The Council as it ought to have been

Until now apologists have contrasted the Council with the postconciliar period, to condemn the second which allegedly betrayed the spirit of the first. They have denounced the “media Council” which supposedly distorted the true Council. They have pilloried the “para-Council” which is said to have obscured the brilliant insights offered by Vatican II.

From now on we can compare the Council as it was with the one it ought to have been. Indeed, the magazine Courrier de Rome is starting to publish in French translation the schemas that had been carefully composed by the Preparatory Commission of the Council and were ruthlessly discarded at the end of the first session, on December 6, 1962. The Council Fathers were thus deprived of these preparatory works, which filled no less than 16 volumes with the schemas of 54 decrees and 15 dogmatic constitutions, amounting to more than 2,000 pages in all.

The first volume published by Courrier de Rome, entitled Chastity, Virginity, Marriage, Family, which was composed by the Theological Commission, with Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani presiding, is already very instructive, especially if we compare it to the Instrumentum laboris or working document that is supposed to serve as the connecting thread of the Synod on the Family next October. In the one, we find clear, definite, precise expression; in the other, a vague, ambiguous, elastic compromise text.

On the one hand, 24 pages of Scriptural, Patristic and Magisterial references; on the other, only one page of conciliar and postconciliar references, as though the Church were only 50 years old and what is preconciliar has become antediluvian!

Father Alain Lorans

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