Yves Congar at Vatican II - Paul Collins (Main Forum)

Thanks Brian. I am glad to hear it.

Hopefully we can get a discussion going in the Forum about the Congar Book . I had the good fortune today of watching a History channel presentation on WW1 and the Yves Congar story played a prominent role , even tho incomplete. More on this subject later. Tom in San Jose, a Congar fan

p.s. Brian , we need to talk about" projection " , that is putting on to another one's own feelings.

Tom in San Jose

If you count your pennies…

In May Congar cost me $53 delivered from Amazon.com, which I thought good value for a hardback of 1000 pages that I wanted to get my hands on. Apart from sheer curiosity, I wanted to do a bit of background work in it for a piece of writing I was engaged in. Yes, I still find it interesting, at times amusing, but, not unnaturally, I learn more about Yves Congar than I do about substantive matters about Vatican II.

Having said that, I flicked open the book before starting this, and my eye fell on the following sentences (p. 389):

‘Medina [Estevez, a theological expert from Chile; later a cardinal head of Congregation for Saceraments] also told me that the Curia was trying to weaken the Moderators [who chaired sessions] and to prevent them from acting.”

‘Medina [! again] told me (having heard it from McGrath (Arch. of Panama)] that the Congregation for Religious had sent to the Superiors General a list of dangerous experts… (in this connection, the three experts nailed by Cardinal Ottaviani the other day were said to be Rahner, Ratzinger and Martelet…)’

There is a lot of that gossip mill.

Then there is the more serious stuff, like backroom strategies for getting ideas up or thrown out. Thus p. 519 (again, just flicked it open):

‘In the morning: before leaving, we looked at a few points of the text [for discussion that day] that we wanted to include. The Belgians always do this. They study each paragraph BEFORE the discussion, carefully preparing the points on which they wish to intervene, agreeing about this among themselves and with Mgr Philips [Belgian expert and Sec. of Theological Commission], planning, if need be, a manner of procedure and a line to fall back on. This is indeed (so far as concerns theology), “the first Council of Louvain, held in Rome.”’

One last quote: this time I looked for it. I chose earlier in the book, for C’s impressions, in fact, at the close of the First Session of the Council, 9 Dec. 1962. So, p. 249:

‘Finally, before packing this notebook in my case, I record a few thoughts that came to my mind in the train.
‘Ottaviani reproaches me for saying sometimes good things, sometimes bad things in my Vraie et fausse Réforme [True and False Reform, published in Eng. Trans. only 2011]. He wouldn’t want anything of complementarity, he never either speaks or thinks of the Church dialectically. Everything is praiseworthy, everything must be praised. They know only ONE line: the one that is homogeneous and favourable to the assertion of their authority.’

Is this view from 1962 news to anyone here in 2012?

So, if you don’t need the book, and tire of gossip from the graves, save your pennies?