Struggle, Condemnation, Vindication: John Courtney Murray’s Journey toward Vatican II by Barry Hudock (review)

For the Fall 1964 edition of Lumière et vie, a journal published by French Dominicans, the editors dedicated the entire number to the subject of religious liberty. The assembled authors were supremely conscious of the debates over the subject then occurring at the Second Vatican Council. Contributors, such as A.-F. Carrillo de Albornoz (a former Jesuit and head of the Secretariat on Religious Liberty for the World Council of Churches), and two recently deceased theologians, Jan Grootaers of the University of Leuven and Cardinal Georges M.-M. Cottier, OP, were keen observers of the developments of the council’s texts on religious liberty which were then in play. Yet there is a conspicuous absence. For all his influence on the subject, nowhere in the journal’s 160 pages is the name John Courtney Murray, SJ, mentioned.

Murray is not at risk of being erased from history, but his influence has to be seen in a more global context. That is not the principal aim of Barry Hudock’s book, but it could be, since he gives several examples of how Murray came to make his mark on the world. While Hudock is focused more on situating Murray’s work in a context that has direct implications for Catholic life in the United States, the Jesuit’s ideas spilled over into an international gathering at Vatican II. Hudock notes that it challenged traditionally Catholic countries such as Spain and Italy, whose laws gave preferential treatment to the positions held by the church. The bishops of those countries saw clearly how opening the door to the principles Murray was articulating could jeopardize the status of the church in their native lands. The council, however, did not cow to their fears; instead the bishops embraced a higher value: that of the individual conscience, free of coercion, to opt for or reject the Gospel. In the process, Murray cemented his standing among the more important theological voices of the twentieth century, all while offering a signal contribution to civilization.

Hudock’s book at times has the ring of the familiar. He distills a number of previously published works – mainly from Joseph Komonchak, Donald Pelotte, and Richard Regan – and depicts a battle zone from which the Declaration on Religious Liberty emerges as the fruit of years of toil and humiliation endured by Murray. There’s no question that Murray was targeted and his writings were called into question and eventually censored. Perhaps the most damning evidence of a concerted campaign against Murray are the diaries kept by Monsignor Joseph “Butch” Fenton, a Catholic University of America theologian, with whom Murray sparred numerous times. Hudock makes very good use of Fenton’s diaries, all of which have been digitized and form part of the CUA Library’s online collections. Weaving together the published secondary literature along with the Fenton material, Hudock provides the reader with a near seamless exposé of the development of Murray’s thought and the consequent dust-ups caused in the theological community, both at home and at the Vatican.

Two small complaints arise over some sins of omission in Hudock’s analysis. First, for a volume that seeks to trace how Murray came to his decisive contributions at the Council, one would have hoped for some reference to and explanation of Murray’s interest in and involvement with the Columbia University Academic Freedom Project or Murray’s role in the Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs – two key venues which helped him shape his views on the place of religion and the limits of freedom, both in academia and in civil society. Secondly, given the changing nature of the world order in the 1950s and 1960s – both in terms of the challenges of Communism and post-colonial Africa – there is no reference to how these pivotal social problems were in any way influential on Murray’s thought, or on the collective observations...