Newspaper Page Text
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The following story is a
roundup of the second session of
the ecumenical council.
(N.C.W.C. News Service)
The ecumenical council’s
second session took up the ecu
menical and pastoral lead from
Pope Paul Vi’s opening address
and made a slow but steady drive
toward “aggiornamento” —
bringing the Church up to date.
The session started its busi
ness Sept. 30 with a study of
the nature of the Church—a cri
tical analysis that included self-
criticism — and advanced on
Nov. 18 to debates on ecumen
ism which covered what the
Church must do for Christian
unity.
Seemingly endless debates
were occasionally sparked with
sharp clashes.
Speeches on the council floor
answered with arguments for
the “new order” were answer
ed with arguments for the “old
order” in a process that seem
ed like stalemate. But when is
sues were put to a vote, the new
order overwhelmingly won out:
—The council Fathers voted
clearly in favor of giving bish
ops a larger role in governing
the universal Church.
—They approved a reform
simplifying the Church’s public
worship, and bringing modern
languages in the Mass and sac
raments.
—They adopted a set of prin
ciples on the Church’s use of
press, television and radio.
—They voted in favor of re
storing the deacon as a perma
nent member of today’s Catho
lic clergy.
The session showed unmis
takably that the new order is to
replace the old.
The rule of secrecy which
covered almost everything that
took place in the council hall
during the first session (Oct.
11-Dec. 7, 1962) was eased
during the second session.
Archbishop Pericle Felici, the
council’s general secretary,
explained at the session’s first
general meeting that secrecy
was now limited to the actual
texts of the proposed schemas
and the work of individual coun
cil commissions.
Direction of the council’s
work was taken over by four
moderators—Leo Cardinal Su-
enens of Belgium, Julius Car
dinal Doepfner of Munich, Gia
como Cardinal Lercaro of Bo
logna and Gregorio Cardinal
Agagianian, Prefect of the Sa
cred Congregation for the Pro-
gagation of the Faith.
Sixty-three non-Catholic re
ligious leaders came for the
second session of the council
which opened Sept. 29 as ob
server-delegates or guests of
the Secretariat for Promoting
Christian Unity.
This was 18 more than those
at the first session.
Pope Paul gave laymen an of
ficial role at the council for the
first time.
He named 15 lay audi
tors. Their role, according to a
council press bulletin, was to
help in the work of the council.
The bulletin said that they might
“be called upon to give their
advice to the conciliar commis-
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THEY DIRECTED WORK OF COUNCIL—The Cardinal
delegates or moderators pictured above were named by
Pope Paul VI to direct all the work of the second session
of Vatican Council II. The session, opened September 29th
came to a solemn close last Wednesday, Dec. 4. A Third
session is tentatively scheduled for September 14th, 1964.
Cardinal Suenens strongly
urged (Oct. 22) that more lay
auditors be named, including
women, “since women consti
tute one-half the population of
the world.” He also said there
should be representatives from
the “great congregations of
Brothers and Sisters who con
tribute so significantly to the
apostolic work of the Church.”
Just a week before the coun
cil opened, Pope Paul said in a
speech to the members of the
Roman curia (Sept. 21) that the
curia, the Church’s central ad
ministrative body, had “grown
ponderous with its own vener
able age.” It needed to be sim
plified and decentralized he
said.
The Pope outlined the
reforms needed—reforms to be
‘ ‘formulated and promulgated
by the curia itself”—and these
reforms were seconded later in
debates on the council floor.
—Members of the curia will
be recruited on a “ supranation
al” basis. (Its membership
is now predominantly Italian.)
—Members will have what the
Pope called an “ecumenical”
education to prepare them for
work in the curia.
—Local bishops will take
over those functions now per
formed by the curia which can
be handled more efficiently on a
local basis.
—Local bishops may be
brought into the curia.
‘ ‘And We shall say more,” the
Pope continued. “Should the ec
umenical council show a desire
of seeing some representatives
of the episcopacy, particularly,
prelates who direct a diocese,
associated in a certain way and
for certain questions . . . with
the supreme head of the Church
The moderators are (1. to r.) Giacomo Cardinal Lercaro,
Archbishop of Bologna, Italy; Gregorio Cardinal Agagianian,
Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of
the Faith; Leo Cardinal Suenens, Archbishop of Malines-
Brussels, Belgium; and Julius Cardinal Doepfner, Arch
bishop of Munich and Freising, Germany.
SHOWN ABOVE are the five Cardinals of the United States as they emerged from one
of the early sessions of Vatican Council II after it reconvened on September 29th. They
are (1. to r.) Cardinal Ritter, St. Louis, Mo.; Cardinal McIntyre, Los Angeles; Cardinal
Spellman, New York; CardinaTCushing, Boston; Cardinal Meyer, Chicago.
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in the study and responsibility
of ecclesiastical government,
the curia will surely not oppose
it.” . .
This idea of bishops taking a
bigger- part in running. the
Church, with possibly an “epis
copal senate” to work with the
Pope was talked over in the
council hall. And on the last
day of the session, the Pope
published a document increas
ing the powers of bishops.
Pope Paul set the tone of the
session in a moving opening ad
dress (Sept. 29):
He told of his ‘ ‘deep sadness”
at the * ‘prolonged separation”
of the Catholic Church and other
Christian Churches.
' ‘If we are in any way to blame
for that separation,” he said,
“we humbly beg God’s forgive
ness and ask pardon too of our
brethren who feel they have been
injured by us.
“For our part, we willingly
forgive the injuries which the
Catholic Church has suffered.
His words moved a non-Ca
tholic American delegate-ob
server to say later: “This is
the first time since the Refor
mation that such gratifying
words have come from a Pope.”
The Pope said that the * ‘prin
cipal concern” of the session
would be to * ‘examine the inti
mate nature of the Church.”
The Church must be seen as
totally Christ - centered, he
said, if the council’s main ob
jectives were to be rightly un
derstood.
He outlined these ob
jectives in four points; “The
knowledge, or—if you prefer—
the awareness of the Church;
its reform; the bringing toge
ther of all Christians in unity;
the dialogue of the Church with
the modern world.”
The session itself opened with
discussion on a controver
sial but vital subject, the na
ture of the Church.
As they debated the nature
of the Church, the Fathers also
voted on the changes to the Li
turgy schema. This schema had
been discussed in the first ses
sion.
On Oct. 9, the Fathers pass
ed—by an overwhelming ma
jority—changes to the schema
which would eventually bring
modern languages into the Latin
Rite Mass.
Ten bishops from nine
English-speaking nations start
ed drawing up plans for a com
mon English language text for
the Mass and the sacraments.
The 10 bishops—including two
Americans, Archbishop Paul J.
Hallinan of Atlanta and Auxil
iary Bishop James H. Griffiths
of New York—are calling on
liturgical experts, biblical
scholars, musicians and ex
perts in English style to help
draw up a suitable English text.
While the council was dis
cussing giving greater recogni
tion to the role of laymen in the
Church—covered in the third
chapter of DeEcclesia—a U. S.
prelate, Bishop Robert E. Tra
cy of Baton Rouge, La., asked
for a council declaration against
racial discrimination. Another
Archbishop Lawrence J. She-
han of Baltimore, called for a
full and accurate treatment
of the question of Chtjfch and
State. Both spoke in the name
of all the U. S. Bishops. The
U. S. Bishops objected to the
schema's phrase “regretable
separation,” holding that the
American experience of sep
aration has not been regret-
able but very good.
On Oct. 29, the Fathers de
cided in a close vote (1,114
to 1,074) to include their de
claration on the Blessed Vir
gin in the schema on the nature
of the Church rather than in a
separate schema.”
Explaining this decision,
Father Bernard Haering,
C.SS.R., a council expert, said
after the meeting that it was a
matter of expressing the ful
ness of the doctrine on the Bles
sed Virgin in a balanced per
spective and presenting the ven
eration of Mary in its proper
relation to the adoration of
Christ.
The debate on the nature of
the Church clearly showed that
the issues of the collegiality
of bishops and the restoration
of the permanent diaconate were
two of the major issues at the
session.
A new procedural device was
introduced Oct. 30 which let
the moderators gauge the think
ing of the Fathers without ex
tending the interminable num
ber of arguments for and
against.
The moderators submitted
five questions for a vote. Four of
them dealt with the idea of the
“collegiality” of bishops and
the vote explained what the Fa
thers understand by that unfam
iliar term: episcopal consecra
tion is the highest grade of the
sacrament of Holy Orders; ev-
ry bishop, who is in union with
all the bishops and the pope,
belongs to the body or college
of bishops; the college of
bishops succeeds the college
of Apostles and, together with
the pope, has full and supreme
power over the whole church;
the college of bishops, in union
with the pope, has this power
by divine right.
With their affirmative answer
to the fifth question, the bishops
showed they thought the diacon
ate should be restored asadis-
tinct and permanent rank in the
sacred ministry. It was a per
manent rank in the early
Church, but it has become, in
the Western Church, just a step
to the priesthood.
The balloting was to serve as
a guide to the Theological Com-
mision in revising the chapter
dealing with the hierarchy in
the schema on the nature of
the Church.
A four-day recess followed
the Oct. 30 vote, and when the
council reconvened it seemed
to have gained momentum.
The Nov. 5 meeting saw the
start of biting criticism of the
Roman Curia and serious char
ges of tampering with the sche
ma presented to the council on
“Bishops and the Government of
Dioceses,” the fifth chapter of
De Ecclesia.
Archbishop Leo Binz of St.
Paul, a member of the Com
mission for Bishops and the
Government of Dioceses, call
ed the schema an * ‘unhappy sch
ema” with “no real intro
duction, no connecting link and
no real conclusion.”
He said that this was because
five chapters of the original
schema had been deleted when
it was returned from the Co
ordinating Commission.
The schema was completed
in March, 1963, he said, and
only the bishops near Rome
and the experts of Rome were
invited to review it. He said
that no one objected to what
(Continued on Page 3)
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PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, December 12, 1963
The Second Session Of Vatican Council II
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