This is a new eye witness account
But also Smith contributes an eye witness account to some important events of the Council. One of the almost iconic scenes or incidents of the Council, at least for traditionalists, was when the then head of the Holy Office, Cardinal Ottaviani, was interrupted, but for Bishop Smith it was not as is sometimes portrayed:
“Cardinal Ottaviani, unfairly as it turned out, was constantly portrayed as representing all that was wrong with the Church. He was also accused of deliberately blocking all efforts at reform. He was almost blind and did not read his script. He went on for fifteen minutes at a time where daily appeals were being made by both Archbishop Felici and the president of the day asking that contributions be kept short and to the point. At this stage Cardinal Alfrink intervened saying ‘Eminentia Vestra habeat me excusatum, quidecim momenta praeterierunt’ (‘Your Eminence, please excuse me, fifteen minutes have passed.’) Cardinal Ottaviani said, ‘Ego iam finivi, iam finivi, iam finivi’. (‘I am finished’), and sat down. This was greeted by a scattering of applause and interpreted as a moment that suggested the Council was its own master and not subject to dictation from the Curia. In some ways, it was a symbolic moment, even if the interpretation was very unfair to Cardinal Ottaviani, who was a much more open-minded individual than the caricature of public and media perception.
The media reports the following day spoke of ‘thunderous applause’. I was very surprised and curious at this and went back and listened to the tape on a number of occasions. The applause was very sparse and did not justify the headlines – a lesson learned.”
(Bishop Michael Smith, Vatican Council, Memories (Dublin, 2022), p.52-3.)
Also Bishop Smith relates a little about some key personalities of the Council, and which became more famous later (including the two later Popes of Wojtyla and Ratzinger, who he says were well known and influential even then):
“A Dublin-born Jesuit priest, Fr Malachi Martin, who was in Rome for much of the Council, provided a good example of those self-appointed experts operating on the fringes of the Council that supplied easy copy to journalists who had little understanding of the Council or how it operated. He claimed to have many important contacts and to be deeply involved in the Council — both claims were totally without foundation, but initially accepted by many of the English-language media. He was, in the early days of the Council, the source of many unfounded stories. In general, the English-language reporting on the Council was poor, mostly displaying an ignorance of what a Council entailed. An exception was Robert Kaiser of TIME magazine, who wrote a number of balanced cover articles on the Council, including a cover story on Pope Paul. Towards the latter part of the Council, Fr Martin, now no longer exercising his priesthood, wrote a book on the Council and on Pope Paul VI. This book was largely fiction. Commonweal, the American periodical, invited Kaiser to write a review of the book. The review was a brilliant piece of writing that destroyed all credibility attached to the book. Given the context, the review was circulated widely and enjoyed by many.”
(Bishop Michael Smith, Vatican Council, Memories (Dublin, 2022), p.127-8.)
The ‘context’, which Bishop Smith doesn’t say, is that Fr Martin was accused of sleeping with Kaiser’s wife.
Indeed this book seems to leave a lot unsaid and possibly a ‘read between the lines’ attitude needs to be adopted to get the most out of it. For example he includes some curious references to Cardinal Leo Jozef Suenens of Belgium. In general, this influential Cardinal at the Council, has been characterised in the years since as one of the Western European liberal clerics who had an over sized role during its deliberations. Bishop Smith does seem to agree about his influence, but it seems in the early debates of the Council he might have taken a more neutral stand. He was for example a strong supporter of the Legion of Mary and it appears it might have been his decision (certainly, and notably, not that of the Irish Bishops) to invite Frank Duff to the Council. But then he veered into at least a partial support for artificial contraception, a touchstone issue in the 1960s and 1970s, separating, if you like, the two wings of the Catholic Church, with the Papacy, famously, later ruling it out completely as permissible in the document Humanae Vitae. In any case this is what Bishop Smith says about the episode:
“An address given by Cardinal Suenens evoked the most reaction, especially in the press. Many were unimpressed with this address, including Pope Paul, though there was limited applause at the end. In the bar afterwards, one Australian bishop called Cardinal Suenens ‘a rabble rouser’. He was never a big fan of Cardinal Suenens. The phrase in the talk that was picked up by all was ‘we must avoid a new Galileo incident – one such is enough for the Church’. I was delegated to collect a copy of the text of the address from Cardinal Suenens when he finished, as it seems he did not submit it in advance. I approached him immediately after he finished speaking and he was most cooperative. From his general demeanour, however, it was very evident to me that he knew his talk would bring a major reaction on many fronts. It was a moment that stayed with me through my life. There is little doubt, however, that his influence in the Council weakened from then to the end of the Council.”
(Bishop Michael Smith, Vatican Council, Memories (Dublin, 2022), p.112-3.)
It seems strangely written that passage, is he saying Suenens was somehow coordinating his talk with influential people in the media so his talk would have a very planned and intended reaction, or that he was pressurised to give it?
Of course in modern times controversy about this Council has if anything grown, rather than been allayed. One of its earliest critics, who was at the Council, was Archbishop Lefebvre, the French head of the Holy Ghost fathers who went on to found the SSPX. Bishop Smith clearly looks upon these critics in the same way that some look upon the Old Catholics, those who opposed Vatican I and who are still around. He doesn’t seem to have much sympathy for this opposition:
“Over the previous few days, leading up to the formal closure of the Council, some groups emerged seeking further changes to the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Another group of bishops, small in number, drawn mainly from Europe and South America, established the ‘International Group of Bishops under the patronage of St. Paul’. They were unhappy with sections of some of the documents. It was given little credibility and largely ignored. It had a short life span after the Council. It did, however, give rise to one negative outcome. Few general councils of the Church, including Vatican I, ended without a schism. The source of the schism this time was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, superior general of the Holy Spirit Congregation, who was very active in promoting this group, with a Brazilian bishop, Geraldo de Proenca Sigaud, acting as a secretary. They sought to have the document on the Church in the modern world rejected. This did not happen, as it was approved with an overwhelming majority. Following this final approval and promulgation, many of those who were involved in Archbishop Lefebvre’s campaign withdrew. He, however, persisted and set up his own Church, replicating what happened with Bishop Ignaz von Dollinger after the first Vatican Council. Recent popes have all sought to mend the breach, not always successfully. Pope Benedict XVI did however have some success in this regard.”
(Bishop Michael Smith, Vatican Council, Memories (Dublin, 2022), p.157.)
Modern times
And that is I guess where we are still at in this controversy. Its clear that some in the Church regard the traditional Catholic movement, which, in a sense, was effectively led from that moment by Lefebvre, as a schismatic nuisance which is supposed to go away some time soon! Yet in reality, vocations to the priesthood, for example, are at a very healthy state in that movement and pretty much collapsing or collapsed in the Church in Ireland that Bishop Smith recently partly led.
It has emerged not at all as the small and containable fly buzzing around the elephant that Dollinger et alios represented after Vatican I. I guess in simple terms after Vatican I hardly anything really changed in the Catholic Church, so why would anybody, who drew spiritual nourishment from that Church, want to leave it? Whereas after Vatican II, everything has changed, Church altars and tabernacles, the language, music, calendar of the readings and, to a degree anyway, the liturgy and, surely, respect for the Eucharist. If that pre Vatican II Church is your Church, and you want to stay in it, you increasingly have to turn to the traditional movement in the Catholic Church.
Incidentally this is now a very topical matter, with rumours coming out of Rome that an Archbishop, Vigano, will now face ecclesiastical charges for not adhering to Vatican II, stated very explicitly, and that Rome intends soon to completely abolish the Latin mass.
Many thanks at any rate to Bishop Michael Smith for his help here and for a copy of his valuable book, which is available from Veritas.
by Brian Nugent,
www.orwellianireland.com
