The Vatican Council: The Fourth Session

Refreshed after a summer’s rest, Pope Paul VI last week asked the world’s Catholics to pray for the success of the Vatican Council’s fourth and probably final session, which begins in Rome Sept. 14. It was a request that the participating bishops could wholeheartedly echo, although perhaps for motives different from the Pope’s. After the shattering climax of the third session, when a conservative minority blocked a vote on religious liberty and the Pope overruled the council by unilaterally declaring Mary the Mother of the Church, many leaders could do with a few prayers of support.

More Maneuvers. In all, the 2,500 prelates will have eleven agenda items to deal with. A twice revised schema on the sources of Revelation—a pronouncement that leaves open the question of whether church dogma has its foundation in Scripture alone or in a handed-down tradition as well—is certain to get quick approval, as are shorter documents on seminaries and Christian education. Sure to get eventual approval, too, is a revised declaration on religious liberty, which particularly interests non-Catholic Christians. The document asserts that, as a matter of divine right, “nobody can be forced to act against his own conscience,” but it placates wary Italian and Spanish conservatives by allowing that under certain “historical circumstances” special privileges can be granted to a particular church by the state.

The real tests of the council’s commitment to renewal, many Catholics believe, are still the schema on “The Church in the Modern World” (Schema 13) and the declaration on non-Christian religions. Probably the most heavily rewritten of all council documents, Schema 13 is forthright on questions of peace and war—it upholds the right of conscientious objection and denounces massive bombing of civilian centers—but it appears evasive and unsure in dealing with marriage, and it says nothing about birth control. The prospect is that it will get further revision. “We could use another year to work on it,” says one Latin American bishop on the drafting committee. As for the declaration on non-Christian religions, Arab nations and Eastern Rite Catholic bishops in the Middle East are still putting strong pressure on the Vatican to excise a statement exonerating Jews from the charge of deicide. But the basic text of that document was overwhelmingly approved during the last days of the third session, and although Vatican observers expect more maneuvers to defeat it, its proclamation is considered a near certainty.

Reduction of Powers. In six months of deliberation so far, the council has approved five documents of varying significance. Transcending even this, however, has been the churchwide quest for further renewal that it has inspired. But the real question, warned Swiss Theologian Hans Küng in Commonweal last week, is “After the council, what?” Conservative pressure could easily frustrate the goals of the council by watering down legislation arising from decrees and by insisting on the narrowest possible application of reformation-aimed documents. To ensure the success of the council, Küng concludes, there must be an internationalization of the conservative-minded Curia, a reduction of its powers, and above all, a new democratically elected senate of bishops to assist the Pope in governing the church. But the only man who can effect these changes is Pope Paul VI, who has spoken often about Curial reform but done nothing so far to implement it. Some church observers feel that Paul is waiting for the council to end before making his move. Others detect in his recent speeches a strident emphasis on the prerogatives of the papacy, a concern about renewal carried to excess. “It is necessary to deepen the idea of the authority of the church,” he warned in July. Thus the always enigmatic aims and purposes of Pope Paul remain the key to the direction and drama of the fourth session—and after.