Marxism and Communism were at the centre of the discussion of the schema on the Church in the modern world, during the third session of the Council that opened on 14 September 1964. The discussion was influenced by the encyclical of Paul VI Ecclesiam Suam, which had appeared two months previously, on 6 August 1964. In it the Pontiff deplored the ideological systems denying God and oppressing the Church in the world, but hoped “that they may one day open with the Church a positive dialogue, different from the present one, necessarily to be deplored and lamented”.55 “For the first time” observes a contemporary historian “the policy of dialogue with non-believers and socialist regimes entered an encyclical.”56
In the general examination of the Council schema, which omitted every reference to Communism, the theme was touched upon by many Fathers with different emphases. Cardinal Josef Frings, in the name of the German and Scandinavian bishops, asked that the word Communism not be used, to avoid every appearance of political interference and connection with capitalism.57 On the opposite front, The Most Reverend Yu Pin, archbishop of Nanking, in the name of seventy Council Fathers, demanded the addition of a new chapter, or at least of a solemn declaration on Communism to satisfy the expectations of those peoples who were groaning under the Communist yoke.58
On 7 April 1965, while the schema was being revised, Paul VI set up a Secretariat for non-believers, with the aim of promoting “dialogue” with them. The presidency of the body was entrusted to the Austrian Cardinal König, who had often acted as intermediary between the Holy See and Communist Governments.
On 14 September 1965 the fourth and final session of the Council began.59 On 21 September, after the report by Mgr Garrone, the debate was opened on the schema of the “Pastoral Constitution” concerning relations between the Church and the world. The text in the possession of the Fathers made no explicit reference to Communism. In fact, according to the editors of the document, a condemnation would have been in contrast with the pastoral character of Vatican II and constitute an obstacle to the “dialogue” with the Communist regimes.
The Lebanese patriarch Maximos IV Saigh maintained that, to save mankind from atheism, rather than condemning Marxism, it was necessary to denounce the causes that provoke atheistic Communism. He proposed “a dynamic mysticism and a vigorous social morality and demonstrated that in Christ is the source of the effort of the workers towards their true liberation”.60 The Yugoslavian Cardinal Seper showed himself to be contrary to a condemnation of atheistic Communism, stating that partial responsibility for modern atheism was to be attributed to those Christians who obstinately continued to defend the established order and immobilism of the social structures. “We therefore proclaim that that rigid conservatism and that immobilism that some never cease to attribute to the Catholic Church is alien to the true evangelical spirit.”61 Even more explicit was Cardinal König, who invited the Catholics, in the countries subjected to Communism, to testify to the living God by sincerely collaborating in the economic and social progress of the Regime, to demonstrate that from religion greater energies than atheism can flow. However protests and censorship were not lacking from Archbishop Geraldo de Proença Sigaud,62 Bishop de Castro Mayer63 and other prelates such as the Italian Cardinal Ermenegildo Florit and the Czechoslovak Jesuit Bishop Pavel Hnilica, ordained in hiding and only recently arrived in the West.
“It is necessary to speak” Bishop Elko, Ruthenian eparch of Pittsburg (United States) affirmed “of dialectic materialism, as of a plague in today’s society and to condemn it as we should, so that future centuries will not consider us responsible for fear and pusillanimity, if we have only dealt with it indirectly.”64 “Every time an Ecumenical Council has met” said Cardinal Antonio Bacci in his turn “it has always solved the great problems which were stirring at that time and condemned the errors of the day. To remain silent on this point I believe would be an unpardonable lacuna, indeed a collective sin. (…) This is the great theoretical and practical heresy of our time; and if the Council does not deal with it, it may seem a failed Council!”65
Notes:
55. AAS, vol. LVI (1964), no. 10, pp. 651-4.
56. A. Riccardi, Il Vaticano e Mosca, p. 269.
57. Acta Synodalia sacrosancti concilii oecumenici Vaticani II, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, 1978, vol. III, pars V, p. 510.
58. Acta Synodalia, vol. III, pars V, p. 378.
59. Paul VI announced two decisions that caused commotion: the establishment of a synod of bishops that would offer the Pope, at regular intervals, the contribution “of its advice and collaboration” and his acceptance of the invitation to visit the UN on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of its foundation. R. Aubert, Il Concilio, p. 323.
60. Acta Synodalia, 1977, vol. IV, pars II, p. 451.
61. G. F. Svidercoschi, Storia del Concilio, pp. 595-6.
62. Acta Synodalia, vol. IV, pars I, p. 555.
63. Acta Synodalia, vol. IV, pars I, pp. 371-2. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Lucida e relevante intervenção do bispo-diocesano no Concilio”, Catolicismo, no. 179, November 1965, p. 8.
64. Acta Synodalia, vol. IV, pars II, p. 480.
65. Acta Synodalia, vol. IV, pars II, pp. 669-70.