An Anglican Letter from the Vatican Council
Diocesan Press Service. November 8, 1963 [XV-2]
Prof. William J. Wolf, the American Episcopalian appointed to observe the Second Session of the Council. He is Howard Chandler Robbins Professor of Theology at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass.
Rome, Oct. 27, 1963
After four weeks of the Second Session of Vatican Council II I began to do some arithmetic about its progress. The Schema on the Liturgy was being amended and might be ready for Papal approval and publication at the end of this session. We had been listening to debate on the Schema on the Church, but had only completed three chapters of a document still to be amended. There was in addition to creative contributions mach repetition and irrelevancy. With a total of 17 schemata to go it began to look as if Vatican II might more resemble the Council of Trent (about 18 years) than the relatively short session of Vatican I! This might happen unless the schemata to be considered were radically reduced in number or unless a method were discovered to speed up deliberation and decision in a body of more than 2, 200 bishops.
Discussion with the Council Fathers in the coffee bar and dinner with one of the four Cardinal Moderators revealed that many of them felt even more strongly than this Observer on this issue. There seems to be a vacuum of authority for decision within the Council. The Pope seems to want any new directions to emerge as a consensus from the bishops themselves. The lines for taking initiative in the superstructure of the Council itself - the board of 12 presidents, the four new moderators, the Coordinating Commission, and the Secretariat itself with the Secretary-General. One of the proposals in the Schema on the Church is that the bishops be understood together with the Pope as a College able to take more action locally through national or regional conferences of bishops. One suggestion heard increasingly is that these conferences meet now in Rome for preliminary "caucusing" in order to send a majority and a minority speaker to the whole Council and thus spare the Fathers the almost endless contributions of individuals, particularly the Spaniards and the Italians.
A foretaste of what might emerge came Oct. 25 when the Moderators announced that a vote would be taken the following week on whether to include a section on the Virgin Mary within the Schema on the Church or to give a separate Schema to Mariology. Two Cardinals spoke eloquently on the opposite positions, Santos of the Philippines against the inclusion of Mary within the Schema on the Church and Koenig of Vienna in favor. Here is a procedural issue that has momentous theological consequences. If the Virgin Mary is understood as part of the People of God with references largely to Biblical and earlier Patristic sources a way may more clearly be opened for more dialogue on this point with the non-Roman Catholics. If however, the Marian "maximalists" (as they are called) succeed in getting a separate section, enthusiasm may lead on to more Marian definitions. At any rate the function of Mary as co-redemptrix will be furthered with the danger as underlined by a Chilean prelate that a form of almost pagan worship may evolve. This Observer dares to predict that a majority of votes will be secured for the inclusion of the Virgin Mary in the unit on the Church. Next week should prove one of the most interesting of the Second Session.
Another proposal heard is that national or regional conferences of bishops should be set up canonically in the respective countries as soon as the Council passes enabling legislation in a Schema on the Rule of Bishops. Then the Council itself might proceed by means of a Continuation Committee with bishops representing their national conferences gathering in Rome and conducting further deliberations in a smaller group with periodic meetings. On nearly all sides there is a desire to avoid producing a Curia of bishops because of the unhappy experience with Curial bureaucracy in the past. The Second Session may just possibly produce a new form of the Counciliar process adapted to the conditions of today with speedy communication and an episcopate about four times larger than that in any previous Council.
The Council decided by a narrow margin of 40 votes Oct. 29 to put discussion of the Virgin Mary within a chapter in the general theme "On the Nature of the Church" rather than have a separate theme on the subject. The vote was 1,104 to 1,074.