CWR: A Deeper Context: Overlooked book provides insight into Vatican II debates by Conor Dugan
Why I think there is no better book to help put the Council in context than Robert Royal’s tour-de-force A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.
Dugan writes:
But, now, with Vatican II in the dock, Royal’s book takes on
increased importance. He helps put the Council in context and to see the
trends that were already at work in the Church prior to the Council and
that continued after it closed. In particular, his highlighting of the
emphasis on nuptial mysticism—a “theme” that “had long existed in the
tradition”—prior to the Council is a key insight. His description of the
advances—and hiccups—in biblical studies is another. Still another
insight is that pre-Conciliar Catholicism was much more disparate than
many want to admit. And many of the Conciliar themes were simply the
fleshing out of work that predated the Council. Certainly, after reading
Royal’s careful study of 20th century Catholicism, one could not claim
that “what the Council produced was not remotely in continuity with the
past” or that after the Council there was not “the faintest desire to
carry on the Catholic religion as existed before,” as one recent
commentator on the Vatican II debates recently put it.
Indeed, to accept the thesis that the Council should be rejected
requires a rejection not just of the Council itself, but the work of
figures such as Guardini, Chenu, Congar, de Lubac, Ratzinger, and
Balthasar. Many traditionalists seem to be fine with this move but they
should be clear that they are not asking simply for the Council to be
declared anathema but much (or most?) of the 20th century Catholic
intellectual tradition to be declared anathema as well. This raises the
question of to which date the clock should be reset. 1950? 1940? 1910?
Earlier?
I don't have a problem with Vatican II being understood primarily as a Ressourcement project of renewal or reform, a project nonetheless affected by other intellectual and "spiritual" trends within the Patriarchate of Rome. But it was a project necessary not for the Church Universal, only the Patriarchate of Rome.
