Pope John XXIII was fully conscious of the implications of his opening speech at the Second Vatican Council. He managed to outwit the prophets of doom and asked for a great leap forward in the Church. The substance of the faith, he said, is not the same as its historical formulations. Author Peter Hebblethwaite, who wrote his biography, recalls the day.
It was drizzling on the morning of October 11, 1962, the first day of the Council. Pope John’s speech came only at the end of a long ceremony that began at 8 a.m. Until he began to speak, October 11 meant simply a baroque endurance test. After the Veni Creator Cardinal Eugene Tisserant said the Mass. Some of it was in Greek. The Sistine Choir sang Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli with its customary vibrato: the Counter-Reformation at is best. The bishops neither participated nor communicated at the Mass: liturgy as spectacle…
The speech came at the end of a very long morning. It lasted thirty-seven minutes. It was in Latin. Not everyone grasped its meaning straightway. It made its real impact only when it was translated and published in the press. But for those who could understand, it was a remarkable achievement, a tour de force. With his ‘robust and harmonious voice’ (Falconi), Pope John seemed to shed his years and obesity and become a youthful prophet launching the Church on a great adventure of the Spirit.
But the question recurs – was it all his own work? Capovilla assures us that it was. He quotes Pope John as saying: ‘I would like the first Italian draft of this speech to be published, not because I want to be praised for it but because I want to take responsibility for it; it should be known that it belongs to me from the first to the last word’ (Letture, p 197). One could hardly be more emphatic than that.
The October 11 speech contained four main themes which lifted it above banality and shaped the future course of the Council. Pope John’s hearers, however, only began to wake up when he spoke directly of the Roman Curia. This retranslation of his Italian text is designed to bring out its vigour and freshness.
‘In the everyday exercise of our pastoral ministry, greatly to our sorrow, we sometimes have to listen to those who although consumed with zeal do not have very much judgement [discrezione] or balance. To them the modern world is nothing but betrayal and ruination. They claim that this age is far worse than previous ages, and they go on as though they had learned nothing at all from history – and yet history is the great teacher of life [maestra di vita]. They behave as though the first five centuries saw a complete vindication of the Christian idea and the Christian cause, and as though religious liberty was never put in jeopardy in the past. We feel bound to disagree with these prophets of misfortune [sventura] who are forever forecasting calamity – as though the end of the world were imminent. And yet today Providence is guiding us towards a new order of human relationships which, thanks to human effort and yet far surpassing its hopes, will bring us to the realisation of still higher and undreamed of expectations; in this way even human oppositions can lead to the good of the Church.’ (Lettere, p. 426: see Abbott, p. 712 for the familiar translation).
Pope John’s sense of history, however, was not merely a strategy for dealing with embattled misanthropes who sought security by returning to the past and denigrating the present. It also made him see the importance of responding to the Spirit now. This defined the purpose of the Council, negatively and positively:
‘Our task is not merely to hoard this precious treasure, as though obsessed with the past, but to give ourselves eagerly and without fear to the task that the present age demands of us – and in so doing we will be faithful to what the Church has done in the last twenty centuries. So the main point of this Council will not be to debate this or that article of basic Church doctrine that has been repeatedly taught by the Fathers and theologians old and new and which we can take as read. You do not need a Council to do that. But starting from a renewed, serene and calm acceptance of the whole teaching of the Church in all its scope and detail as it is found in Trent and Vatican I, Christians and Catholics of apostolic spirit all the world over expect a leap [balza] forwards in doctrinal insight [penetrazione] and the education of consciences [la formazione delle conscienze] in ever greater fidelity to authentic teaching. But this authentic doctrine has to be studied and expounded in the light of the research methods and the language [formulazione letteraria] of modern thought. For the substance of the ancient deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. [Altra è la sostanza dell’ antica dottrina del depositum fidei, ed altra è la formulazione del suo rivestimento] (Lettere, p. 427 see Abbott, p. 715 for comparison).
The last sentence became, understandably, an object of controversy. Those who held an ‘immobilist’ view of language regarded it as pernicious neo-modernism; those on the other hand who thought that history was a necessary dimension of all theology found it liberating.
There can be no doubt about what Pope John said and meant. The above translation is based on the Latin transcript provided by Vatican Radio, and can be checked in its archives. Yet when the Latin version of the inaugural speech appeared in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official collection of papal documents, the text had been tampered with and censored. The idea of the ‘substance’ of faith vanished, and cautious qualifications were introduced. They are italicized in the following text and in the translation which immediately follows:
“Est enim aliud depositum fidei, seu veritates, quae veneranda doctrina nostra continentur, aliud modus quo eadem enunciantur, eodem tamen sensu eademque sententia” (MS, November 26, 1962, pp. 786-95 for the whole speech; ASCV, I, 1, p. 172, for this sentence). “For the deposit of faith itself, or the truths which are contained in our venerable doctrine, is one thing, and the way in which they are expressed is another, retaining however the same sense and meaning.”
The last clause, not by chance, comes from the anti-Modernist oath of 1910 which also speaks of holding fast to ‘the absolute and immutable truth’ (Daly, pp. 235-6). So the censoring of Pope John can be safely attributed to the authors of Veterum Sapientia who were still trying to preserve the language and deny history.
This was not the only sentence of Pope John that was bowdlerised and distorted. The previous sentence was given the same treatment. In the Latin version of his speech, there is no ‘leap forwards’, and indeed no movement of any kind. Once again, the additions are indicated by italics, but this time the omissions are graver still: ‘Oportet ut haec doctrina certa et immutabilis, cui fidele obsequium praestandum est, ea ratione pervestigetur, quem tempora nostra postulant.’ ‘This certain and immutable doctrine, to which faithful obedience is due, should be investigated in the way our age demands,’ What happened to ‘the research methods and the language of modern thought’? When Pope John discovered these outrageous changes in late November 1962, he was too canny to sack the editor of Acta Apostolicae Sedis. He simply quoted himself, in the original non-edited version, in important speeches.
If curial theologians were alarmed by the apparent ‘relativism’ of Pope John’s remarks on language and faith, his comments on how to deal with errors sent shivers down the spine of the more politically inclined. No resourceful editing could alter the fact that in refraining from condemnations he had broken with a tradition at least four centuries old. Yet Pope John did it with great tact and skill. He did not deny that errors existed in the contemporary world; indeed, they positively abounded. In a characteristic image he said that ‘errors often vanish as swiftly as they arise, like mist before the sun’. It was an experience he had often had as he sat on his balcony at Sotto il Monte. There was a wry humour in the suggestion that the perspiring heresy-hunters arrive on the scene of error just as their quarry departs. So the Council was not being summoned to condemn errors: ‘Today the Spouse of Christ prefers to use the medicine of mercy rather than severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present age by showing the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations’. (Abbott, p. 716: retranslated). Pope John modestly described this new attitude as a ‘preference’. But he knew perfectly well that if one looked at the history of the papal magisterium in the last 150 years, it was little short of ‘revolutionary’.
John knew that he was turning things upside down. In a laconic aside he noted that ‘the Church has urgently condemned these errors with the greatest severity’. In 1832 Pope Gregory XVI incidentally the last professional theologian to become pope had defended the need for ‘severity’ in his encyclical Mirari Vos. Gregory wielded the stick vigorously. Pius IX – whom there was wild talk of beatifying – followed his example, and the pontificate of St Pius X was single-mindedly dedicated to theologian-bashing. Pope John laid aside the rod.
This article first appeared in Peter Hebblethwaite’s book Pope John XXIII (Geoffrey Chapman) and later in PRE Sept 2005.
