Congar, Architect of the Unam Sanctam Alberto Melloni

Louvain Studies 29 (2004) 222-238

A Dominican and a reformer, a Cardinal and a persecuted man, a theologian and a man of resistance, a strategist and a candid Catholic, master and friar, preacher and diarist – Father Yves Congar, one of the leading figures in twentieth-century Catholic theology, easily lends himself to these apparently paradoxical semantic binaries. Indeed, they could also be formulated as oxymorons of great interest from the point of view of historiography because Congar has been all these things simultane- ously. I say this forestalling what should be a conclusion – that he derived from this his key of interpretation for the Church. This was a church which, over the course of his long life (he was born in Sedan on 8 April 1904 and died in Paris on 22 June 1995) had absorbed all the contra- dictions of its catholicity and learned to practice a new and different form of ecclesial life. In fact, if there is a single theme running through Congar’s intellectual development, it is indeed the Church. As testimony to this fact, we have a huge body of work available for which would-be definitive bibliographies are often undermined by the discovery of a new conference address or a forgotten article.1 At the centre of his theological corpus, there is a visible and scientific interest in and a lifetime of experience about the Church.

Knowing the Church

The Church to which Congar consecrated his intellectual search was a Church which, when he was still only a child, was unleashing all

1. Bibliographical references in Pietro Quattrocchi, “Bibliographie générale du Père Yves Congar,” in Jean-Pierre Jossua, Le Père Congar: la théologie au service du peuple de Dieu, Chrétiens de tous les temps, 20 (Paris: Cerf, 1967) 242-246; see also Aidan Nichols, “An Yves Congar Biography: 1967-1987,” Angelicum 66 (1989) 428- 466; a panorama of recent dissertations in Joseph Famerée, Histoire et Église: L’ecclésiologie du père Congar de “Chrétiens désunis” à l’annonce du Concile (1937-1959) (Louvain-la- Neuve: UCL, 1991) 472-475. CONGAR, ARCHITECT OF THE UNAM SANCTAM 223 its institutional might in the struggle against “modernizing forces,” a struggle that engaged the pontiff himself 2 in a ghost-hunt where the question of the relationship between Catholicism and modernity remained unanswered. Yet that ghost-hunt ended up frustrating the intellectual vivacity of Catholicism with devastating consequences that spread throughout the rest of the twentieth century – from the passivity shown toward totalitarian systems onward – of which we still have not taken even a provisional inventory. This was the same Church which, when Congar died after receiving his red hat in articulo mortis, was still trying to find a balance between the striking gestures of openness administered by John Paul II and a doctrinal policy that sought to discipline theology, thereby restoring a diffidence toward research which at times seems to have imbued the walls of the former Holy Office to a greater extent than they could be sanitized by the intelligence of its most enlightened dwellers.3 Within this vast and slow Church, Congar moved like an indefati- gable explorer. A number of very important studies undertaken in the last twenty years have already highlighted how his way of historicizing problems represented the cornerstone of his thought,4 which was in fact the plan he intended to pursue, as he explained in the foreword to his work Chrétiens désunis, an historical investigation of ecclesiological development which, thanks to the reemergence of a plurality of contra- dictory ecclesiological forms and conceptions of the Christian past,5 would allow a process of rethinking capable of reintroducing the Roman Catholic Church into the two processes from which it had cut itself off. The first was the process of church unity, which was Congar’s real passion and a branch of theology that owes almost everything to him. The second was the process of secular modernity, the hic sunt leones of a Catholicism which, in Congar’s view, by using condemnation as its weapon, had ended up becoming a mere fortress of self-referential ecclesiastical thinking.6

2. Gianni La Bella (ed.), Pio X e il suo tempo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003). 3. See Giuseppe Ruggieri, “La politica dottrinale della curia romana nel postcon- cilio,” Cristianesimo nella storia 21 (2000) 103-131. 4. Famerée, Histoire et Église; Jean-Pierre Jossua, “Signification théologique de quelques retours sur le passé dans l’œuvre d’Yves Congar,” Cardinal Yves Congar (1904- 1995), ed. André Vauchez (Paris: Cerf, 1999) 93-103. 5. Andrea Galeano, “La Ecclesiologia de Yves Congar,” Franciscanum 22 (1980) 139-149. 6. Joseph Famerée, “L’ecclésiologie du Père Yves Congar: Essai de synthèse cri- tique,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologique 76 (1992) 377-419. 224 ALBERTO MELLONI

This was the goal to which he dedicated his work. Through the sequence of his major books – Chrétiens désunis (1937), Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Église (1950), Jalons pour un théologie du laïcat (1953), Vaste Monde, ma paroisse (1959), La Tradition et les traditions (1960- 1963), Esquisses du mystère de l’Église (1953), L’Église de saint Augustin à l’époque moderne (1970), Je crois en l’Esprit saint (1979-1980) – we can identify the landmarks that are well-known to a specialist audience and of which Congar himself, as an autobiographical writer, was well aware. Indeed, when revisiting his theological path,7 when speaking about his education8 and when re-examining his entire life (something he did extensively during an interview with Jean Puyo in the mid-seventies),9 Congar showed that he was conscious of what he had been fighting for and his underlying awareness that he owed his success to two characteristics of his ecclesiology.

Knowing History, Knowing through History

The first of these characteristics was his ability to imbibe data – records and ideas, references and bibliographies, documents and sources. This was true at the beginning of his experience when reading Le mys- tère de l’Église by Père H. Clérissac and made him appreciate the ‘poetic’ side of Catholicism.10 Congar cultivated this aspect when he started attending the Insti- tut Catholique in 1925 (where Jacques Maritain had given him the first traditio by Thomas Aquinas) and again, in December 1926 at Le Saul- choir in Tournai (where he met Marie-Dominique Chenu). It was this confrère who introduced Congar into one of the two major intellectual

7. See “Appels et cheminements 1929-1963,” Cardinal Yves Congar, O.P.: écrits réformateurs, ed. Jean-Pierre Jossua (Paris: Cerf, 1995) 263-304. 8. On his youth, see “Enfance ardennaise,” La Grive (1965) October-December 14-16. “Enfance sedanaise 1904-1919,” Le Pays sedanais (1978), n. 5, 27-31; also “Trois années à la Faculté de philosophie,” Le livre du centenaire 1875-1975 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1975) 245-258; the relation with the Maritain circle in Meudon, “Souvenirs sur Jacques Maritain,” Notes et documents de l’Institut Jacques Maritain (1962) April-June, 5-7. 9. Yves Congar, Une vie pour la vérité, Jean Puyo interroge le Père Congar (Paris: Centurion, 1975). See also Yves Congar, Une passion: l’unité: Réflexions et souvenirs 1929- 1973, Foi vivante, 156 (Paris: Cerf, 1974); Le concile de Vatican II: son Église peuple de Dieu et corps du Christ, Théologie Historique, 71 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984); Entretiens d’automne, 2nd ed. (Paris: Cerf, 1987); and “D’une ecclésiologie en gestation à Lumen Gentium chap. I et II,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 18 (1971) 366-377. 10. Congar, Une vie pour la vérité, 74. CONGAR, ARCHITECT OF THE UNAM SANCTAM 225

‘dynasties’ of French theology, described by Émile Poulat as divided and irreconcilable. One started from Blondel and his persistent diffidence toward the historical-critical approach and ended up with de Lubac’s lukewarm relationship with the reformism of the Second Vatican Council. The other characteristic originated from the research done by Loisy, went through Chenu (who saw in the early twentieth- century crisis just one of the many final crises of a baroque theological system) – and culminated precisely in the critical passionalité and loyalty to the conciliar reforms put forward by Congar. Chenu did nothing to stifle Congar’s research abilities; on the contrary, he bol- stered them. Actually, shortly after their meeting, Congar (meditating upon the seventeenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, on 25 July 1930), is led to enrich with an intimate persuasion (inspired by the spiritual- ity of Le Sacrifice du Chef by E. Masure) the flurry of intellectual activ- ities sparked off by Chenu. In the teaching of the elder brother (Chenu explained to his young students, for one hour a week, the meaning of Faith & Order and of the ecumenical Assembly of Lausanne), he discovered an ecumenical vocation. Congar continued to pursue a diachronic study that knew no boundaries. As he had learned from an old article written by Father M.-B. Schwalm which appeared in the 1908 edition of the Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques, entitled “Les deux théologies: la scholastique et la positive,” Congar discovered the power of historical bipartition and diachronic distinction. Listening to the ideas of Gabriel Le Bras, Étienne Gilson, and the Protestant theologian André Junot in Paris in 1931, discussions with his contacts among Russian émigrés, developing his relationship with Abbé Gratieux, who brought the mem- ory of Chomiakov to the West, cultivating his friendship with Father Lambert Beauduin at the time when the project for an ecumenical monastery was taking shape – all these experiences laid the foundations for a theological approach which, once the garnering of ideas had been completed, set forth by marking out the distance between unionism and ecumenism. This assimilating capability of Congar’s ecclesiology, however, would not have achieved the same effect had it not been matched by another factor, that is, his ability to grasp “les problèmes” just as they are. And he did this until, in 1935, the inquiry undertaken by La Vie intellectuelle on “les raisons actuelles de l’incroyance”11 opened a revealing rift between

11. See Giuseppe Alberigo, “Réforme et unité de l’Église,” Cardinal Yves Congar (1904-1995), 9-26. 226 ALBERTO MELLONI apostolicism and ecumenism, or, to express it in other terms, between reform and unity in the Church. This experience of historical time as the conveyor of evangelical calls – another typical theme taken up by Chenu – provided impetus to Congar’s characteristic qualitative conception of Catholicity, because he was a firm upholder of the principle which stated that where contem- porary society was spreading the human dimension in the different domains of creation, the Church as a universe transfigured by the Grace of God, was bound to respond with “une croissance de l’Église, une incorporation de la foi, une humanisation de Dieu.”12

Persecution

These two characteristics of Congar’s thinking and experience also constitute the soul of the Unam Sanctam series and of its introduction in 1937: the breathtaking 403 pages of Chrétiens désunis: Principes d’un “œcuménisme” catholique, which he had first floated the previous year in his preaching at Montmartre. However, they are also at the root of a persecution on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities which would pursue Congar up to the eve of Vatican II and indeed, if we consider the delay in receiving his red hat, which everyone thought imminent between the end of the Council and the beginning of the nineteen seventies, continued, albeit less trenchantly, almost until the time of his death, when Pope John Paul decided to make him a Cardinal anyway. Indeed, the Unam Sanctam series itself sparked off suspicions,13 of which Congar was well aware, and caused him to seek ecclesiastical protection. As was shown by the Chenu case, which had erupted in the thick of World War II, this ecclesiastical protection was both urgent and necessary.14 Owing to the chaos of war, however, and the fact that he was captured by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp, the French Dominican was ‘able’ to avoid accusation on account of his writings. The

12. Joseph Famerée, “Formation et ecclésiologie du ‘premier’ Congar,” Cardinal Yves Congar (1904-1995), 51-70, p. 61. 13. See Étienne Fouilloux, Les catholiques et l’unité chrétienne du XIXe au XXe siècle: Itinéraires européens d’expression française (Paris: Centurion, 1982). 14. The full story in Giuseppe Alberigo, “Introduction,” in Marie-Dominique Chenu, Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir [1937] (Paris: Cerf, 1985) 9-35; see further R. Guelluy, “Les antécédents de l’encyclique ‘Humani Generis’ dans les sanctions romaines de 1942: Chenu, Charlier, Draguet,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 81 (1986) 421-497. CONGAR, ARCHITECT OF THE UNAM SANCTAM 227 accusation nevertheless did arrive after he was freed from a Nazi prison camp and, in the aftermath of French Liberation, this was the object to which he was abruptly recalled. As a public persona, Congar did not grant too much publicity to this persecution. What condemnation ultimately meant, in fact, was silence on his part. But his intellectual rigor was such that the punishment did not lead to the self-imposed censure which the persecution actually sought to induce. It was only in private, in a series of diaries published for the preconciliar period15 and which were connected to Vatican II,16 that Congar explained the details and fine points of his vicissitudes,17 which I think deserve our attention. If Congar’s ‘public’ ecclesiology – the one that adopts and respects the rules of scientific investigation and the procedures of ecclesiastic censure – ultimately rests upon the characteristics I put forward earlier, then this experience gave him the opportunity to study an ecclesiology at work in corpore vili (his own, that is…). In fact, Congar did not suffer suspicion and persecution in an intimistic way, but rather as an exploration of the ecclesiastical machine. He responded to it because he hoped that Rome would revoke the distressing prohibition it had imposed on the publication of the second edition of Chrétiens désunis,18 and he also hoped it would loosen the brakes it had applied on the publication of Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Église. To achieve these objectives, Congar, already over forty years old, had to face the Roman world for the first time,19 a world where dissim- ulation was an art, where the identification of adversaries was a dilemma that could be resolved only once the outcome of certain issues had been determined in advance by relationships of power. Congar confronted this

15. A fragment was published by Congar himself in 1977, “La question des observateurs catholiques à la conférence d’Amsterdam, 1948,” Die Einheit der Kirche: Dimensionen ihrer Heiligkeit, Katholizität und Apostolizität: Festgabe Peter Meinhold zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. L. Hein (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1977) 242-254, pp. 241-246; the scene is described by Fouilloux, Les catholiques, 781-798. 16. Yves Congar, Mon Journal du Concile, ed. Éric Mahieu, 2 vols. (Paris: Cerf, 2002). Congar kept it unpublished, although the chronicle Le Concile au jour le jour, 4 vols. (Paris: Cerf, 1963-1966), is a faithful mirror of its contents; I have discussed the reason for such a choice in my paper, “Yves Congar à Vatican II: Hypothèses et pistes de recherche,” Cardinal Yves Congar (1904-1995), 117-164. 17. A general list in Étienne Fouilloux, “Congar, témoin de l’Église de son temps (1930-1960),” Cardinal Yves Congar (1904-1995), 71-91, pp. 77-78. 18. On 22 March 1940 Cordovani criticized him in L’Osservatore Romano, without the explicit mention of the author. 19. With different results, even if starting from a phrase from “Loyauté et correc- tion fraternelle,” Problèmes de l’œcuménisme (Paris: Cerf, 1937) I: 4-5, see the opposite thesis of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Der antirömische Affekt (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1974). 228 ALBERTO MELLONI world with a degree of candor, longing to explain his positions painstak- ingly even to those who wanted just that in order to condemn him. The Dominican spoke freely because he was convinced – theologically convinced – that renouncing freedom was as serious as taking it away. And without freedom, he argued, the Church becomes ‘totalitarian’ and its bodies a ‘Gestapo’, using these very terms on more than one occasion. Congar did not set out from a prejudice or a complex: he made distinctions and was ready to credit his interlocutors – including those from the superior-general’s curia and the de curia Dominicans, as well as high-ranking Roman officials such as Montini, Pizzardo and Ottaviani. But the judgment he reached on them was severe in terms of his assess- ment of their way of thinking. He did not allow himself to be seduced by the learned readings of Montini, he did not spare Pizzardo’s intellectual vacuity from the fiercest epithets, and he did not let himself be over- whelmed by the Traseverine courteousness Ottaviani showed towards the contents of the Cardinal’s “pieux et pissotants” writings.20 Nevertheless, what the ecclesiologist derived from these meetings and the dramatic developments that ensued (Congar was led to the brink of suicide by a destructive succession of punitive measures) was a judgment that was neither ecclesiastical nor related to ecclesiastical policy, but an ecclesiological judgment. He was not satisfied with classi- fying people along the spectrum of openness or closure, but he tried to get to the systemic heart of the problem, without claiming for himself any immunities of a ‘constitutional’ nature, though he definitely deserved them. Instead, he strove to understand how emptiness of character, intellectual mediocrity and unwitting stupidity are a requirement of the system, regardless of individual intentions or approaches. Congar did not suffer from (or enjoy) the narcissism of the misun- derstood theologian. He, who in the first footnote of Chrétiens désunis, had outlined plans for a great “Catholic Philocalia” within an ecumenical setting, refused to be mistaken for a heretic. Wounded in his need “to love and to be loved,”21 he highlighted the fact that the development of the injustice that was attacking him had the characteristics of a system that engulfs, moulds and transcends individual shortcomings, however serious and conspicuous these might be. He had expressed his views on these shortcomings on various occasions in extreme tones, at

20. Yves Congar, Journal d’un théologien 1946-1956, introd. and ed. Étienne Fouilloux (Paris: Cerf, 2000) 251, Congar refers to the documents published in La Documentation catholique, 7 February 1952, col. 130-50; 7 March, col. 263-315; 21 March 1952, col. 327-378. 21. Journal d’un théologien, 419, 428. CONGAR, ARCHITECT OF THE UNAM SANCTAM 229 times (as in the case of Jesuits) using evidence that wasn’t in the least bit incontrovertible.22 As he would do throughout his life as a theologian and a believer, Congar trusted in the practice of truth – even when used as a means to describe the distortions of the Church. And he believed that if one con- ducted an analysis by adhering to the truth and with linguistic rigor, then one soon would find oneself surrounded by a way of thinking that was “totalitaire et paternaliste.”23 He reached this diagnosis at a time when he perceived action by Rome as being indicative of a will to bend the Church in France “en quête de liberté,”24 as well as an implicit plan to reduce the Domini- cans to a status of dependence, based on the judicial model govern- ing the congregations of priests, in contemptuous disregard of the vocation of loyal service to the truth peculiar to the Dominican order.25 This judgment took shape over the years starting with the Chenu case. The inclusion in the Index of forbidden books of an introduction to the theological method by the Master of the Saulchoir is the arche- type of a whole period of suspicion.26 The authors of the Index were a “coterie misérable de gens médiocres, ignorants et sans caractère,”27 who nevertheless had the Congregation of seminaries acting as their agent. Congar, however, believed that the Holy Office28 was the immobile driving force behind this attitude and he blamed the Office not just for its methods but also for its substance – since this is where personal or single school-based theses were being passed off as unquestionable doctrine. Congar did not attack Pope Pius XII, but argued that in the Supreme Congregation, whose Prefect, as everyone knows, was the Pope, “il y a toujours un acte initial arbitraire, parfois faux et mensonger, que le système empêche

22. Fouilloux, “Présentation générale,” Journal d’un théologien, 9-18. 23. Journal d’un théologien, 246, 12 February 1954. 24. Étienne Fouilloux, Une Église en quête de liberté: La pensée catholique française entre modernisme et Vatican II (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1998); Au cœur du XXe siècle religieux (Paris: Éditions Ouvrières, 1993). 25. Jossua, “Signification théologique de quelques retours sur le passé dans l’œuvre d’Yves Congar.” 26. See Alberigo, “Introduction,” in Chenu, Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir, 9-35. 27. Journal d’un théologien, 54. 28. It is the point of a paper written by P. Féret, and almost quoted by Car- dinal Frings on 8 November 1963, see G. Alberigo & J. Komonchak (eds.), The His- tory of Vatican II, vol. III (Leuven: Peeters, 2001); the statement of Cardinal Frings in Acta Synodalia Concilii œcumenici Vaticani II, Rome, 1966, pars II, vol. 4, 616- 18. 230 ALBERTO MELLONI qu’on remette jamais en question, et qui déclenche en chaîne une série d’ennuis et de stupidités.”29

A régime crétin

On closer inspection, this denunciation was still not fully developed and would be further elaborated in due course. For Congar was not claiming his own individual rights – not even the right to disobey – which he would eventually start to examine in more depth in the early nineteen eighties following in the footsteps of Tierney’s studies.30 The cutting edge of his argument was based on something entirely different and wholly ecclesiological: did this way of exercising authority represent ‘the’ truth of the Church? Congar was persuaded that the whole accusation machinery set up to strike at him bore the marks of a misapprehension whereby a school-based theology,31 was setting itself up as a magisterium because of its inability to deal with les problèmes. He thus convinced himself that the basis of the accusation levelled against him was that he had thought and written about something which he had instead been expected to accept in servile silence.32 To Congar, this was no isolated episode but the expression of a regime defined as “policier, autocratique, totalitaire, crétin.”33 In Congar’s view, there were at least three factors working against truth, which he derived from his experience as a scholar and from his

29. In Journal d’un théologien, Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Église menacée, février 1952, 221. 30. “Le droit au désaccord, in L’Année canonique (1981),” Cardinal Yves Congar, O.P.: Écrits réformateurs, 157-167. 31. According to Congar, his enemies are simply questioning his criticism of their thesis: “Le tragique de la situation actuelle et de la façon dont s’exerce concrètement le magistère ordinaire romain, c’est que ce magistère fait sans cesse de la théologie et exprime, avec l’autorité du magistère catholique, des positions d’école théologique,” Jour- nal d’un théologien, Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Église menacée, 23 October 1952, 221. 32. Congar – as he realized on 8 February 1954 – was accused for his writings on the priests of the Mission de Paris: “En réalité, ce qu’on a écrit est juste et vrai, mais il aurait fallu ne rien écrire. Régime invraisemblable: policier, autocratique, totalitaire, crétin. Car ce qui me frappe le plus, c’est le crétinisme, l’invraisemblable indigence en intelligence, en caractère. Le système a fabriqué des serviteurs à son image. C’est d’une pauvreté!,” Journal d’un théologien, La crise de 1954, 8 February 1954, 233. Two years later he defines Pius XII’s government as a “un régime paternaliste,” which proposes to reduce theologians “à commenter ses discours et à n’avoir surtout pas la velléité de penser quelque chose, d’entreprendre quelque chose en dehors de ce commentaire,” Journal d’un théologien, Lettre à sa Mère,10 September 1956, 425. 33. “Totalitarian” occurs six times in Journal d’un théologien (and never in the journal of Vatican II…); twelve times Congar calls the Holy Office “Gestapo,” and he defines his counterparts as “crétin” (three times) and “nullité” (twice). CONGAR, ARCHITECT OF THE UNAM SANCTAM 231 direct observation: the first a theological factor, the second an anthropological one, and the third an ecumenical one. At the theological level, the sore point was represented by Mariol- ogy,34 since the emphasis on limitless devotion was not a requisite of compassion but of an image of tradition which contained a deep-seated “conspiracy against the truth.”35 At the anthropological level, the system was propped up by a con- tempt for the human person which manifested itself partly in the treat- ment meted out to its victims,36 but which, at a deeper level, stemmed from the denial of status to the individual or, more broadly, the denial of experience and history in Christian life.37 At the ecclesiological level, the contrast was produced, on the one hand, by a Catholicism that con- fesses the truth as the fruit of research that, as such, is able to respond to the needs of the human person and to the ecumenical call,38 and on the other, by a system that is satisfied with its own rites and which shel- ters behind a wholly instrumental devotion to the Pope.39

34. See Famerée, “Formation et ecclésiologie du ‘premier’ Congar,” 65-66. 35. Congar knows that his positions are not the very same as the Roman Church, “encore que je les croie absolument catholiques” (Journal d’un théologien, 11 December 1954, 302); he expresses his opposition to certain orientations of the church which constitute “une véritable conspiration contre la vérité.” These orientations have a bearing principally on ecclesiology and Mariology: “Et je dis: Non! Je dis non au nom de l’Évangile et de toute l’histoire d’Israël. Marie n’est pas notre rédemptrice, Marie n’est pas l’Objet de notre culte. Toute l’action des prophètes contre l’association des Baals à Yahvé ou contre la baalisation de Yahvé, vaut ici” (Affaires de Rome, Séjour à Babylone), 11 December 1954, 303. 36. The accusation to a system is not a fruit of an anti-Roman complex at all: it comes from an intellectual analysis on the roots of the episodes he may discern – and the main root is, in Congar’s eyes, anthropological: “l’anthropologie, sinon théorétisée [sic] par les spécialistes, du moins pratiquée de fait, c’est celle du Grand Inquisiteur. Manque d’intérêt à l’homme, de considération de l’homme, de respect de l’homme. [Mon cas présent est ici typique],” Ibid. 37. See Journal d’un théologien, “Mon Témoignage,” 59 with a reference to Chenu’s ideas on modernism. On the statute of human experience in Congar, see Monika-Maria Wolff, Gott und Mensch: Ein Beitrag Yves Congars zum ökumenischen Dialog (Frankfurt: J. Knecht, 1990). 38. The Roman devotion for the Marian Year is a scandal for Congar: “Vérité de tout cela? Néant! Valeur de réponse aux problèmes et aux besoins des hommes, néant! C’est le ronron de la machine, qui tourne doucement sous le signe de la double et unique dévotion au pape et à la Madone,” Journal d’un théologien, Affaires de Rome [Séjour à Babylone], 27 November 1954, 294. 39. Congar notes the difference with a Catholicism where everything is already perfect and ecumenism is simply a matter of a return: “Je suis frappé partout de cet irréalisme d’un système qui a ses thèses et ses rites, ses serviteurs aussi, et qui chante sa chanson sans regarder les choses et les problèmes tels qu’ils sont. Le système est satisfait de ses propres affirmations et de ses propres célébrations,” Journal d’un théologien, Affaires de Rome [Séjour à Babylone], 28 November 1954, 295. 232 ALBERTO MELLONI

What emerges from all this is a real “Appareil tyrannique de Rome,”40 an authority with a thirst for bending everything to its will,41 a system with tentacles which, in Congar’s view, was illustrated by Bernini’s colon- nade in a sort of psychedelic nightmare.42 Yes: a system, or rather, as Con- gar wrote, the Roman system, a system which he believed (was not very generous towards Fourvière’s troubles…) had a perfect lubricant in the Society of Jesus,43 and the Holy Office as its hypophysis.44 His overall judgment on this system – which made him feel close to the main character in Carlo Levi’s novel Christ Stopped at Eboli, an anti-fascist priest sent on internal exile to the village of Eboli in South- ern Italy45 – is expressed in one of the bluntest and most desperate pas- sages in his theological diary. In this passage, he refused the accommo- dating explanations proffered by his confrère Forestier, whom he thought had underestimated the injustice inflicted upon him by “un ensemble de sanctions, qu’on ne m’a jamais fait connaître, portées à l’issue d’un procès auquel je n’ai pas assisté” (a series of sanctions that have never been made manifest and that have culminated in a trial which I have never attended). This is a “régime policier” (policing regime) that moves (with the sever- ity of an executioner pressing on the button of the killing machine) “la sévérité du bourreau qui appuie sur le déclic de l’appareil à tuer,” and from which the victim (has no hope of justice) “ne puis espérer aucune justice.” The reason is easily found: it is a system we are dealing with.46

40. When Congar was being interrogated by Gagnebet in December 1954, he considered and rejected the hypothesis of a passage to another confession: the year after he returns to the question: “Si je ne puis servir Dieu, servir la vérité, qu’en passant outre à certaines dispositions canoniques de l’Appareil tyrannique de Rome?,” Journal d’un théologien, Et Lazarus similiter mala, 13 November 1955, 404. 41. Journal d’un théologien, Lettre à sa Mère,10 September 1956, 426. 42. Journal d’un théologien, Affaires de Rome [Séjour à Babylone], 27 November 1954, 293. 43. Journal d’un théologien, Voyage à Rome avec le Père Féret, 89: “Ce qui frappe ensuite, c’est l’accord parfait de style et d’esprit qu’il y a entre la Compagnie et le système romain de la Curie. Ce système des Congrégations, cet appareil d’autorité et de gouvernement qui est comme la croûte de l’Église vivante, évangélique et pneumatique; pour ce système et cet appareil de la Curie, dans lequel nous ne serons jamais à notre aise, la Compagnie est comme faite sur mesure. Elle en représente l’instrument exactement approprié, le service parfait. Il y a, entre les deux systèmes, une sorte d’accord profond.” 44. Journal d’un théologien, Affaires de Rome [Séjour à Babylone], 27 November 1954, 303. 45. See “Appels et cheminements 1929-1963,” 302. 46. “C’est un système. Le système est dominé par la ‘Suprême Congrégation’ – à laquelle ils ont le front de donner le qualificatif de ‘saint’ (office). C’est un système policier, où la décision policière, ni n’a à donner de raison, ni n’est accessible à quelque mise en question. Elle est sans appel. Qui est atteint par elle est comme versé dans un autre monde, où il n’y a plus ni justice ni miséricorde; où, avec la plus grande bonne foi CONGAR, ARCHITECT OF THE UNAM SANCTAM 233

Congar in the System

Congar would find himself plunged into this ‘central’ system during the preparation and the celebration of Vatican II. In the early years, between 1960 and 1962, he found himself a hostage of the preparatory theological commission,47 working as consultor and with the duty – the intolerable duty – to sit next to Chenu’s persecutor, the “Monophysite fascist” Monsignor Parente… At this stage, Congar could be faithful to the method of safeguarding freedom which he had adopted on other occasions. He did not hold a tactical silence but boldly wrote down everything he was thinking, in the firm belief that the kind of knowledge that he was able to aggregate, as he had done in works such as Le concile et les conciles48 and L’épiscopat et l’Église universelle,49 or that he had produced in essays, even short ones like “Le concile, l’Église et ‘les Autres’,”50 “Pour que l’Église soit Église!,”51 had an objectively reformatory power. From this wholly marginal, subjugated and painful participation in the ‘system’, Congar went on to perform a completely different role once the Council began. If, during the first few weeks, he was more hesitant than others in believing that it was possible to do away with bombastic et en toute candeur, tous les Browne vous piétinent. Ils ne se doutent même pas, n’étant que système, qu’ils marchent sur du vivant. Vérité. Désaccord intellectuel avec le système romain. Découverte (1950-51, puis à Rome, 1954-55) que ses bases textuelles ou historiques sont fabriquées ou truquées, ou gauchies. Etc. Ma philosophie actuelle, coexistant avec un certain ‘absolu’, avec la satisfaction de quelques joies élémentaires, mais aussi avec mon effort spirituel de fidélité à la Foi et à la Croix, est: je suis un type foutu,” Journal d’un théologien, Et Lazarus similiter mala, 433. 47. See Alberto Melloni, “Governi e diplomazie all’annuncio del Vaticano II,” À la veille du Concile Vatican II: Vota et réactions en Europe et dans le catholicisme orien- tal, ed. M. Lamberigts & Cl. Soetens, Instrumenta Theologica, 9 (Leuven: Bibliotheek van de Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid, 1992) 250. 48. Chevetogne 1960; Congar writes “Primauté des premiers conciles œcumé- niques,” Le Concile et les conciles (Paris: Cerf-Chevetogne, 1960) 75-109. 49. Paris 1962; Congar writes the paper “La hiérarchie comme service selon le Nouveau Testament et les documents de la Tradition,” L’Épiscopat et l’Église universelle, ed. Y. Congar & B.-D. Dupuy, Unam Sanctam, 39 (Paris: Cerf, 1962) 67-100; see also “L’ecclésiologie de la Révolution française au Concile du Vatican sous le signe de l’affir- mation de l’autorité,” Revue des Sciences religieuses 2-4 (1960) 77-114, and “The Histor- ical Development of Authority in the Church: Points for Christian Reflection,” Problems of Authority: An Anglo-French Symposium (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1962) 119-156, on authority. In 1961 Congar also published the famous article on the querelle between medicants and seuculars in the thirteenth century, “Aspects ecclésiologiques de la querelle entre Mendiants et Séculiers dans la seconde moitié du XIIIe siècle et le début du XIVe,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 28 (1961) 35-152. 50. Lumen Vitae 45 (1960) 69-92, translated and adapted in German, English and Italian. 51. “Pour que l’Église soit Église!,” Signes du Temps 6 (1960) 9-12. 234 ALBERTO MELLONI draft schemas, once the works started in earnest and after the experience of the Message to the World,52 he started to feel more confident and to collaborate with the German, French and Belgian episcopates. The Dominican theologian believed it was crucial to ensure that the Council’s momentum for change should not be reduced to a simple changeover in the ‘schools’ of thought that were predominant in theology. To Congar, the schemas of documents drafted during the lengthy ‘Roman’ preparations of Vatican II should have been done away with not on the basis that their low-level representative quality had been discovered, but because they were wrong. In this, he had assessed the climate of the Council so skilfully, that when the De fontibus revelationis schema was withdrawn on 22 November 1962, owing to a symptomatic collective blunder, he came to be regarded as both an inspiration and a champion.53 His role, which was destined to grow in relation to all the topics that passed through the doctrinal commission, became particularly important in the De Ecclesia, entrusted to Monsignor Philips after Tromp’s schema had foundered in aula. Congar fought for the Episcopal college to be analogous with the Apostolic college – which, in his view, was the most fertile and promising breakthrough achieved by Vatican II.54 Congar’s prominent role in this commission made him a sought- after conference speaker, though he continued to say the same things he had said to the curia representatives whose job had been to punish him ten years before. He believed that the strength of the Council did not lie

52. Marie-Dominique Chenu, Notes quotidiennes au Concile (Paris: Cerf, 1995) 7- 54 (tr. it. Bologna, 1996). 53. See Fouilloux, “Comment devient-on expert à Vatican II? Le cas du Père Yves Congar,” Le deuxième concile du Vatican (1959-1965): Actes du colloque organisé par l’École française de Rome (Rome 28-30 mai 1986), Collection de l’École française de Rome, 113 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1989) 307-331, pp. 307-308. A different perspective through the Director of “Civiltà Cattolica” (Cogar is with him on 21 November 1962) who writes in his unpublished Journal, p. 84: “P. Congar da noi, la sera, dopo cena, Interessante, tra l’altro, l’affermazione che, secondo lui, si poteva rivedere a fondo lo schema ‘De fontibus’ con risultato soddisfacente per tutti. Quanto allo schema sugli strumenti di comunicazione sociale, pensa che si sia fatta troppo ‘la scolastica’ di questi mezzi.” 54. Mon Journal du Concile, I, 18 October 1962, 119: “Je reçois différentes visites, ce matin, entre autres celle de Mgr Philips. Le cardinal Suenens lui a demandé de repren- dre (compléter et amender), avec le P. Rahner et tel ou tel autre, l’ensemble des textes sur l’Église. Je me demande si le travail n’est pas prématuré, puisque ces textes ne doivent venir en discussion qu’à la seconde session. Je me demande aussi, si, préalablement à cela, il ne faudrait pas poser la question d’un plan et d’un mouvement d’ensemble assumant la totalité des schemata doctrinaux, dans l’esprit d’une synthèse d’allure kérygmatique. Mais je réponds très formellement que je suis prêt à travailler à une telle reprise, avec Rahner, Lécuyer, Lubac.” CONGAR, ARCHITECT OF THE UNAM SANCTAM 235 in opposing the prefects of the congregations with the most enlightened theologians but in revealing the antagonism of the ecclesia toward the curia.55 This line of argument earned Congar recognition from important quarters: on 22 June 1963, the newly elected Paul VI asked for Congar’s opinion of the conciliar works and a few days later the Pope personally praised him in front of Msgr. François Marty, Archbishop of Reims56 and anticipated that he would be among the members of the commission in charge of revising the Codex Juris Canonici …57 The man who had suffered three exiles, however, continued to feel precarious, so much so that he feared he would be excluded from working in the Council because of a trivial news leak to reporters,58 and didn’t let himself get carried away by such recognition. On the contrary, just as he had done during the dark days of condemnation, he tried to draw a theological conclusion from his experience of the conciliar Church which he would subsequently condense in his essays on tradition,59 in Sainte Église,60 and in his scrutiny for Pour une Église servante et pauvre.61 These were the topics of the second conciliar period, and in the fervent climate of that period, by which time he was almost revered,62 Congar never lost sight of the most radical questions to be resolved. While the ecclesiological theme was turning out to be harsh and engag- ing, the theologian was reflecting upon the ecclesiological function of historical delay – “Je crois profondément aux délais, aux étapes neces- saires”63 he wrote in 1963. On the other hand, while the Pope was

55. See the definition of the official who condemned Chenu as “l’homme de la condamnation du P. Chenu, le fasciste, le monophysite,” Mon Journal du Concile, I, July 1960, 7. 56. See Fouilloux, “Comment devient-on expert à Vatican II,” 331 and Mon Jour- nal du Concile, I, 30 May 1963, 383. 57. Mon Journal du Concile, I, 30 May 1963, 383. See the dispatch of the French Embassy at the Holy See, for the announcement of its foundation in March, Archives du Quai d’Orsay, Paris: EU 135/16, 06/1963. 58. Fouilloux, “Comment devient-on expert à Vatican II,” 328-329. 59. La tradition et les traditions: Essai théologique (Paris: Fayard, 1963); translated into English, Spanish and Italian in 1964; in German and Catalan in 1965. 60. Sainte Église: Études et approches ecclésiologiques, Unam Sanctam, 41 (Paris: Cerf, 1963). 61. Pour une Église servante et pauvre, L’Église aux cent visages, 8 (Paris: Cerf, 1963). Translated into seven languages. 62. Mon Journal du Concile, I, 4 October 1963, 432-437. 63. For the reference to Lacordaire’s experience, see Le Concile au jour le jour, vol. 3, pp. 124-125: “Ceci dit, il faut garder la tête froide et voir la vraie proportion des choses. Dans un an, dans dix mois, quand on aura un beau texte sur la liberté religieuse, qui pensera encore à son pénible enfantement? Au milieu de tout cela nous revenait en mémoire telle ou telle parole d’un des hommes qui ont le plus aimé la 236 ALBERTO MELLONI embarking on a policy of gestures that seemed to solve every problem,64 Congar was arguing that there was no substitute for a ‘theology’ of reference to identify doctrinal substance – in other words, ‘the truth’. From this perspective, he thought it was necessary to examine the problem of the poverty of the Church65 in order to overcome the “logomachy” of the group of the church of the poor.66 He also argued, in Chrétiens en Dialogue: Contributions catholiques à l’Œcuménisme,67 that once the second conciliar period had ended, there was a need to go beyond an ecumenism based on fine gestures. He explained these approaches during his first private audience with the Pope, granted by Paul VI on 8 June 1964. From that interview, however, Congar became convinced that the Pope’s approach suffered from a serious theological flaw: “il part du haut vers le bas, il ne part pas du peuple de Dieu, ses catégories ne sont pas celles d’un plein ressource- ment ecclésiologique.”68 The alternating storms and calm periods that led up to the end of the Council did nothing to change Congar’s belief that absorbing the delay and ‘thinking it through’ was a necessary task for a theology that constantly had to reckon with the fact that “une idée un peu forte, un peu fine, dépassait l’intelligence moyenne des évêques.”69 Besides, the habit of having to reckon with this problem had been the major hin- drance faced by the Secretariat for Christian Unity, which did not include a well-versed minority among its members. To Congar, it was significant not only that the Catholic ghetto had ruptured,70 but also that, despite everything, “On a fait le pas!”71

liberté, le plus combattu et souffert pour elle. Le Père Lacordaire a, sur la nécessité des délais et la valeur du temps, des formules dont la plénitude dépasse de beaucoup le cas présent. Qu’on nous permette tout de même d’en citer deux (Lacordaire fait d’abord allusion à Lamennais): Nous avons reçu, lui et moi, la preuve que le temps est nécessaire à tout et qu’il suffit d’être prêt toujours sans anticiper sur l’heure marquée par la Provi- dence”; “Je crois que l’homme ne voit qu’un point des temps, que Dieu seul saisit leur ensemble, et l’Église inspirée par lui se conduit par rapport à cet ensemble, sans le voir.” 64. Alberto Melloni, “I gesti ecumenici nel cattolicesimo contemporaneo,” Con- cilium (2001), no. 3, 171-189. 65. Mon Journal du Concile, II, 14 September 1965, 389. 66. Mon Journal du Concile, II, 14 September 1965, 388. 67. Chrétiens en dialogue: contributions catholiques à l’œcuménisme, Unam Sanc- tam, 50 (Paris: Cerf, 1964). English trans.: Dialogue between Christians: Catholic Contributions to Ecumenism, trans. Philip Loretz (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966). 68. Mon Journal du Concile, II, 14 September 1964, 133. 69. Mon Journal du Concile, II, 13 September 1965, 386. 70. Mon Journal du Concile, II, 17 January 1965, 303. 71. Mon Journal du Concile, II, 11 May 1965, 378. CONGAR, ARCHITECT OF THE UNAM SANCTAM 237

This was the Church in the period immediately after the Council and in which Congar would continue to wage his struggle against tri- umphalism, authoritarianism, and the dehumanized and dehumanizing presumption of the system, as well as against the reduction of diversity, seen as a nuisance for the ecclesiastical cloak with its lace-trimmed pneu- matology. …

The Truth of les problèmes

Congar’s brave and loyal stance, as mentioned earlier, meant that the ecclesiastical recognition which many had regarded as natural in 1965,72 and which Paul VI had already planned for 1973,73 was eventually granted only in 1995, just a few months before the death of the Domini- can theologian. More than a few of his old persecutors would consider this delay the rightful punishment for someone who was too indomitable to be awarded this kind of honor. At the same time, more than a few of his admirers considered the delay to be a proof of ecclesiastical sluggish- ness in recognizing merit where merit was so obvious. From a theological perspective, the delay allowed Father Congar to concentrate on further development of his studies and to formulate an ecclesiology that had at last emancipated itself from the servitude of having to apologize for the existing institutional system. Congar practiced ecclesiology as a discipline that started from the assumption that problems should not be condemned,74 because they lead to tomorrow’s challenges. At the same time we must ask – can we reduce the final Congarian ecclesiology to so little? – we cannot idolatrize solutions, even the ingenious and quick solutions made up of gestures. For in the end, the problem remains. … The intellectual force of the reformer Cardinal Yves Congar is also the following: the discovery that a system which believed itself to be necessary and necessarily co-extensive with the truth, ultimately constituted (constitutes) the most menacing threat to the unam sanctam.75

72. Mon Journal du Concile, II, 25 November 1965, 486. 73. On the episode see Jean-Pierre Jossua, “Avant-propos,” Écrits réformateurs, 12. 74. Journal d’un théologien, Et Lazarus similiter mala, 9 December 1955, 415. 75. See Étienne Fouilloux, “Frère Yves, Cardinal Congar, Dominicain: Itinéraire d’un théologien,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 89 (1995) 379-404; Jean-Pierre Jossua, “Yves Congar: La vie et œuvre d’un théologien,” Cristianesimo nella storia 17 (1996) 1-12. 238 ALBERTO MELLONI

Dr. Alberto Melloni is Professor of History at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia, Italy, and a member of the John XXIII Foundation of Religious Science in Bologna. He is an internationally recognized authority on the Second Vati- can Council and Pope John XXIII, and the thought of Yves Congar, and is a contributor to the History of Vatican II, directed by Giuseppe Alberigo, and editor of the Italian edition. Address: Via san Vitale 114, Bologna, Italy.