Sacrosanctum Concilium: Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan and the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy

Prologue

Paul J. Hallinan was the youngest American archbishop at Vatican II, only fifty-one years old in 1962, but he made a significant contribution during the first two sessions of the Council through his efforts to assure approval of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the first document issued by the Council, which Pope Paul VI promulgated on December 4, 1963.

Hallinan was an unlikely candidate for the role of liturgical reformer. Ordained a priest of the diocese of Cleveland in 1937, he had a conventional clerical career for the next twenty-five years as a curate in a large city parish, army chaplain in World War II, and then involvement in the Newman Apostolate on the local and national levels for a dozen years prior to his appointment as bishop of Charleston, South Carolina in 1958. In February 1962 he was appointed the first archbishop of Atlanta when that diocese was made a metropolitan see. Six months later he was in Rome for the opening of Vatican II.

Like several American bishops, notably fellow Clevelander, John Dearden, Hallinan was to find Vatican II an exhilarating and transformative experience. What is surprising in his case is how enthusiastically he embraced the progressive agenda of the majority of the Council Fathers. He quickly recognized the pastoral and psychological importance of making the liturgy the Council's first priority. Despite his lack of language skills, he mastered the complex international maneuvering that dominated the internal workings of the Council and became quite adept at practicing it himself. On one occasion Archbishop Egidio Vagnozzi, apostolic delegate to the United States, accused Hallinan to his face of being a politician. He told Vagnozzi: "It takes one to know one."¹

At the Council

Ironically, Vagnozzi recommended to the American bishops that they should nominate Hallinan as the North American representative on the Council's Liturgical Commission because he had been impressed with a Liturgical Week that Hallinan had sponsored in Charleston in May 1960. The U.S. bishops nominated two candidates, Hallinan and Bishop Leo Dworschak of Fargo, North Dakota. When the French and Dutch bishops asked Msgr. Frederick McManus (initially the only American peritus on the Liturgical Commission) to recommend a candidate, he proposed Hallinan, who was elected by 1,347 votes.²

When he was tipped off about the election results by his seminary classmate, Archbishop John Krol of Philadelphia, one of the Council undersecretaries, Hallinan noted in his diary that he was "surprised, delighted and scared." However, his friend from the Newman Apostolate, Bishop Robert Tracy of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said that "once he found himself on the commission, he went to work with that drive and originality that are so characteristic of him." Hallinan had good reason to be scared of his new responsibilities. In addition to his limited command of Latin and modern European languages, Hallinan had no formal training in liturgical scholarship, although he had taken an interest in liturgical renewal during his association with the Newman Apostolate and in Charleston and Atlanta. However, he was fortunate to be able to turn to McManus for advice and direction. They had known one another for several years, but they now became close friends and collaborators with almost daily contact when the Council was in session. They complemented one another perfectly. Hallinan valued and trusted McManus's expertise, and McManus respected Hallinan's integrity, courage, and good old-fashioned American political horse sense.³

Like all of the schemata at Vatican II, the fate of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was to be determined on two levels, first in deliberations of the Liturgical Commission, which was to meet twenty-one times in general sessions between October 21 and December 7, and secondly on the Council floor by all the bishops at the plenary sessions or general congregations.⁴ Hallinan was active on both levels. The debate on the liturgy began at the fourth general congregation on October 22 when Cardinals Giovanni Battista Montini of Milan, Giacomo Lercaro of Bologna, and Laurean Rugambwa of Tanganyika...