Lumen Gentium IV: The Psychological Unraveling of Trent and Vatican I

A SELF-CONFIDENT CHURCH
 
Our study of Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium Part 4 focuses today on the lost opportunities for reform leading up to and including the Protestant Reformation itself and the post-Reformation response in the Roman Catholic Councils Trent [1545-1563] and Vatican I [1869-1870]. As we have seen in previous installments of this blog stream, “reform of the Church” was hardly a bolt from the blue problem leading Luther to post his 95 Theses in 1517. At the Council of Constance [1414-1418] the Church fathers burned Jan Hus at the stake for his calls for greater voice for the laity, symbolized over history by his demand that the laity have access to the cup at communion. But before Hus there was John Wycliffe [1328-1384] from the University of Oxford who led a biblical revival of sorts—translating the Scriptures into the English of the day—and an early populist sentiment in what was still a feudal/aristocratic age in many ways.
 
Both Wycliffe and Hus believed that their writings and actions were prophetic insights from the Holy Spirit. As the Keys to the Council [2012] authors admit [pp. 57ff], there has been a tendency on the part of the Catholic Church since early medieval times to play down the existential or “independent” power of the Holy Spirit in the Church because most troublesome reformers claimed to have been inspired by the Spirit in directing their reform movements. This is certainly true of the controversy involving “The Spiritual Franciscans,” a branch of the Order that came to believe the mainstream Franciscans were betraying St. Francis of Assisi’s [1187-1226] rule of absolute poverty, i.e., owning nothing, as they interpreted Christ’s words in the Gospel. When popes over the next century granted dispensations to the Franciscan Order as a whole, allowing them the use of money, buildings, etc., the Spirituals claimed that popes had no such rights to do this, on the grounds that Francis had ushered in a new age of the Holy Spirit. Many of the Spirituals were arrested; some burned; all disbanded. See my Amazon review of The Spiritual Franciscans [2003] by David Burr. It is an intriguing but sad story.
 
It is not hard to understand that the medieval leadership of the Church—its popes, bishops, clerics, most academics—understood the Church to be the voice of God incarnate, and even beyond that, synonymous with the Kingdom of God itself. Consider that the consummate free spirit, Francis of Assisi himself, hastened to Rome for Pope Innocent III’s institutional sanction of his band of brothers, even after Christ himself had reportedly commanded Francis to “rebuild the Church!” The members of the Trinity, it would seem, were not exempt from the authority of the Church, one might conclude. The Church’s self-understanding was not raw hubris or narcissism, though those features raised their heads from time to time. In the Roman mentality of good order, authority—particularly divine authority—was a philosophical and psychological given. Reform critiques—however well-intentioned—upon any part of the Church system were seen as a threat to the good ordering of God’s Church in all its members. To insist, as the Spiritual Franciscans did, that a pope was powerless to reorganize the workings of a religious order was to question the voice of God expressed through his vicar, the Bishop of Rome, Successor of Peter.
 
This is not to say that the Church of the late medieval era was delusional or naïve. The Council of Constance was certainly aware of the imperfections of the Church, and by 1418 it had removed three men sparring for the papal throne, elected and installed Pope Martin V, and left instructions for periodic [five or ten year] councils to continue the reform of the Church in such matters as Church Law, sacraments, conduct of the clergy, etc. Martin V was a competent pope, certainly an improvement over the previous fifty years. But he saw the office of the papacy in the pre-Constance mold, as the supreme expression of Christ’s power, beholden to none, not even the wishes of the Council of Constance. [In fact, the concept of a council having power over a pope, “conciliarism,” was condemned at future councils, notably Vatican I in 1870.]
 
Before we move on, Constance functioned with the wind at its back, so to speak. In terms of its ecclesiastical self-consciousness, it was the only game in town. Muslims were external infidels to be converted or exterminated. The Eastern Orthodox Church, so it was believed, would “come home” in its suitable time. Catholic dissidents were to be disciplined. From a spiritual-psychological vantage point, the Council of Constance was the last Council to enjoy such self-confidence.
 
LOSING ITS NERVE?
 
The most drastic challenge to the nature and definition of the Church was the Protestant Reformation, because at its heart the very relationship of God and humanity was under question to a degree that Catholicism had never faced before. Was the Catholic Church the sole true mediator of God’s will, or did the believer receive the gift of salvation directly through the words of the Sacred Scripture, or sola scriptura [“by scripture alone.”]  My sense is that Luther would not have articulated his impact in quite this way, nor did he ever advocate for the demolition of the Church. In many ways it is fair to say that Luther did not so much start a church as awaken personal freedom of faith. His definition of reform was the removal from institutional church-hood   laws and practices lacking, in his view, clear biblical basis. The sale of indulgences had been the last straw for the monk. Salvation could not be earned by good works or purchased with money. Salvation was belief in God’s Word mediated through the Sacred Scriptures.
 
Consequently, Catholic councils after 1517 would have to question their souls, their identities, the very order of the spiritual universe. New councils would be required to define, defend, and evangelize their position in the plan of God’s salvation, a challenging theological venture for a church not accustomed to doing this.
 
The Council of Trent was first on the psychiatrist’s couch, so to speak. [See my review of Trent: What Happened at the Council (2013) by John O’Malley]. Trent, while jarred by the happenings of the past thirty years, had not totally lost its inner bearings. There was hope in the planning days of Trent that Catholics and Protestants might debate concerns of reformers, but by the time Trent was summoned in 1545 the Protestant reform was already broken into multiple directions too numerous for Catholic bishops to address.
 
Consequently, Trent was faced with a new truth—an admission that it could not fix the Body of Christ, at least not in its own time. To its credit, this Council turned its energies to what it could manage, internal reform of the Catholic Church to win back the loyalties of other Christian communities, such as by insisting that bishops live in their assigned dioceses and that seminaries be established for better educated priests. The Council assumed the traditional hierarchy of authority, that the Catholic Church spoke exclusively for the will of God and recognized ultimate papal authority. The Council did satisfactory work in advising Pope Pius V on matters of Catholic reform; the Tridentine Missal for Mass was promulgated by Pius V in 1570 and remained in use till the mid-1960’s. But the Church would now have to live with the stigma of being a broken family.
 
FULL BLOWN PANIC DISORDER
 
Trent, at least, could console itself with the thought that its issues were religious. The next council, Vatican I in 1869, was faced with a more frightening prospect, the insignificance of alienation from the world at large. The centuries after Trent were times of momentous change in every aspect of human life across the planet—from science to learning to politics to philosophy. The philosopher Rene Descartes [1596-1650] turned human understanding upside down with his famous maxim, Cogito, ergo sum. [“I think, therefore I am.”] In a lengthy biography in the Encyclopedia Britanica Descartes is described as the father of modern philosophy in the sense that he prioritized human experience over medieval objective reality, including religious dogma. In this sense he is more influential than Luther, given that even today we live and act by our own interpretation of the world around us, more often than not.
 
After Descartes much of the Western World rebooted to engage subjective human experience as a primary philosophical source, no longer religion, as the measure of lived reality. In Europe, for example, the principle cuius regio, regius religio became an accepted maxim: the king’s religion was the realm’s religion. The American colonies took Descartes even further, forming a government based upon democratic principles, free elections, and personal religious choice of conscience as opposed to the idea of an established religion. [American practice of freedom of conscience influenced much later Vatican II discussion.] Politically, after the French Revolution [1789] strong independent nations formed throughout Europe. The nationalist surge even reached Italy in the 1800’s, a movement known as the Risorgimento, which reached to the walls of Vatican City itself. Pope Pius IX [r. 1846-1878] perceived the changing world as a threat to the Church and its teaching authority, indeed its very place in the world. To strengthen a besieged Church against the modern world, he convoked Vatican I [1869-1870]. The first and primary work of this Council was the proclamation of the doctrine of papal infallibility, the ultimate expression of ecclesiastical authority. 
 
Consider that since the Council of Trent the modern era had truly begun: Galileo, van Leeuwenhoek [microscope], Voltaire, Locke, Marx, Darwin, Napoleon, to name just a few of the new influences of the era. Self-determination—by benign rule or democracy—shaped much of the civilized world. History and archaeology of no denominational stance addressed the composition and meaning of the Bible.
 
Psychologically speaking, everything about Vatican I bore a sense of desperation and worry. Prior to Vatican I, in 1864 Pius IX issued The Syllabus of Errors, which included many condemnations that today seem both unreasonable and extraordinarily impossible to enforce. Essentially, Pius condemned modernity. Point eighty, for example, condemns this proposition: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.” Pius, in condemning this proposition, is embracing the dream that history can be stopped in its tracks. In his defense, Pius IX could from his chambers hear firing of real canons, not just philosophical ones. Vatican I would take place in the teeth of the Franco-Prussian War which had spilled into Italy, already in turmoil with the Risorgimento.
 
What is a psychiatrist to do with a patient who denies the inevitable? A mild reaction is withdrawal: stay indoors, close the shutters. Not for nothing did Pius IX coin the phrase “Prisoner of the Vatican” to describe the new position of the pope as he perceived it. However, not every Catholic feared modernity and a sizable number embraced it. St. John Newman converted to Catholicism precisely by the new study of ancient historical writings. As a rule of thumb, the attitude of the Church toward Pius IX’s Vatican I was mixed; the closer one resided to Italy or identified with the pope’s assessment of the times, the more likely one was to support the declaration of infallibility or full papal authority. The further from Rome, the passion was less. In fact, one might say that many in the Church assumed the pope already enjoyed the general principles of infallibility. i.e., the authority from God to speak with doctrinal force on matters of faith and morals. In fact, Pius had already acted infallibly in 1854 when he declared the Immaculate Conception a doctrine of the Church. [The only other exercise of infallibility occurred in 1950, when Pope Pius XII declared the Assumption of the Virgin Mary a doctrine of the Church.]
 
No one at Vatican I took issue with honoring the Virgin Mary as Pius IX had done fifteen years earlier, but a fair number wondered if the declaration of infallibility itself might not be prudent, at least at this time. There were reservations among Catholic bishops and thinkers who wrote and expressed theological concerns about the proposal, including Lord Acton of England, who famously wrote, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Historically, Lord Acton’s caution about power was not idle speculation. Twentieth-century Catholic theologians cautioned against “creeping infallibility,” that everything a pope said was ipso facto binding. [Consider Pope Francis’ recent statement on blessing same sex couples and the kerfuffle it has set off.] There was sympathy, too, for the position that a solemn declaration of infallibility would cement the longstanding misunderstanding over the sources of Revelation; Catholicism on the one hand with its dual Scripture-Tradition belief on the one hand, and the classical Protestant “Scripture alone” position on the other. Catholics who strongly supported infallibility were called “ultramontanists, i.e., “on the other side of the mountains, the Alps, Rome.” You still see the term used today, in a broad sense.
 
Vatican I began in September 1869 and was the first Council ever held at the basilica of St. Peter, as the church was not completed during the Council of Trent. Previous Councils, when held in Rome, took place at St. John on the Lateran Hill. Various sources indicate that opponents of infallibility had their say, but numerically their numbers were a minority, and some left the Council before a final vote was held on the infallibility question. As it turned out, only two bishops voted against the proposal, one of them being the bishop of Little Rock, Arkansas, who returned home to serve his diocese until 1907. Because of warfare in the city of Rome, the bishops returned home, but the Council was never reconvened, and it was not formally closed until Pope John XXIII declared it closed a century later, on the eve of Vatican II. See my review of What Happened at Vatican One here.
 
Vatican II would be the third post-Reformation Council, and we will look closely at its document on the Church, Lumen Gentium, to compare the self-understanding of the 1962 Church vis-à-vis the generations that met in 1545 and 1869. In many ways, Vatican II inherited “the best and the worst of times.” What medicines would it prescribe?