Vatican II’s Departure from the Anti-Modernist Paradigm: Part II

The Victory of the Council Majority

In the first part of this article, I discussed anti-Modernism and the “chain of errors” narrative employed by the council minority at Vatican II. In this second part, I demonstrate the legacy of this narrative and the abandonment of it at the Council. The centrality of anti-Modernism to the thought-world of the council minority is manifest across the conciliar Acta (the official record of speeches, draft texts, and written interventions at Vatican II). There were, for example, numerous references to Modernism in the debate over De Fontibus (the document on divine revelation, which became Dei Verbum). Some of the documents initially presented to the council fathers included references to Pascendi and Lamentabili, and in key places these first drafts clearly reflected the anti-Modernist paradigm of the council minority. A full account of these dozens of references to Modernism in speeches and texts across the Council’s four sessions (October 1962 to December 1965) is not possible in this short article.  I will list just a few of the most interesting episodes to give readers a sense of the importance of the “ghost” of Modernism at Vatican II.

During the First Session (1962), Sicilian archbishop Giovanni Battista Peruzzo (1878–1963) used the chain of errors narrative to criticize the widespread support for the expansion of the use of the vernacular in the liturgy. Peruzzo associated support for vernacular liturgy with Modernism, a spiritual and ecclesiological threat born from a rotten genealogy (traced through Jansenism, then back to Protestantism and humanism). Some contemporary Traditionalists highlight Peruzzo’s speech as prophetic. In the Second Session (1963), a very interesting debate was stirred up over the image of the Church as sacrament of salvation (Lumen gentium 1). Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini (1888–1967), a tireless leader of the minority bloc, raised the ghost of Modernism, asserting that such language was reminiscent of the Irish Jesuit George Tyrell (1861–1909), whom Ruffini called “the prince of the modernists.” (As far as I can tell, Tyrell is the only Modernist theologian to be referred to by name on the council floor.) Joseph Clifford Fenton (1906–1969) of the Catholic University of America then offered a written submission further critiquing this new ecclesiology as ambiguous and Modernist-tainted. At the instigation of the bishop of Eichstätt, Joseph Schröffer (1903–1983), the German Jesuit Otto Semmelroth (1912–1979) responded to these critiques in a manner that satisfied most observers.

The great bulk of references to Modernism in the Third and Fourth sessions (1964 and 1965) concerned the following nexus of closely interconnected issues: first, the manner in which doctrinal development would be understood. Second, whether what Joseph Ratzinger called “a new view of the phenomenon of tradition” was in fact a trojan horse for Modernist understandings of the nature of divine revelation (cf. Dei verbum). Third, whether doctrinal development concerning religious liberty, clearly desired by the council majority, in fact entailed a Modernist understanding of dogmatic mutability and relations between church and state and between the church and individual conscience. Fourthly, and finally, whether the new posture towards the modern world, proposed in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, was in fact a capitulation to Modernist tendencies, understood in the expansive way decried by Pius XI in the encyclical Ubi Arcano (1922).

Since the council majority wished to press forward with an ambitious reformist program, they had to contend with the resilient ghost of Modernism. Often, they ignored evocations of Modernism, which implicitly communicated that such evocations were beside the point. This strategy showed a preference for playing offense rather than defense (a strategy I can relate to as a UNC football fan). That is, the majority usually proceeded positively, stressing precedents for their positions in scripture and tradition (ressourcement), or justifying their positions by appealing to recent papal teaching or pastoral need (aggiornamento). There were times, however, that members of the majority confronted the Modernist boogeyman more or less head-on. This is most clearly seen in episodes like Bishop Schröffer’s defense of Otto Semmelroth and through the majority’s defense of key passages from Lumen gentium and Dei verbum against charges of Modernism. Figures like the Belgian Andre-Marie Charue, the English Benedictine Christopher Butler, and the Italian Enrico Nicodemo successfully argued that, far from being heretical, their “lively and dynamic conception of tradition” (Nicodemo’s words) was unimpeachably orthodox. Those council fathers wishing for a historically conscious Catholic theology were finding resources in the work of the nouvelle théologie (“new theologians” formerly suspected of Modernism), as well as in figures like John Henry Newman (1801–1890), an intellectual giant from the recent past. 

The Erasure of Anti-Modernist Doctrinal Documents

Ultimately, the council majority was victorious: anti-Modernist doctrinal documents failed to achieve a “controlling function” at the Council. That is, neither Pascendi nor Lamentabili, nor the “Anti-Modernist Oath” set the terms of debate in the manner that the minority attempted to set them. Sometimes, this was because the majority demonstrated that what was condemned in these documents as “Modernism” was not, in fact, what the council majority was arguing for (e.g. Lumen gentium 1 on the Church as sacrament). In other cases, the anti-Modernist documents did not set the terms of debate because the majority believed that they were voting for a justifiable or even necessary development of doctrine (as in the case of religious liberty), or they wanted to quietly leave behind indefensible positions (for example, uncritical attitudes to biblical scholarship and especially the Old Testament).

Probably the best piece of evidence in support of the claim that the anti-Modernist documents ceased having a controlling function is that none of the four constitutions cite them at all, in any context. In fact, not a single Vatican II document cites Pascendi, Lamentabili, or the “Anti-Modernist Oath.” Just as with the ghost of Jansenism, the victory of the majority party led to an erasure of documents from the conciliar corpus that formerly constituted pillars of ultramontane orthodoxy (in the case of Jansenism, this concerned Auctorem fidei especially, but also Unigenitus). Nothing could symbolize leaving behind the “chain of errors” narrative more clearly than Pope Paul VI’s abolition of the “Anti-Modernist Oath” in 1967. An old genealogy was rejected, and a new age for Catholic theology had dawned. *

 Shaun Blanchard is Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Newman Studies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A graduate of North Carolina, Oxford, and Marquette University, Shaun writes on a variety of topics in early modern and modern Catholicism. He is the author of ‘The Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II’ (OUP: 2020) and, with Ulrich Lehner, co-edited ‘The Catholic Enlightenment: A Global Anthology’ (CUA: 2021). ‘Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction’, co-authored with Stephen Bullivant, will be published by OUP in March 2023.

*These essays were adapted from my presentation at the National Institute for Newman Studies conference "Saint John Henry Newman and Catholic Modernism" held in Pittsburgh October 17-18, 2022. My presentation was titled "The Ghost of Pascendi: The Vatican II Council Fathers and the Legacy of Modernism." I am grateful to the other presenters for their critique, encouragement, and feedback: Claus Arnold, William L. Portier, Elizabeth Huddleston, Jeffrey Morrow, and Fr. Charles Talar.