Vatican II as a Ressourcement Project

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.

Who Needed Ressourcement to a Greater Degree than the Other Jurisdictions?

The patriarchate of Rome.

CWR : The Next Pope is an evangelical call to ressourcement by Eduardo Echeverria
George Weigel’s new book provides a balanced perspective on what the next pope should embrace in order to promote the radically Christocentric and evangelical imperative of the Church.

Yves Congar and the Future of the Church in its Past
by Charles Taylorhttps://t.co/AT5pehdjBY

— Church Life Journal (@ChurchLifeND) August 26, 2020

Church Life Journal

I'm not going to critique Taylor here, though what he says is worthy of critique, as his understanding of the problem of political life is flawed, and affects his understanding of the Church's mission as well.

I won't disagree that the patriarchate of Rome needed Ressourcement, not only to become familiar with the Fathers as models, but also as voices of the Tradition, and to be able to distinguish between what is directly pertaining to the Kerygma, theological propositions that have been found to have value in explaining the Kerygma and accepted by the Church Universal, theological opinion that is not yet accepted by all of the Church Universal, and so on. Was a Latin synod posturing as an ecumenical council the best or most effective means of bringing Ressourcement to Latin bishops? Or could this aspect of ecclesial reform have been done in a better and more cost-effective way? If the synod had just been an opportunity for bishops to gather, pray, study and have discussions, without feeling it necessary to issue documents to justify the calling of the synod, would the results have been better?

Jean Duchesne on Louis Bouyer

Les grands théologiens du XXe siècle : Louis Bouyer (4/6)

The others in the series:
Henri de Lubac
Jean Daniélou
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Karol Wojtyla
Joseph Ratzinger

Catholic Culture Podcasts Ep. 75

It's fashionable among traditionalists to bash the nouvelle théologie without really knowing anything about it. It was far from a unified movement in which everyone was a modernist. I talked to @DeclueViews about his work clearing this up. https://t.co/ZoA8NpICae

— Catholic Culture Podcasts (@CatholicPods) May 20, 2020

Concilium v. Communio

CWR Dispatch: Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Reformer by George Weigel
(Also published at First Things.)

As I wrote in The Irony of Modern Catholic History, a fissure in the ranks of the reformist theologians at Vatican II began to open up during the Council’s third session, held in the fall of 1964. A new theological journal, Concilium, was being planned by some of the Council’s influential theological advisers (many of whom had been heavily censored in the pre-Vatican II years). A towering figure among them, the French Jesuit Henri de Lubac, began to worry that Concilium would take the reformist project in a deconstructive direction: one that would do serious damage to what John XXIII, in his opening address to the Council, called “the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine,” which Pope John urged “be more effectively defended and presented.”
  
The first several issues of the new journal intensified de Lubac’s concerns. So in May 1965 the most venerable member of its editorial committee quietly withdrew from the Concilium project while continuing his work at the Council itself. As Vatican II drew to a close, others would join him in expressing serious reservations about the tack being taken by their onetime theological allies. And those concerns did not lessen over time.  

The result was what I call in my book “The War of the Conciliar Succession”: the war to define what Vatican II was and what Vatican II intended for the Catholic future. This war was not a struggle between “traditionalists” and “progressives.” It was a bitterly fought contest within the camp of Vatican II theological reformers. It continues to this day. And the question that so concerned Henri de Lubac remains entirely pertinent, 56 years later: Would an interpretation of the Council that effectively set the Catholic Church against “the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine” end up betraying the gospel and emptying it of its power?  

Joseph Ratzinger joined de Lubac and other dissident conciliar reformers in launching another theological journal, Communio, which he and his colleagues hoped would advance an interpretation of Vatican II that was in continuity with the Church’s settled doctrine even as it developed the Church’s understanding of that doctrine. Communio, now published in 14 language editions, has been a creative force in Catholic intellectual life for decades. Like Ratzinger, Communio is not against Vatican II; it has challenged what its authors contend is a wrongheaded interpretation of Vatican II.

Only one group was engaged in true reform, though in a wrong-headed way by employing the council to do it. Would  it be accurate to say the progressives were leaning towards heresy or had embraced it? Or were they guilty of an archaeologistic thinking that reflected a historical reality that existed only in their imagination? (Simplicity, the Eucharist as Last Supper, and all that?)

Is von Balthasar an Universalist?

Latin traditionalists hold his universalism against von Balthasar and Ressourcement in general. Have Thomists moved beyond that?

CWR Dispatch: Did Hans Urs von Balthasar teach that everyone will certainly be saved? by Mark Brumley
Whatever Balthasar’s position is, and whether or not it is correct, it isn’t universalism.

An Interview with Matthew Levering and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr.

CWR: Ressourcement after Vatican II honors the work of Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
An interview with Matthew Levering and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., who co-edited a collection of 13 essays on ressourcement thought in gratitude to Fr. Fessio for a lifetime of service to the Church.

Ressourcement after Vatican II: Essays in Honor of Joseph Fessio, S.J.

Battling Over Latin Christianity

Latin traditionalists and "conservatives."

1P5: Bishop Barron and the ‘Unhappy’ Renewal of the ‘Trad’ Movement by Timothy Flanders

Pope Benedict would later write concerning his formative years before the Council about his “anti-Roman resentment … imparted to us by our studies” [1] and that “we all had a certain contempt for the nineteenth century; it was fashionable then, somewhat kitsch piety and over-sentimentality — we wanted to overcome all that. We wanted a new era of piety” [2].
He recalls that when he saw the original document on revelation at Vatican II (on behalf of which Ottaviani had pleaded), he wished to circumvent the Magisterium in order to impose his own interpretation of Tradition upon it [3]. He “wanted out of classical Thomism[.] … Thomas’s writings were textbooks, by and large, and impersonal somehow[.] … I didn’t want to operate only in a stagnant and closed philosophy, but in a philosophy understood as a question — what is man, really? — and particularly to enter into the new, contemporary philosophy” [4].
Such castigation of the fathers of the immediate past and the imposition instead of their own interpretation of Tradition seems to be the defining characteristic of the Nouvelle Théologie party. This was the party that, in Barron’s words, “won the day at Vatican II.” This attitude on display by these men appears to run contrary to piety, opening up questions about the continuity that is claimed.

Is the reference to piety here when talking about Tradition and its expressions misplaced? Is a particular linguistic and theological expression of Tradition more important than the Person of Christ?

But at Vatican II, the conservatives switched sides and allied themselves with the liberals in order to overcome the prior Magisterium. They successfully convinced enough bishops to throw out all the original documents (save one, written by Bugnini). They suppressed all the warnings from Ottaviani and others, who stated that their dreams of a springtime were naïve. But after the Council was done, Barron notes, the liberals and conservatives immediately broke into two warring parties, represented in the journals Concilium and Communio.

 But was reconciling the Church with modernity or the modern world the only goal of these "conservatives" or these reformers aligned with or following Ressourcement?

This crisis will be overcome when conservatives renounce forever their alliance with the liberal heretics and unite themselves in charity to the traditionalists they once shunned. They must renew their filial piety toward the pontificates of Bl. Pius IX and St. Pius X.

This is to be stuck in an ecclesiological and theological rut, and of course merely re-confirms the Latin belief that Magisterium of the Church is to be centered in the person of the bishop of Rome.

Bishop Robert Barron on Henri de Lubac

CWR Dispatch: Cardinal Etchegaray, Henri de Lubac, and Vatican II by Bishop Robert Barron
What is still very much the needful thing today is the de Lubac attitude.

Are both left-wing and right-wing rejections of Vatican II on display today? Just go on the Catholic new media space and you’ll find the question readily answered. What is still very much the needful thing is the de Lubac attitude: deep commitment to the texts of Vatican II, openness to ecumenical conversation, a willingness to dialogue with the culture (without caving in to it), reverence for the tradition without a stifling traditionalism.

Often because of the post hoc fallacy, Ressourcement theology is being ignored by Latin traditionalists. Others merely are committed to their version of Thomism, and critique Ressourcement theology accordingly. Another approach taken by some contemporary Thomists is to take what was good in the return of the sources and employ it in Thomism, hence Ressourcement Thomism. Do Latins have what is necessary to reset their ecclesial tradition and teaching? Arguably that is what the best of Ressourcement theology was trying to do, though whether they were able to do so is questionable, as those who were orthodox had to stay within the bounds of second millenium Latin "dogma," rather than question whether those teachings by Latin councils were actually definitive.

The Latin Traditionalists React

Just as they can't admit that maybe the Ressourcement movement might have had a point.



NLM

Latin traditionalists can't concede anything. "Everything was A-ok with the Church [i.e. the patriarchate of Rome] before the Pian reform of Holy Week in 1955 [or choose some earlier liturgical reform]." As if they were alive at the time and had the omniscience to know that this was true. "Vatican 2 ruined everything!"

Did Ressourcement fade because of the hard-headedness of some of the Latin clergy and religious and the ignoring of Ressourcement by "progressives"? Or maybe the patriarchate of Rome didn't deserve such a gift and God withdrew it.

Kwasniewski writes this howler:

"Many more examples can be given in the realms of clerical vestments, church architecture, and liturgical hymns and orations. And then there will be simply issues of pluralism: some churches give the sacraments of initiation all at once to infants, while others spread them out in acknowledgment of the role of reason and free will. Is one necessarily right and the other wrong? Couldn’t they both be right, because they’re looking from different legitimate angles?"

Would he concede such pluralism on the question of ecclesiastical divorce? I am doubting it, even if he begrudgingly grants it with respect to the Eastern discipline of ordaining married men to the presbyterate. Show me a Latin author who justified the delay of Confirmation on the basis of "the role of reason and free will" rather than ecclesiological considerations centered on the office of the bishop.

Like the West, the East has its “black boxes” into which people are not supposed to look too closely, lest they find tensions, contradictions, reversals, laxities, and other odds and ends. Above all, their systematic theology and moral theology are a mess, because they have no authoritative framework for interpreting the Fathers. Their own version of scholasticism, a bit like Islam’s, imploded and fell apart, unlike the West’s, which with figures like Bonaventure and Thomas attained a rare perfection and magnificence. Above all, there is no one in the East who is as biblical, patristic, ecumenical, synthetic, broad-minded, and comprehensive as the Angelic Doctor. Aquinas makes frequent, sympathetic, incisive use of dozens of Western and Eastern Fathers — indeed, more Eastern authors than Western — so it’s a bit silly to say our theology starts in the 12th century.

Except it is arguable that theology in general did not have that place in the life of the Church that the Latins have given to theologians. Perhaps the Orthodox would here claim that it is the reception of a theological opinion, its incorporation in the liturgical and prayer life of the Church, that matters, rather than what the majority of theologians might say. And anyways, Aquinas is not the end-all, be-all of Latin theology, even if Thomists and Latin traditionalists like Kwasniewski would like to think that his theology holds this primacy of place.

Moreover, what the hieromonk doesn’t seem to grasp, or perhaps doesn’t wish to acknowledge, is the many great spiritual figures the West has always had, and still has. He does not mention figures like St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Bd. Charles de Foucauld, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and Bd. Columba Marmion, let alone countless martyrs and saints of every state in life. He mentions St. Pio of Pietrelcina only to suggest that he was opposed by the Church, which is only partially true. The writings of Fr. Jacques Philippe are every bit the equal of many contemporary books published by the Orthodox. One might also take a look at the pre-Reformation volumes of the Classics of Western Spirituality series from Paulist Press to get a rough sense of the richness of our mystical tradition.

I bet Kwasniewski rejects Bouyer's claims about the separation of Latin spirituality from Latin liturgical experience. But this is not a theological claim but a historical claim that must be evaluated accordingly, not in accordance with some a priori position that is taken to be a truth of Divine Faith -- "The Holy Ghost has not abandoned any of the apostolic-sacramental churches, since all of them give abundant evidence of the operations of the Spirit: faith, hope, charity, the gifts and fruits, miracles." Just because the Holy Spirit sanctifies does not mean that a church or group of churches does not have defects which the Holy Spirit must remedy.

I posted a link to the English translation of the original here.

Something for the Wish List?

OUP: An Avant-garde Theological Generation: The Nouvelle Theologie and the French Crisis of Modernity by Jon Kirwan

Latin Theology of the Priesthood

HPR: Patristic Ressourcement in the Theology of the Priesthood by Dr. Joshua Madden

The World Needs Christ

Not more academese, and "Modernity" is an invention of the elites, not out of whole cloth but close. Would the pioneers of "modernity" fall somewhere on the spectrum? Where would they fall on the social hierarchy?

Church Life: Renewing Nouvelle Théologie by Cyril O’Regan

Forgetfulness of God is a serious problem - without memory of God we cannot bless Him and thank Him for His manifold benefits. Is this forgetfulness, then, just an intellectual mistake, or is it one caused by sin? If the Latin churches had not first been internally weakened, and then lost to the modern nation-state, would there be a spiritual vacuum to be filled by some ideology? So what Latins have to offer the world in bringing Christ to it, after 50 years of a disastrous liturgical reform?

"And if there is a simple lesson to be drawn from the sprawling work of both de Lubac and Balthasar it may well be that misrememberers are far more dangerous to Christianity because in some lights they look just like it."

We are not talking about heresies but philosophical errors that do not fulfill man's heart, but feed upon sin and vice. what normal person claims to be a Hegelian or Nietzschean? Academics may pretend; there are those on the new right who claim to be followers of other philosophers, but they have rejected Christianity because of its perceived errors in its moral code.



Ressourcement Futures

R. R. Reno on Karl Rahner

A failed attempt at inculturation that made the sources secondary to his theological construct.

After Vatican II, Karl Rahner was everywhere in demand. He knew the doctrinal tradition inside and out. Those trained in accord with the earlier Thomism could put his new approach, “transcendental theology,” into familiar mental slots—post-Kantian anthropology became the foundational philosophy in the place of ­Aristotelian metaphysics, but otherwise the scholastic architecture remained intact. Rahner was in that sense a manualist. New building materials, but the same structure. This accounted, in part, for his postconciliar ­ascendancy.

It seems his star has fallen. During a recent visit to Rome, I briefly ventured back into the classroom, lecturing to seminarians on Rahner’s introductory textbook, Foundations of Christian Faith. During the Q&A, it became clear that the priests-in-training thought Rahner useless. After class one asked, “In the end, wasn’t he a heretic?” I’m no fan of Rahner’s, but I admit to being taken aback by that question!

Rahner was not a heretic. But his theology falters, largely because he assumes that the primary language of faith—Scripture, liturgy, and the ancient creeds—lacks spiritual power. His was a project of translation. He took what he regarded as the dead idioms of the past (“Christ rose from the dead”) and restated them in what he imagined to be the vital idioms of the present (“transcendental hope in the resurrection”). As is too often the case with theologians chasing cultural relevance, his formulations were already out of date when Foundations was published in the mid-1970s.

I’ve read a lot of Karl Rahner and learned a great deal. He opens up the logic of doctrine, often with exquisite dexterity. But his basic project was always doomed. As one of my teachers, George Lindbeck, observed, in good theology, Scripture absorbs the world, not the world Scripture. What the original witnesses to Christ say is always more vivid and radiant with divine truth than any translation into contemporary parlance.

He also talks about the pontificiate of Francis: A Failing Papacy

Interview with Tracey Rowland

CWR: Tracey Rowland's Guide Through the Catholic Academic "Zoo" by Carl E. Olson

"Theology is important because it is all about reasoning about the highest things. It is the one thing a person doesn’t want to get wrong in life because it affects one’s eternal destiny."

Thinking about the taxonomy of Latin Catholics and the second Vatican Council... who were the "progressives" during the council? What did they seek to change? And the "conservatives"? What did they seek to conserve? The status quo? For the conservatives, perhaps, orthodoxy is identified solely with scholastic formulae, a tradition within the Latin ecclesial tradition but not the only one. Some of the progressives may have wanted to shift the expression of teaching to other traditions; the Ressourcement theologians for example wanted some sort of return to the Church Fathers. Does that mean all progressives were right-minded? There may have been some who were heterodox, seeking to change the beliefs or moral norms of Tradition, just as there are heterodox among Latin clergy and theologians today. And even if some progressives were correct that the Latin churches need to shift their expression of doctrine away from neoscholasticism, it does not mean that their judgement about necessary changes in discipline or liturgy were also correct.

How many of the Ressourcement theologians were willing to concede that what had been taken to be definitive expressions of Sacred Tradition by western councils and popes in the second millenium may not be so?

Related:
CWR Dispatch: A "Conclave" for Camelot by Mary Jo Anderson
Robert Harris's new thriller is about papal intrigue and Vatican politics; it is also an example of how progressives envision the Catholic Church changing with the times.

Jeremy Beer on David Schindler

Philosopher of Love

Fr. Brian Mullady Answers Questions on Vatican 2

HPR

Marcellino D'Ambrosio: Ressourcement Theology and its Intellectual Background -- A Select Bibliography

No Master of Theology is 100% Correct?

Does God permit theologians to make some errors for the sake of their humility and for the sake of ours, so that we recognize that no human teacher has all of the answers? If this is the case then how does this affect our understanding of what teaching [of theology] is? It is not just recognizing that some teachers are better than others (authorities) and going over their reasoning but we also have to return to the sources as another check?