Cardinal Franz König
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Cardinal
König is the emeritus Archbishop of Vienna and was one of the leading figures
at the Second Vatican Council. His
article is reprinted with the kind permission of The Tablet, published in
London, from the December 21, 2002 issue. It was the last article in a
series entitled, "How Vatican II Changed the Church." Please
visit The Tablet's website at: .
John XXIII was and called himself a simple man, a peasant’s son, and yet he set the signals for the council. He triggered what was to prove a momentous episode in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. It was he who set in motion the transformation of the Church from a static, authoritarian body that spoke in monologues, to a dynamic, sisterly Church that promoted dialogue. As a man of dialogue himself, he re-emphasised its importance both with the world and within the Church.
In January 1959, while he was still finally making up his mind whether he should call a council or not, he seemed at times to be amazed by his own courage. Soon after he had announced that he was summoning a council, he confided to me in a private audience how, during the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity in January 1959, the idea suddenly came to him. “My first thought was that the devil was trying to tempt me. A council at the present time seemed so vast and complicated an undertaking. But the idea kept returning all that week while I was praying. It became more and more compelling and emerged ever more clearly in my mind. In the end I said to myself, ‘This cannot be the devil, it must be the Holy Spirit inspiring me’.”
It was a bolt out of the blue even for those of us who realised that reform was necessary. I remember thinking, “How will a general council ever work? Will it deal only with inner-church reform, or will it reach out to questions that concern the whole of mankind? Will bishops from all over the world ever be able to reach consensus?”
Remember what the Church was like before the council. On a visit to England as a young curate in the Thirties I was fascinated by the different Christian Churches and beliefs. Unlike in Austria, where almost everyone was Catholic, here one encountered Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Reformed, Quakers. I was staying with a Roman Catholic parish priest in southern England when I discovered that there was a convent of Anglican nuns nearby. When I told my host that I wanted to pay the nuns a visit, his immediate reaction was: “No, no. You must be careful. No communicatio in sacris”. “All right”, I thought sadly, “but why?” The priest’s reaction was typical.
Later, on my pastoral visits as a bishop, I soon became aware that many Catholics found it hard to accept the denunciation of non-Catholics and longed for a change in the Church’s stance on ecumenism. Many of them were married to non-Catholics or worked with them in the same concerns. Although there was already a strong ecumenical movement outside the Roman Catholic Church, we Catholics were discouraged from taking part and were not supposed to go to ecumenical meetings or discussions on the subject. We were in a fortress, the windows and gates of which were closed. The world was out there and we were inside, and yet we were supposed to go out and take the Gospel message to all nations. But although we often shook our heads, we accepted the status quo and all those rules and regulations. And we had absolutely no inkling of how those walls could be removed.
Soon after the council was announced, I heard that every bishop attending could take a theological adviser, a so-called peritus, with him. I immediately rang the Jesuit Karl Rahner, whom I knew well, and asked him to accompany me to Rome. I knew that Rahner was convinced that it was our mission to go out into the world and proclaim the Gospel message, and not to keep the faith locked away behind closed doors. But Rahner was aghast. “What are you thinking of?”, he said, “Rome has considerable misgivings about me and my writings already. Imagine what they would say if I turned up as a council theologian!” And with that he declined. I asked him to think about it and said I would ring again later. When I did, Rahner said: “All right, in God’s name, but you must take the responsibility! Who knows what will happen when Ottaviani sees me!”
I had already got to know Cardinal Ottaviani, the head of the Holy Office, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was still called then, under Pope Pius XII. I remember bumping into him once, soon after Pius XII first allowed evening Masses. He came up to me and said, “What do you say? One can now celebrate Mass in the evening. Don’t people laugh when you announce an evening Mass?” It took me a little time to see what he meant, but it was a typical Ottaviani reaction. There is a fixed order of things which must never be changed – Semper idem was after all his motto. As change was inconceivable to him, it seemed also in a strange way ludicrous.
I was, therefore, somewhat worried about what Ottaviani would say to my bringing Rahner. So on my next visit to Rome I informed him privately. “Rahner”, he muttered, shaking his head, “how will that work?” He wasn’t against it, just worried. Not long after the actual council had begun, however, I saw Cardinal Ottaviani and Rahner strutting up and down St Peter’s together, deeply absorbed in conversation. Ottaviani was against change, but he was far more flexible than his right hand, Fr Tromp SJ. Tromp was utterly convinced that the concept of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ was the apogee of theology after which there could be nothing new.
Rahner scanned for me the numerous drafts and propositions that were sent out in the preparatory phase of the council, and was sometimes highly critical. “The authors of this text have obviously never experienced the suffering of a distraught atheist or non-Christian who wants to believe and thinks he cannot”, he once commented. And on another occasion he said, “These drafts are the elaborate theses of churchmen who are confusing self-confidence with firmness of faith. They are simply not up to today’s situation.” But there were also, of course, texts that Rahner approved of.
I was asked to sit on the Preparatory Commission, which was made up mainly of bishops and was supposed to prepare possible subjects for discussion at the council. I soon noticed that a significant num