Book Review

Backstage politics of the council

Vatican II: a sociological analysis of religious change

I find surprising this book's claim to be the first systematic sociological study of an event as important as the Second Vatican Council. Melissa Wilde, who teaches sociology of religion at Pennsylvania University, uses the odd term "eventful sociology" to describe her work, though it is true that sociologists tend to focus on processes at the expense of narrative, and to leave revolutionary events to historians. What Wilde attempts is a fusion of a narrative covering the years of the council with an analysis of crucial junctures that cumulatively switched subsequent events in a revolutionary direction, and also with an analysis of voting patterns. She presents much evidence to show that most participants expected the council to be dominated by the Curia and the conservative views of bishops from countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland, where Catholicism retained a stable religious monopoly. Her object is to ferret out how these same participants found themselves caught up in a growing sense of collegiality with power to engage in a collective act of redefinition.

It has always been my view that the sociology of religion has to operate in concert with political sociology, and that the politics of the Church proceed on the same principles as politics in general. That is certainly borne out by Wilde's analysis of the positions adopted by the various "parties" manoeuvring for influence and power in the successive sessions of the council. Her point of reference, however, is less political sociology than a model based on economic behaviour and the theory of organisations. She discerns major divisions between bishops operating in stable monopolies like Spain, those operating in monopolies threatened with instability by Protestant "sects" or Marxism, as in Latin America, and those operating in pluralistic situations either alongside mainstream Protestants with whom they maintained valued ecumenical relations or in Pays du Mission like France.

The French, Germans, Dutch, English and, to a lesser extent, the Americans seem to have been the potential movers and shakers, and in their pursuit of change understood how to organise alliances in a way the Curia and its potential allies did not. To achieve their purposes they needed to build a consensus with Latin Americans which initially looked unlikely but in the event proved crucial.

It makes common sense that bishops working in environments where Catholics were a minority and/or lacked access to political power should favour liberty of conscience. On that issue the leaders of Catholic minorities, for example in Africa and Asia, or of suppressed majorities, as in Poland, were unlikely to espouse the doctrine that error has no rights. Demanding liberty where it is to your advantage, and privilege where it is advantageous, smacks of hypocrisy. Persecution clarifies the mind. Moreover, the issue of religious liberty was a matter of obvious principle to the bishops of North America and clearly of central importance for ecumenical relations with Protestants everywhere. It posed problems for the Latin Americans because in their view they were faced with the wrong kind of Protestant - Pentecostals and the like - whom Wilde labels "missionaries" in spite of their rapid indigenisation.

This is where the position of the Latin Americans becomes particularly interesting, given their reservations about an open religious market. What they shared with northern Europeans, however, was a belief in collegiality, and a readiness to talk and compromise. By contrast, the Curia was interested in the levers of hierarchical power. So, despite the Latin Americans being primarily interested in social justice and the northern Europeans focused on religious liberty, they worked together, and in the event religious liberty was strongly endorsed. The Latin Americans voted with the northerners on the sources of revelation, though many of them were less "progressive" on the vexed issue of the role of the Virgin Mary. In this area I should have liked more details of the variations in Latin America. I can imagine why Brazil and Chile were relatively progressive on revelation, and why the episcopates in secular societies like Uruguay and Venezuela were also progressive, but I would have expected the Argentine to be conservative. And why in Africa were the Nigerian bishops particularly conservative? Another interesting question is whether the progressive attitude of the French episcopate was echoed throughout francophone Africa.

The most serious dangers from the progressive viewpoint were the triumph of fundamentalism, equally with respect to Tradition and Scripture, and a further exaltation of Mary, maybe to the role of co-mediatrix. Wilde comments that if fundamentalism had triumphed or Mary been accorded even more exalted status, all ecumenical hopes would have foundered for good. On these issues and on the issue of religious liberty she makes excellent use of The Ecumenical Review as a forum for the expression of Protestant hopes and fears with respect to the council.

Two issues were bypassed at the council. There was no condemnation of Communism, presumably for prudential reasons, including relations with the Orthodox Church, and no liberalisation of attitudes to birth control, presumably for prudential reasons of a rather different sort. Those riding the current of change were afraid that adding birth control to their agenda might stall progress on other fronts of more immediate concern. Protestant commentators did not press for liberalisation for prudential reasons of their own, including ecumenical relations with the Orthodox Church. It seems that the ecumenical politics of ecclesiastical elites do not necessarily lead in a liberal direction. Ward further argues that the bishops gathered in Rome were not responsive to concerns at the grass roots, or maybe the progressives hoped the matter would be resolved in their favour after the council. At any rate the laity voted with their feet (so to speak) as birth rates throughout the Catholic (and Orthodox) world plummeted. Whatever the statements of principle, the birth-control issue threatened ecclesiastical authority: a change threatened it in the short run and failure to change threatened it in the long run, Melissa Wilde provides a useful narrative of events, stressing how early victories by the progressives created a snowball of anticipation and confidence, and she rejects any idea that its outcome had much to do with Pope John XXIII, apart from calling the council in the first place. She also provides interesting detail, some of it tucked away at the back of the book. It seems that the Dutch provided nearly a third of the theologians, and that only progressives mentioned the Holy Spirit. When she writes of a strong Protestant presence in Belgium and categorises Poland as "formerly Catholic" it is clear that her grasp of the European situation is variable. All the same, this book is an impressive first essay by a young and innovative scholar.

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