whose main purpose had always beenstating and defending the faith; after the council, bishops and priests

EMERGING CONFLICTSAnd conflict there was. It became clear in the first discussion, whichwas on the liturgy; roughly half the speakers spoke for the draft andhalf against- The main topics of disagreement concerned practicalreforms: the language of the liturgy, communion under both kinds,and concelebration, but running throughout these and other topics

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could worry about communicating it to the faithful. Others arguedthat from the beginning of the task of reappropriating the tradition,the council had to have inJ;;ind those to whom it would be speakingin the last third of the twentieth century; for them fidelity to the doc-trinal heritage and effective communication were inseparable tasks.Very few noted something that became very clear soon after thecouncil: that there is no single audience in the world today, whichraises the question whether it is possible to be pastoral on a worldwidescale.

As is well known, when it came time to vote on whether toremove this text from the table, 61% of the bishops voted to do so,fewer than the two-thirds needed for such an action. On the next day,however, Pope John intervened and ordered the text rem anded to aspecial committee for revision. This vote indicated that the conciliarmajority did not wish to issue doctrinal texts of the sort that they hadbefore them, and now the pope was backing them. Shortly after, heestablished a coordinating committee to review all of the materialsprepared for the council and to decide which texts should be retainedand how they must be revised in order to reflect the goals that he hadset out and the conciliar majority had confirmed by their votes. Whilethe composition of the new committee was balanced, it very soonbecame clear that the governance of the council had passed fromthose who had directed its preparation to bishops and theologianswho had been marginalized during that process. Someth ing like a coupd'Eglise had taken place.

Or at least that was the way the first session was experienced byparticipants and observers of all stripes, by those who were pleasedwith it and by those who deplored it. Slogans began to be coined: it isthe end of the Counter-Reformation, of Tridentine Catholicism, evenof the age of Constantine. Bishop-participants spoke of having under-gone a conversion in their understanding of their own offices and oftheir relations with Roman authority. Catholics around the world had

the novel experience of watching the teaching office of the church, atits highest level, being exercised in an open and collegial fashion,with give and take, conflict, conciliation, compromise for the sake ofconsensus.

EXPLANATIONS OF DIFFERENCESFrom the end of the first session on, observers and participantsattempted to explain the differences that had appeared at the council.Edward Schillebeeckx thought it inadequate simply to speak of a con-flict between conservatives and progressives; he spoke rather of twomindsets, an essentialist orientation that saw the faith as somethingthat could be contained in traditional concepts, was at home withabstractions and concerned above all with clarity and precision, and anexistential tendency that was concrete, pragmatic, pastorally and ecu-menically sensitive." Perhaps the most influential essay was by GerardPhilips, a theologian at the University of Louvain, the man who in thelast three sessions of the council was the executive secretary of theDoctrinal Commission.' Philips also distinguished two basic orienta-tions, differing, not on the need for dogma and doctrine, but in theirbasic views of the mission of the council and of the church. Thefirst was primarily concerned with fidelity to the deposit of faith, thesecond with effective communication to contemporaries. Of the firstgroup Philips uses adjectives such as: abstract, imperturbable, concep-tualistic, anxious, cautious, suspicious, monolithic, tutioristic, polemi-cal, negative, scholastic, bookish, juridical, neglectful of ancient tradi-tion in favor of fairly recent traditions; his list for the second group israther shorter, and not at all damning: historically conscious, ecu-menical, grounded in the sources, pastoral, concerned with effectivecommunication.

The great weakness in these characterizations, of course, is thatthey are bipolar, which does not permit one to notice, to describe,or to explain differences, often important, within the camps of the

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cowboys and Indians. This weakness was perhaps less visible duringthe first session of the cou~il when a fairly coherent front formed inopposition to the texts prepared for the bishops. The two importantvotes taken during this session (liturgy and sources of revelation) wereposed in terms of Yes or No (placet or non placet), and this may havesuggested the bipolar opposition. Its inadequacy would become clearquite quickly as the council had to move on toward what janGrootaers has called the "second preparation" of Vatican II." For now,as a young peritus for Cardinal Frings (Cologne), Joseph Ratzinger,put it: "... the preparatory work was unsatisfactory, and the councilrejected the extant texts. But the question at this point was: Whatnow?"s

Other dramatic moments were to follow in the next three ses-sions as the council moved to answer that question. Disagreementswere expressed, sometimes passionately, occasionally even bitterly,over topics such as the relation between papal primacy and episcopalcollegiality; the role of episcopal conferences; the nature of religiouslife; the revival of the diaconate, the place of the Blessed Virgin Mary;the ecclesial character of other Christian communities, the church'srelationship with the Jews; the authority of St. Thomas Aquinas; reli-gious freedom; the nature and purposes of marriage; a possible con-demnation of communism; war and peace. The lines of force could dif-fer with each matter, and it oversimplifies greatly to th ink that therewere compact blocs facing off against each other. The council provid-ed a forum for these issues to be debated publicly and provoked newhistorical, theological, and canonical studies that were taken seriouslyin the course of moving toward statements on which the great majori-ty could agree. Little of this drama may be discernible in the sixteentexts that can be found published in a paperback book today, butfamiliarity with the history of these documents is often the key tointerpreting them properly both in their content and ill their historicalsignificance.

From the beginning there were differences over tactics in theranks of the progressive bishops and theologians. A week into thecouncil, at a meeting among German and French bishops and theolo-gians, Yves Congar noted that the Germans simply wanted to rejectthe prepared doctrinal schemas and to substitute a text kerygmatic incontent and style. The French, including Congar himself, were alsoseverely critical of the texts for not meeting Pope John's pastoral goal,but they thought that the prepared texts could be revised in thatdirection. In fact, the council would adopt the method favored by theFrench, trying to salvage as much of the good in the prepared texts aspossible in order to achieve as large a consensus as possible. This wasa choice that some deeply regretted, and regret even today, regardingit as almost guaranteeing that the council would not live up to PopeJohn's hopes for it.

Hans Kung, for perhaps different reasons, also was impatientwith the aims and methods of consensus. On the eve of the council,he met with Congar and proposed holding a meeting of theologians inRome in order to urge a reformist agenda. Congar cautioned against iton the grounds that it would appear that theologians were usurpingthe role of the bishops and that it would give the appearance of a plot.He himself would not attend any such meeting, he told Kling, unlessrepresentatives of all theological orientations were invited. During thesecond session, Kling became impatient at the slow progress of theliturgy decree and at certain compromises that were made in the textby Fr. Martimort. Congar contrasted the two: Martimort worked withwhat is possible; "he's a reformist, a possibilist, Ki.ing is an exigeant ofa revolutionary sort. I am, I think, between the two of them. I amaware of what has ALREADY been done, which is fantastic .... Wealso have to look at what was possible and what is possible. TheCatholic Church is made up ALSO of Ottaviani and of Parente, ofTromp and of the Archbishop of l3enevent. Kung considers only facts,texts, what they impose as questions and as conclusions."

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In fact, when Kung's proposal that Cardinal Ottaviani bereplaced as head of the doctrinal commission and that a new commis-sion be elected was turneddown, he turned down an invitation to jointhat commission with the result that his participation in the work ofthe council was limited to drafting speeches for bishops and to lectur-ing on the council to many audiences in Rome. So dissatisfied was hewith the text on the church that was being prepared that he decidedto see if he could not have a book on the nature of the church, cast inradically different fashion, ready at the same time as LUllien !/mtiulilwould be published.'

had seen before; heir of that heritage, the second saw a new challengeraised which, in the view of some, meant the recasting of traditionaltheology.

Elsewhere I have illustrated these theological differences by ref-erence to the final redaction and early reception of the PastoralCOl'lstitutioJ1 011 the Cburcb il1 the Modern World (Gaudium et spes). 12 A teamdominated by French-speaking theologians had completed a revisionof the text in the spring of 1965. The text was heavily influenced byM.-D. Chenu who for decades had been urging the church to read"the signs of the times" in order to discern "the appeals and the solici-tations of the Spirit." "In the great webs of historical process," heargued, the world was more or less consciously displayi ng its open-ness to and need of the Word of God. Chenu's favorite metaphor forthis openness was "pierres d'attCJIte," too thing-stones jutting out at theend of a wall in expectation of an addition. Such an approach restedalso upon a theology of the Incarnati on as the assumption into Christof the whole of human existence, including the social, political, andcultural.

During the summer of 1965 German-speaking experts and bish-ops subjected this draft to severe criticisms. Karl Rahner found thetext uncritical in its analyses, confusing in its attempts to relate thenatural and the supernatural, moralizing in its interpretation of con-temporary movements. It lacked, he said, an adequate theology of sinand its ineradicable depths, as well as of the cross and its implications.The draft's optimism replaced "the legitimate and necessary 'pessimism'that Christians must profess before the world," "the antagonismbetween a world under the power of the Evil One and the disciples ofChrist [that] will never be mitigated but will grow ever more bitter inthe course of time." Ratzinger made similar criticisms.

This was more than a conflict between French-speaking andGerman-speaking theologians; behind it lay deeper disagreements, as,for example, on whether to place the Incarnation or the cross at the

CONGAR, RATIZINGER, & DOSSETTIBut there were also substantive disagreements over what kind of docu-ments to write in place of the rejected ones.t One of the major differ-ences can be illustrated by contrasting comments abou t the whole ofthe conciliar achievement made by Yves Congar and Joseph Ratzinger.Congar, reflecting on the much-reduced presence of St. ThomasAquinas in the final texts, claimed that, nevertheless, "Saint Thomas,the Doctor communis, furnished the redactors of the dogmatic texts ofVatican II with the foundations and the structure of their thought.'? Inaddition, if in Gaudiutll et spes and Digl1itatis hWllal'lae, the council was ableto break with the last remnants of theocratic thought, it was because itachieved something similar to what St. Albert and St. Thomas hadeffected in the thirteenth century. 10 Ratzinger saw things differently.'Those forces that really had made Vatican II possible and shaped it"he identified as "a theology and a piety which essentially were basedon the Holy Scriptures, on the church Fathers, and on the great litur-gical heritage of the universal church."!' The comments point to twodifferent eras of the history of the church and of theology for a modelof how to deal with contemporary challenges: Ratzinger to the patris-tic and Congar to the medieval. The first period saw the creation of anew distinctive Christian worldview, distinct from anything the world

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heart of the church's evaluation of the modern world (Do let usremember that neither would have agreed to the absurd choicebetween the two necessarYmysteriesl), Joseph Ratzinger thought itshould be the cross, which stood as a symbol that no superficial dia-logue such as the one undertaken in this text could succeed. Instead, itshould have chosen a kerygmatic "proclamation of the gospel-thusopening up the faith to the non-believer and abdicating all claim toauthority other than the intrinsic authority of God's truth, manifestingitself to the hearer of the message," "An orientation of the churchtowards the world which would mean a turning away from the cross,"Ratzinger went on, "would lead not to a renewal of the church but toits decline and' eventual decay." The purpose of the council was not todo away with this constitutive Christian scandal but to remove thesecondary scandals represented by outmoded forms of the church'srelationship with the world. In a commentary soon after the council,he criticized the authors of the text for preferring Thomi sm and theGreek Fathers, as well as Teilhard de Chardin, to preachers of thecross such as, say, Luther. Too little emphasis was placed on sin; theemphasis, Ratzinger said, falls instead on the redemption that hasalready taken place, and the final text could "easily tend to give aslightly semi-Pelagian impression,"

There was a third voice in the debate, that of Giuseppe Dossetti(1913-1996),'3 Not very well known outside Italy, Dossetti playedimportant roles at two of the most important events in twentieth-cen-tury Italian history, as a layman at the constituent assembly of 1948that produced the constitution for the new Italian Republic, and at theSecond Vatican Council, where he was the chief adviser to GiacomoCardinal Lercaro of Bologna. After Vatican ll, he withdrew into thequasi-monastic community he had founded.

A very evangelical vision inspired the speeches Dossetti pre-pared for Lercaro and a few other bishops and the memoranda hecomposed during and after Vatican 11.'4 (To try to locate Dossetti, who

is largely unknown to Americans, I suggest trying to imagine whatVatican" might have done and said if Dorothy Day had set the agen-dai) If the council did not embody and call for a very radical conver-sion to the gospel (sim glossa, he liked to call it-without extenuatingcommentary), it would fall short of the epochal intentions of PopeJohn. The council, of course, did not go down that road, and Dossettiregarded its final texts greatly compromised by Paul VI's caution andhis desire for near-unanimity, Nowhere was this Christian radicalismmore displayed than in his observations about the draft and then thefinal text of Gaudium et spes,

Dossetti found the draft's analysis of the contemporary worldnothing but "common sense propositions," "journalistic populariza-tion," The schema should be revised in order to give the response ofthe gospel to concrete problems and to do this "in the immediacy andrelevance of its most vigorous statements." He too wished the councilto offer an optimistic and positive message; but, he said, there is agreat difference between "an utterly supernatural Christian optimism"that anticipates "a transfiguration and regeneration that is like a resur-rection from the dead, solely in virtue of the blessed passion ofChrist," and a naturalistic optimism that "indulges in a phenomenologyof human progress and ignores or flees the principle that everyone andeverything must be 'salted with fire' (Mk 9:49), by the fire of the crossand of the Spirit of Christ." The schema's optimism was not so salted;it conformed to common opinions, was uncritical and timid.

This affected, most particularly, the text's treatment of war andpeace. The text tried so hard to be non-judgmental that it ignored thejudgments on contemporary evils the church is called to make in thename of Christ. On so crucial a point as war, Dossetti wanted thecouncil's discourse to be "absolute, synthetic, evangelical." Only thiscould respond to the anxiety of peoples; only this could "banish warand make peace, not by human calculation but by the creative force ofthe Word of God." This is the witness to faith in Jesus Christ that the

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whole church is called to give, in this moment of supreme danger, shecould give no truer response that to say to the world: "Entrust yourselfnot to defense by arms anoby political prudence, but only to the pro-tection of the Lord Jesus."

When the bishops failed to follow this evangelical call, articulat-ed at the council by Lercaro and a few others, Dossetti thought thatthe value of the council as a whole was called into question. The fail-ure demonstrated that certain institutional and theological knots wereso tight that they could never be loosened "except by a sword, by thesword of the Word of God, clear and simple, beyond all other theo-logical reflection."

The three views of Gaudium et spes, to repeat, are views thatemerged within the "progressive" majority of bishops and theologiansat Vatican II. One is tempted to see behind the differences betweenChenu and Ratzinger differences in basic theological approach and,perhaps, in spirituality, Chenu being most at home in a Thomistworld, Ratzinger within the patristic and in particular the Augustiniantradition. Where Dominicans such as Chenu and his colleague YvesCongar praised Gat~diunt et spes for identifying appeals for grace foundin the world as grounds for a dialogue, Ratzinger saw instead Pelagianambitions and warned that Christians could not let dialogue replaceproclamation. In this respect, Dossetti, the evangelical, came closer toRatzinger than to Chenu, though one suspects he might find such dif-ferentiations idle when compared to the threats under which humanitylies and to the gospel, sine glossa, which alone rescues from them.

I have reviewed these examples of difference and disagreementat Vatican II in order to offer a fuller view of some of the dynamics ofthe council than is provided when it is described or in terpreted solelyin terms of progressives vs. conservatives, good guys vs. bad guys.Similar differentiation needs to be made within the ranks of the con-servatives, who were by no means a uniform group. The most intran-sigent bloc were the members of the Coetus Internationalis Patrunt, an

international group founded and directed by Archbishop MarcelLefebvre, the Italian bishop Luigi Carli, and the Brazilian bishopGerald de Proenca Sigaud, They were vigorously opposed to what wasproposed about episcopal collegiality, ecumenism, and especially reli-gious freedom. Their stances on these issues coincided with their fun-damental view that for a century and a half the church had rightlyopposed the principles of the French Revolution. The council, theybelieved, was not only calling into question the doctrine and thechurch structure that had so successfully opposed those principles, itwas even introducing those principles into the church herself. Thisgroup numbered somewhere between 250 and 350 members, depend-ing on the issue at stake. That other members of the conciliar minoritysteered clear of this group is an indication that there were also dis-agreements among them with regard to tactics.

On the issues themselves, people could move back and forthfrom one group to another. Cardinal Suenens was one of the heroes ofthe progressive majority, but he broke with it when he said in the hallthat the draft on the Blessed Virgin was too Christ-centered.Archbishop Parente was associated with the Holy Office, but he gaveone of the most important speeches on behalf of episcopal collegiality.Cardinal Ottaviani was one of the bogeymen of the majority, but heurged a strong and explicit condemnation of the use and even posses-sion of atomic, biological, and chemical weapons. I am sure that otherexamples could be found by close examination of speeches and ofvotes.

WHAT MIGHT THE COUNCIL TEACH US?But it might also be that the council has something to teach us aboutthings that divide Catholics today. We might ask whether our presentdivisions coincide with those of the council and then whether thecouncil's own method for dealing with diversity and disagreementcould provide a model for dealing with them today.

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Within theology I think that the differences th at became visiblein later stages of the council, and which I have typified in terms ofThomism and Augustinianism, are still with us. They roughly coincidewith the distinction David Tracy made between a correlational theolo-gy and a manifestation or epiphanic theology. IS The former institutes aconversation between the biblical and traditional heritage and thequestions and assumptions of a particular era or culture. Each is con-sidered capable of illumining and criticizing the other. An epiphanictheology desires simply to present the faith in its wisdom and beauty,and it is perhaps an ideal of this orientation that the proclamation ofthe gospel does not need to be culturally mediated. This is whatRatzinger has called "the positivism of faith": proclaim the gospel andits truth and beauty will attract.

At the moment I would say that it is this epiphanic approachthat is most in favor. If one were to personalize it, one could saythat interest in Karl Rahner has been replaced by interest in HansUrs von Balthasar. This shift is also visible in moves in catecheticsaway from emphasis on personal experience to emphasis on thecontent of the faith. The difference tends to become an unfortunatedichotomy when people try to identify modern theologians as inter-ested mainly in ressourcement (recovery of the tradition) andaggiornamento (presence to one's time), a distincti on I don't think ishelpful either historically or analytically. Perhaps this is the placeto point out also that most defenders of an Augustinian approach,and I am thinking here in particular of Cardinal Ratzinger, do notdesire a return to the state of theology before Vatican II, that is, areturn to nee-scholasticism. They consider themselves, instead, tobe heirs of the earlier, greater, deeper tradition that was in goodpart neglected by theologians who considered that because theolo-gy was not "scientific" before medieval scholasticism, it was notworth studying. In this sense, Cardinal Ratzinger is not at all arestorationist.

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TWO APPROACHES TO THE MODERN WORLDThe differences between Augustinians and Thomists have their paral-lels in the way Catholics approach the modern world, whether theylook for points of contact, whether they set up sharp dichotomies,how they conceive the task of preaching and catechesis, ete. TheThomist approach typically works with an elaborated theory of humannature, that beyond which grace elevates us, that below which sinsinks us. It tends, therefore, to recognize that the created world,including the world humans have constructed, has an intelligible sub-stance, worth knowing in and for itself, and for this effort it acknowl-edges a certain autonomy in the sciences that study it.Correspondingly, this approach tends to have a more nuanced view ofcontemporary events and movements; is inclined to look at "the signsof the times" for signs of grace at work, hopes to discover movementsor events that await the supernatural, Chenu's pierres d'attfl1te. All this isin continuity with an emphasis upon the incarnation and on theredemption already accomplished.

A typical Augustinian approach, on the other hand, tendsrather to emphasize the cross and the rupture that it demands as theprice of conversion. It tends simply to contrast the mental attitudeof faith and the mental attitude of contemporary culture.Correspondingly, very alert to the danger of Pelagianism in appealsto movements and events, it tends to notice discontinuities ratherthan continuities. If the effort to discern "signs of the times" is madeat all, it tends to see them all as negative. Where the Thomist seesthe need for three conversions: religious, moral, and intellectual, theAugustinian typically is content with religious and moral conversion(Bernard Lonergan).

While on the subject of interpretations of the world, let me !loll'

that both at the council and since, there was visible a tendency to kit:ntlfy political options with religious motivations. At the councilthis appeared in efforts to defend the ideal of the Catholic confession

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al state and to secure an explicit condemnation of communism. Afterthe council, it appeared in some proponents of a theology of revolu-tion or a theology of liberation. where political options claimed to bedrawn, without mediation, from the pure gospel. Today one still sees acertain amount of odiul11 /)o/ilicum at work in Catholic conversations. Onaffective and intellectual levels a greater affinity is often felt for peopleof similar political views than with one's fellow Catholics of differentpolitical persuasion. There need not be anything wrong with that, solong as the link is not made so close that it leads people to closethemselves off from others and even from other Catholics andChristians, who should not on account of their political orientationsbe considered to be outside the fold.

A NEW PROBLEMThere is one problem in the contemporary church to which I don'tthink there is a parallel in the experience of Vatican II. At the councilthe differences I have pointed to were differences within the house-hold of faith, and by faith here I mean the substantive sets of mean-ings and truths that constitute the church. The counc iI fathers mayhave argued fiercely over particular points, including whether a partie-ular matter had been settled by Trent or by the ordinary rnagisterium,but they were at one in recognizing the constitutive role of doctrineand the importance of defending the faith once delivered to the saints.They took it for granted that the church is first of all the communityof those who believe that God was in Christ reconcil ing the world tohimself.

But I think what Charles Taylor describes as "the new individual-ism" is very widespread in our culture and even among Catholics."This is the tendency to reduce religion to one's own very personal,even private, spirituality ("following your bliss;" "being true to yourown inner Self"), which then becomes the criterion by which todecide what tradition, if any, to follow, what community, if any, to

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enter, what beliefs to hold, if any. As Taylor argues, this is an almostperfect exemplification of William James' definition of religion as "thefeelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so faras they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever theymay consider divine." Out of this inner reality, James said, "theologies,philosophies and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow.?"This seems to me different from the often deplored "cafeteriaCatholicism" (although it may be one of its inspirations), that is, pick-ing and choosing among church teachings; that at least allowed thatthere were church teachings. FOT those whom I am describing it isnearly incomprehensible that one's spirituality might need itself to betested against any external reality or authority. If this phenomenon isas widespread as Taylor thinks it is, then it may be that many of thedisputes about doctrines or worship or morality that so often occupyCatholics are rather missing the point: there are many people claimingto be Catholic who couldn't care less.

CAN VATICAN II HELP US TO DEAL WITH DIFFERENCE?Does Vatican II have anything to offer to help us deal with differenceand disagreement? Granted that the church cannot always be living inthe state of an ecumenical council, still are there not some things tolearn from the experience, still fresh in some minds, of that collegialexercise of the teaching office? Consider the process by which a textwas elaborated at Vatican II. A first draft was drawn up by a commit-tee, usually after some internal debate; it was then presented to thebody of the whole where it was criticized or praised; a general up-or-down vote was taken on whether to use it as the basis of what thecouncil wanted to say; individual chapters were voted on now withthree options: Placet, Non placet, Placet iuxta modul11 (Yes, No, Yes withthis amendment). The work went back to committee where criticismswere taken into account and proposed amendments were reviewed.The committee was particularly concerned not to try to settle legiti-

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rnately discussed matters of theology, and to seek ways of statingthings that left room for diversity within the expression of the onefaith they sought to articulate. The revised text was then printed withall changes from the previous draft clearly indicated, often in parallelcolumns, and given to the whole body of bishops. Another vote wasthen taken on whether to accept the changes, still with an opportunityto offer yet further amendments. These were then considered; the textwas returned to the floor, and a final up-or-down vote was taken onthe work.

That was the basic method and structure followed at Vatican II,the mechanics of the council if you will. It provided ample room fordiscussion, for debate, for disagreement, and, as often as not, thesewere dealt with by conciliation and compromise for the sake of asbroad a consensus as possible. (There are Catholics on both the leftand the right who regret this ideal of consensus, particularly if reachedby compromise: 011 He tral1sige pas avec la verite/'S) Many letters, diaries,and testimonies indicate how the freedom that the structure permittedand even required transformed the minds and hearts of participantsand gave them a new sense of their own rights and responsibilities asbishops. (This is why Yves Congar insisted so much on the aspect of acouncil as a physical coming together of bishops, of mutual exchangeand learning, something that would be impossible With, say, "an ecu-menical council by letter," which a few people have actually suggestedfor the future.) What the church-in-council wished to say and how tosay it were things that emerged in the course of this conversationamong representatives of the world's churches.

What often emerged was also the decision not to resolve a dis-puted issue, but to leave it for further theological or canonical clarifi-cation. This happened, for example, with the disputed question aboutScripture and Tradition and with the relation, both in theory and inpractice, between papal primacy and episcopal collegiality. Thischoice disappointed some people on both sides, but there was large

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agreement that it was a wise policy. The result, of course, is that agood number of disputed points since Vatican II cannot be resolved bygoing back to the conciliar documents, because the council decidednot to settle them. It also at times made for rather bland documents,which explains why new readers of the texts today often wonder whatall the fuss was about.

Another element in the conciliar experience was the universalparticipation. The whole church, that is, the individual churches livingin communion, participated in the persons of their bishops. Thisensured that all voices from all regions could in principle be heard,although it does have to be said that the council was primarily con-cerned with problems in the northern hemisphere (the so-called Firstand Second Worlds). No one person and no one church were consid-ered to have a monopoly. The rights and responsibilities of the papacywere acknowledged, but so were those of the bishops, and the twowere found not to exclude one another. I do not know why this mightnot provide a general model for official teaching in the future. Such amodel was used, somewhat imperfectly, it has to be said, in the casesof the new Code of Canon Law and of the Catechism of the CatholicChurch; it was not used adequately in the case of the Vatican docu-ment on episcopal conferences and it was notably not used in the caseof Dominus Iesus, with the well-known results.

In any case, it provides a model for the kinds of conversationsthat would enable us too to deal non-coercively with our own diversi-ty and our disagreements. I do not know any reason why this sort ofprocess should be permissible, or should be expected to be fruitful,only at an ecumenical councilor only among bishops. Why should itnot apply also in conversations between clergy and laity and indeedamong the laity also? To judge from a few internet discussions I'm partof, many Catholics could learn a thing or two about elementary cour-tesy, about how to listen and how to speak, about give and take, fromthe example of the Second Vatican Council.

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As with the bishops at the council, appropriate opportunitiesshould be given for as wide a participation as possible, so that every-one may enter the conversation with something to say but also withsomething, perhaps much more, to learn. This means that no oneshould claim a monopoly on the truth or consider his own view toexhaust the matter under discussion. Some forty years ago, a yearbefore Vatican II opened, Yves Congar gave a lecture with a similartitle to mine tonight: "Diversity and Divisions." Toward the end, hespoke of what he called "a law of communion," whose implications hethen spelled out:

Although external authority has a place within it, the church is asociety not by coercion but by communion: communion of themembers in the same objects of faith and love, communion ofthe members with one another. The great requirement of thiscommunion is openness, a readiness to welcome, to give, and toexchange. Individuals, groups, peoples, we distinguish ourselvesby ways of thinking that are different, perhaps even in certainrespects opposed. But there is one way which must be commonto us, because it derives from Christianity itself. The spiritualprinciple which makes us Christians necessarily entails the con-sciousness that we are not alone, that others also are subjects. Itnecessarily entails an invitation not to lock myself in a system ora situation, but to accept that systems of ideas and si tuations becalled into question.

We have to remember, Congar said, that "only the totality of this peo-ple, only the church in her historical and geographical, anthropologi-cal and spiritual universality, is the adequate subject of the totality offaith and grace which come to her from Christ." Within this vision, "inpractice to give what I have been able to perceive of it the absolutecharacter of the totality is profoundly to misunderstand what thattotality can truly be.?" He adduced a helpful image from the Frenchessayist Jean Cuehenno.

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Let our ideas be clear; let us present them in all their rigor. Thisis a condition of honesty. Let us serve them with all our might.This is the exercise of our courage. But just as we leave a marginon our writing paper for revisions, for corrections, for things notyet found, for the truth for which we can still only hope, let usleave around our ideas the margin of fraternity.

The image is attractive. We ought to leave room in the margins, evenof our manifestos, for corrections, additions, new emphases, some-one else's insights. Above all, we ought to leave room, at least in themargins, for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

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NOTES1 See his inaugural encyclical, Ad Petri cathedra»!, no. 61-62.2 Edward Schillebe~kx, 'The Second Vatican Council," in The

Layman in the Church alld Other Essays (Staten Island, NY: Alba House,1963) 67-92. A year later Michael Novak was to contrast "non-histori-cal orthodoxy" and historical consciousness,

3 Gerard Philips, "Deux tendances dans la theologie contempo-raine: En marge du lIe Concile du Vatican," Nouvelle Revue Theologiqllf 85(1963) 225-38.

4 See jan Grootaers, "The Drama Continues between the Acts:The 'Second Preparation' and its opponents," in History oj Vatican II. Vol.II: The Formation of the COlmcil's Identity: First Period and Intersession October1962 - September 1963, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchak(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis and Leuven. Peeters, 1997) 359-514.

5 Joseph Ratzinger, Die letze Sitzllngsperiode des KOl1zils (K6In:Bachem, 1966) 28i ET Theological Highlights oj VaticaH II (New York:Paulist Press, 1966) 148.

6 Yves Congar, Mon jot/mal du COHcile(Paris: du Cerf, 2002) I,466. During the fourth session, Congar would repeat the criticism:"Kung is still very radical. He says things that are true but in them thecritical search for the true is not sufficiently tempered by concern forconcrete situations", ibid. II, 498.

7 See Haw: Kang: His Work and his Way, ed. H. Haring and K.-J.Kuschel (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image Books, 1980) 170-72.

8 I sometimes compare this to what happened in Poland. A verydisparate group of people united themselves in Solidarnost in order tobring about regime change, but when this finally happened and thequestion now was what should take its place, all the old disagreementsresurfaced. The differences weren't as great at the Council, of course,but the analogy has some usefulness.

9 Yves Congar, "La theologie au Concile. Le 'theologiser' duConcile," in Situation et taches presel1tesde la theologie (Paris: du Cerf, 1967) 53.

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10 Yves Congar, "Eglise et mon de dans la perspective deVatican II," in L'EgJisedans Ie 11I0l1dede ce temps, ed. Y. Congar and M.Peuchmard (Pris. du Cerf, 1967), III, 3., where he adds in a note: "Thispoint about correspondence is, of course, one of those that allow goodcommentators to regard GS as profoundly Thomist in inspiration."

11 Joseph Ratzinger, "Zehn Jahre nach Konzilsbeginn: Wo ste-hen wid' in Dogma IInd Verkiindigul1g (Munich 1973) 437-39.

12 For what follows, see Joseph A. Komonchak, "Le valutazionisulla GaudiulIl et spes: Chenu, Dossetti, Ratzinger," in Volti di jil1e concitio.Studi di storia e teologia sll/la cOl1c/usiol1edel Vatical10 II, ed. Joseph Dare andAlberto Melloni (Bologna: II Mulino, 2000) 115-53.

13 See Giuseppe Dossetti, COH Dio e COI1la Storia. Una viceHda dicristiano e di UOIIIO,ed. Angelina and Ciusppe Alberigo (Genoa: Marietti,1986)i "Per una valutazzione globale del magistero del Vaticano II," inVatiCa110II: Fraltlltlfllti di UM rijlessioHe, 23 -102, in II Vaticano II: Frammwti diuna rijlessione, ed. F.M. Broglio (Bologna: II Mulino, 1996) 103-90iPeruna 'Chiesa eucharistica': Rilettura delia portata dottril1ale delia constituzione liturgi-ca del Vaticano II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Giuseppe Ruggieri(Bologna: II Mulino, 2002).

14 Giuseppe Dossetti, "Alcune linee dinamiche del contributodel Cardinale G. Lercaro al Concilio ecumenico Vaticano II," in IIVaticano II: Fraltlnlmti di una rijlessiom, pp. 103-90, where Dossetti reviewsLercaro's activities and interventions, many of these inspired, if notwritten, by Dossetti himself.

15 David Tracy, "The Uneasy Alliance Reconceived: CatholicTheological Method, Modernity and Post-modernity," TheologicalStudies 59 (1989) 548-70i see also]. McDade, "Catholic Theology inthe Post-conciliar Period," Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and Ajter, ed. A.Hastings (New York, 1991) 422-43.

16 See Charles Taylor, Varieties oj Religion Today: William JamesRevisited (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), esp.79-107.

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17 As quoted by Taylor, Varieties oj ReligioH Today, 5.18 Those who have .wected the council for these compromises

are well known; at the other end of the spectrum, Hans Kling wrote,even before the council ended: "An intelligent interpretation of a decree... will not be snagged by the terms of the decree, which are often theresult of a compromise ... " (The ChangiHg Church: Rejlectiol1s 011 tl,e Progress ojtl,e Second Vatican Council [london: Sheed and Ward, 1965], t 39)

19 Yves Congar, "Diversite et divisions," in Catholicisme WI etdivers. Semaine des intel/ecluels catholiC/ties (8 au i 4 Novelllbre i 96 i) (Paris:Fayard, 1962) 27-43.

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Response

DANIEL E. PIlARCZYKArchbishop oj Cincinnati

irst of all, three comments about some specificpoints in Fr. Komonchak's presentation that I found

very interesting. First, he notes that underlying the strug-gles over the liturgy in the council was the issue of control.How much authority for liturgical reform should bereserved to Rome and how much entrusted to the local orregional bishops' conferences? Some forty years later thisissue is still being dealt with. It is, in my opinion, what liesbehind Liturgiarn Authenticam and the new statutes fromRome for the International Com mission on English in theLiturgy (lCEl).

Second, I was grateful for the insight that fidelity tothe doctrinal heritage and effective communication aretwo inseparable tasks but that there is no single audiencein the world today with which the church is called to com-municate. Consequently there arises the question ofwhether it is possible to be pastoral on a worldwide scale. Ifind this a very interesting question. It might be recast asfollows: how much pastoral directive can come from a cen-tral authority before it stops bei ng pastoral and becomesexclusively canonical.

Thirdly, I have to admit that, although I have done abit of reading about the council and its teaching, and havetaught courses on the Vatican [[ documents, I don't believeI ever heard of Giuseppe Dossetti, the radical who camefrom Bologna with Cardinal Lercaro. My embarrassmentwas mitigated when I discovered that Dossetti is not

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mentioned once in the indices of the five volume commentary onthe council documents edil~d by Herbert Vorgrimler. This provestwo things. One is that some of the most interesting peopleinvolved with the council didn't make much of a splash in its histo-ry. The other is that, not surprisingly, Fr. Komonchak is well versedeven in what some of us consider the most arcane elements of thecouncil's history.

As I read over Fr. Komonchak's presentation it occurred to methat a recurrent theme is binary opposition. We hear about theprophets of doom and those who wanted a more positive presentationof the truth, about an essentialist orientation opposed to an existentialtendency, St. Augustine versus St. Thomas, progressives versus conser-vatives. Fr. Komonchak is careful to point out that these characteriza-tions are bipolar "which does not permit one to notice, to describe, orto explain differences, often important, within the camps of the cow-boys and the Indians." But, even though there may be wide differencesof opinion, tonality, and background in each camp, and although thereare many ways to be a cowboy and many ways to be an Indian, thecowboys are not Indians and the Indians are not cowboys. There arebasic differences between them.

There are a couple more pairs of opposition that Fr. Komonchakdid not mention, but which he could have. Antioch and Alexandria,Plato and Aristotle.

All this leads me to offer some thoughts about my own way oflooking at theology, church history, and pastoral ministry. It's allessentially (or at least existentially) binary because reality is essen-tially binary, and this inherent dimension of opposition in almosteverything we deal with provides both tension and energy. Lightand darkness, birth and death, pain and pleasure: these are the reali-ties that occur in every human life. In Christian revelation we havesin and grace, Christ both human and divine, God of one nature yettriune, time and eternity, unchanging truth and the development of

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doctrine. Everywhere we look there are pairs of realities that call forour attention.

OPTIMISM VS. PESSIMISMIn terms of pastoral ministry and pastoral leadership, I have foundthat more often than not the basic operative realities are optimismand pessimism. Of course optimism and pessimism each have theirplace in basic Christian life and doctrine: law versus liberty, fear ver-sus confidence, the threat of hell versus the promise of heaven. But Ithink that optimism and pessimism aIso have roles to play in the wayin which the gospel is proclaimed and in which the local church isdirected.

What does the priest preach about most of the time: damnationor salvation? What motivation is offered for behaviors such as churchsupport: obligation or opportunity?

The same sorts of questions can be addressed to the administra-tive styles of bishops, and these styles can be characterized as opti-mistic or pessimistic. The basic question is one of management. Doesthe bishop micro-manage or macro-manage? Is he inclined to send outdetailed directives or is he inclined to let people alone? I am inclinedto think that micro-management is based on pessimism, on a convic-tion that people need lots of directio n or they will mess things up.Macro-management, on the other ha nd, seems to me to be a result ofoptimism, a conviction that priests and people will generally do allright if they are left to follow their own experiences of grace.

I think that the sex abuse scandal can have both an optimisticand a pessimistic response. Obviously the behaviors of some of thechurch's agents have been inexcusable and there is no way to justifythem. But what about the future? Wi 11this mess lead only to disillu-sionment or will it contribute to a heightened awareness of a hithertounheeded social problem? One's answer to that depends on whetherone is a pessimist or an optimist.

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THREE GENERAL REMARKSThree more general remarks before I come to conclusion. First generalremark: while persons of Cnristian faith must be long term optimists,it is not the case that, in the interim, it is always appropriate to beoptimistic or always appropriate to be pessimistic. It is not the casethat one is always correct and the other is always wrong. While indi-vidual human beings may be more inclined to one than to the other,there are circumstances when one or the other is simply inappropriate.It is almost inhuman to say that the inmates of the Soviet gulagsshould have had a brighter outlook on life, or that the pope's historicvisit to the Italian Parliament was an inexcusable inconvenience toRoman traffic.

Second general remark: there is a whole range or spectrum ineither approach to Christian life and ministry and doctrine. It is notthe case that you are either a pessimist or an optimist, and that, what-ever you are, you are the same as everybody else on your side of themiddle. There are all kinds of optimists and all kinds of pessimistsfrom the gloomiest of Gusses to the brightest of Pollyannas. It's dan-gerous to generalize about either tendency. One is inclined toremind oneself that there are neither optimists nor pessimists, sim-pliciter dicti, but only human persons who tend to be more optimisticor more pessimistic.

Third general remark: unadulterated optimism is dangerous. Sois unadulterated pessimism. Reality does not come in unmixedessences. It's always a mixture of good and bad, of possible and impos-sible, of desperate and hopeful. One of my favorite little theologicaltheories is that the most important word in theology is the adversativeconjunction, but. God is merciful, but God is just. Jesus is true man,but also true God. The liturgy is the work of the Christian people, butalso of the Holy Spirit. If we neglect our adversative conjunction, werun the risk of gross oversimplification. Even though individual per-sons may be generally optimistic or generally pessimistic, every

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thoughtful posture, every leadership style has to be a combination ofliberal and conservative, Antiochian and Alexandrian, Thomistic andAugustinian, optimistic and pessimistic. I believe that that's just theway things are.

Two concluding observations. First: it might be amusing some-time to try to line up all the pairs tha t we have been talking about thisevening under the general headings of optimism and pessimism. DoesAugustine go under pessimism? Why? To what extent? Is being a lib-eral inherently optimistic? Are existential theologians pessimists?Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about the liturgical reform ofVatican II-its intent and its outcome?

Finally, a word from our sponsor. The Catholic CommonGround Initiative is both optimistic and pessimistic. It acknowledgesthat there are divisions in the church that do not appear to be healthy,but it also holds that there is blessing in trying to bring together peo-ple of differing perspectives. It holds that the middle ground may bewider and more varied than people realize and that bringing peopletogether for human and humane conversation contributes to the well-being of the church. Cowboys may still be cowboys and Indians maystill be Indians, but arguably the world and the church will be betteroff if they are talking to one another rather than shooting at oneanother.

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