Katholische Konzilsidee im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert by Hermann Josef Sieben (review)

616 BOOK REVIEWS informative essay on the role of Vatican Radio in papal foreign policy or the influence of missionary orders or the Congregation for the Eastern Churches on that policy. The new field of intelligence studies, in particular, could shed some interesting and revealing light on the Vatican's diplomatic record. Our appraisal of Vatican diplomacy during World War II might change when we learn that the papal diplomatic codes had been broken by all the major (and some of the minor) belligerents who thereby gained access to the Secretariat of State's secret communications with the nuncios and delegates, or that the vaunted intelligence service of the Vatican was a myth and that Pius XII was so desperate for information that he begged the British representative to provide transcripts of BBC news broadcasts, or that an employee of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches passed information to both Germany and the Soviet Union during the war. Of course, it is rather facile to fault the editors for failing to compile a volume different from the one at hand. These observations are not intended to detract from what in this reviewer's opinion is a strong collection of essays. Ifanything, such observations suggest that this volume may provide the double service of surveying the current state of research on papal diplomacy while suggesting avenues for future study. David Alvarez Saint Mary's College of California Katholische Konzilsidee im 19- und 20. Jahrhundert. By Hermann Josef Sieben . [Konziliengeschichte, Reihe B: Untersuchungen.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 1993. Pp. xx, 432. DM 128,-.) The well-known church historian and specialist in councils, H. J. Sieben, has already published major monographs for the series Konziliengeschichte illustrating how councils were understood in the Early Church ( 1979), in the Latin Middle Ages from A.D. 847 to 1378 (1984), and from the Reformation up to the Enlightenment (1988). In this final volume he tackles the daunting task of describing theological judgments about the nature of councils before, during, and after the First and Second Vatican Councils. The study is a mine of information, replete with numerous astute insights and useful factual data. The book is organized into thirteen chapters. The first of the opening five chapters treats the startlingly modern views of the Italian ex-Jesuit Giovan Vincenzo Bolgeni (1733-181 1 ), whose teachings about the nature of councils anticipated by more than a century emphases on episcopal collegiality that emerged in the writings of Vatican Council II. Chapter two establishes how a gradual shift in the way theologians and historians in the first half of the nineteenth century contextualized Constance's decree of 1415, Haec sancta, prepared the way for Vatican Council I. Chapters three and four contrast the opposing theological assessments of councils first by Henri Maret (1805— BOOK REVIEWS617 1884), the liberal dean of the Sorbonne theology faculty, in sharp contradistinction to his Ultramontane counterpart, Johann Baptist Heinrich (1816— 1891 ), professor of dogmatic theology at Mainz. The fifth chapter cites numerous articles and editorials from the Jesuit review Civiltà Cattolica, which during the papacy of Pius IX served as a semi-official mouthpiece for the pope's personal theology of councils. Chapter six shows how various new accents shifted the traditional idea of a council's significance that gradually emerged after the papal convocation of Vatican Council I in 1868. After some 300 years without a council, uieologians now began to consider a council as holding significance not only for the Church but also, in God's providence, for society at large. A council was now considered to bear witness in the presence of, in opposition to, and for the sake of the world (vor, gegen, undfür die Welt). Chapter seven focuses specifically on the years between 1870 and 1908 to show how the dogmatic assessment ofthe nature ofa council gradually shifted as historical-critical studies clarified who had de facto convoked councils. In this regard the work of the Tübingen historian Franz Xaver Funk (18401907 ) published in his Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen und Untersuchungen deserves, according to Sieben, particular credit for contextualizing how councils were convoked. Ecclesiologists will find the next six chapters a wealth of information. The most fascinating chapter...