The First Vatican Council and Infallibility

From Harvard University Press:

The enduring influence of the Catholic Church has many sources—its spiritual and intellectual appeal, missionary achievements, wealth, diplomatic effectiveness, and stable hierarchy. But in the first half of the nineteenth century, the foundations upon which the church had rested for centuries were shaken. In the eyes of many thoughtful people, liberalism in the guise of liberty, equality, and fraternity was the quintessence of the evils that shook those foundations. At the Vatican Council of 1869–1870, the church made a dramatic effort to set things right by defining the doctrine of papal infallibility.

In Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church, John W. O’Malley draws us into the bitter controversies over papal infallibility that at one point seemed destined to rend the church in two. Archbishop Henry Manning was the principal driving force for the definition, and Lord Acton was his brilliant counterpart on the other side. But they shrink in significance alongside Pope Pius IX, whose zeal for the definition was so notable that it raised questions about the very legitimacy of the council. Entering the fray were politicians such as Gladstone and Bismarck. The growing tension in the council played out within the larger drama of the seizure of the Papal States by Italian forces and its seemingly inevitable consequence, the conquest of Rome itself.

Largely as a result of the council and its aftermath, the Catholic Church became more pope-centered than ever before. In the terminology of the period, it became ultramontane.

The Contents:

Introduction
1. Catholicism and the Century of Lights
2. The Ultramontane Movement
3. The Eve of the Council
4. Under Way and Moving toward Dei Filius
5. Infallibility
Conclusion
Appendix: English Translation of Pastor Aeternus
Basic Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

I've read Father O'Malley's book on Trent and really look forward to another book that's forthcoming, When Bishops Meet about Trent, Vatican I and II.

Why I read this book now: the Eighth Day Institute's second annual theological conference, this year called the "Florovsky-Newman Week", takes up the subject of authority in the Christian Church. The title and description:

The Patristic View of Authority: Bible, Pope, or Conciliarity?

Co-sponsored by Eighth Day Institute and the Gerber Institute for Catholic Studies, the Florovsky-Newman Week promotes a “return to the sources for Christian unity.” Heeding Fr. Florovsky's advice, rather than simply overlooking differences, this conference seeks to overcome the different views of church authority. And we do so by returning to the common Tradition, by learning to read the Fathers as living masters, rather than as historical documents. Our hope is for you to deepen your understanding of the authority by which the Church grounds her faith and morals, examining authority from our respective traditions as Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians. Join us for this unique event as we dive into the Church Fathers in order to explore, challenge, and encourage one another to better love God and neighbor.

Note the addition of Blessed John Henry Newman to the title (last year it was just "Florovsky Week"!):

Soon to be St. John Henry Newman, this 19th century educator, poet, pastor, and theologian is considered by many to be the most important (and controversial) figure in the history of England. As a leader in the Oxford Movement, his immersion in the early Tradition of the Church, especially the Church Fathers, led to his conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. Cited frequently by Fr. Georges Florovsky, a case can be made that Newman's emphasis on the Fathers was key to the development of Florovsky's ecumenical proposal for a neopatristic synthesis.

As at last year's event, three speakers, one Catholic, one Protestant, and one Orthodox, will make presentations in the evening and weekend plenary sessions. The other speakers will respond: the Catholic and the Orthodox to the Protestant speaker, etc. During the day there are academic paper sessions, time for prayer, meetings at Eighth Day Books, etc. The banquet and presentations on Wednesday through Friday are at Newman University; on Saturday, we move to St. George Orthodox Cathedral.

So anyway, this book is part of my preparation--I've submitted a proposal for a paper, but I haven't received notice officially that it's been accepted--for the conference.

Father O'Malley devotes three of the five chapters to the background of the First Vatican Council, the first Church Council since Trent in the 16th century. He reviews the political and culture situation in Europe, especially in Italy, where the Pope's temporal authority over the Papal States and Rome was in danger in the drive for Italian unity and nationhood. He examines the relationship between Church and the nations in Europe, especially trends like Gallicanism,  Febronianism, and Josephinism through which the state or the ruler controlled education, formation of priests, selection of bishops, monastic and religious foundations, etc. O'Malley's survey in those three chapters thus begins in the eighteenth century, explores the grassroots origins of the Ultramontane movement--meaning grassroots from the laity, to the priesthood, to the academic world, and to the episcopacy--and the pontificate of Pope Pius IX (including the history of the treatment of the popes personally during the revolutionary movements of France and Italy).

As Deal Hudson points out in his interview with Father O'Malley from April 2018, Pope Pius IX (Pio Nino) does not come off very well in the narration of the events at the First Vatican Council. He and Archbishop Manning and others in the majority Ultramontane party do things that range from the manipulative to the vindictive. They were already in the majority; there was going to be some statement on Papal Infallibility from the Council; they did not need to treat certain bishops so abusively. The two chapters on the events of the Council also point out how much the press, Catholic and secular, especially Louis Veuillot's Univers, not only covered, but influenced the Council. At the same time, Lord Acton, William Gladstone, and Johann Dollinger were gathered (as shown in the picture above) to talk about the Council and its activities, trying to lobby against a decree on Papal Infallibility.

In his Conclusion Father O'Malley discusses the aftermath of the First Vatican Council, including, all too briefly I think, Newman's response to Gladstone's overreaction to Pastor Aeternus. In his interview with Deal Hudson, O'Malley opines that since the decree on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there has been no exercise of Papal Infallibility in matters of faith and morals. But the Church has been more centered on the role of the Pope in the everyday lives of Catholics, with Papal documents, speeches, travels, audiences, etc. One could also argue that the greatest event of the twentieth century for Catholics was the Second Vatican Council, which changed many aspects of daily Catholic life on the local, not Papal, level. Father O'Malley doesn't discuss this, but the long papacy of Pope Saint John Paul II also changed Catholics' view of the pope's role in our lives: his travels, his theological and philosophical influence, the saints he canonized, the reforms he instituted (Canon Law, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, World Youth Day, the Synods of Bishops, etc), his great project of the celebration of the Third Millennium of Christianity, have formed our image of what a pope should be and do.

Father O'Malley is great historian and writer. He uses the sources well; writes succinctly and clearly; analyses cogently.

Highly recommended: except that I think he should have dedicated a few paragraphs to show how Newman's response to Gladstone formed the mainline interpretation of Papal Infallibility and authority.

Note that I purchased my copy of this book.

Back to Trent with John W. O'Malley, SJ

The  Second Vatican Council has been much in the news, Catholic and mainstream, occasioned by the canonization of the pope who called the Council and the pope who really implemented the Council (John XXIII and John Paul II). When George Weigel wrote on First Things about the canonization of those popes, he commented on the difficulties of implementing the Second Vatican Council;

As everyone who lived through the post-Vatican II years knows, John XXIII’s Council created a lot of turbulence of its own. One reason why, I’m convinced, is that Vatican II, unlike previous ecumenical councils, did not provide authoritative keys to its own proper interpretation. It defined no dogma. It condemned no heresy or heretic(s). It legislated no new canons for the Church’s law, it wrote no creed, it commissioned no catechism. These were the ways previous councils had told the Church, “This is what we mean.” Vatican II did none of that.

The Council of Trent did all all that. From that "Counter-Reformation" Council a new catechism, new statements for reform, decrees on the Sacraments, the crucial doctrine of Justification, etc, gave direction to the Catholic Church for centuries--well, until the Second Vatican Council! In fact, if you compare and contrast the two councils, the usual commentary is that Trent was doctrinal and Vatican II was pastoral. 

John W. O'Malley might disagree about that comment re: Trent: it was both doctrinal and pastoral as it was called both to combat the errors of Luther (and later Calvin) and to reform the Church of abuses and scandals, particularly to improve the care of souls. Thus the three sessions of the Council of Trent focused on both the definition of those doctrines most threatened by Lutherans ideas and the reform of the Church, especially the actions of bishops and parish priests. 

As Harvard University Press describes this 2013 book:

The Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Catholic Church’s attempt to put its house in order in response to the Protestant Reformation, has long been praised and blamed for things it never did. Now, in this first full one-volume history in modern times, John W. O’Malley brings to life the volatile issues that pushed several Holy Roman emperors, kings and queens of France, and five popes—and all of Europe with them—repeatedly to the brink of disaster.

During the council’s eighteen years, war and threat of war among the key players, as well as the Ottoman Turks’ onslaught against Christendom, turned the council into a perilous enterprise. Its leaders declined to make a pronouncement on war against infidels, but Trent’s most glaring and ironic silence was on the authority of the papacy itself. The popes, who reigned as Italian monarchs while serving as pastors, did everything in their power to keep papal reform out of the council’s hands—and their power was considerable. O’Malley shows how the council pursued its contentious parallel agenda of reforming the Church while simultaneously asserting Catholic doctrine.

Like What Happened at Vatican II, O’Malley’s Trent: What Happened at the Council strips mythology from historical truth while providing a clear, concise, and fascinating account of a pivotal episode in Church history. In celebration of the 450th anniversary of the council’s closing, it sets the record straight about the much misunderstood failures and achievements of this critical moment in European history.

O'Malley masterfully narrates the struggle to convene the Council, blocked by papal concerns about conciliarism and the efforts of Francis I of France to thwart the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who urgently wanted the Church to launch a council for the sake of unity throughout his Empire. Francis I, Henry VIII, and the Schmalkaldic League of Lutheran princes wanted the Holy Roman Empire to be weakened from within by religious disunity. Throughout the following chapters that cover the three sessions of Trent, O'Malley keeps the narrative of events and his analysis of the decisions reached/documents issued in balance, providing details about personalities, the different factions, and the results of the theologians's discussions and the bishops' decisions.

I have not read his book about the Second Vatican Council--perhaps I'll look it up too. I checked this book out from the Wichita Public Library. I've read and reviewed his Trent and All That, and I read his Four Cultures of the West (might need to re-read it soon).

TRENT AND ALL THAT: Catholic Reformation or Counter Reformation? Or Something Else??

One of the last purchases on my Eighth Day Books gift certificate from my husband this Christmas is Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era by John W. O'Malley. Previously, I have enjoyed reading his book Four Cultures of the West (prophetic, academic, humanistic, performance/art). Re: this book, Harvard University Press states:

Counter Reformation, Catholic Reformation, the Baroque Age, the Tridentine Age, the Confessional Age: why does Catholicism in the early modern era go by so many names? And what political situations, what religious and cultural prejudices in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave rise to this confusion? Taking up these questions, John O’Malley works out a remarkable guide to the intellectual and historical developments behind the concepts of Catholic reform, the Counter Reformation, and, in his felicitous term, Early Modern Catholicism. The result is the single best overview of scholarship on Catholicism in early modern Europe, delivered in a pithy, lucid, and entertaining style. Although its subject is fundamental to virtually all other issues relating to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, there is no other book like this in any language.

More than a historiographical review, Trent and All That makes a compelling case for subsuming the present confusion of terminology under the concept of Early Modern Catholicism. The term indicates clearly what this book so eloquently demonstrates: that Early Modern Catholicism was an aspect of early modern history, which it strongly influenced and by which it was itself in large measure determined. As a reviewer commented, O’Malley’s discussion of terminology "opens up a different way of conceiving of the whole history of Catholicism between the Reformation and the French Revolution."

Table of Contents:
Introduction: What’s in a Name?
1. How It All Began
2. Hubert Jedi and the Classic Position
3. England and Italy in Jedin’s Wake
4. France, Germany, and Beyond
Conclusion: There’s Much in a Name
Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

The work he highlights in chapter three is H. Outram Evennett's Spirit of the Counter-Reformation, based on his Birkbeck Lectures of 1951 edited by John Bossy, one of Evennett's students and the author of the major study on English Catholicism, The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 . What both O'Malley and Bossy point out in their evaulation of Evennett's achievement in this book (which has NOT BEEN OUT OF PRINT since publication), is that he was working in a cultural milieu, British academia at the University of Cambridge that of course had not considered the Catholic side of early modern history at all. I read Evennett's book a few years ago while preparing a couple of presentations on the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic/Counter Reformation for my parish's RCIA program.

After tracing the development of the names of what O'Malley calls "the Catholic side" of the religious changes that happened in Europe during the 16th and 17th century, he summarizes their effectiveness and proposes a new name (as of 2001, at least): Early Modern Catholicism. The other terms used: The Counter Reformation (describes the actions taken by the Catholic Church to "counter" the Protestant Reformation; The Catholic Reformation (describes the actions taken by the Catholic Church to address abuses, improve discipline); The Tridentine Age (focuses on the efforts of the Council of Trent); Confessional Catholicism (focuses on the efforts of states and nations to identify themselves politically as Catholic)--each have strengths and weaknesses in attempting to summarize the Church's activities in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The term O'Malley proposes, Early Modern Catholicism, suffers, as he admits, from some vagueness but benefits by comprehending all the other names under its big tent, and other names besides--like the Baroque Era, the Age of Gold in Spain, the Great Century in France, etc. Robert S. Miola uses that term in the title of his great anthology.

Although he uses yet another term for the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation ("The Reinvention of Catholicism") I thought of Nathan Mitchell's book on the Rosary as I read O'Malley describing how his term Early Modern Catholicism allows much more leeway in discussing people and events that don't fit under the categories claimed in the names listed above: the missionary efforts (including England); the devotional and confraternity movements and new orders founded in the 16th and 17th centuries, like the Oratory; and the role of women, the Ursulines, Mary of Agreda, etc.

Another book that represents that broader reach and uses YET ANOTHER TERM, "Catholic Renewal" also demonstrates the dating issue O'Malley brings up, extending the period from 1540 to 1770, up to Enlightenment times. The second edition added a chapter on "The Catholic Book", which means I need to supplement the edition I already have!

Finally, there is Robert Bireley's book, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation published by Catholic University of America Press:

Throughout its history, Christianity has adapted to contemporary society and culture in order to reach people effectively and have an impact on the world. This process often evokes controversy. Certainly this is the case in the current century, and so it was in the sixteenth. Robert Bireley argues that early modern Catholicism, the period known more traditionally as the Counter Reformation, was both shaped by and an active response to the profound changes of the sixteenth century--the growth of the state; economic expansion and social dislocation; European colonialism across the seas; the Renaissance; and, of course, the Protestant Reformation.

Bireley finds that there were two fundamental, contrasting desires that helped shape early modern Catholicism: the desire especially of a lay elite to lead a full Christian life in the world and the widespread desire for order and discipline after the upheavals of the long sixteenth century. He devotes particular attention to new methods of evangelization in the Old World and the New, education at the elementary, secondary, and university levels, the new active religious orders of women as well as men, and the effort to create a spirituality for the Christian living in the world.

This book will be of great value to all those studying the political, social, religious, and cultural history of the period.

What term do you think best describes "the Catholic side" of the 16th and 17th centuries? Please cast your vote in the comment box and tell why:

1) Catholic Counter Reformation
2) Catholic Reformation
3) Tridentine Age
4) Confessional Catholicism
5) Early Modern Catholicism
6) Catholic Renewal or Catholic Refashioning
7) Your Own Term