Roman Catholics: The Bravest Schema

A century ago, in his Syllabus of Errors, Pope Pius IX condemned the thesis that the Roman Catholic Church should accommodate itself to the modern world. Last week the bishops of the Second Vatican Council began discussion of a document that goes a long way toward making that accommodation. For Catholics, Schema 13, entitled The Church in the Modern World, is the most personally important item of all on the council’s agenda. Sometimes with platitudes, sometimes with passion, the schema bravely touches on every social issue that troubles the hearts of men, from overpopulation to nuclear war, and summons Catholics to join with others in creating a new and better world.

Pursuit of Dialogue. Every section of the schema unfolds one or more ideas with revolutionary implications for Catholicism. The introduction notes the need for the church to recognize “the signs of the times.” Chapter 1 warns that Christians should not reject this world for the sake of the next: “Anyone who is unwilling to be of service in the renewal of the world is seeking God in vain.” A second chapter expresses Catholic willingness to renounce ancient rights when new circumstances demand it. In the third chapter, Christians are urged to “pursue the dialogue with all men of good will” in order to achieve justice on earth.

What will most intimately affect Catholics is the fourth chapter, a discussion of major world problems, which follows the tone and spirit of Pope John’s encyclicals, Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris. A section on economic and social order amplifies John’s dream of humane socialization; it argues that “economic development must in no case be left entirely to itself,” and “the earth’s goods are the common inheritance of the whole human race.” A section on peace warns that “the use of nuclear weapons must be judged before God and man as most wicked.” In a long and candid discussion of marriage, the schema emphasizes the quality of life brought to marriage through self-giving conjugal love rather than procreation, expresses the hope that future scientific discoveries will clear the way for church acceptance of some form of birth control. However, as Bishop Emilio Guano of Leghorn pointedly reminded the council after an audience with Pope Paul VI, the birth-control issue will ultimately be decided by the Pontiff himself after a special papal commission has completed a thorough study of new contraceptives.

Stronger & More Specific. During the discussion of Schema 13, there were many demands that it be made stronger and more specific. Montreal’s Paul-Emile Cardinal Léger asked that it be stripped of all sterile condemnations; Giacomo Cardinal Lercaro of Bologna complained that the present text was too narrowly Occidental and European in viewpoint. The schema was attacked as unacceptable by Sicily’s implacably conservative Ernesto Cardinal Ruffini and by Archbishop John Heenan of Westminster. Heenan charged that it had been written by clerics with no knowledge of the world, delivered a savage attack on theological experts at the council who would like to modify the church’s position on birth control.

It is clear that the schema, which has already gone through nearly a dozen revisions since Belgium’s Leo Josef Cardinal Suenens proposed it in the council’s first session, will take more consideration than the bishops can give it before they adjourn Nov. 20. In fact, the Pope announced officially that he would convene a fourth session of the council. It is also clear that a vast majority of the bishops consider the passage of Schema 13 essential. Despite their reservations, they voted to accept it as a basis for discussion. “It is precisely in this document,” says Dutch Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx, “that the proof will out: whether the institutional church considers herself the be-all and end-all, or whether she deems herself an instrument in the hands of Christ, at the service of all mankind.”