Yves Congar, My Journal of the Council, Part VIII

Saturday 13 October 1962

In St. Peter’s at 9 am, in the tribune. This time, the bishops were all in purple mantelette, but those belonging to religious orders had their own specific color: white, black, grey, and the Eastern Rite bishops had their own particular costume.

Mass of the Holy Spirit, a low Mass and with dialogue. But the responses from 2,500 breasts was rushed and chaotic. It was quite difficult to follow.

The secretary went up into the ambo and announced that the bishops were invited to fill in the sixteen spaces with sixteen names from among themselves for each of the ten Commissions. Many of them started at once to write names. However, after some silence, Cardinal Liénart (at the presidium [The Council of Presidents, consisting of ten Cardinals, was responsible for chairing the Council meetings.]  immediately to the right of the first President, Cardinal Tisserant), stood up and read a paper asking for this election to be delayed until Monday or Tuesday, in order to give the bishops time to get to know one another from country to country. This would ensure greater cordiality, greater freedom and confidence, and above all a better selection of names for these Commissions, which were very important. He even suggested a form of procedure: since bishops’ conferences exist in forty-two countries, each of these conferences should suggest a certain number of names, with an indication of the number of dioceses that they encompass. (The paper read by Cardinal Liénart on the first day of the First Session had been written by Msgr. Garrone, whose idea it had been. Cardinal Liénart did no more than read it.)

This double suggestion was warmly applauded. A little later, Cardinal Frings stood up to say that he seconded this recommendation in the name of the German and Austrian cardinals.

After a brief pause, the Secretary of the Council announced that he concurred with this recommendation and that the elections would take place on the following Tuesday.

This little point was important. To begin with, all points of procedure are important: they involve the work of a group. In this case, the principal importance rests in the fact that THIS IS THE FIRST CONCILIAR ACT, a refusal to accept even the possibility of a prefabrication. The bishops had been given, in the same format as the voting papers, a list of those who had been members of the Preparatory PONTIFICAL Commissions: it is likely that many would, to a considerable extent, have copied this list. We would thus have been faced with the same men who had prepared these texts with which the bishops are dissatisfied. Cardinal Liénart’s proposal recognized the importance of the Commissions in which the texts will be drawn up. It revealed the bishops’ desire to be free to discuss things, without accepting something that had been prepared in advance by the Curia and its people. It means that the bishops intend to talk and discuss things. Moreover, Cardinal Liénart has suggested a procedure which gives reality and importance to the intermediate bodies. Between the supreme head (and his Curia) and the individual bishops, there are intermediate groupings. One of the results of the Council ought to be that of giving them more power and independence. The importance of this was demonstrated on the very first day.

What I foresaw is happening: the Council itself could well be very different from its preparation.

Yves Congar, My Journal of the Council, pp. 91-92. The 1100-page book can be purchased from Liturgical Press. Pray Tell ran the previous (seventh) installment of the journal of Yves Congar last week.

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One response to “Yves Congar, My Journal of the Council, Part VIII”

  1. Jack Rakosky

    I guess if I am ever to read my copy of Congar’s Journal, it will probably be piecemeal by commenting on these posts. My motivation to do so was increased today by my comment this morning on the coming Extraordinary Synod of 2014 and Ordinary Synod of 2015

    https://praytell.blog/index.php/2013/10/31/cdf-prefect-on-the-priesthood-crisis/#comment-1419409

    In his cover letter to bishops asking them to respond to preparatory questions by the end of January, Baldisseri says that Francis wants the October 2014 synod to be the first step in defining the nature of the questions which are to be addressed again in 2015 (the 50th anniversary of the Synod’s establishment) in the form of working guidelines for the pastoral care of persons and families.

    Undoubtedly Francis is turning over to the bishops (and perhaps all of us) two key issues that Paul VI reserved for himself, the Synod and the birth control issue. Except now the birth control issue has mushroomed into the cohabitation issue, the divorce issue, and the many different forms of family life (including gay people raising children).

    It looks like Francis is going to try to shape how collegiality will function in the future over the course of these next two synods.

    First of all, it is interesting that he appears to have made a conscious choice of the family as the center of focus. I suspect this has much to do with his sense that changing the position of both the laity and women in ecclesiastical decision making is essential in order to have really effective synods. I do not think it was an accident that Francis had diocesan and parish councils present at Assisi, and that Baldisseri is asking this discussion go down to the deanery and parish levels.

    Second unlike the Vatican Council, the bishops are not going to spend much time in Rome but are going to spend it there in two sessions. It is not the work the bishops do in Rome but what they do back at home before the two meetings that will count. Francis attributes the success of the landmark conference in Brazil that is his model to the fact that it took place in the place of pilgrimage among the laity not in a conference center!

    Third, the question is not whether these two synods will have symbolic laypersons speak at them, but whether lay people in their parishes and dioceses do the equivalent of what the bishops did in the opening days of Vatican II: i.e. don’t allow the bishops to formulate the issues and dominate the discussion and decide who are going to be the key players and spokespeople in the local, national, and worldwide process.

    Francis is giving the laity an issue where the laity can really bring their experience and expertise; it will be interesting to see what happens. As Francis himself has said the laity are very complicit in clericalism and often prefer to be on the sidelines rather than being players themselves.

    How much of the next several years will see laity really trying to shape these synods by addressing the real and very difficult issues involved, or how much of it will be what John Allen has begun to call “playing church” watching the clerical game play itself out while cheering for one’s favorite team and players.

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