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The Minority Report at Trent and the Vatican Councils: Dissenting Episcopal Voices as Positive Sources for Theological Reflection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
This paper argues that the record of theological dissent at Trent and Vatican I are positive and fruitful sources of theological reflection on the sensus fidelium. Not only do these “minority” voices (minority in the literal sense of opposing a majority group or opinion) help us to accurately interpret the drafts and final documents of these councils, but these minority figures can sometimes preserve the sensus fidelium through their calls for various concessions from the majority.
First, I revisit Trent's decree on Scripture (1546). Due to the interventions of two Italians (Nacchianti, the Bishop of Chioggia, and Bonuccio, the General of the Servites), the question of the relationship between scripture and tradition was left open – that is, the “two‐source” partim‐partim theory was not dogmatically enshrined. This was an important episode wherein a tiny minority gained a critical concession. I argue that this minority intervention bore fruit not only in a final Tridentine document that better echoed the faith of the ages, but also bore fruit centuries later at Vatican II in Dei verbum.
Second, I argue that the minority at Vatican I protected the Church from extreme ultramontanism. This relatively large and intellectually powerful minority, many of them rooted in Gallicanism, played a key role in tempering a dogmatic proclamation that was further balanced and interpreted a century later in Lumen gentium and Christus Dominus.
I conclude by suggesting theologians should look for ways in which the minority at Vatican II could serve future generations of Catholics in unforeseen ways.
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- Copyright © 2017 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
Footnotes
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I am grateful to the Smith Family Fellowship for funding my research this academic year.
References
1 See Note 5, “The Orthodoxy of the Body of the Faithful during the Supremacy of Arianism, in The Arians of the Fourth Century (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1908 [1833]), pp.445–468Google Scholar, especially p.445. Interestingly, Newman says by “laity” that he was speaking of the laity “inclusively of their parish priests” and thus essentially contrasted this group with the bishops.
2 “The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One (Cf. Jn. 2:20, 27), cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples’ supernatural discernment in matters of faith when ‘from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful’, they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals.” Lumen gentium 12 is accessible at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html.
3 I am following John O'Malley's literal use of a “majority” and a “minority” positions at Vatican II. See What Happened at Vatican II? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), p.102Google Scholar.
4 Quoted in Ker, Ian, “Newman, the Councils, and Vatican II”, Communio 28 (Winter 2001): pp.708–28Google Scholar. Here: p.718.
5 Hubert Jedin's history remains one of the best sources on the Council in English. A History of the Council of Trent, Trans. by Graf, Ernest, 2 vols. (St. Louis: Herder, 1957–1961Google Scholar). For the most accessible introduction to the Council of Trent in English, see O'Malley, John, SJ, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
6 For the Tridentine decree, see the most recent edition of Denzinger: Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd edition, originally compiled by Denzinger, Heinrich (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), p.370 (no. 1501)Google Scholar.
7 O'Malley, Trent, p.97. See also pp.92‐98. However, it was not always clear how to distinguish between an ecclesiastical tradition (a man‐made tradition) and an apostolic tradition.
8 Ratzinger, who was intimately involved in these debates at the Council (and a primary architect of Dei verbum), explains this “new view of the phenomenon of tradition” in his commentary on Dei verbum. See Ratzinger, Joseph, “Constitution on Divine Revelation in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 3, edited by Vorgrimler, Herbert (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969)Google Scholar [henceforth: Vatican II Commentary], pp.155‐156.
9 Ratzinger argues convincingly that the spirit of the final decree (which he calls “pneumatological”) is clearly that of the papal legate, Cardinal Cervini. See God's Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office, eds. Hünermann, Peter and Söding, Thomas, trans. Taylor, Henry (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), pp.82–83Google Scholar. Cervini began a promising reign as Pope Marcellus II in 1555, but it lasted only a month.
10 The 22 March 1546 draft is available in Acta of Trent 5:31.
11 Acta of Trent, 5:7. Cervini (also a papal legate) argued that there was no real difference between scripture and tradition since both emanated from the same Holy Spirit. See Ratzinger's discussion of Cervini pneumatological approach in God's Word, pp.67–89.
12 Acta of Trent, 5:18. Footnote 5 indicates the Nacchianti (“Clodiensis”) was appealing to the authority of St. Augustine. The editor adds that much evidence was displayed against Nacchianti leading him to confess “che in la Chiesa fusse qualche traditione apostolica non scritta” [“that in the Church were some unwritten apostolic traditions”].
13 Cardinal Cervini wrote to Cardinal Farnese on February 27, 1546: “I believe that many remained scandalized by him”; Acta of Trent 5:19, note 1. It should be noted that Bishop Nacchianti did abandon this stance when he was pressured to by fellow bishops, but they accused him of novelty, not heresy. Regardless, opposition to partim‐partim was on record. See Acta of Trent, 10:399. On the retraction, see Acta of Trent, 1:494‐95.
14 Acta of Trent, 1:525. Bonuccio (“Angelus Bonutius” in the Acta) went on to argue (23 March 1546) that traditions can and do change, but the Word of God “cannot and does not.”
15 Hubert Jedin, History of Trent, 2:75. Hubert Jedin helpfully summarizes Bonuccio's position: “In his opinion the stream of New Testament revelation does not divide into Scripture and Tradition, as had been taken for granted by every speaker in the previous great debate – with the exception of the Bishop of Chioggia – but Scripture is complete as to its content and contains all truths necessary for salvation. For him ‘tradition’ is essentially an authoritative interpretation of Holy Writ, not its complement.”
16 Acta of Trent 5:47.
17 This is basically the judgment of Maurice Bévenot: “The suppression of the [partim‐partim] phrase … was made not because it was wrong, nor because it was generally recognized to be an open question, but because (i) it had been objected to and (ii) because its suppression did not affect what they really wanted to define.” See Bévenot, , “‘Traditions’ in the Council of Trent”, Heythrop Journal 4 (1963): pp.333–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Here: p.344.
18 For a concise introduction to these debates, see Matthew Selby's excellent summary in “The Relationship Between Scripture and Tradition According to the Council of Trent,” (Master's thesis, St. Paul Seminary, University of St. Thomas, 2013). Accessible at http://ir.stthomas.edu/sod_mat/4/.
19 See Ratzinger's discussion in Vatican II Commentary, pp.155‐157, 170. “Only by going back to the comprehensive reality of the deeds and words of God it is possible to do away with the positivistic idea of the duplex fons” (p.170).
20 See Christophe Theobald, “The Church Under the Word of God” in The History of Vatican II, vol. 5, edited by Giuseppe Alberigo, English version edited by Joseph Komonchak (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), pp.275‐361; for the initial debates and the rejection of the first draft, see Volume I of Alberigo's history.
21 The phrase is applied to the book, Du concile general et de la paix religeuse (1869) by the French anti‐infallibilist Gallican Henri Maret. See Oakley, Francis, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church, 1300‐1870 (Oxford: OUP, 2003), pp.208–9Google Scholar.
22 Denzinger 1839.
23 Oakley, Conciliarist Tradition, pp.250‐51.
24 For the rather shocking language of Louis Veuillot's l'Univers (and, to a lesser extent, W.G. Ward's Dublin Review) see Ward, Wilfred, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912), vol 2, pp.212–13Google Scholar.
25 Oakley, Conciliarist Tradition, p.207.
26 O'Gara takes her title from a statement of Bishop Charles‐Henri Maret: “the minority has triumphed in its defeat.” See O'Gara, Margaret, Triumph in Defeat: Infallibility, Vatican I, and the French Minority Bishops (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1988), p.xviiGoogle Scholar.
27 See O'Gara, Triumph in Defeat, pp.89‐116 for untimeliness; pp.117‐41 for indefinability; pp.142‐74 for those who believed the doctrine was not true.
28 Archbishop Darboy (Paris), Bishop Strossmayer (Djakove, Croatia), and Augustin Vérot, Bishop of St. Augustine, Florida (but educated at Saint‐Sulpice, France) all evoked the decrees of Constance during debate at Vatican I. Vérot's speech is recorded in Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum collection, 53: pp.955‐967. See Oakley, Conciliarist Tradition, p.215.
29 See O'Gara, Triumph, pp.68‐88.
30 Ibid., pp.221‐55.
31 For Manning's oath, see Chadwick, Owen, A History of the Popes, 1830‐1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp.186‐7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 Oakley, Conciliarist Tradition, p.216.
33 Congar quoted in O'Gara, Triumph, p.xvii.
34 The minority at Vatican II can be studied through the five‐volume conciliar history edited by Giuseppe Alberigo, the Conciliar Acta, and concentrated studies like Roy‐Lysencourt, Philippe, Les Membres du Coetus Internationalis Patrum au Concile Vatican II: Inventaire des Interventions et Souscriptions des Adherents et Sympathisants, Liste des Signataires d'occasion et des Théologiens, Instrumenta Theologica 37 (Leuven: Peeters, 2014)Google Scholar.
35 O'Malley, What Happened, pp.258‐59; Royal, Robert, A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2015), p.176 note 13Google Scholar.