Letters

Vatican II (letter)

Valentine Gallagher

Contents - Sep 2002 - Buy a copy now Editorial: AD2000's Fighting Fund launched - Michael Gilchrist Is the self-destruction of Anglicanism to continue? - Nigel Zimmerman News: The Church Around the World - AD2000 Vocations: Corpus Christi Seminary enrolments bounce back - Michael Gilchrist Promoting Catholic vocations in the Melbourne Archdiocese - Joanne Grainger CHURCH ATTENDANCE: The family, feminism and the declining role of fatherhood - Richard Egan The 1960s 'cultural revolution': from self-sacrifice to self-fulfillment - Fr Gregory Jordan The strange case of Father Damien and Robert Louis Stevenson - Fr F.E. Burns PE Australian Rosary CD wins international recognition - Colleen McGuiness-Howard John Paul II and World Youth Day in Toronto: an Anglican perspective - David Warren Letters: Church design (letter) - Greg Briscoe-Hough Letters: Renovations (letter) Letters: Abortion (letter) - Bob Denahy Letters: Seminaries (letter) - Andrew Sholl Letters: Media complaints (letter) - Michael Daniel Letters: Feminism dead? (letter) Letters: Teaching the faith (letter) - Kevin McBride Letters: Zero tolerance (letter) - J. Dekker Letters: Priestly 'uniform' (letter) - Philip Robinson Letters: Horse and cart (letter) - Arthur Negus Letters: Shakespeare (letter) - John Doherty Letters: Vatican II (letter) - Valentine Gallagher Books: Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Rethinks Contraception - Bill Muehlenberg (reviewer) Books: The Arians of the Fourth Century, by John Henry Newman - Peter Westmore (reviewer) Books: The Lost Shrine of Liskeard, by Claire Riche - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: Christianity for Buddhists, by Frederick Farrar - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: Think Piece: Religious, Ethical and Moral Values, by Sebastian Camilleri OFM - Mark Posa (reviewer) Marilen Studios: a Christian approach to business - Joe Padero Music: CD specials from AD Books Reflection: The Christian way to spiritual maturity - Fr Dennis W. Byrnes PP

Mr Peter Howard contends that "the only real 'confusions' in the Catholic Church after Vatican II ... have resulted from dissenting theologians and they have caused the crisis" (July AD2000).

Monsignor George Kelly disagrees. He maintains that a factor in the crisis is the presence of some ambiguities in the conciliar texts. He writes: "The documents of the Council contain enough basic ambiguities to make the post-conciliar difficulties understandable" (The Battle for the American Church, p. 20).

Father Brian Harrison also acknowledges the existence of ambiguities. He observes: "It seems to me essential for the leaders of the Church to honestly recognise the ambiguities we have inherited from the Council" (Thirty Days, July 1989).

While professor of Theology at Tubingen University, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger published his Theological Highlights of Vatican II. An English translation appeared in 1966.

The Cardinal devoted some space to the explanatory note appended to the document treating of episcopal collegiality. The "nota praevia explicativa" was devised as a guideline for interpretation but was not incorporated into the Council text.

The Cardinal wrote: "As is well known this note injected something of bitterness into the closing days of the session otherwise so full of valiant hopes. A detailed analysis of this very intricate text would take us here too far afield. The end result, which is what we are concerned with, would be the realisation it did not create any substantially new situation.

"Essentially it involved the same dialectic and the same ambiguity about the real powers of the college as the Council itself manifested. Without doubt the scales were here further tipped in favour of papal primacy as opposed to collegiality. But for every statement advanced in one direction the text offers one supporting the other side and this restores the balance, leaving interpretations open in both directions.

"We can see the text as either 'primatialist' or collegial. Thus we can speak of a certain ambivalence in the text of the 'explanatory note', reflecting the ambivalent attitude of those who worked on the text and tried to reconcile the conflicting tendencies. The consequent ambiguity is a sign that complete harmony of views was neither achieved nor even possible" (page 115).

VALENTINE GALLAGHER
Arncliffe, NSW

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 15 No 8 (September 2002), p. 15