What's happening to doctrine?

...The chief dangers were perceived to come from several modern developments...

...Finally, the council did not offer much help for those who were troubled by the remarkable ways in which it departed from the attitudes and strategies with which the church had confronted modern society and culture since the French Revolution and which the preliminary drafts had intended to repeat and confirm...

...A third dangerous tendency was visible in the increasing appeals to the human experience of both the agents and the Commonweal: 456 recipients of divine revelation...

...In the alleged return to repressive authority, others see a fearful desire to guarantee by power what only trust in the Spirit of truth can really achieve...

...The sudden development in the church of movements for the ordination of women was met by an official, negative response in 1976, but the women's movement has continued to press upon the church issues which not only concern women's exclusion from the ordained ministry, but also raise the question of patriarchal bias at the heart of the traditional expression of the faith itself...

...Pope John XXIII used to like to quote the old adage: "in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas...

...According to this view, doctrines are propositional expressions of Christian truth, revealed in the words and speeches of divine legates...

...Hans Kiing used the centenary of Vatican I to raise fundamental historical and theological doubts about the church's infallibility...

...Historical consciousness had a second impact, however, in the form of a tendency to relativize the claims to antiquity and to universality of traditional structures, languages, and doctrinal statements...

...Finally, the council insisted that the church's magisterium is subordinate to the Word of God communicated in the Scriptures and tradition, and, while it reaffirmed its unique authoritative role in the church, it placed it in a fuller context in which other bearers of the Christian faith — the liturgy, the sensusfidelium, Christian spiritual experience — also have their own roles to play...

...On the other hand, theologians ought to be able to expect that the church will not deny them the right to engage their task in its full complexity and to work out its requirements by trial and error, by mutual criticism, and in accordance with strictly theological criteria...

...The first of these was the spread of historical criticism in the interpretation of the Scriptures, which was challenging the historical validity of the New Testament accounts of the life of Jesus and of the origins of the church...

...The pope insisted that there is a difference between the truth of a doctrine and the way in which it is expressed, thus offering the council the opportunity to find a different expression, more suitable to contemporary society and culture, of the ancient faith...

...The pope had read and approved for conciliar discussion all the preparatory documents, and it is hard not to see those who had composed them as those persons whom the pope criticized as "prophets of doom" who could see in the modern world nothing but prevarication and ruin...

...An Inquiry, were accompanied by those implied in the new efforts of theologians to place conciliar and papal teachings of the past in historical context and to work out hermeneutical principles for their interpretation...

...too juridical...

...A year later, in Mysterium Ecclesiae, it addressed the underlying issue of doctrinal authority, strongly defending infallibility, but also for the first time including a qualified recognition of the historicity of dogmatic assertions and language...

...All these issues, both criteriological and substantive, were to be raised again in formal Roman investigations of the views of Kiing and of Edward Schillebeeckx on Christology...

...and they were defended among Catholics by a distinct philosophical and theological method and system, Neo-Scholasticism, which claimed to be perennial and universally valid...

...In the alleged doctrinal chaos since the council, the one group sees a vindication of the fears expressed by "conservatives" at the council that the church was facing major threats to the integrity of its message and cohesion...

...They were written particularly in view of tendencies which had first clearly manifest themselves in Modernism, but then had revived in the late 1940s as the "new theology" which had been condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950...

...A major impetus for these criticisms came from the opening address of Pope John XXIII...

...But while the texts of the council represent a repudiation of the attitudes and emphases of the preparatory drafts, they also bear clear marks of the controversies from which they emerged and of the compromise and ambiguity which were the price of the near unanimity with which they were passed...

...Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, regularly warns against the influence of appeals to a vague "spirit of the council" as opposed to the letter of the council...

...On the other hand, what is meant by "Vatican II" is itself a matter of dispute...

...A decade after the council, the previous, clearly recognizable unity of Catholic theology had been transformed into a plurality of theological efforts and visions...

...and "The Church...

...The main lines of the debate became clear in the first session of the council...

...In the last fifteen years, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued documents at the rate of almost one a year to warn against error or to restate Catholic teaching...

...The requirement of an imprimatur has been used as a disciplinary measure to insure doctrinal orthodoxy in catechisms and textbooks...

...These measures, which have increased in number and severity in the last five years, have provoked in some Catholics the joyful expectation of what they consider a long overdue ' 'Catholic restoration," and in others the fear that the church is being dragged back into an ecclesiastical regime in which unappealable exercises of authority are made to substitute for the critical dialogue by which they think doctrinal disputes are most effectively resolved...

...The council spoke of a "hierarchy of truths," not to question the truth of any doctrines, but to insist that they all be considered in relation to the center of Christian faith, the mystery of Christ received and lived in the church...

...This disagreement among Catholics is often remarkably similar in tone and substance to the debates which marked the drama of Vatican II itself...

...Pope Paul VI himself issued his "Credo of the People of God" in 1968 in order to meet the disquiet experienced by many Catholics and to restrain those "possessed by what is almost a passion for change and novelty...

...But the stakes also include the discernment of what is truly central and permanent in the Christian message, and what may be reformed or even dropped as a now temporally or culturally alien expression of the message...

...The council was to try, rather, to present a positive statement of the church's faith, pastoral in style and persuasive enough to draw people to the church on its own merits...

...Finally, Catholics who were involved in the ecumenical movement were feared to be unduly indulgent towards Protestant views and unduly willing to make concessions about Catholic doctrines and structures...

...The Preparatory Theological Commission, largely dominated by members of or consulters to the Holy Office, had composed three doctrinal texts: "The Sources of Revelation...

...Almost immediately the intellectual edifice of Neo-Scholasticism collapsed as many theologians abandoned its uniform method, language, and style of argument for an often bewildering variety of philosophical or socialscientific conceptions and methods...

...Their efforts have recently been met by a Roman warning against certain excesses in liberation theology...

...At the same time, theologians in Asia, Africa, and Latin America began the effort to forge a language and symbolism appropriate to cultures quite different from the western culture by which Catholicism had been molded for almost two millennia...

...In all three texts, the classic modern understanding of doctrines was presupposed and defended...

...In turn, the church has a right to expect from theologians great care in laying theological foundations, a genuine effort to show how their work is compatible with the central faith and traditions, and a willingness to engage in serious criticism of one another's work — all these being exigencies theologians must be willing to meet if they wish their work to be respected and valued in and by the church...

...Pope John Paul II is incessant in his invocations of Vatican II, and his invitation to the synod did not include the possibility of reversing its direction or its main emphases...

...It is often very difficult for such people to accept with equanimity any exercise of authority, and a sort of group bias — "us against them" — often leads them to refrain from serious criticism of their fellow theologians, a failure, of course, which is almost guaranteed to make interventions of authority more likely...

...It acknowledged the possibility of imperfection in the church's expression of Christian doctrine, and it sanctioned a variety of such expressions, both in the differing liturgical and theological traditions of the Eastern churches and in the different cultural circumstances of the •"new churches," which it encouraged to undertake their own culturally relevant fides quaerens intellectum...

...This teaching authority constituted the proximate rule of faith, as compared to the more remote (because more obscure and implicit) "sources of revelation" — the Scriptures and the Tradition...

...In short, the preparatory documents were consistent in their analysis and in their response: against the threats of subjectivism and historicism, the council was to provide a massive reaffirmation of authority, the authority of God in revelation, of Christ as his chief legate, of the church as Christ's juridically empowered agent in the world, of the tradition of objective verbal statements which articulate the Christian mysteries...

...In the first place, the texts contained no doctrinal anathemas (the only two condemnations concerned moral issues: abortion and indiscriminate bombing...

...Doctrines, finally, were expressed in a language sanctioned by antiquity, tradition, and authority...

...The new Code of Canon Law has attempted to strengthen the authority of the church over appointments to theological faculties...

...IN THE MIDST of these transformations, a variety of issues were raised which soon brought on tensions and conflicts between theologians and church officials...

...As political theologians argued for a fundamental theology which recognized the primacy of the political and liberation theologians began to conceive of faith based on "orthopraxis," a practical commitment to free people from various sorts of economic, political, or sexist oppression, this anthropocentric turn was itself criticized for assuming as a norm the subjectivity of the 6 September 1985: 457 bourgeoisie...

...But, on the other hand, it is also clear that as an event the council was much more than its set of sixteen documents...

...Biblical and historical critics raised serious doubts about the council's account of the origins of the church and of its ministries...

...On several issues the council chose not to resolve disputes, not to try to work out a full theory explaining how to integrate its new emphases into the older Catholic system, and sometimes to paper over the remaining differences either with bland language or by simply juxtaposing, without systematic reconciliation, statements reflecting the opposing viewpoints...

...Paul urged us to "speak the truth in love," and that implies that those who do not love are unlikely to know the truth themselves or to acknowledge its presence in others...

...Given all this, it should not be surprising that the council gave rise in the next twenty years to a series of theological and doctrinal developments and controversies which were to the unhappy senses of a Jacques Maritain severe enough for him to say that, by comparison, the Modernist crisis was only a mild case of hay fever...

...JOSEPH A. KOMONCHAK THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL pronounced no new doctrines of faith, nor, of course, did it deny any...

...In place of the overreliance on authority felt to be present in the classical modern presentation of the faith, theologians now made what they called "the anthropocentric turn," an effort to conceive and articulate the faith in terms of its ability to address the deepest desires and needs of the human person...

...too representative of one school of thought...

...And, finally, they include questions of justice towards individuals and of the most effective way — in a world which places great hopes in the ability of persons to arrive at the truth freely and without constraint — to secure that the full Gospel is effectively addressed to the present generation...

...Furthermore, the church must not again attempt to avoid the tensions, difficulties, and dangers by an exercise of authority which denies the true nature of the present challenge, discourages people from undertaking it, and so postpones even further an authentic solution...

...The documents were rejected for being too Scholastic...

...There is no doubt that some of what has happened since the council has sought support in very questionable appeals to the council's intentions...

...They deliberately departed from traditional conciliar language, being discursive in style and argument, and using biblical, patristic, and liturgical language in preference to Scholastic and juridical concepts...

...Rome intervened at several points in order to try to regain control over theological developments since the council and to assure the integrity of the inherited tradition...

...Perhaps both passions are exaggerated...

...The authority of these teachers derived, not from their personal holiness, wisdom, or talents, but from their office and from the command of Christ to "teach all nations," a charge which carried with it the power to command assent from the "learning Church...

...They involve the integrity and illuminating power of the distinctive Catholic vision and the coherence and effectiveness of the church which is supposed to give a communal witness to that vision...

...the texts themselves, both by reversing earlier directions and emphases and by their compromise and ambiguity, helped to provoke post-conoiliar confusion...

...Both groups wonder whether the coming synod of bishops will not reverse the council, giving a chance to win the war to those who lost the major battle of Vatican II...

...IN THE subsequent three sessions of the council, sixteen texts were to be written and promulgated...

...Several theologians have been the subject of official investigation by the Congregation, and some of Commonweal: 458 them have suffered one form or another of ecclesiastical discipline...

...and insufficiently biblical, spiritual, pastoral, and ecumenical...

...Political and liberation theologians called for a thoroughgoing reinterpretation and reevaluation of the faith from the hermeneutical perspective provided by a commitment to the poor, itself often based on a Marxist analysis and critique of contemporary society...

...The earlier emphasis upon formal authority gave way to a direct statement of the central message of Christ and to a concentration on his person, his mysteries, and the share in his life which constitutes the heart of Christian existence...

...Emboldened by the pope's example, the majority of the council Fathers expressed a series of criticisms of the draftdocuments...

...a priest of the archdiocese of New York, teaches ecclesiology and ministry at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C...

...The difficulties and tensions being experienced today are so great because the stakes are so high...

...It is perhaps banal to recall it here, for the adage itself gives no direct help in discerning the necessary from the legitimately debatable...

...These texts were very defensive efforts, warning the church of dangers to traditional Catholic doctrines believed to be widespread in modern consciousness among Protestants, and now tempting unwary Catholics...

...Therefore, the council itself cannot provide a sufficient criterion for the problems of a church twenty years after the council closed...

...guided by his Spirit in their essential role of preserving, communicating, and authoritatively interpreting the deposit of faith...

...When the Dutch bishops authorized A New Catechism, quite different in style and emphasis from the traditional works, Rome ordered a review of it and insisted that clarifying and explicating addenda be added to all new editions...

...The Defense of the Deposit of Faith...

...In 1972 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a warning against errors about the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Trinity...

...The issues raised by his book, Infallible...

...while what constitutes permanent, de jure divino aspects of the church's structure became a topic of widespread theological discussion...

...6 September 1985: 459...

...Before the council had ended, theologians were experimenting with terms like "transignification" and "transfinalization" as more appropriate articulations of the mystery of the Eucharist than Trent's "transubstantiation...

...The two draft documents which were brought to the council floor, on the sources of revelation and on the church, were so severely criticized by the council "Fathers" that they were remanded for thoroughgoing rewriting, and the third was never even presented...

...too negative, suspicious, and defensive...

...In that respect, Emile Poulat is correct in pointing to Archbishop Lefebvre as representing "la mauvaise conscience romaine for transformations accepted after having been long declared unacceptable, acquiesced in after having been pitilessly combated, without any other basis in the end than a change in perspective and in majority...

...On the other hand, many of those who are fearful about the coming synod suffer from the psychological and sociological effects of having experienced the passage from what Karl Rahner used to call the transition from the "Pian" to the "Johannine" church...

...In 1965, Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical, Mysterium Fidei, in which he rejected the adequacy of new formulas, defended Trent's term, and added a strong defense of the traditional Scholastic language employed by the church...

...The teachings of these legates was entrusted to the Apostles and through them to the pope and bishops, who were instituted by Christ and father JOSEPH A. KOMONCHAK...

...But the council was the arena of a very significant debate on the nature and role of doctrines in the church, which was in turn to be followed by a set of doctrinal controversies at least as serious as those that marked the Modernist controversy at the turn of this century...

...In these circumstances, theologians cannot reasonably expect the church to make its innermost life and its complex activity wait upon the fulfillment of their historical and hermeneutical task...

...Other controversies were prompted by Catholic biblical scholarship on the historicity of the infancy narratives, on the Virgin Birth, and on the Resurrection of Christ...

...The pope made it clear that to his mind the council was not meeting simply in order to repeat what the church had already taught nor to issue condemnations of contemporary errors...

...In many respects, they gave a new direction, form, and in some cases, substance to the church's traditional presentation of the faith...

...These legates, the greatest of whom was Jesus Christ, possessed divine authority because God had confirmed their statements by prophecy and miracle, particularly in the case of Christ by raising him from the dead...

...In 1968, Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae, the encyclical on birth control, which was met by the greatest resistance to a papal document since the Syllabus of Errors, a response which not only called into question important elements of the church's teaching on marriage and sex, but prompted widespread claims to a "right to dissent...

...New questions were raised about the meaning, adequacy, and authority of Nicaea and Chalcedon...

...The three texts which had been prepared for the council debates were designed to consecrate this understanding of doctrines, its origins, function, and defense...

...Those who can remember the last repressive decade of the reign of Pius XII greeted Vatican II as a moment of liberation, in which they could rejoice at the discomfiture of those who once had imposed their minds and wills in what were felt to be unjust ways...

...But perhaps the final recommendation — "charity in all matters" — can be of more assistance than those who occupy offices of power and those who spend their time studying and thinking are often inclined to believe...