Revelation and revolt

Bishop Robert E. Tracy was on target with his judgment the liturgy schema had been a good document for the Second Vatican Council to tackle first.  He was able to write in his book, “American Bishop at the Vatican Council,” that “in a month’s time the schema on the liturgy had been reworked and a successful vote taken to accept it as a basis for a final text.” However, the next document the  preparatory commission presented to the council fathers for acceptance, amendment or rejection was not so fortunate.  It was titled “De Fontibus Revelationis” (About the Sources of Revelation).  

The title was a signal the preparatory commission which had prepared the schema had already decided a point of great contention in biblical studies over the previous 50 or so years: “Was all of divine revelation contained in the sacred Scriptures of the Bible or was there true revelation added by the magisterial teaching of the popes and bishops and handed down to us today through the church’s tradition?”  In other words, was there really only one source of revelation, the Bible or two sources, the Bible plus the Catholic Church?  Martin Luther and the other Protestant leaders who followed him held the first position.  The question had never been officially settled by the Roman Catholic Church in its councils held since the Protestant Reformation in 1517: the Council of Trent (1545-1563), and the First Vatican Council (1869-1870).  

Now, the schema the council fathers were to vote on, which had been sent out to them the summer prior to the opening of Vatican II, assumed the two-source theory despite strong opposition from leading experts on Scripture and theology like Schillebeeckx, Martelet  Moeller and Rahner.   

In the “History of Vatican II,” edited by Guiseppe Alberigo and Joseph Komonchak, the historian Ruggieri notes that “the critical arguments of Schillebeeckx and Rahner were confirmed by many of the theologians who during those days were setting the tone of the many meetings which the bishops held for their own updating.”  

I, as a student at the North American College, was amazed and edified to see the bishops of the United States gathering in the auditorium of our college to listen to, question and learn from the best English-speaking Scripture scholars and theologians in the world.  This, it seemed to me, had to be the work of the Holy Spirit.

Bishop Tracy learned a lot and understood well what was at stake in the debate on how to present the Catholic Church’s view of sacred Scripture to the world.  This would be evangelization at its highest level. Bishop Tracy wrote in his book, “it was the council which really opened my eyes by contrasting the old and the new positions so sharply and clearly.  A truth could be contained more explicitly in one mode (Scripture or traditional church teaching) than the other, and at any rate, neither is source. There is but one source, the living teaching of the Lord.”  

He earlier wrote that the one source was Christ, which is not altogether clear. Maybe he meant that Jesus is the end, or goal, or climax of all revelation since the God-inspired Old Testament prepares the way and leads to the God-inspired New Testament, with the incarnation, life, teaching, death, resurrection and founding of the church as Jesus’ continuation or mystical body on earth.  

Rather good for “a simple administrative bishop” as he described himself.  As a native Louisiana bishop, he saw all the angles; ecclesiastical and political.  He also wrote, “Because the Protestant reformers had appealed from the pope to the Bible, and the Bible alone, the reacting Fathers of Trent had placed tremendous emphasis on the church as interpreter of the Bible and on tradition as a separate “source” of Revelation.”  He understood things had changed a lot in the 40 years before Vatican II.  

Archaeology had discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls, “which gave the world a Hebrew text of parts of the Bible 1,000 years older than any yet at hand.”  And “important new techniques of exegesis (the disciplined study and explanation of Bible passages) had been developed which resulted from better knowledge of the literary ‘forms’ in which the sacred writers communicated.”  

He concluded that we needed a council for doctrinal as well as evangelical reasons.  And to prove his point, he quoted another of the true theological giants of Vatican II, “Father Yves Congar OP who said, “There is not a single dogma which the church holds by Scripture alone, not a single dogma which it holds by tradition alone.”  

In addition to untying a theological knot concerning doctrine, there was some lagniappe to be gotten: “This position, of course, Tracy wrote, “made possible a whole new avenue of dialogue with our Protestant brethren who had been saying all along that all Revelation was in the Bible.  Now we were granting that they were correct in this, an admission which would be highly conducive, in turn, to having them approach the question of tradition in the same open-minded way.  And, indeed, many a Protestant theologian had already been doing just that.”   

Also, like a true Louisiana politician, Bishop Tracy took with some nonchalance the next event:  “After seven days of sharp exchanges, a curiously mixed up vote and then a dramatic move on the part of Pope John, the schema on Revelation was completely derailed!” he wrote.  To reject a schema and have a new one written required a two-thirds vote.  That would be difficult, even though Pope Pius XII had recognized with approval the more recent advances in Sacred Scripture in his 1943 encyclical, “Divino Afflante Spiritu) (“By the breath of the Divine Spirit”).  Two-thirds, or 1,473 votes, were needed, and only 1,368 votes for rejection were cast.  The vote to reject failed by 105 votes.  However, Pope John XXIII saw this was so unacceptable a schema that he pitched it himself.  In church councils the pope can do that, since he at the end has to approve everything.  The fight had been rather bitter and the new, entirely rewritten schema was not taken up again until the third session, two years later.   When it was taken up again, it had a new title in Latin to emphasize its ultimate source, “Dei Verbum,” (The Word of God). Pope John XXIII must have been smiling down from heaven.  

Tradition gets its due. “This tradition which comes from the apostles develops in the church with the help of the Holy Spirit.  For there is a growth in the understanding of the reality and of the words which have been handed down” (Section 8).  But this tradition of the church’s teaching, handing on the faith, is at the service of sacred Scripture, the Word of God. “This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully by divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit” (Section 10).   

It was worth waiting for.  By this time more American bishops had found their voice.  Cardinal Meyer of Chicago wanted the new schema to state that the Bible would serve as a corrective norm according to which tradition is judged.  Archbishop Shehan of Baltimore asked for the schema to make clearer the part played by the human author in the process of Revelation.  The majority seemed to think that there had been a too exaggerated preoccupation with the inerrancy of the Bible to the neglect of pastoral and ecumenical considerations.  

When the final solemn vote on the revised schema on revelation was taken, it passed with 2,344-6 in favor.  Bishop Tracy stated, “The principal effects of the constitution, I feel, will be: (among others)  it explicitly encourages ecumenical cooperation in Bible study: it urges greater use of the Bible in the sacred liturgy and in teaching and preaching; it will result in having Scripture play a much greater role in the life of the individual Catholic, who will henceforth become far more familiar with holy writ.”

When I became pastor of St. Thomas More Parish (in Baton Rouge) in 1990, 25 years after the close of Vatican II, some parishioners asked me and Father Jerry Martin to start a Bible study.  We did; 300 parishioners showed up.

Read this Constitution on the Liturgy, the second of the four main documents of Vatican II.  In Abbot’s, “The Documents of Vatican II,” it is only 17 pages.   You may even be able to Google it.

Father Carville is a retired priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge and writes on current topics for The Catholic Commentator. He can be reached at johnnycarville@gmail.com.