One of the issues more frequently ducked when dealing with the Second Vatican Council is the role played by Venerable Pius XII in paving the way for it to be convened during the pontificate of his successor, John XXIII.
In order to contribute bridging this gap the Rome-based “Comitato Papa Pacelli – Associazione Pio XII”, last Wednesday evening, November 23rd, held the symposium “On the way to the Second Vatican Council: preparation under Pius XII” in the Istituto Maria SS.ma Bambina in Rome, adjacent to St Peter’s Square.
The proceedings, preceded by a short prayer at the tomb of the Venerable Pontiff in the Vatican Grottoes, were presided over by H.E. Cardinal Walter Brandmüller and saw the participation of three speakers, namely three professors, such as Father Peter Gumpel, S.J., Alexandra von Teuffenbach and Don Nicola Bux, moderated by a canon lawyer of the Rota Romana, Emilio Artiglieri, who is also the secretary and co-ordinator of the Comitato Papa Pacelli.
The three speakers addressed the complex and somewhat intriguing subject according to the respective spheres of competence, Father Gump in his capacity as postulator of the Pope’s beatification cause and professor von Teuffenbach as historian specialising in Pius XII and his historical vicissitudes.
Renowned theologian and consultor to the Vatican for the Papal liturgical celebrations Don Nicola Bux, who is also as a prolific and acclaimed author of a number of books as well as co-founder of the above Comitato, addressed an all the more interesting issue: to show the continuity of Vatican II in its official documents with the magisterium of Pius XII, especially in the liturgical realm, against the so called “hermeneutics of rupture”.
This is upheld by those who are bent on dividing the Church between two supposedly incompatible phases: pre- and post-Vatican II, or Pius against John, to put it in another way.
To duly fathom the genesis of Vatican II and aptly assess Pius XII essential contribution to its accomplishment, father Gumpel claims we have to go as far back as Vatican I, a council that remained unfinished due to the Piedmontese conquest of Rome in 1870.
Therefore the successors of Pius IX knew that a follow-up to Vatican I was to have been convened at some stage, but probably Leo XIII, Pius X e Benedict XV did not think the time was ripe for such initiative.
But Pius XI and most notably Pius XII paid much more attention to the issue, up to the point that the latter secretly started to plan what was needed for the Council in terms of setting up of commissions, agenda and projects, including preparatory documents as a base for discussion. But ultimately this spade work ground to a halt.
Why?
According to father Gumpel, it’s highly likely that Pius XII came to realise that the moral rubble in the aftermath of World War two was more serious than the material one and deemed it unwise for the bishops to gather in Rome while leaving their flocks without their guidance in such a predicament.
As recalled by professor von Teuffenbach, who did not fail to decry the strange curtain of silence with regard to the Vatican II preparations under Pius XII, the idea of the Council had been mooted by Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini, the then archbishop of Palermo, first to Pius XII and then to his successor, John XXIII, with the latter finally acceding to the cardinal’s request and officially opening its proceedings on October 11th, 1962.
Interestingly, this opening was taking place exactly four years after the funeral of Pius XII, who died on October 9th, 1958. Now, four years in the history of the Church are the equivalent of an eyelid beat and such a short time span in anticipation of the Council might well indicate that John XXIII was somehow aware that the preparatory work needed not start from scratch, since it had already been done to a good extent by his predecessor.
But most of all, professor von Teuffenbach underlined, if we look at the quotations from Pius XII magisterium in the Council’s documents, we find out that their number is second only to those from the Scriptures. The only and obvious conclusion, therefore, is that Vatican II simply could not have been possible with the theological, doctrinal and organizational contribution of Pius XII.
According to don Nicola Bux, no less than 180 explicit references to his magisterium are to be found in the documents of Vatican II, e.g. Lumen Gentium, 31; Gaudium et Spes, 25; Dei Verbum, 8; Apostolicam Actuositatem, 31; Ad Gentes, 22, just to name the more relevant ones quantity-wise.
Moreover, this continuity between his pontificate and the documents of Vatican II could not be more evident than in the realm of liturgy. Pius XII was in fact especially sensitive to the liturgy, as shown in his wonderful Encyclical Mediator Dei, which reasserted and confirmed the guidelines of Catholic worship to be also amply found in Vatican II Sacrosanctum Concilium.
These are the very guidelines don Bux sees as essential also for a correct interpretation and application of subsequent reforms under the “hermeneutics of continuity” so steadfastly upheld by Benedict XVI. In particular, don Bux pointed out, in his introduction to Mediator Dei already in 1947 Pius XII made it clear that “tradition is necessary, and innovation is ineluctable - both are in the nature of the ecclesial body as well as of the human body” and therefore “it makes no sense to be extreme innovator or traditionalist”.
Rather, Pius XII suggests, the two poles in this confrontation should meet each other and face off without prejudice and with great charity.
Alas, what Pius XII was not able to implement, don Bux regretted, was a “codex iuris liturgici”, a liturgical code. It might have been contemplated in the preparatory documents drafted by the commissions under Pius XII, but their texts were sidelined after a certain anti-Roman ideology had managed to creep into the Council organisation and thus oppose anything previously written and/or produced in the eternal city.
Had this code been in place, don Bux noted, perhaps the liturgical abuses in the wake of Vatican II might have not taken place. But anyway, as proclaimed by an old dictum, it’s never too late.