After Vatican II, the ship of the Church was in choppy water. Some of the sailors have sought to alter course

ON 11 October 1972, eight members of the International Theological Commission, set up as a vehicle for dialogue between Rome?s doctrinal overseers and the theological currents that had fuelled the Second Vatican Council, addressed a letter to Pope Paul VI. When the Pope first saw it on the pile of correspondence prepared for him by his secretary, Pasquale Macchi, he may have imagined the theologians had written to urge yet another reform, or to plead for yet another loosening of traditional controls.

The business of this letter, however, was of an opposite sort.

The eight theologians represented a new phenomenon in post-conciliar Catholic theology, a group of penitents increasingly suspicious of the ecclesiastical revolution they themselves had helped to unleash. They wrote to express urgent concern that the ?unity and purity of the Catholic faith? was being compromised by inaccurate and theologically suspect translations of liturgical texts from Latin into the vernacular languages. They complained that the Vatican?s liturgical office, the Congregation for Divine Worship, was relying on local bishops? conferences to judge the quality of translated texts rather than examining them carefully in Rome. It was the first shot in a row that eventually led to the exile of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, architect of the ?new Mass? and most other post-conciliar liturgical reforms, on 11 July 1975.

In a sign of things to come, among the authors were a German theologian named Joseph Ratzinger and a Chilean named Jorge Medina Est?vez. As young periti, or theological experts, at the council, both had been part of the broad progressive majority. Both began to move to the right in the post-conciliar years, and both have gone on to play key roles in the Roman Curia under John Paul II. As the 1972 letter appealing to Paul VI shows, the revised understanding of Vatican II later executed by the men around John Paul II ? what some would call their rolling back of the council ? had been germinating for some time.

Ratzinger?s leading role in this campaign is well known. As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to the present time, he has beaten back or redirected several attempts to apply the conciliar impulses in different cultural contexts. They include liberation theology in Latin America (think of the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff), religious pluralism in Asia (the Belgian Jacques Dupuis), ?historically conscious? moral theology in North America (Charles Curran), and post-conciliar ?low ecclesiology? in Europe (another Belgian, Edward Schillebeeckx).

Medina Est?vez, meanwhile, as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship from 1998 to 2002, managed to push through sweeping changes in the rules according to which liturgical texts are translated into the vernacular languages, insisting upon a more literal and ?Roman? approach. He also took a wrecking ball to the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, a translation body that became a favourite target of conservative liturgical activists. Key ICEL personnel have resigned under pressure, a stern new set of rules on translation has been promulgated in the document Liturgiam Authenticam, and a new set of statutes for ICEL has been prepared to give Rome more control.

The story is not over; in late October, Medina?s successor, Cardinal Francis Arinze, wrote a strong letter to presidents of English-speaking bishops? conferences insisting that the statutes be revised again. Among other things, Rome wants power to approve ICEL staff, plus an acknowledgment that it is the Congregation for Worship, not the bishops? conferences, that erects the commission.

Ratzinger and Medina are hardly alone in having second thoughts about the whirlwind triggered in the Catholic Church by Vatican II. Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Avery Dulles are three leading examples of other prominent theologians who fled the progressive camp amid the turbulence of the late Sixties. The French neo-Thomist Jacques Maritain, also increasingly alarmed after the council, warned in 1968 of a ?neo-Modernist fever...compared to which the Modernism of Pius X?s time was only a modest hay fever?. Maritain spoke in apocalyptic terms of an ?imminent apostasy? to which conciliar reforms were leading.

It is perhaps Ratzinger?s change of heart, however, that is most worth examining in detail, if only because it was most consequential for the Catholic Church in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Ratzinger has served as doctrinal czar for 21 years now, under a Pope not particularly captivated by the fine points of such considerations (his intellectual interests are more philosophical and anthropological), and hence has been in a unique position to shape doctrinal policy.

Ratzinger has rejected charges of a shift in his thinking. In a 1993 interview with Time magazine, he asserted, ?I see no change in my theological positions over the years?.

How accurate is that statement? One can test it in various areas, beginning with his views about church structures. During the council, Ratzinger believed the Church was over-centralised. In a 1963 commentary on the first session, he praised the emergence of ?horizontal Catholicity?, in which ?the Curia found a force to reckon with and a real partner in discussion?. He offered as the leading example control over liturgy by bishops? conferences, ?not by delegation of the Holy See, but by virtue of their own independent authority?.

In a 1990 series of lectures on the doctrine of the Church to the bishops of Brazil, by contrast, Ratzinger emphasised the ?vertical Catholicity? he had earlier sought to correct. His exchanges with Cardinal Walter Kasper on the relationship between the universal Church and the local Churches reflect the same thinking. In practice, Ratzinger has not been an ally of ?horizontal Catholicity?. He was a driving force, for example, in rejecting the lectionary, or collection of scripture readings for the Mass, approved by the United States bishops in 1991. He has been supportive of the crackdown on ICEL.

A similarly sharp turn can be seen in his attitude to bishops? conferences. In the first volume of Concilium, the progressive theological journal founded after Vatican II, Ratzinger wrote: ?One not infrequently hears the opinion that the bishops? conferences lack all theological basis and could not therefore act in a way that could be binding on an individual bishop.? On the contrary, he says, one must reject such a ?one-sided and unhistorical? systematisation. Yet as prefect of the CDF, Ratzinger has advanced just this argument. The lack of theological standing of bishops? conferences was a central point of the August 1998 document Apostolos Suos, which held that no conference could issue statements on doctrine or morality unless there was either unanimity among its members or the prior approval of the Holy See had been given.

Ratzinger?s changing assessment of the function of the synod of bishops which meets in Rome tells the same story. In 1965, he saw the synod as a means of continuing the council: ?If we may say that the synod is a permanent council in miniature ? its composition as well as its name justify this ? then its institution under these circumstances guarantees that the council will continue after its official end; it will from now on be part of the everyday life of the Church.?

In his 1987 work Church, Ecumenism and Politics, however, Ratzinger struck a contradictory note. The synod, he wrote, ?advises the pope; it is not a small-scale council, and it is not a collegial organ of leadership for the universal Church?. He argued that according to Vatican II?s constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium 22, the college of bishops can act with legal force only in an ecumenical council or by all bishops of the world acting in unity.

Then there are the reforms he originally envisaged for the Holy Office. In 1968, Ratzinger signed a petition proposing that a theologian should be able to have counsel of his or her own choice from the beginning of any investigation; that all relevant documents should be provided upon request; that the theologian under review should not be bound by secrecy; that any dispute should be referred to two professional theologians, one chosen by the person under review; and finally that the International Theological Commission should represent the diversity of theological views in the Church.

As prefect of the doctrinal congregation, however, Ratzinger has by and large not carried out these reforms. Investigations still unfold without the defendant being informed or given the opportunity for counsel. Theologians are refused their case files. Secrecy is imposed. The International Theological Commission, though encompassing diversity within a certain range, is not seen by many theologians as representative of the ?schools? that exist today.

Finally, in a 1972 essay reflecting on the council, Ratzinger argued for allowing divorced and civilly remarried Catholics under some circumstances to receive the Eucharist. He cited St Basil: ?There it is stated that after a longer penance, Communion can be given to a digamus [someone living in a second marriage], without the suspension of the second marriage; this in confidence of God?s mercy, who does not leave penance without an answer. . . . It seems ? nothing less than just, and is fully in harmony with our ecclesiastical traditions.? Yet in September 1994, in response to three German bishops who defended granting Communion under these circumstances, Ratzinger?s congregation upheld the ban. Civilly remarried persons ?find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God?s law?, the congregation ruled. ?Consequently, they cannot receive holy Communion.?

The burden of proof would thus seem to be on Ratzinger, to demonstrate how these seemingly stark contradictions do not amount to ?changes in his theological positions?.

On that fateful day in 1972 when Ratzinger and Medina signed their letter to Paul VI, one could not descry the path down which they, and revisionist Catholic thinkers like them, were beginning to lead the Church. Today we see it more clearly. What we cannot yet anticipate is how much of the path is left to travel.

Perhaps the most bitterly contested issue in the Church today is who has a better claim to the legacy of Vatican II ? reformers who seek a servant Church, or restorationists who want to accent strong papal authority? Which better expresses what Vatican II intended? What was the council?s ?legislative intent?? Whoever controls how Vatican II is remembered to a great extent controls the direction of the Church. Ratzinger?s testimony is critical, but an assessment of it would be incomplete without asking how and why it has shifted. One must ask which Ratzinger is a more reliable witness to the intent of the council ? the Ratzinger who penned the 1963 commentary on the first session, or the Ratzinger of today?

It would be unfair to suggest that a spirit of revisionism characterises the entirety of John Paul II?s pontificate. In any number of areas ? inter-religious dialogue, ecumenism and social justice, to name three ? this Pope has actually moved the Church forward from where the council left it. Yet the fact remains that in other areas of ecclesiastical life, from theology to liturgy, from collegial governance to lay ministry, key figures in John Paul?s entourage have striven to put the conciliar genie back in the bottle. What long-term impact will their efforts have? There is an old bit of Roman wisdom that bears recalling: ?Anything one pope does, another pope can undo.? Much, in other words, depends upon John Paul II?s successor.

John L. Allen Jr is the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter of Kansas City. His biography, Cardinal Ratzinger: the Vatican?s Enforcer of the Faith, was published by Continuum in 2000. His most recent book is Conclave: the politics, personalities and process of the next papal election (Doubleday).

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