History of Vatican II ed. by Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchak (review)

Book Reviews HISTORY OFVATICAN II. Edited by GiuseppeAlberigo and JosephA. Komonchak. Vol V: THE COUNCIL AND THE TRANSITION: THE FOURTH PERIOD AND THE END OF THE COUNCIL, SEPTEMBER 1965–DECEMBER 1965. Maryknoll and Leuven: Orbis and Peeters, 2006. The bishops and periti at the last session of Vatican II faced the daunting task of bringing the council to a successful conclusion before the solemn closing that was set for December 8, 1965. By that date approval was given to no fewer than eleven of the sixteen texts issued by the council . “The assembly did nothing but vote,” said Giuseppe Alberigo of the fourth session. In fact forty-seven percent of all the votes at the council occurred during these final three months. Among the texts approved were the Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern Word (Gaudium et spes), the Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis humanae) and the Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church (Ad gentes). The general congregations had to be suspended three times to give the commissions time to catch up with the hundreds of proposed revisions. The euphoria of the earlier days of the council had now given way to weariness and frustration which dampened the enthusiasm of some of the leading lights among the majority such as Cardinals Suenens, Léger, Bea and Döpfner. Msgr. Gérard Philips, one of the key periti and an indefatigable workhorse, returned to Belgium exhausted before the end of the session. The constant interventions of Pope Paul VI added to the tension , especially when he removed discussion of birth control and clerical celibacy from the agenda and established the synod of bishops on his own initiative with a motu proprio that never mentioned Lumen gentium or the word “collegiality.” The pope’s anxiety to protect tradition and to preserve the unanimity of the council as well as the unity of the Church meant that most of his interventions were in favor of the minority, although not on the issue of religious liberty. The resurgent minority, ably led by Cardinals Ottaviani, Florit and Siri and Archbishop Felici, capitalized on the pope’s fears of a runaway church, which were fueled by developments outside the council such as the turmoil among Catholics in the Netherlands. “Several times Paul VI The Jurist 70 (2010) 235–265 235 236 the jurist appears to have been a hostage of the minority,” writes Giovanni Turbanti in the opening chapter (33). Msgr. Albert Prignon, the rector of the Belgian College and a peritus, was more blunt and accused some leaders of the minority of “practicing a kind of blackmail on the pope.” “Not only are they not grateful to him,” added Prignon, “but they speak openly of his weakness and they do not hide their intention of taking advantage of it in the future” (294–295). The last great crisis in the council occurred on November 24 and 25, 1965, only two weeks before the closing ceremony. Paul VI wanted four changes made in the text of Gaudium et spes regarding the ends of marriage and birth control with specific reference to Pius XI’s encyclical Casti connubi and Pius XII’s famous address to the midwives. As Peter Hünermann relates in his chapter on the last weeks of the council, Cardinal Léger was outraged at what he regarded as the pope’s attempt to force his own solution of the birth control issue upon the council after he had forbidden the council to discuss it. Léger wrote to the pope protesting that the council could not decide an issue it had not been permitted to examine without causing “a serious loss of trust in the magisterium of the Church.” The compromise was to quote both Pius XI and Pius XII as well as an address of Paul VI the previous year stating that the issue needed more thorough investigation (413–415). Gilles Routhier takes a more favorable view of Paul VI’s role, noting that he never overrode the decisions of the commissions when they failed to endorse fully his proposed changes. He attributes the papal micromanaging to Paul’s own scrupulous...