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Vatican II as a Constitutional Text of Faith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2014

Grant Kaplan
Grant Kaplan*
Affiliation:
Saint Louis University
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Abstract

This article posits that the hermeneutical approach of Peter Hünermann toward the “text” of the Second Vatican Council possesses the capacity to dissolve disputes that have arisen from a fissure among Catholics about the meaning of the council. At the heart of Hünermann's approach is a bold attempt to read the council's genre in light of “constitutional texts” that have played an important role in founding and reconciling different types of communities in the modern world.

Keywords

Second Vatican CouncilPeter HünermannhermeneuticsPope Emeritus Benedict XVI
Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , June 2014 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2014 

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References

1 Key texts in the debate include Alberigo, Giuseppe and Komonchak, Joseph, eds., History of Vatican II, 5 vols. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996–2006)Google Scholar; Routhier, Gilles, Vatican II: Herméneutique et réception (Montreal: Fides, 2006)Google Scholar; Schultenover, David, ed., Vatican II: Did Anything Happen? (New York: Continuum, 2007)Google Scholar; O'Malley, John, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Lash, Nicholas, Theology for Pilgrims (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 227–84Google Scholar; Lamb, Matthew and Levering, Matthew, eds., Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Marchetto, Agostino, The Second Vatican Council: A Counterpoint for the History of the Council, trans. Whitehead, Kenneth (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2009)Google Scholar; McDermott, John, “Did That Really Happen at Vatican II?,” Nova et Vetera, English ed., 8, no. 2 (2010): 245–66Google Scholar; Kenneth Whitehead, “Vatican II Then and Now,” ibid., 467–83.

2 Heated debate about these works has occurred in a variety of Catholic magazines. A sampling of this debate would include the disagreement between Avery Dulles and John O'Malley, supplemented by a number of letters to the editor, in America (Feb.–Mar. 2003); between Joseph Komonchak and Matthew Lamb in Commonweal (Jan.–Feb. 2009); the review of O'Malley's work by Richard John Neuhaus (“What Really Happened at Vatican II,” review of What Happened at Vatican II, by John W. O'Malley, First Things [October 2008]: 27); and the comments on Alberigo's work by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, as reported by Sandro Magister, “Vatican II: The Real Untold Story,” http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/34283?eng=y. For a mediation of these disputes, see Faggioli, Massimo, Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012).Google Scholar

3 “The Final Report of the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops” is found, among other places, in Origins, December 19, 1985, 446–50; online, see https://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/SYNFINAL.HTM. For the 2005 address, see http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222_roman-curia_en.html. The printed version cited here (page numbers in parentheses in the text) contains eleven pages. The text is also found under the title “A Proper Hermeneutic for the Second Vatican Council,” in Lamb and Levering, Vatican II, ix–xv.

4 Kasper, Walter, “The Continuing Challenge of the Second Vatican Council: The Hermeneutics of the Conciliar Statements,” in Theology and Church, trans. Kohl, Margaret (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 166–76.Google Scholar

5 Pottmeyer, Hermann J., “A New Phase in the Reception of Vatican II: Twenty Years of Interpretation of the Council,” trans. O'Connell, Matthew J., in The Reception of Vatican II, ed. Alberigo, Giuseppe, Jossua, Jean-Pierre, and Komonchak, Joseph A. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987), 33–34.Google Scholar

6 Wicks, Jared, “Still More Light on Vatican Council II,” Catholic Historical Review 98, no. 3 (July 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 498.

7 Routhier, Gilles, “The Hermeneutic of Reform as a Task for Theology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 220.

8 Even Andrew Greeley's direct appeal to “rupture” deals more with Benedict's “practical forms” than with doctrinal matters; Greeley's examples of momentous rupture include decentralizing authority, the priest facing the congregation, and meat on Friday—hardly a revision of Christ's two natures or adding another person of the Trinity! See Greeley, “The Revolutionary Event of Vatican II: How Everything Changed,” Commonweal, Sept. 11, 1998, 14–20.

9 O'Malley, “Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?,” in Schultenover, Vatican II, 55.

10 One example is the review of O'Malley's What Happened at Vatican II by Richard John Neuhaus, who wrote, “The final irony is that if, in the twenty-fifth century, the Second Vatican Council is remembered as a reform council that failed, it will be the result of the combined, if unintended, efforts of the likes of Marcel Lefebvre and John O'Malley in advancing the argument that the council was a radical break from the tradition that is Catholicism” (Neuhaus, “What Really Happened at Vatican II,” 27).

11 Two such examples are Rush, Ormond, Still Interpreting Vatican II: Some Hermeneutical Principles (New York: Paulist Press, 2004)Google Scholar and Theobald, Christoph, La réception du Concile Vatican II, vol. 1, Accéder à la source (Paris: Cerf, 2009)Google Scholar. For discussions of Theobald in English, see Rush, Still Interpreting Vatican II; and Faggioli, Vatican II, 127–30. See also the essay by Theobald, “The Theological Options of Vatican II: Seeking an ‘Internal’ Principle of Interpretation,” in Vatican II: A Forgotten Future?, ed. Melloni, Alberto and Theobald, Christoph (London: SCM Press, 2005), 87–107.Google Scholar

12 See in particular Faggioli's subsection “Neo-Augustinian Receptions of Vatican II,” in Faggioli, Vatican II, 68–75. Faggioli inherits this analysis from Komonchak; see Komonchak, Joseph A., “Augustine, Aquinas, or the Gospel sine glossa?” in Unfinished Journey: The Church 40 Years after Vatican II: Essays for John Wilkins, ed. Ivereigh, Austin (New York: Continuum, 2005), 102–18.Google Scholar

13 For the English text, see de Lubac, Henri, “The Church in Crisis,” Theology Digest 17, no. 4 (1969): 312–25Google Scholar, at 318. A revised French version of his talk can be found in Nouvelle Revue Théologique 91 (1969): 580–96.Google Scholar

14 “The Final Report of the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops,” §5.

15 O'Malley makes this point in “Vatican II,” 55–58; and in What Happened at Vatican II, 290–313.

16 For an account, see O'Malley, “Vatican II,” 52–56; the works of Marchetto and Alberigo have been translated into English; see note 1 above.

17 This citation comes from the report of Magister, “Vatican II: The Real Untold Story.”

18 Lamb and Levering, Vatican II.

19 Routhier, “The Hermeneutic of Reform,” 232.

20 Ratzinger, Joseph with Messori, Vittori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, trans. Attanasio, Salvator and Harrison, Graham (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 27–44Google Scholar. Routhier cites from the less ominously titled French version, for which he gives his own English translation; see Ratzinger, Entretien sur la foi (Paris: Fayard, 1985).Google Scholar

21 Komonchak, Joseph A., “Benedict XVI and the Interpretation of Vatican II,” in The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity, ed. Lacey, Michael J. and Oakley, Francis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar, 105. It should be noted that as early as 1995 Komonchak had located then-Cardinal Ratzinger, along with Henri de Lubac, in a “third position. . . . This middle position might be called a ‘reformist’ interpretation because of its insistence that the popes and the bishops never wished for a revolution to produce a new church, but a spiritual renewal and pastoral reform of the church” (Komonchak, “Interpreting the Council: Catholic Attitudes toward Vatican II,” in Being Right: Conservative Catholics in America, ed. Weaver, Mary Jo and Scott, R. Appleby [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995]Google Scholar, 33).

22 Komonchak, “Benedict XVI and the Interpretation of Vatican II,” 104.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid., 105.

25 Ibid., 110 n. 22.

26 For O'Malley's analysis of the 2005 Curial address, see O'Malley, “‘The Hermeneutic of Reform’: A Historical Analysis,” Theological Studies 73 (2012): 517–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 O'Malley, “‘The Hermeneutic of Reform,’” 542.

28 Ibid., 546.

29 Hünermann, Peter and Hilberath, Bernd Jochen, eds., Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil, 5 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 2004–6)Google Scholar. In 2009 the five volumes were made available in an affordable paperback edition.

30 For an exception, see Faggioli, Massimo, “Council Vatican II: Bibliographical Overview, 2007–2010,” Cristianesimo nella Storia 32 (2011): 766–67Google Scholar, 774–76; Faggioli, Vatican II, esp. 131–33. Rush, O'Malley, and Komonchak are all aware of Hünermann's work, but none of them has yet given a full account of it. For a brief account in French of the merits of Hünermann's thesis, see Theobald, La réception du Concile Vatican II, 435–37.

31 Peter Hünermann, “Der Text: Werden—Gestalt—Bedeutung; Eine hermeneutische Reflexion,” in Hünermann and Hilberath, Herders theologischer Kommentar, 5:7–101. Hünermann's additional contributions related to this question include “Zu den Kategorie ‘Konzil’ und ‘Konzilsentscheidung’: Vorüberlegungen zur Interpretation des II. Vatikanums,” in Das II. Vatikanum: Christlicher Glaube im Horizont globaler Modernisierung, ed. Hünermann, Peter (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1998), 67–82Google Scholar; “The Ignored ‘Text’: On the Hermeneutics of the Second Vatican Council,” in Melloni and Theobald, Vatican II, 118–36; “Der ‘Text’: Eine Ergänzung zur Hermeneutik des II. Vatikanischen Konzils,” Cristianesimo nella Storia 28 (2007): 339–58Google Scholar; and “Kriterien für die Rezeption des II. Vatikanischen Konzils,” Theologische Quartalschrift 191, no. 2 (2011): 126–47.Google Scholar

32 Here it should be acknowledged that Hünermann's concern with genre overlaps with a central point in O'Malley's hermeneutic (O'Malley, What Happened at Vatican II, esp. 11–14, 305–13).

33 Hünermann's definition of Verfassung relies on Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, “Geschichtliche Entwicklung und Bedeutungswandel der Verfassung,” in Staat, Verfassung, Demokratie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991), 29–52Google Scholar; and Grimm, Dieter, “Verfassung,” in Staatslexikon, ed. Sacher, H., 7th ed. (1989), 633–43Google Scholar. See Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 12 n. 13.

34 In a later article, Hünermann argues that Vatican II signaled a definitive recognition of a break from four epochs (with the associated dates in parentheses): an assumption of Christendom (312), an identification of Catholicism with Western thought-form (1054), a confessional understanding of Catholicism (1517), and a hostile disposition toward modern thought forms (1789). One could also see these as examples of Benedict's “practical forms.” See Hünermann, “Kriterien,” 126–47.

35 This paragraph has offered an abbreviated paraphrase of Hünermann's “Der ‘Text’,” 13–15.

36 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 16–17.

37 For Hünermann's comparison to the Rule, see “Der ‘Text’,” 82–83.

38 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 82: “Das Ziel dieser Regel ist die Ermöglichung eines christlichen Lebens aus dem Glauben, allerdings in einer bestimmten Form.”

39 Komonchak, “Benedict XVI and the Interpretation of Vatican II,” 97–98. Komonchak also mentions the possibility that Benedict could be referring to the Italian juridical scholar Paolo Pombeni.

40 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’: Eine Ergänzung,” 354: “Die Texte des II. Vatikanischen Konzils auf eine solche Ebene zu fixieren, ware ein grobes Missverständnis der behandelten Sachverhalte und der Weise, wie sie behandelt warden.”

41 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’: Eine Ergänzung,” 355: “So ist eine staatliche Verfassung nie ein letzter Zweck in sich. Sie ist ein dienendes Mittel.”

42 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) 91, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html.

43 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 66: “Die Worte haben einen die unmittelbare Zielsetzung von Gaudium et spes überschreitenden Charakter.”

44 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 67: “Immer wieder münden die Darlegungen in Aufforderungen.”

45 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 67: “Die Aufzählung der Prinzipien des katholischen Ökumenismus in UR stellt zugleich die Grundzüge einer zu gestaltenden Verhaltens- und Aktionsweise der Gläubigen, der Gemeinden der Ortskirchen und der Kirche im Ganzen dar.” He cites the Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) 2–4, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html.

46 Pesch, Otto Hermann, Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil: Vorgeschichte—Verlauf—Ergebnisse—Nachgeschichte (Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 1993), 148–60Google Scholar. Pesch cites Seckler, Max, “Über den Kompromiss in Sachen der Lehre,” in Im Spannungsfeld von Wissenschaft und Kirche, ed. Seckler (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1980), 99–103Google Scholar. It should be noted that Pesch's principles hardly embody the hermeneutic of rupture. For instance, his first hermeneutical principle states that one cannot interpret any council as fundamentally opposed to the church's tradition (Pesch, 149).

47 Pesch, Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, 151–52; for an English summary, see Rush, Still Interpreting Vatican II, 28.

48 After pointing to some of the typical examples of “contradictions”—democratic vs. hierarchical definitions of the church, episcopal collegiality vs. papal power, sensus fidelium vs. the magisterium—Pesch pithily asserts, “Logische Risse!” (Logical cracks!) (Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, 153).

49 Pesch, Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, 160.

50 Hünermann, “The Ignored ‘Text’,” 121. For the remark, see Rush, Still Interpreting Vatican II, 36. Rush cites Karl Rahner, who notes, “At least in Gaudium et Spes the Council adopted spontaneously a mode of expression which had the character neither of dogmatic teaching valid for all time nor of canonical enactments, but was perhaps to be understood as the expression of ‘instructions’ or ‘appeals.’” Rahner was perhaps the first theologian to identify the “pastoral” quality as significant. See Rahner, Karl, “Basic Theological Interpretation of the Second Vatican Council,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 20: Concern for the Church, trans. Quinn, Edward (New York: Crossroad, 1981)Google Scholar, 89.

51 Hünermann, “The Ignored ‘Text’,” 128.

52 Hünermann's vociferous defense of Juan Sobrino following the CDF's critique of him may be the instance most likely to have caught the American theological community's attention. See Hünermann, Peter, “Moderne Qualitätssicherung? Der Fall Sobrino ist eine Anfrage an die Arbeit der Glaubenskongregation,” Herder Korrespondenz 61 (April 2007): 184–88.Google Scholar

53 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 14: “Die Konzilsväter waren sich bewusst, dass die kirchenrechtliche Umsetzung ihrer Aussagen nicht ihre Aufgabe war.”

54 Congar, Yves, Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat (Paris: Cerf, 1954).Google Scholar

55 For these points, see Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 30, 34, 51.

56 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 19: “Der Text ist ein Gemeinschaftswerk. Das, was er sagen, mitteilen, bewirken will, seine Intention lässt sich nicht von einzelnen empirischen Autoren her bestimmen.”

57 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 31: “Hier wird zunächst der Horizont bezeichnet, in welchem die Fragen des Konzils zu behandeln sind; es geht um die allgemeine Bedeutung fundamentaler Sachverhalte im Leben der Kirche, in Bezug auf die ökumenische Situation und in Bezug auf die Evangelisierungsaufgabe der Kirche in der Welt.” He cites the Acta et documenta concilio oecumenico Vaticano II apparando, series II (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1964–1995)Google Scholar, II/III 2, 10.

58 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 32–34.

59 Both Rush and Pottmeyer make similar points. For Rush, see “Toward a Comprehensive Interpretation of the Council and its Documents,” Theological Studies 73 (2012): 547–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 550, where he writes: “Over time, the conciliar assembly ‘learned’ to be a council. Along the way it received into its thinking and its documents its own earlier documents. The bishops developed in their thinking, such that their later documents show development over the earlier ones. . . .” Pottmeyer writes: “A development is discernible both in the overall history of the Council's work and in the history of the individual texts: a development, over the course of four years, in the council fathers' level of theological formation, in their understanding of one another's positions, and in their awareness of the problems” (Pottmeyer, “A New Phase,” 39–40).

60 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 74.

61 For an account of the responses to the questionnaire, see O'Malley, What Happened at Vatican II, 18–20.

62 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 15: “Auch sie impliziern den kreativen ‘Leser,’ d.h. Papst und Kurie, die im Sinne des Konzils wirken, Bischöfe, die sich ihrer kirchlichen Verantwortung und Sendung bewusst sind, ein Volk Gottes, das seiner Würde inne ist und die entsprechenden Lebensformen hervorbringt.”

63 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 84–85. O'Malley writes: “Style is the ultimate expression of meaning. It does not adorn meaning but is meaning. It is the hermeneutical key par excellence” (O'Malley, What Happened at Vatican II, 49).

64 Neil Ormerod seems to be getting at this point when he writes: “At the practical level we have seen major reviews of canon law, of seminary and religious life, and so on. While the soundness of some of these might be questioned, they must be located against the background of the dynamic process that Vatican II sanctioned” (Ormerod, “‘The Times They Are A-Changin’: A Response to O'Malley and Schloesser,” in Schultenover, Vatican II, 173).

65 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 85: “Ein konstitutioneller Text des Glaubens hingegen beansprucht den Leser bzw. den Angesprochenen in einer ganz anderen Weise. Auch hier ist eine Zustimmung gefordert. Dazu wird der Text ja vorgetragen. Diese Zustimmung aber kann nicht einfach mit einem Ja oder Nein gegeben werden. Zustimmung meint hier ein Sich-Einlassen auf den Text.”

66 Hünermann makes this point in “Der ‘Text’: Eine Ergänzung,” 358.

67 In a later article Hünermann references the work of the linguistic philosopher Konrad Ehlich, who thematizes a text as “essentially an instance of mediating the formation of tradition” (“Der ‘Text’: Eine Ergänzung,” 342).

68 Hünermann, “Der ‘Text’,” 85: “Man braucht vielmehr auf allen Ebenen kirchlichen Lebens einen fortgehenden Dialog, eine fortgehende Auseinandersetzung und ein entsprechendes Durchdenken dieses Textcorpus.”