The Council and the Eclipse of God by
Don Pietro Leone
‘Man’s choice of Life’
A. The Religious Life
‘Nuns
under Threat’ by Eugen Von Blaas (1869)
Historical Sketch [1]
Cardinal Spellman opened the debate on the scheme on religious on 10th
November 1964, denouncing the risk of the modernization of religious life in
opposition to the position adopted by Cardinal Suenens, who had proposed a
radical reform of female religious life two years before in his book Promotion apostolique de la religieuse.
In our presentation of the Council texts below, we shall see a reflection of
many of the elements of the latter Cardinal’s vision. In this book he aimed to
redefine the rôle of the nun by giving her an adequate ‘social formation’ and
making her an ‘animator of the female laity.’ To this end he called for the
elimination of ‘certain outmoded and superfluous devotions’ which risked
‘mechanizing or atrophying prayer life’ and called for the transformation of
their spiritual exercises to ‘renovate, simplify, and make them evolve towards
a piety that was more biblical, liturgical, ecclesial, and apostolic.’
He invited nuns to be more sincere and expansive in their mutual
relations and to be ‘constructively self-critical concerning their own
religious practices.’ They should avoid the impression of ‘living in a ghetto’
isolated from the world; religious habits should be fully adapted to relations
with the world; they should abandon forms and rituals no longer befitting our
age. Even the concept of obedience was to be reviewed: renunciation of one’s
own will was not to be preferred to the common good; the common good sometimes
required inferiors to make their point of view felt, before superiors made
their decisions.
On 11th November Cardinals Döpfner and Suenens declared
themselves satisfied neither with the scheme nor with the proposed amendments.
The former Cardinal maintained that the scheme lacked the key points of renewal
and aggiornamento; the latter
demanded new rules for convents, so that the nuns should be treated as feminae vere adultae [2].
He recommended new structures of government, more democratic and
representative, to avoid concentrating power in the hands of a single superior
and an obedience which was excessively ‘passive’ and ‘infantile.’
Bishop Guilly, on the other hand, found it ‘truly surprising’ that there was ‘so little on the other Orders and Congregations who dedicated themselves severely to the contemplative life’, who were ‘ the very ‘men and women who with their prayers, austerity, silence, and sacrifices contribute more than all others to the promotion of the Church’s apostolate.’
Other Council members dissatisfied with the scheme did not attempt to
have it rejected, because every-one believed that in such a case it would have
been entirely reformulated by the ‘Progressives.’ The latter group, by
contrast, did not have sufficient numbers to reject the scheme themselves, and
instead hit on the strategy of voting placet
juxta modum, proposing modifications in favor of their own vision of
things, a strategy which turned out to be successful.
We observe that in line with the changes to the religious habit that he
had proposed, Cardinal Suenens, together with Cardinal Léger personally set the
tone by making their appearance in the corridors of the Council at the time of
its last public sessions, clad in black clerical suits, no doubt ‘fully adapted
to relations with the world’ [3].
Analysis of Texts
In this section we shall consider:
1. ‘Up-to-date Renewal’;
2. How the Council Envisages this Renewal;
3. The Process of Renewal.
1. ‘Up-to-date Renewal’
i) ‘The up-to-date renewal of the
religious life comprises both a constant return to the sources of Christian
life in general and to the primitive inspirations of the institutes, and their
adaptation to the changed conditions of our time.’ (Perfectae Caritatis 2).
The renewal of religious life is here justified both by an appeal to a
return to original purity, and
by an appeal to adaptation to ‘changed conditions of our times.’ The
former appeal suggesting that contemporary religious life did not correspond to
the past, which was a bad thing, and therefore should be accommodated to the
past; the latter suggesting that it did correspond to the past, which was a bad
thing, and should thereby be accommodated to the present. We see here two
discrete appeals for change which, when taken together, are contradictory. In
fact religious life did correspond to the past, but, in its zeal to promote
renewal, the Council appeals to a return to religious life in its original
purity [4].
A further contradiction in this text is manifest in the pair of terms
‘return’ and ‘adaptation’: ‘return’ suggesting resuming something in a stable
manner and adaptation entailing change.
We shall now look at the more general question of the meaning of the
phrase ‘up-to-date renewal.’ Such is the translation by Father Flannery OP of
the Latin accomodata renovatio, which
in its turn is viewed by Bishop Butler in his book ‘Theology of Vatican II’, as
the translation of the Italian term aggiornamento
[5].
At a first glance one might consider it inappropriate to use the phrase
‘up-to-date renewal’ of the religious life, but on reflection one can see that
the phrase is simply an idiomatic expression of the concept of ‘adjournment’
and it is this very concept of adjournment which is so incongruous when used of
the religious life, and indeed of the Church as a whole, according to the
Council’s program of change.
To examine what the Council is proposing here, let us first attempt to
understand the meaning of:
‘Up-to-Date Renewal’/ aggiornamento
and the Religious Life.
Now to bring a given thing or a given activity up to date, is to bring
the qualities of that thing or of that activity up to modern standards. So for
example to bring a certain type of car up to date is to bring its qualities
such as its aerodynamic or safety features up to modern standards. As for the
religious life, it is the life of a consecrated person who has taken the three
evangelical vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in order to love God and
neighbor perfectly. When the religious life is active or ‘mixed’, the love of
neighbor is exercised not only by prayer but also by activity; when the
religious life is purely contemplative by contrast, the love of neighbor is
exercised only through prayer.
In view of these facts, we can conclude that an ‘up-to-date renewal’/ aggiornamento of the religious life
should consist in bringing the method of loving God and neighbor up to modern
standards, such as by the use of computers or the radio for apostolic purposes:
the same thing should be done, but in a more efficient way. Such however was
not to be the case, for the Council understood the renewal not as a change of
the way of doing the thing, but as a change of the thing itself, or more
precisely, not as a change of the thing, but as its destruction.
2. How the Council Envisages ‘Up-to-Date Renewal’
i) ‘All institutes should share
in the life of the church. They should make their own and should promote to the
best of their ability, each in a manner suited to its own character, the
church’s initiatives and undertakings in biblical, liturgical, dogmatic,
pastoral, ecumenical, missionary and social matters.’ (PC 2, Principle of
Renewal “c”).
ii) ‘… let them more and more
live and think with the church, and let them dedicate themselves wholeheartedly
to its mission.’ (PC 6)
In texts (i) and (ii) amongst others, the Council, by an appeal to the
obedience of religious to the Church, presents the renewal of religious life as
the implementation by religious of the Church’s work ‘in biblical, liturgical, dogmatic, pastoral,
ecumenical, missionary and social matters’, in other words as the
implementation of the Council teaching as a whole.
This principle of renewal obviously applies principally to religious of
the active and mixed life, but in a more restricted sense also to religious dedicated
to the purely contemplative life, where it may have an impact on biblical
study, liturgy, on the type of religious habit to be worn, and on recreation
where the new humanitarian, worldly spirit may suggest that the use of
television is opportune, or the use of other such media (such as the ‘internet’
in the present day).
Reflecting on how the Council envisages this renewal, we realize that it
does not in fact consist in a change of qualities, but rather in a change of
substance. For the Council teaching as a whole, as we have attempted to show
above, is no longer fully Catholic, but rather consists in a sort of
Catholicism tainted by worldly, naturalizing humanitarianism. Religious
communities, then, in implementing this teaching, are implementing a sort of
humanism which comprises a different form of love towards God and neighbor:
which constitutes in short a change in its very substance.
We see an example of this in the life of one of the most luminous of 20th.
century religious, St. Theresa of Calcutta, who, together with all her
wonderful work for the poor and suffering and despite the many conversions to
which it certainly has given rise, did not in fact, in conformity to the
ecumenical bias of the Council, seek to convert members of other religions to
Catholicism, but only to make them ‘better Moslems’ or ‘better Buddhists’
etc.
We are not, then, dealing with an accidental (qualitative) change here,
but with a substantial change, like the change of a car into a hovercraft. To
present such a change of the religious life (or of the car for that matter) as
an ‘up-to-date renewal’/ aggiornamento
is clearly to use such a term in an illegitimate manner.
We have been looking at the old type of religious life and the new, and
analyzing the change from one to the other in terms of substance and qualities
(accidents). In order more deeply to understand the difference between the two
types of life, we continue to analyze them in scholastic terms, this time in
terms of matter and form.
The matter that we are dealing
with here is the religious life: the life consecrated by the three vows to the
perfect love of Christ, the Spouse of the soul, and of the neighbor; the form is that which gives the matter its
particular character. Now the form of the religious life, that which makes the
religious life what it is, is the Rule. This Rule, up to the time of the
Council, had always been Christocentric in character, because clearly only a
Christocentric rule can enable the religious to love Christ, the Spouse of the
soul, with a perfect love: only this type of rule can enable a perfect love
towards God and man: that is to say the total self-gift towards God and the
commitment to convert, save, and sanctify souls.
The Rule which forms the religious life subsequent to the Council, by
contrast, is no longer exclusively Christocentric, but rather oscillates
between Christocentricism and anthropocentricism and in its entirety thus
constitutes an incoherent amalgam of these two principles. In other words it no
longer conforms entirely to the Catholic Faith, but rather, as we have said
above, to a Faith colored by a sort of worldly, naturalizing humanitarianism:
it is this that determines what love towards God and man is in the new type of
life: the love towards God, namely, that is enshrined in modern liturgy, and
the love towards neighbor that is enshrined in humanitarianism. The Form of the
Old Rule differs from the Form of the New Rule and thus makes of the matter
which it molds in either case a different substance, a different thing.
If an art master in the first lesson of the day models clay into the
form of a cat so that his pupils can copy it, and after the pause models the
same clay into a dog so that they can copy that, then the thing he is dealing
with has changed and is no longer what it is before: it is a model of a dog and
not of a cat. So religious life, governed by new principles enshrined in a new
rule, has been transformed into something that it was not before.
3. The Process of
Renewal
We here consider:
a)
The Implementation of Renewal
b)
The Consolidation of Renewal
a) The Implementation of Renewal
i) ‘The manner of life, of prayer
and of work should be suited to the physical and psychological conditions of
today’s religious. It should also, in so far as this is permitted by an
institute’s character, be in harmony with the demands of the apostolate, with
the requirements of culture and with the social and economic climate,
especially in mission territories…’ (PC 3)
ii) ‘[Clerical and lay
institutes] should adjust their
observances and customs to the needs of their particular apostolate.’ (PC
8, cf. PC 9).
iii) ‘The holy synod… encourages
them [religious lay congregations]
to adapt their lives to modern requirements.’ (PC 10).
iv) ‘In young churches… [adaptation is necessary to local] character and way
of life… local customs and conditions …’
(PC 19)
v) ‘When it is proposed to found
a new religious institute it must be asked, seriously: is it necessary, or at
least very useful, and can it develop?’ (PC 19)
Texts (i)-(v) express the broad scope of the envisaged renewal,
encompassing, as it does, the character of the religious, of the apostolate, of
the time and place, especially in the missions. The term ‘Usefulness’ has an
activist flavor and will of course be governed by the goal envisaged, which is
the implementation of the Council’s doctrines in the context of a given
apostolate.
The texts suggest that the various institutes have hitherto not
conformed to modern or local conditions. Take text (ii) for instance: Here we
are told that institutes should adjust themselves to ‘the needs of their
particular apostolate’. But if they are engaged in an apostolate, then what are
they engaged in if not in its needs? And if they are engaged in its needs, how
are they meant to adjust themselves to what they are already doing?
The only thing that such apostolates had not previously been doing, of
course, was implementing conciliar doctrines. Are these, then, the modern and
local ‘needs’? - needs like the need for ecumenism, for the New Mass, and for
the convocation of the Council itself, which in fact were not experienced by
the people at all - but perhaps would be later, when the people were told to
experience them.
b)
The Consolidation of the
Renewal
We may view the consolidation of the renewal according to the following
categories:
1.
Rule and Books;
2.
Internal Renewal;
3.
Dress;
4.
Traditional Spirituality;
5.
Contemplative Communities.
1.
Rule and Books
‘…For this reason [i.e. the
necessity of adaptation to the particular religious, apostolate, and place] the constitutions, directories, books of
customs, of prayers, of ceremonies and such like should be suitably revised,
obsolete prescriptions being suppressed, and should be brought into line with
this synod’s documents.’ (PC 3).
2.
Internal Renewal
‘Lest the adaptation of the
religious life to the needs of our time be merely external and lest those whose
rule assigns them to the active ministry should prove unequal to the task, they
should be properly instructed, in keeping with each one’s intellectual caliber
and personal bent, concerning the behavior patterns, the emotional attitudes,
and the thought processes of modern society… all through their lives, religious
should endeavor assiduously to perfect their spiritual, doctrinal and technical
culture. Superiors, as far as they are able, should provide for them the
opportunity, assistance and the time for this.’ (PC 18).
The mandate for change, implemented in the manner that we have seen in the previous section, is here consolidated both externally, by committing it to paper, and internally, by a program of study. The object of the study is modern society, presented as a form of dark and inscrutable Kafkaesque metropolis needing a life-time to fathom. The truth is, rather, that it is no different from society in any other epoch, because the man who dwells therein is no different from his forebears: he is fallen and in need of Truth and Grace like any other man. The only difference between the past and the present is the acceleration with which the inner dynamic of Fallen Nature is being realized to-day [6].
3.
Dress
‘Religious dress… must be
simple and modest, at once poor and becoming. In addition, it must be in
keeping with the requirements of health and must be suited to the time and
place and to the needs of the apostolate. The dress… which is not in conformity
with these norms ought to be changed’ (PC 17).
Such then are the criteria for assessing the idoneity of habits, which
of course exclude the one essential criterion, namely that of being a constant
reminder to the religious and to every-one else, of their total self-gift to
the Divine Spouse of their soul. Such a self-gift was admirably expressed by
the traditional nun’s habit covering the whole person - and was such a habit
supposed incidentally to be not
‘becoming’?
As for the requirement that the habit must be suited to the times, one
might ask why a habit that had been suited to all times up to the 1960’s,
perhaps even since the Middle Ages, might no longer be considered suited to the
present – unless of course the Council was already envisaging changing it to
imitate contemporary fashions. We observe too that simplicity is also presented
as a motive for change, as it was in the liturgy: simplex munditiis? [7]
4.
Traditional Spirituality
i) ‘Those who make profession of
the evangelical counsels should seek and love above all else God… In all
circumstances they should take care to foster a life hidden with Christ in God,
which is the source and stimulus of love of the neighbor, for the salvation of
the world and the building-up of the church.’ (PC 6)
ii) ‘Chastity for the sake of the
kingdom of heaven which religious profess, must be esteemed an exceptional gift
of grace…’ (PC 12);
iii) ‘Voluntary poverty, in
Christ’s footsteps, is a symbol of Christ which is much esteemed, especially
nowadays. Religious should cultivate it diligently…’ (PC 13);
iv) ‘By their vow of obedience,
religious offer the full surrender of their own wills as a sacrifice of
themselves to God…’ (PC 14)
In texts (i)-(iv) we see clear expressions of the final end of religious
life, in other words of the perfect love of God in accordance with the title of
the respective document Perfectae
Caritatis, which is however implicitly contradicted by the document’s
principal teaching, favoring, as it does, the renewal of religious life in
conformity with the Council’s humanitarianism. We have seen a similar
syncretism of self-contradictory old and new elements in the domain of the Mass
and of the priesthood, and indeed everywhere else in the Council documents.
5.
Contemplative Communities
i) ‘…their [the contemplative
institutes’] way of life should be
revised in accordance with the aforesaid principles and criteria of up-to-date
renewal…’ (PC 7).
ii) ‘While preserving… the nature
of their own institutions they [the monks] should renovate their ancient holy traditions and should… adapt them
to the present-day needs of souls…’ (PC 9).
iii) ‘Papal enclosure is to be
maintained for nuns whose life is wholly contemplative. However, it should be
adjusted to suit the conditions of time and place, abolishing obsolete
practices after consultation with the monasteries themselves.’ (PC 16).
iv) ‘Institutes and monasteries…
which the Holy See… judges not to offer any reasonable hope of further
development, are to be forbidden to receive more novices.’ (PC 21)
It is of course more difficult to imbue a purely contemplative community
with a humanitarian spirit, as we have said above. There can be no other reason
that such communities have found it easier to survive the Council than those of
the active or mixed life.
Texts (i)-(iv) do however attempt to open contemplative communities to
change, although not without obscurantism.
Why, in text (ii), should monks renovate ancient or holy traditions
unless antiquity or holiness are somehow bad? And if the duty of monks is of
the purely spiritual order, then the needs of souls with which they come into
contact must be spiritual and always the same, so that there is no sense in
speaking of ‘present-day (spiritual) needs’; and even if there were new
spiritual needs (presumably unearthed by the monks after a life-time research
into the ‘behavior patterns… emotional attitudes… and thought processes’ of modern man), why
should that require that ‘ancient and holy traditions’ should be adapted?
How, in text (iii), can papal enclosure and other practices of
contemplative communities which exist solely in order to enable the soul more
perfectly to love God, in other words solely in view of Eternity, be affected
by considerations of time and place?
How, in text (iv), can it be said that a community does not ‘offer any reasonable hope of further
development’, if there is a question of receiving more novices? - unless of
course ‘development’ only means the putting into effect of the ‘up-to-date
renewal’. If this is true, we see how severely the Holy See is prepared to
treat recalcitrant institutes: it will forbid them to receive more novices and
thereby condemn them to extinction.
Conclusion to Section C
We have seen in the above texts:
a)
A movement away from the ideal of the perfect love of
Christ as established by the original Rule of the Religious Order towards
conciliar, worldly humanitarianism;
b)
A dissipation and fragmentation of the One into the
multiple: into adaptation to the multiple contingencies of:
- individual communities;
- individual members;
- modern times;
- prevailing customs (especially in the
missions, colored as they are by paganism);
- federations, unions, or associations for
institutes and independent monasteries (PC 22);
- the dispositions of Episcopal Conferences
(PC 23).
Such dissipation and fragmentation was to constitute a process of
perpetual flux for the future.
c)
A rigorous method of imposing the renewal which is:
-
external;
-
internal, for the consolidation of the external
renewal;
-
expressed in clothing;
-
enshrined in directories and rules;
-
implemented in the name of obedience to the Council
and to the Church;
- implemented in a language vague and ambiguous enough
to justify suppressing recalcitrant communities and preventing new ones coming
into existence with the old spirit.
*
In synthesis, we have seen a violent and definitive removal of the
proper form of Religious Life, which, as we have explained in more detail above, is a Christocentric Rule
informed by the Catholic Faith in its entirety: the Faith in the One, Triune
God, enabling the perfect love of Him, the Spouse of the soul.
The religious in their active life seek to bring all to know and love
God by their work of evangelization and catechesis and by administering the
sacraments; in their contemplative life they promote the same ends by prayer,
where they also seek to know and love Him on a personal level, contemplation
being defined as simplex visio Veritatis,
the simple vision of Truth.
Such a religious life in its true sense can be made possible only by a
Christocentric, authentically Catholic, rule. This rule constitutes its form:
the principle of its identity, unity, and stability. Removing this form, or
mixing it with worldly humanitarianism, robs the religious life of its
identity: it fragments, dissipates, and diversifies it; it robs it of its
eternal stability and subjects it to a process of never-ending change and
evolution.
The disintegration resulting from the removal of the form has been
pointed out in chapter 2, when we considered the abandonment of clear
terminology for describing non-Catholics. The Aristotelian - Scholastic
doctrine of Form, formal principle, formal cause, is in fact, as we shall later
see, one of the keys to understanding the Council; its neglect constitutes one
of that Council’s gravest metaphysical errors.
The particular evils of the renewal of religious life, in conclusion,
are four in number:
1.
It contaminates the purity of the greatest love on
earth second to martyrdom;
2.
It dims the supernatural light of the Mystical Body of
Christ;
3. It diminishes the workings of Divine Grace in the World
4. It erodes that spiritual rampart which protects the World from Divine Wrath.
Here we can clearly discern the devil’s intent to thwart God’s workings
in this world, especially in the cloister, where God’s servants dedicate
themselves to living the Divine Life in its fullness. The devil, who knows that
this is the true life which he has himself rejected, envies and hates those
that live it and seeks to destroy them. Similar sentiments motivate his human
agents who pursue the chimera of self-deification, ‘for the immanent deity
cannot brook any other gods in his presence’ [8].
The demonic character of the renewal is further seen in its thoroughness,
violence, and devastating power.
[1] RdM V 12
[2] truly adult women
[3] RdM VI. 10
[4] another field
in which this tactic is used is that of the liturgy, as we shall see in the
next chapter.
[5] The Basic
Sixteen Documents, Vatican Council II p.401, footnote (a)
[6] see the comments on modern man in chapter 8
[7] simple in [her] worldlinesses, Horace Odes, I. 5
[8] Father Fahey, The Mystical Body... op.cit p.58
