The Mole of Vatican Council II: The True Story of "Xavier Rynne" by Richard Zmuda (recently published by my college roommate Greg Pierce and his ACTA publishing company) is a lightly fictionalized account of Redemptorist theologian Francis Xavier Murphy who, writing in the New Yorker under the pseudonym "Xavier Rynne," chronicled the backroom machinations of The Council, especially the theological combat between conservatives and liberals. His progressive story of liberation from a repressive, reactionary elite was, of course, celebrated by the secular media. Perhaps more than any other writer, Murphy created the narrative of that historic event as a triumph of the "good guys" (led by John XXIII) over the bad guys (Cardinal Ottaviani). It is an engaging read, especially for those of us who lived through those years and recall the exhilaration, the fascination with the mysterious "Rynne," and the pleasure of rooting against Ottaviani and his scoundrels.
Gifted, intelligent, charming, full-of-life Murphy, from the Bronx, was a genius of an "intelligence officer" using his connections and friendships in the Vatican to uncover what was happening in real time 1962-5. As a "peritus" (expert) at the Council, he had taken a vow to keep secrecy about the happenings. But he broke that vow, morally compelled to do his part to defeat the pernicious forces of reaction.
He captivated me as he is iconic of his own, the "Great" generation of priests; but even more of those who followed him, the Silent Generation. This group was coming out of the Depression and WWII; came of age in the peaceful, prosperous, Catholic-friendly post-war order. Typically, they were young priests at the time of the Council. They had imbibed the optimistic, liberal American values of their childhood which were entirely validated by the Council. They were ecstatic about the Council. These priests are now in their 80s and 90s and leaving us. They are a remarkable cohort; dear to me. I have known so many as friends...Jesuits, Maryknollers, and priests of Newark. Theirs is a distinctive spirit. It does not survive them. But first a fresh look at the place of Vatican II in history.
Continuity or Rupture: Two Models of the Council, Rynne or Guarino?
"Rynne" clearly, persuasively presented the accepted (by secular media and everyone else) plot line of the Council: triumph of progressives over the (deplorable) Ottaviani and his college of cardinals. This is no doubt what happened. This underlies the later narrative of the Council as a rupture, a discontinuity between the old and the new. The alternative view, of development within continuity, informed the entire, authoritative magisterium of John Paul and Benedict.
More recently this later hermeneutic of the Council has been given more depth and clarity by (my friend) Monsignor Tom Guarino of Seton Hall. He develops the surprising view of Congar that the philosophy of St. Thomas quietly and covertly informed the theology of the Council. This comes as a shock as the documents avoided the language of scholasticism and Thomism in favor of a vernacular more friendly to dialogue. So, while the restrictive, deadening manualist theology was displaced, there remained underneath a solid, traditional if unarticulated foundation. The Council always had two goals: aggiornamento, an opening to the modern world, which takes central place in the Rynne story; but also resourcement, a return to the sources, the doctors and fathers, not excluding Thomas himself. Some years ago (was it R. Reno?) pointed out that the bishops and theologians at the Council, overwhelming affirmative of the progressive schemas, were all thoroughly formed by the Tradition, the legacy of St. Thomas. And so the developments...religious freedom, Jews, Revelation, ecumenism, liturgy, etc...were deeply coherent with that underlying Tradition. And so, the actual documents (as distinct from the imagined "Spirit of Vatican II") were not deviations, but authentic, organic developments of the Council, in accord with the thought of St. Vincent of Lerins and St. John Cardinal Newman. Guarino sees that the Thomistic concepts of "participation" and "analogy" inform all the major developments of the Council.
In this light we see the Council not so much as displacement of the old by the new, but rather as the retrieval of a deeper tradition: the famous "spoils of Egypt" whereby the Church gathers from the gentiles all that is good, true and beautiful, as did the Israelites in flight into the desert. As Augustine drew from Plato and Thomas from Aristotle, so the contemporary Church was adopting a receptivity to all that is good in modernity. So, Guarino sees that rather than renouncing Protestants as heretics, non-Christians as heathens, and Jews as "God-killers," the Council used the rich concept of analogy to see that these groups share is distinct ways, "similarity within dissimilarity," in the truth-goodness-beauty that finds full expression in the Catholic Church of Christ. There is an openness to what is worthwhile in other traditions, which is in balance/tension with the urgency to share the incomparable richness of our Catholic legacy.
All of this is, of course, not to detract from the engaging fiction (based on history) of Mole in Vatican II. But rather to clarify that accepting the simple, reactionary/progressive binary as a thorough, balanced account of the Event would be a mistake.
Communio Theology (Tracey Rowlands, David Schindler, Ratzinger, etc.) on the Council and Culture
Guarino echoes the positivity of the Council, (and that of the moderate-liberal-Vatican-II-priest), in his serene confidence in an underlying philosophical continuity and substantiality that is yet organic, creative, and fruitful. Combine this with the Christ-centered emphasis of the dual papacy and you have the heart and soul of the Council. But that is still not the whole picture. With his sympathy for the post-modern sensibility, Guarino would agree that the schemas, authoritative and inspired by the Holy Spirit, are yet human statements, limited, finite, positional in time and space. So we ask: What is the weakness of the Council? For one, it did not really engage Communism, our primary global antagonist at that time as well as today. Secondly, it strangely failed to engage the singular Catholic theological genius of the century, Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was left to pursue his own work which expresses the best of the Council and corrects the weakness. But most important, it's optimistic attitude to culture blinded it to the dark forces that were at that very moment starting to overwhelm the Church.
Famously, John XXIII renounced the "prophets of doom" (Ottaviani and crew) at the start of the Council. Looking back 60 years later, at the collapse of the Church as we knew it, we must grant that the optimism of the progressives of that time was not fully realistic. Ottaviani's dread, his sense of impending disaster, was indeed prescient. Western culture was turning dark, even demonic, at the very moment that the Church was opening its arms in a trusting, credulous embrace.
Tracey Rowlands has been especially helpful in showing the inadequate theology of culture which left us vulnerable to the assaults of the Cultural Revolution. She looks for realism to the mature thought of John Paul, Benedict, David Schindler, Alistair McIntyre, Milibank and the Radical Orthodox movement, Charles Taylor, Romano Guardino, Christopher and Dawson. These share a deep, clear sense of the hostility of culture, "the world" in biblical terms, to the gospel. Such realism was not explicit in the Council and entirely absent from the euphoria that followed and that carried an entire generation of priests for almost 60 years.
Recalling the typology of Richard Niebuhr on Christ and Culture, we might say that the Council had a strong sense of Christ in culture, but an inadequate grasp of Christ against culture. John Paul and Benedict were more balanced and realistic.
A Different Perspective on Vatican II
Zmuda repeats exactly the narrative we all ingested in the 1960s from Rynne and others: the revolution of enlightened, progressive forces against a powerful, entrenched, reactionary college of cardinals. It becomes expanded however into the conviction that the "old church" was overcome by "the new church." We got this from the secular media (particular Rynne's pieces in The New Yorker) and liberal Catholic journals like National Catholic Reporter, America, and Commonweal.
I propose an alternate, revisionist understanding: This event was not the start of something new so much as a culmination, a finalization of the Church that had been developing in the previous decades, especially since 1945, the end of the war. The reality is that the initial schemas of Ottaviani and his crew were overwhelmingly renounced by huge majorities at the very first session and throughout all four years. All documents were accepted by huge majorities, almost unanimously. From the start, Ottaviani was vastly outgunned. He never had a chance. With or without the clever, whistleblowing Mole, the reactionaries were doomed from the start. John XXIII had a sense of this from the beginning.
The Council was exuberantly, almost universally welcomed by the Church: not because it overthrew a repressive order, but because it affirmed and celebrated the very values we had been living for years. A range of flourishing movements flowed into the Council: liturgical, ecumenical, biblical, activist, and so forth. I recall my childhood in the 1950s: we swam and played handball in the Protestant YMCA and YWCA. My father with other Catholics worked closely in the labor movement with secular Jews. I myself was drawn to become a Maryknoll missioner...not to save pagan babies, but to address the physical suffering about which I learned. Yes, we had the mass in Latin, learned about limbo, ate fish on Friday, and didn't go into Protestant churches. But those were more like endearing eccentricities. The encompassing culture, in the Catholic ethnic (now dissolving) ghetto was one of ecumenism, openness, cooperation, optimism, and national unity against Soviet Communism. The young priests in parishes in 1960 had already been reading Rahner, Kung, DeLubac and company not to mention Protestant scripture scholars. Bishop Sheen, Thomas Merton, "Father Bing Crosby" and the Kennedys were national celebrities, across religious boundaries. And so, we see that the Council (1962-5) marked the high point, the climax and culmination of the post-war Catholic American Camelot. It is the end point of a very clear and distinct chapter in the history of American Catholicism. What followed is not so clear.
The New World in the West: Culture Revolution
If 1965 marked the definitive maturation and termination of a specific Catholic world, rather than the emergence of a novel one, it also marked the emergence, beyond the Church, of a New World...a real revolution, a liberation from sexual restraint, bonds of local and historical community, the natural law, authority, tradition and God. Sexual, cultural progressivism! Like the Council, this New World did not come out of nowhere, but exploded from a convergence of multiple streams: affluence, power, unrestrained technology, individualism, contraception, radical feminism, the triumph of the therapeutic, and the arrival of the indulged-entitled-narcissistic Boomer Generation. If our parents were tested and purified in the fires of Depression poverty and a world war, we were spoiled by comfort, safety, indulgence.
Cultural liberalism attacked the very heart and soul of Catholicism: authority and conscience, chastity, spousal meaning of sexuality, the family, community, reverence for Tradition, trust in and obedience to God. Neither the Greatest nor the Silent Generation were prepared for this. Neither generation even recognized it.
The Happy, Moderate, Liberal, Vatican II Priest
The Silent Generation of priests who came of age in the prosperous, thriving 1950's Church were confident, optimistic, open-minded, inquisitive, ecumenical, energetic and concerned for the poor. About the Council they were simply ecstatic! Happiness is....being an American Catholic priest in 1962.
An hour ago I spoke with a Monsignor friend of mine, now a healthy 90 year old. I mentioned "Xavier Rynne" and he almost jumped for joy. He remembers that in the early 60s he would meet with a group of up to 30 fellow priests to discuss those letters about what was going on in the Vatican. You could feel his energy and joy. He mentioned names of priests, recently deceased, who were well respected for their theology and leadership. He emphasized the "energy" of the time. He wondered about the younger clergy who don't seem to share this enthusiasm.
This happy, expansive, moderate, grounded priest is...I suggest...the default, normal, standard priest in the years after the Council. He retains a sense of tradition, sacrament and authority but in the euphoria of those exciting years. He is confident, expansive, generous, open-minded. Eager to serve the poor. Enthusiastically ecumenical. Interested in the social sciences, history, culture.
The problem: he never noticed the Cultural Revolution. If Ottaviani remained stuck in 1962, our Vatican II priest remains stuck in 1965. He detaches, remains neutral in the Culture War. You will not hear from him a sermon on contraception, woman priests, homosexuality...not for it and not against it. He remains in the conservative/progressive binary articulated by Rynne and so detaches from the actual world that exploded on us in the years immediately after 1965.
And so, he is not a huge fan of John Paul/Benedict. Father Francis Murphy in later years was asked about Pope John Paul and responded that he is a conservative pope in control of a conservative college of cardinals, but he does reach out, and so it is hard to make sense of him. John Paul does not fit his paradigm: he has the foul odor of Ottaviani about him. The Cardinal of Krakow was arguably the most vigorous bishop in the world in immediately implementing the Council in which he distinguished himself as the youngest, most gifted prelate. Likewise, Joseph Ratzinger was recognized by his older periti as the brilliant, young mind of the group. But in the troubled world of 1968 in which both men recognized the attack on our faith from cultural liberalism they were not seen for what they were, but only within the limiting "Rynnian" categories.
Pope Francis is an example of this Vatican II, silent generation priest. He obsessively rants against clergy that are dogmatic, rigid, condemnatory. We all wonder: who is he talking about? I will tell you who he hates so: Cardinal Ottaviani, at least as portrayed by Rynne and other detractors. The Ghost of Ottaviani haunts Francis and his generation of priests. That specter hovers behind every Latin mass, every Evangelical-Catholic alliance against legal abortion, every Philippine rosary group counting Hail Mary's, everything clerical and canonical.
This avoidance of the Cultural War has been, however, in many ways an adaptive, wholesome coping mechanism. These priests have remained, through all the chaos, change and depletion of Church life, energized, hopeful and positive. They have maintained the unity of the Church. They have retained the loyalty of many who have moved away from Catholic practice: think of the young people who cohabitate, contracept but then come to the rectory, in due time, for a sacramental wedding. They are men of the Church who have served with generosity and sacrifice.
Four Responses to Vatican II
Looking back now after almost 60 years, I would replace the limiting reactionary/progressive binary articulated by Rynne and widely accepted with a nuanced "quadnary" of: traditional, progressive, organic conservative, and moderate Vatican II.
Traditional stands with Ottaviani in rejecting the Council. This was a small cohort at first but has greatly increased, especially with young families, as the darkness of Cultural Liberalism is highlighting the appeal of tradition. This views the Council as a rupture with the past, and a loss of cherished legacy. Sometimes it blames the Council for the decline of the Church that followed. My own view is that that decline was not caused by, but was coincident with the Vatican reforms. Thought experiment: imagine that Ottaviani had prevailed. What would have followed? Nothing good! Possibly a schism. Surely an even greater abandonment of the Church into other denominations or pure secularism.
Progressive agrees that the event was a rupture, discontinuous with the past. It moves well beyond the texts of the Council, in a so-called "Spirit of Vatican II," to embrace the premises of the Sexual Revolution: contraception, woman priests, homosexuality, etc. Kung and Schillibeeckx are representative of this theological approach.
Organic conservative is the authoritative teaching of John Paul/Benedict which accepts the Council as inspired by the Holy Spirit and understands it with an Evangelical focus on the person of Jesus Christ, in continuity with Tradition, including a return to the sources, and a nuanced-positive-yet-critical philosophical engagement with modernity. Aligned with this dual pontificate as a secondary hermeneutical key to understanding the Council are the lay renewal movements which surged in the Church during or after that event in the 1960s. These moves of the Holy Spirit (notably the Charismatic Renewal, Neocatechumental Way and Communion and Liberation) coincided with the explosion of the Cultural Revolution and the implosion of the religious orders and the entire Catholic (1945-65) order.
Vatican II Moderate Liberalism is a positive celebration of the Council and all the post-war values it articulates, avoidance of Culture War, accommodation to bourgeois modernity. Clinging to the classic model of Rynne, it tends to conflate John Paul with Ottaviani. Rahner and Lonergan may be the best theological expressions of this school. It is a softer progressivism that retains a footing in tradition and ignores the radical challenges of the cultural revolution.
Conclusion
A sadness hangs over this generation of priests as they decline and pass: the younger clergy do not carry forward their legacy. Facing the darkness of Cultural Liberalism, a reality of which the older priests seem to be blissfully unaware, young priests are reactive and retrieve a more counter-cultural, traditional Catholicism. There exists a sad disconnect between young and old priests. This is not a failure of charity. It is a culture gap. They live in two different worlds. The one in the post-war, Vatican II Camelot of 1965; the other in the post-1968 dystopia.
As a boomer, coming of age in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, I am a Catholic Culture Warrior. Yet I have immense admiration, affection, and gratitude for this entire generation of priests, now in decline, who have loved and served our Church so competently, energetically, enthusiastically. May our younger clergy and all of us look to them, emulate them, receive-cherish-protect-share the rich legacy they leave us. Even as we engage an ever-darkening world and lean more strenuously into Christ and our legacy of faith.
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