Rev. Ralph Wiltgen: The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II

[Stone]

THE THIRD SESSION
September 14 to November 21, 1964

SPEED IS OF THE ESSENCE


On January 4, 1964, shortly after the closing of the second session, Bishop Franz Hengsbach, of Essen, Germany, wrote in America: “After the Council has completed work on the five or six essential schemas, all remaining matters should be left for treatment in directories or handbooks to be assembled by post-conciliar commissions set up by the Council and following its basic directives.” Such manuals would serve as guidelines, “but without the authority which comes from a decision of the Council itself.”

At that time, there were still thirteen schemas on the agenda of the Council. The question was, Which were the five or six schemas regarded by the Bishop as essential? As a leading figure in the German hierarchy, he might well have been taking this occasion to announce a new policy of the European alliance. If so, it was to be expected that the Coordinating Commission of the Council would shortly take action along those lines.

And in fact, eleven days after the appearance of Bishop Hengsbach’s article, the nine-member Coordinating Commission met in the Vatican and made decisions of so drastic and revolutionary a nature as to undo four years of work on six major Council documents.

It instructed the Commission on Oriental Churches to reduce its schema to “some fundamental points.” It instructed the Commission on the Discipline of the Clergy and Faithful to reduce its decree on priests to a number of propositions. The decree was ultimately shortened to exactly one hundred lines. The Commission on Studies and Seminaries was instructed to reduce its constitution on seminary training to “the essential points for presentation in the form of propositions ... The rest of the material will be used in the coming revision of the Code of Canon Law, or in particular instructions to be issued by the Holy See.” The same Commission was also instructed to shorten its constitution on Catholic schools. The Commission on Religious was instructed to reduce its thirty-four-page constitution to “its essential points.” The Commission on the Sacraments received similar instructions concerning its decree on the sacrament of Matrimony. Three months later, the Coordinating Commission instructed the Commission on the Missions to reduce its decree on that subject “to a few sentences or propositions.” That raised to seven the number of schemas affected.

When the Secretary General informed the Council Fathers of these decisions by a letter dated May 11, 1964, he also intimated that the shortened schemas would be put to the vote in the Council hall but would not be discussed.

These, then, were clearly the schemas regarded as being of secondary importance. The “essential” ones, therefore, must have been those unaffected by the instructions mentioned—the schemas on divine revelation, on the Church, on bishops, on ecumenism, on the apostolate of the laity, and on the Church in the modern world. And those six schemas were precisely the ones in which the German-speaking Council Fathers, and the European alliance in general, were most interested, and in regard to which they had the most control. Two of them—on the apostolate of the laity and on the Church in the modern world—were within the competence of the Commission on the Apostolate of the Laity, to which Bishop Hengsbach had been elected at the outset of the Council by the highest number of votes.

The reduction of seven schemas to the status of “propositions” was an attempt to speed up the work of the Council. Many formal petitions from individual Council Fathers, as well as from entire episcopal conferences, had requested that the Council should move faster; the United States hierarchy, for instance, had officially petitioned the Pope to make the third session of the Council the final one. On the other hand, the solution adopted by the Coordinating Commission was very unrealistic. All nine members could have anticipated that their decision would be overruled by the Council Fathers, at least in the case of the propositions on priests. For how could the bishops offer their priests a mere one hundred lines, never discussed in the Council hall, when they had spoken in detail and at such great length about their own role as bishops?

But perhaps there was some other reason behind the Coordinating Commission’s decision. The controlling power in the individual Council commissions was in the hands of the European alliance. However, those commissions were not empowered to set aside a part or parts of individual schemas that they considered unsatisfactory. The Coordinating Commission, on the other hand, was so empowered, and it made use of its prerogative by instructing the various commissions to reduce their schemas, thereby ensuring that many, if not all, unsatisfactory elements would be eliminated. The seven schemas, as reduced to propositions, could then be expanded as a result of new suggestions from the Council floor.

In the latter part of April, Cardinal Dopfner wrote to the bishops of Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Scandinavia, inviting them to a conference on Council matters to be held at Innsbruck, Austria, from May 19 to May 22. Referring to the decision of the Coordinating Commission that the propositions should not be discussed, he indicated that the last word on the matter had not yet been said, and that it was also “an open question whether or not there will be a fourth session of the Council.” The Cardinal said that the same observers from the hierarchies of neighboring countries would again be invited to attend. He announced further that, as in previous years, those “in our circle who are members of a Council commission will
prepare drafts on the individual schemas with the help of the periti of their choice, and those drafts will serve as the basis for discussion.” Holding the conference so early had a considerable advantage, he pointed out, for “in this way our proposals can be passed on in time to the Council Fathers of other countries who have requested them.”

The Coordinating Commission took still further steps to speed up the Council’s work at its next meeting, on June 26. These steps involved amendments to the Rules of Procedure and were approved by Pope Paul VI on July 2. From now on, all cardinals and Council Fathers who wished to speak had to submit written summaries of their proposed addresses to the Secretary General “at least five days before discussion of the topic begins.” As a result, rebuttal was virtually impossible. According to the original Rules of Procedure approved by Pope John XXIII, any Council Father who wished to refute a statement could inform the Secretary General of his wish to speak, and was then to be given the floor as soon as the list of speakers was exhausted. During the second session, this request had to be supported by five signatures. Now, however, according to a new clause added to the rules, such a request had to be made in the name of at least seventy other Council Fathers. As might have been expected, the figure was such as to discourage anyone who did not belong to a highly organized group from asking for the floor; and the measure proved very effective in silencing minority views.

On July 7, the Secretary General informed the Council Fathers by mail that the sequence of schemas to be discussed and voted upon at the third session was as follows: on the Church, on bishops, on ecumenism, on divine revelation, on the apostolate of the laity, and on the Church in the modern world. The remaining schemas, which had been reduced to propositions and were not to be discussed, would be “submitted for voting in the sequence and manner to be determined by the Council Moderators in due course.”