January 18, 2012 Scripture and Vatican II: A very incomplete journey  BRENDAN BYRNE SJ

Of special relevance in 2012:
Brendan's comments re the Catechism of Catholic Church,in final part of article

      This article is from a public lecture from
      Vatican 2: Memory and Hope – 40 Years On,
      a conference presented by the Forum of Australian Catholic Institutes of Theology (FACIT)
      with Australian Catholic University,
      held at St Patrick’s Melbourne Campus of ACU in October, 2002.

      LET ME BEGIN, if you will allow, in autobiographical mode. I have long
      counted myself very fortunate to belong to a generation that knew both the
      pre-Vatican II and post-conciliar period. I shivered as an acolyte at a
      dawn kindling of the Easter Vigil fire before the transfer of the
      ceremonies to the evening. As a young student for the priesthood, I was
      excited in the early 60’s as cracks were found in the frozen pre-Vatican
      II liturgy for inserting sung Gelineau psalms in the evocative Grail
      translation that we still use today. This was a musical, imaginative
      entrance into the biblical world far more powerful than purely
      intellectual instruction. Later—in the early years of the Council
      actually—the chance to learn Hebrew greatly deepened that entry and
      further studies set me on the path to be a biblical scholar in the
      post-conciliar era.
      Of course, well before the Council, Australian biblical scholars of the
      preceding generation—our teachers—were returning from studies abroad and,
      in tandem with new movements in catechetics, beginning to open up the
      Bible to seminarians, to religious sisters and other groups. Names such as
      Harry Davis, Bill Dalton, Jerome Crowe, Campion Murray, Bob Crotty, Angelo
      O’Hagan, Dennis Murphy, John Scullion and others spring readily to mind.
      They had a wonderful, liberating message and, for the most part, audiences
      thirsting for what they had to offer.1 At the same time, like all
      enhancers of life, they met opposition, charges of disloyalty and even
      heresy, some of it quite personal and wounding. They were worked off their
      feet, being rectors, provincials, presidents betimes. They broke the ice
      for scholars of the next generation such as Frank Moloney, Tony Campbell
      and myself. Their contribution to the Australian Church cannot be
      over-estimated. As one of their heirs and successors, I pay tribute to
      them now.
      The scholars and teachers of that generation were, of course, the first
      inheritors of the turn-around in Catholic biblical studies that came,
      twenty years before Vatican II, with the publication in 1943 of Pius XII’s
      Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu.2 That biblical encyclical broke the
      long winter of repression that had settled upon Catholic study of the
      Bible in response to the Modernist crisis and the perceived excesses of
      Protestant ‘higher criticism’. The encouragement to study the Bible in the
      original languages and not as refracted through the Latin Vulgate and,
      above all, the acceptance that biblical truth appeared in a variety of
      literary forms proved to be immensely liberating. Divino Afflante Spiritu
      really opened up the way for Catholic scholars to embrace whole-heartedly
      the historical-critical approach to the Bible that had become the dominant
      paradigm in Protestant scholarship, with its roots in the Enlightenment of
      the late 17th-18th century. Young Catholic scholars of that era—the late
      40’s—such as Joseph Fitzmyer, Raymond Brown and Roland Murphy, capped
      their ecclesiastical studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome,
      with doctoral work under leading Protestant scholars such as William
      Foxwell Albright. Armed with knowledge of the biblical languages and
      immersed in the fray of discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, they
      became masters of the historical-critical approach and the relentless
      pursuit of the literal sense: to determine as accurately as possible what
      the text meant in its historical context. Their unassailable scholarship
      won for them acceptance and leadership in the highest levels of the wider
      biblical guild, hitherto the preserve of Protestants alone. Their
      monument—and the monument to Catholic practice of the historical critical
      method—is the Jerome Biblical Commentary (in both its original and New
      editions).3
      Working, as I did, alongside a leading scholar of that era, such as Joseph
      Fitzmyer, on the Pontifical Biblical Commission, I was struck by the
      tenacity with which he would defend the historical-critical approach. He
      did so with the ardour of a veteran, who had seen the battle fought long
      and hard before finally sheathing his sword. As is well known, the path
      from Divino Affante Spiritu in 1943 to the Decree On Divine Revelation in
      Vatican II was not an untroubled progress. In the final years of Pope Pius
      XII and the early months of John XXIII a strong reaction against modern
      biblical scholarship made a brief but very wounding appearance,
      culminating in the suspension from teaching of several scholars at the
      Biblicum. The crisis came to a head with the decision as to which
      approach—the historical-critical sanctioned by Divino Affante Spiritu or
      the old proof-texting style of the reactionaries—would be sanctioned in
      the Decree on Divine Revelation to be considered by the Council. As is
      well known, in what was probably the most defining act as regards the
      direction the Council was to take, a draft form of a schema on Revelation
      reflecting the reactionary approach was withdrawn, after vigorous debates,
      at the first session by John XXIII, who commissioned its rewriting, adding
      to the commission responsible for the schema several biblical scholars
      reflective of the new approach.4
      In the light of that victory and in its spirit, the Pontifical Biblical
      Commission, issued in 1964 an Instruction on the Historical Truth of the
      Gospels.5 Beyond the recognition of literary forms, this very positive
      document accepted that between the life of Jesus himself and the actual
      composition of the written gospels there existed a considerable period
      when the traditions about Jesus, in various forms, were moulded and shaped
      by the new awareness of his status brought through Easter faith and also
      by the variety of forms and contexts in which they were transmitted in the
      teaching and preaching of the Church.6 This greatly defused controversy
      swirling around the delicate area of historicity. The Vatican II Dogmatic
      Constitution ‘On Divine Revelation’ (Dei Verbum) when at last promulgated
      at the final Session in 1965, gave full endorsement to this document,
      taking over its content and much of its language in its treatment of the
      Gospels.7
      Officially, then, with the blessing of the Council, the path was set for
      the furthering of the biblical revival in the Catholic Church. Reversing
      centuries of reaction to the Protestant campaign for the scriptural
      empowerment of believers, Vatican II insisted that the Bible was the
      treasure and possession of the entire Church and encouraged its study and
      reading on the part of all the faithful.
      I have the good fortune to belong to that generation of biblical scholars
      who emerged from graduate studies in this new era of acceptance and
      ecumenical cooperation. We have never lacked employment—not only in
      positions of formal teaching but for occasional lectures, workshops, and
      other modes of biblical study. I feared at one time that the biblical wave
      might peter out, that other areas of theological interest would rise and
      eclipse interest in scripture. This has not happened. Thirty years on, a
      major in biblical studies still seems to be the norm in the construction
      of theological degrees; the lay people who now make up the vast majority
      of students show no less enthusiasm for biblical studies than the
      seminarians who once outnumbered them. In the glory days of the mid-80’s,
      institutions such as Catholic Theological College and Yarra Theological
      Union had nearly five hundred students taking biblical courses. This means
      that out there in the parishes and schools of Australia there are tens of
      thousands of scripturally literate Catholics—literate in the sense of
      knowing the kind of literature they are dealing with when handling the
      Bible, and having some knowledge of the world and cultures from which the
      texts come. Beyond mere knowledge, the scriptures are nourishing and
      energising the lives and spirituality of such people to an extent
      unthinkable before Vatican II.
      All well and good, but shadows have gathered as well as light. It is
      sometimes said that it has been the misfortune of the Catholic Church
      that, after long struggle, it opened itself up to the modern world at
      Vatican II just as the world itself was rejecting modernity—the legacy
      above all of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment—in favour of
      that somewhat amorphous but much-appealed-to construction known as
      ‘post-modernity’. The Church, in other words, decided finally to get on
      the bus and take the trip just as everyone else, intellectually and
      culturally, was beginning to get off. We are witnessing in recent times a
      curious alliance between forces of reaction that would have been at home
      in the theological climate of the Modernist repression and post-modern
      tendencies that in other respects endorse a highly relativised view of
      truth that questions the validity of any kind of over-arching grand
      narrative such as Christianity would appear to presuppose. There is also
      the dispute over the legacy and meaning of Vatican II itself. Was the
      Council primarily an opening out to the modern world and an endorsement of
      the autonomy and value of the world—the kind of endorsement characterised
      above all by the ‘Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World’
      (Gaudium et Spes) and the ‘Declaration on Religious Liberty’ (Dignitatis
      Humanae)—in theological terms the Rahnerian vision? Or was it a
      rediscovery on the part of the Church of her full biblical and patristic
      patrimony, a reprising of the richness of her own tradition, whose beauty
      above all she could hold up before the world for its chastening and
      (hopefully) its captivation—in theological terms the von Balthasar
      vision?8 It is surely no secret that, during the present pontificate and
      under the current President of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the
      Faith, it is the latter, rather than the former that has been officially
      in favour.9
      At one level, it might be supposed that the biblical movement would
      flourish in such an atmosphere. But the matter is more complex than that.
      As I noted earlier, the biblical movement since Divino Affante Spiritu has
      been largely the promulgation of the historical-critical approach to the
      Bible. The Jerome Biblical Commentary is its monument. In accordance with
      the post-Enlightenment ethos, history has been the dominant paradigm. Such
      an approach is very good at telling you what a biblical text meant in its
      original context—an informative and salutary exercise, liberating
      scriptural interpretation from literalist constructions and challenging
      outdated paradigms and prejudices, notably anti-Jewish ones. It can often
      be very enriching. It does demand, however, that one enter the biblical
      world on its own terms and, for a time at least, remain there. It is not
      so good at telling how to return to your own world—the modern world—with
      the riches you have gained. In other words, while it’s good at telling you
      what the text meant, it’s not so helpful in regard to what it might now
      mean.
      If in this connection I might lapse back into autobiographical mode for a
      moment, my period of tenure as a member of the Pontifical Biblical
      Commission, beginning in 1990, was dominated by the preparation of the
      document, promulgated by Pope John Paul II in April 1993, The
      Interpretation of the Bible in the Church.10 On the whole, the sessions
      devoted to the composition of this document were a rewarding experience
      and, as most of you are probably aware, the document was by and large well
      received and praised for its basically positive tone and openness to new
      developments. It was interesting, however, to observe the currents running
      during its preparation. On the one hand, older scholars such as Joseph
      Fitzmyer were determined not to yield an inch of the hard-won high ground
      in regard to the primacy of the historical-critical method, virtually to
      the exclusion of everything else; on the other hand, there were those who
      felt it was time to recognise that the historical critical method had its
      limitations, that it had limited appeal in many pastoral and homiletic
      contexts, and needed to be supplemented by other approaches and methods of
      interpretation. At one stage, too, it had more or less been agreed upon to
      omit the virtually compulsory salute in church documents on Scripture to
      the ‘treasure-house’ of Patristic interpretation. Then, not without some
      encouragement from the Cardinal President, back came a ‘patristic
      paragraph’ (III, B, 2), albeit, to my mind, very well composed by one of
      the French members of the Commission. So the document emerged, with the
      historical-critical method still enjoying a certain primacy but having to
      make room on its perch for several other methods and approaches—literary
      and structuralist, canonical, social scientific, liberative (liberation
      theology and feminist theology)—all critically reviewed, to be sure, but
      none rejected or regarded as totally without merit. Needless to say, too,
      the document totally endorsed and urged still further the promotion of
      knowledge and use of the Bible in all aspects of Church’s life, as Vatican
      II had already commended.
      But what is the reality regarding that desiratum when we look at life in
      the Church some sixty years after the movement set in motion by Divino
      Afflante Spiritu in 1943? I can speak only for the Church in
      Australia—though I suspect that it is typical of the situation in Western
      Christianity as a whole. Doubtless there is a minority—I think we have to
      call them an elite—who have, through courses, reading, and workshops,
      become highly scripturally literate; they derive nourishment and strength
      from their reading of scripture; many put into practice a biblical vision
      of social justice, often at considerable personal cost. Beyond this
      minority, however, I think we must reckon a far greater number who, if
      still ‘churched’ in any sense, regard the Bible as mysterious and alien.
      The passage from a literalist understanding of, say, the accounts of the
      Ascension of Jesus (Luke 24:50; Acts 1:9-11), to an appreciation of its
      expression of truth in symbolic form, is not an easy one—certainly not one
      that can be successfully achieved in one sermon or instruction. Those of
      us who are teachers know that many students in introductory biblical
      courses wrestle for months to grasp that biblical truth is not the same as
      historical exactitude and that, just as we don’t have to believe that the
      whale swallowed Jonah, so we don’t have to make one continuous historical
      reconstruction from the four gospels of all that happened on the first
      Easter Sunday. There is moreover, the legacy of the historical-critical
      approach that suggests that, if you are going to really appreciate this
      particular biblical episode or parable, for example, you’re going to have
      to come with me on a journey back into the biblical world and its culture.
      To grasp the message of the more familiar New Testament at any depth,
      you’re going to need to have some awareness of the Old Testament texts and
      traditions which it is constantly evoking. We almost have to ask people to
      become 1st Century believers in order to become 21st century believers
      with complete biblical enrichment.
      For most people today—apart from the dedicated inner circle—that is a big
      ask. It is becoming a bigger ask day by day as biblical literacy in the
      wider cultural sense diminishes more and more. How many people stopped in
      the street or coffee shop could tell you who came first: Abraham or
      Moses—or Charlemagne, for that matter? Or whether the Flight into Egypt
      took place on a donkey—or on El Al or Egyptair? In short and, more
      seriously, the movement for biblical renewal in the Church is asking
      ordinary members of the Church to incorporate into their sense of
      religious identity a whole new biblical culture—the kind of biblical
      culture Protestants have had for generations—just when the sense of
      belonging to a Christian, let alone Catholic culture, ethnically imbibed
      in one’s mother’s milk is rapidly waning. Unlike the United States, the
      Australian national myth lacks biblical foundation. Our catechists and, in
      particular, our liturgists have a grave challenge on their hands when they
      try to find a bridge between the symbols and stories encased in the great
      biblical narratives and the myths that stir and resonate in the wider
      popular culture. Fundamentalists in any of the Christian denominations
      and, to a lesser degree, Evangelicals and Pentecostals will require an
      entrance into a biblical world that virtually cuts off their adherents
      from the wider secular culture—even if they readily employ features of
      that culture, e.g., its rock music or marketing techniques, to some
      effect. The Catholic way—going right back, I would maintain, to the great
      project of Luke-Acts—has ever been to seek to bridge the gap: to
      inculturate the Gospel without losing its vital challenge. Since Western
      civilisation is now so far removed from its historically Judeo-Christian
      roots, that task is now immeasurably more difficult.
      So, while applauding the achievements of biblical renewal in the years
      since Vatican II, I feel obliged to acknowledge that they have been
      largely confined to an inner elite rather than diffused among the masses
      of believers. In no small degree are our labours of Sisyphus-like
      proportions.
      I think, too, it has to be said that the task of promoting the kind of
      biblical literacy asked for at Vatican II has received little help and no
      small degree of hindrance from prevailing tendencies in the Roman Curia.
      The 1993 document of the Biblical Commission stands on a lonely eminence
      in this regard—and even it could have been negative in tone had not
      several of the members of the Commission fought long and hard to exclude
      gratuitous judgements in many areas. The handling of scripture in the
      Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) is simply disgraceful and in many
      respects regresses not merely behind Vatican II but Divino Affante Spiritu
      itself.11 When I asked at a session of the Biblical Commission why that
      Commission was not being employed or at least consulted during the
      preparation of the Catechism, my question was received in sullen silence;
      I had ventured upon some inter-Curial turf war.
      Moreover, when one teaches New Testament within the Catholic tradition,
      with complete loyalty and appreciation of that tradition, including such
      things as the primacy, the distinct presbyteral and episcopal ministry, a
      high christology and deep sacramentality, one can only become more and
      more aware of the gap between the Gospel as Jesus appears to have
      proclaimed it and required it to be lived in the community, and the
      policies, edicts, appointments and decisions that have emanated from Rome
      in recent years. There is no need for me to catalogue such things now.12
      Let me simply say that, having resisted for years the application of the
      strictures of Jesus against the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23 to my
      own Church, I find myself unable to do so any longer:
        The scribes and the Pharisees occupy the chair of Moses. You must
        therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say; but do not
        be guided by what they do since they do not practise what they preach.
        They tie up heavy burdens and lay them upon people’s shoulders, but will
        they lift a finger to move them? Not they! (vv 2-4).
      If any good at all can come from the extremely painful situation that so
      many church leaders finds themselves in as a result of failure or alleged
      failure to take action in the matter of sexual abuse, it may be in the
      area of being forced to return to such passages of the Gospel and to ask
      whether the age-old refusal to apply them ‘domestically’, so to speak,
      needs some reassessment.
      I am concluding, then, on a rather sombre note. I am happy in my
      scriptural work and will beaver on, knowing that other sons and daughters
      of Vatican II have much harder and more risky roads to traverse and much
      greater disappointments to confront. I can identify with the wistful
      comment of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, ‘We were hoping ...’
      (Luke 24:21). I know that the risen Lord still accompanies us, expounding
      the Scriptures, instructing us, perhaps, that our earlier Vatican II
      vision was too simple, too optimistic in a worldly sense; that we need to
      grasp again and again how it is through suffering, diminution and death
      that redemption, little by little, is achieved. Let us keep on going along
      the road on which he has been and remains our Companion.
      NOTES
      1 On this era see B Rod Doyle, Biblical Studies in Australia: A Catholic
      Contribution: A Short Survey and Bibliography, (Melbourne: David Lovell,
      1990), esp. pp. 6-10.
      2 A most useful anthology of official Catholic Church documents on
      Scripture, from Trent to the present day has recently appeared: Dean P
      Béchard (ed.), The Scripture Documents: An Anthology of Official Catholic
      Teachings (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002). A translation of
      Divino Afflante Spiritu (DAS) appears on pp. 115-36.
      3 R E Brown, J A Fitzmyer, R E Murphy (eds.), The Jerome Biblical
      Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968); The New Jerome
      Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990).
      4 A brief account of these developments is given by R E Brown in New
      Jerome Biblical Commentary 1167-68 (‘Church Pronouncements’ 72:6-7).
      5 Text in Béchard, Scripture Documents 227-34.
      6 See esp. ibid. §VIII (Béchard 229-30).
      7 Relevant portion (esp. §19) in Béchard 19-31.
      8 On the distinction, see John L Allen, Jr., Cardinal Ratzinger: The
      Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith (New York/London: Continuum, 2000) 57.
      9 Cf. Allen, Ratzinger 141-42, 272.
      10 English Translation, Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993; also in
      Béchard 244-315.
      11 While the Catechism’s express treatment of the place of Scripture in
      the deposit of faith (§§101-33) largely derives from Vatican II, Dei
      Verbum, the actual citation of texts throughout the document reverts to
      the old ‘proof-texting’ approach, neglectful of context, variety of
      literary form and genre (especially apocalyptic in regard to
      eschatological statements); see esp. the teaching on Hell (§§ 1033-35).
      Most notorious perhaps is the section on Original Sin (§390, where the
      Tridentine expression of the doctrine is reiterated with scant regard to
      exegesis of Genesis 1-3 and Rom 5:12-21 that has been mainstream for
      generations. The sustained presentation of the life of Christ
      (§§1351-1411) reflects a similar exegetical naivety in regard to the
      Gospels.
      12 What I have in mind are such measures as the refusal to listen to
      pastoral experience in regard to the Third Rite of Reconciliation; the
      stubborn retention (or indeed reimposition) of non-inclusive language in
      liturgical and other official texts; the ever more restrictive edicts in
      regard to the participation of lay-people, especially women, in liturgical
      and other sacred functions; the unjust and insensitive treatment of loyal
      theologians such as the venerable Jacques Dupuis; the refusal to allow any
      relaxation in the rule of priestly celibacy in the face of glaring
      pastoral need and deprivation of the sacraments to vast numbers of people.
      Is not this a ‘tithing of mint and dill and cummin’ to the neglect of the
      ‘weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith’ (Matt 23:23)?
    

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