From: Mary: Mary and the Churches, Albert Stacpoole (ed) Papers of the Chichester Congress, 1986 of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Columba Press, Dublin, 1987.

Mary’s Place in Lumen Gentium, Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church

Alberic Stacpoole, OSB Roman Catholic, St Benet’s Hall, Oxford

 

The Second Vatican Council opened with the intention that a com­plete Constitution or Decree should be accorded to the blessed Virgin, and closed with her assigned to the last chapter of its Dogmatic Con­stitution on the Church. Even then, this Council had more to say about Mary than any of the previous twenty General Councils. Chap­ter VIII of Lumen Gentium, in its final form, proved a third longer than the proposed separate schema. And yet the Council marked the turning point in what had been a once exuberant Catholic devotion to Our Lady.

Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne, leader of the Conference of German Bishops, gave a conference in Genoa in November 1961 as a preparation for the Council. He made the point that our Lady is a sign announcing the Church, ‘that holy people made one through the common worship of the liturgy’. He then surmised that coming decades would face the task of integrating the marian movement with the liturgical: he saw the marian approach as giving the liturgically minded something of its heart-felt warmth, its fervour and feeling, its readiness for atonement and penance. Equally the marian minded would receive from the liturgy something of its ‘sacred sobriety and lucid charity’.

What the Council brought was a deepening sense of Mary as model of the Church. Its early draft documents provided a privilege-centred approach: Mary was unlike others, immune from original sin, excused the general judgment of mankind after the general resurrec­tion. Its final text provided a community-centred approach: Mary was the exemplar of the whole Church, as immaculate bride of Christ and as already joined to him in glory. The document in its changes went through three titles: ‘Mother of the Church’ (1962), ‘Mother of God and Mother of Men’ (1963) and ‘Mother of God, in the mystery of Christ and the Church’ (1964). When completed, it suc­ceeded in balancing two aspects of mariology, viz, the blessed Virgin’s unique relationship with Christ the Redeemer, her own Son (nn. 52-9, esp. 55); and her close relationship with Christ’s body, the Church and all the redeemed (nn. 60-5, esp. 63-5 which draw out the theme of Mary as type of the Church). As to the latter, that is why the fathers of the Council eventually decided to place their state­ment on Mary within their Constitution on the Church.

 

History of the Marian document through the Council’s session

 

Lumen Gentium VIII transpired as an amalgam of two equally valid, equally scriptural and equally traditional expressions of an authentic Catholic attitude to Mary: one considering her in herself, another considering her as part of salvation history. It would be well to trace that process.

During the two years before the Council opened a sub commission  headed by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani of the Commission De doctrinafidei et morum (with S. Tromp SJ as secretary), worked out a draft upon the Church (Li chapters). To it was added a chapter on ‘Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of Men’. It was debated in the last week of the stormy first session (1-7 December 1962). Cardinal Ottaviani suggested to the fathers (not officially, but in an impromptu fashion which put them on their guard) that, rather than debate the complex thirty-six-page schema on the Church hurriedly, they should debate the six-page schema on the Blessed Virgin — and so, ‘with the assistance of our Lady’, the Council could then conclude its first session in union and harmony’. But wisely the fathers chose to begin upon the Church: they saw how regrettable it would appear to Protestants (observers and beyond) were a council, ostensibly smoothing a path towards unity, to settle too quickly for marian piety.

The draft submitted on the blessed Virgin in 1982 was more com­plex than it seemed. It was an expression not only of the views of the members of the Theological Commission (impressive theologians whose convictions were not swayed by popular interest), but also the views of other theologians and bishops worldwide. Six hundred bishops had petitioned Pope John XXIII that the Council should produce a clear statement, standing in its own right, of the authentic teaching of the Church on our Lady. This was printed separately from the first draft of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. It distin­guished two approaches to marian doctrine: a Christo-typica (Mary as a type of Christ) and an Ecclesio-typica (Mary as a type of the Church). It left many mariologists dissatisfied: among them there were ‘maximalists’ who followed St Bernard’s advice, ‘De Maria numquam satis’; ‘minimalists’ who asked for irrefutable proof of every doctrine and devotion; and ‘middle-of-the-roaders’ who claimed to belong eclectically to both views. Before the second session a special schema was provisionally allotted to Mary.

 During the first half of 1963 the Fulda Group (the Austro-Ger­man bishops and theologians) judged that the marian text as it stood would do ‘unimaginable harm~ to oriental and Protestant church rela­tions. Fr Karl Rahner, in particular, urged that the blessed Virgin should be dealt with as an epilogue of the schema on the Church. He argued that, in the title ‘Mediatrix of all graces’, that teaching was not a dogma but a commonly-held doctrine; and that if the word ‘Mediatrix’ was to be used at all, it had to be most carefully defined. The Fulda Conference accepted all this, declaring that it was not absolutely opposed to the retention of the words ‘Mediatrix’ and ‘mediation’ in the schema provided that the phrase ‘Mediatrix of all graces’ was not used. It gave close scrutiny as well to contrary views.

When the second session opened in September 1963 with a debate upon the Church, Cardinal Frings spoke first in the name of the German and Scandinavian fathers. He said that he wished the Church’s relationship to the blessed Virgin and the saints had been set out more clearly. Supporting him, the Cardinal of Chile acknow­ledged that ‘in Latin American countries devotion to our Lady is sometimes too far removed from the proper devotional life of the Church’ — a judgment echoing John XXIII’s earlier warning to the clergy of Rome against their tendency ‘to cultivate certain excessive devotional practices, even with respect to the devotion to the Madonna’. If it were proposed in a separate treatise, the theology of Mary would not be easy to relate to the whole doctrine of Christian salvation: so the schema on Mary should be incorporated into the schema on the Church. Cardinal Frings had made the same judgment, on the grounds that it would foster dialogue with separated brethren better; and Cardinal Silva Henriquez of Chile accepted this, saying that devotional excess sometimes gave non-Catholics wrong notions:

‘Devotion to Mary and the saints, especially in our countries, at times obscures devotion to Christ.’ In the early stages the only dissenting voice came from the Cardinal of Tarragona, speaking for fifty-six Spanish bishops, who put in a strong plea for keeping Mary separate from the Church, as he said, ‘because the mystery of Mary is greater than the mystery of the Church. There is danger that she would be seen in a merely passive role as representing the Church, as the Church’s elder daughter, and not as the Mother of the Church by her vivifying influence’. He said that if the Marian schema was to be included in the main one, then it should appear as chapter II and in its content should be as profound and extensive as the subject deserved.

October 1963 proved a month of marian activity. Firstly, Abbot B. C. Butler (President of the English Benedictine Congregation) published his own proposed marian schema, worked up with a brother monk from Downside whose doctoral thesis had been upon St John Damascene; it drew for its evidence upon the pre-schismatic period. Then a pamphlet was issued of Servite provenance, suggesting that Our Lady’s titles should be listed and should include both ‘Mediatrix’ and ‘Co-redemptrix’ (the ‘co-’ being diminutive, as in ‘collaborator’). Then a peritus from the Theological Commission used the Vatican Press imprint and official document style (even including the classifi­cation ‘sub secreto’) to run off a leaflet that deceived the fathers as to its provenance, strongly advocating a separate schema: this was the Yugoslav mariologist Carlo Balic, a Franciscan consultor at the Holy Office and principal drafter, playing politics. Then the Chilians issued their own substitute schema (on 17 October) before offering a con­flation of three texts: those of themselves, Abbot Butler and Abbe Rene Laurentin of Tours, a great mariologist peritus (20 October). The Moderators called for a debate on 24 October; and the next day five Eastern Rite bishops — in communion with the Holy See — argued for a separate schema, as did the Servite Bishop Giocondo Grotti of Brazil. On 29 October the main issue was put to the vote by the Moderators. Cardinal Rufino Santos of Manila and Cardinal Franz Konig of Vienna, both members of the Theological Commission, were required to argue respectively for and against a separate schema, texts of their speeches were circulated for study overnight, and the vote was then taken. As a procedural matter, it required only a straight majority. The result was received in stunned silence because it proved so inconclusive. The fathers had voted 1074 for a separate schema, and 1114 for incorporating it in the Church: the curialist representa­tives of ‘The Age of Mary’ had lost by a slim margin of forty votes (only 20 being required to go the other way) to the European alliance. This was the only vote of its kind during the course of the Council.

The vote proved embarrassing. The desire for unanimity and justice among the fathers placed both the Theological Commission and the Council itself in a difficult situation. Changes had to be made in the so far agreed text. But unexpectedly the controversy was happily resolved the following year.

At the closure of the second session on 4 December Paul VI told the fathers of the Council: ‘For the schema on the blessed Virgin Mary we hope for the solution most in keeping with the nature of this Council, i.e. the unanimous and loving acknowledgement of the place, privileged above all others, which the Mother of God occupies in the Holy Church... after Christ, her place in the Church is the most exalted, and also the one closest to us; and so we can honour her with the title Mater Ecclesiae to her glory and to our benefit.’ It was to become especially interesting that Paul VI should so strongly and indeed serenely presume that title for the Mother of God. His own spirituality and conviction in this regard was to prevail above that of so many of the fathers, in the last instant.

 

History of the Marian document through the Council’s third session

On 15 September 1964, early in the third session, Chapter VIII on the Church was again taken up. A compromise text, the work of two theologians, was presented. Of these, one was the Yugoslav Fr Carlo Balic and the other Mgr Gerard Philips of Louvain, a Belgian regarded as Cardinal Suenens’ theologian. The latter’s text had dropped the words ‘Mediatrix’ and ‘Mother of the Church’; but he was told that such austerity would not produce the votes needed from the Council fathers. During the next three days the major debate upon the marian chapter of Lumen Gentium was undertaken, thirty-three fathers speak­ing in all.

The essential documents were these: a textus prior from the second session; published in parallel, a textus emendatus, which took in the amending process; a set of modi generated from the debate; a final synthesis presented for voting. The textus emendatus was composed of five chapters: prooem — De munere B. Virginis in oeconomia salutis —DeB. Virgine et ecciesia —De cultu B. Virginis in ecclesia—Maria signum certae spei et solatii peregrinanti populo Dei.

The debate was opened by a statement from the relator, Archbishop Roy of Quebec. Cardinal Ruffini of Palermo began by commenting on the title ‘Mediator’, which had to be further explained so that ‘non-Catholics will come to realise that the use of this title implies no lessening of the dignity of Christ who is the one absolutely necessary Mediator’. Speaking on behalf of seventy Polish bishops, the fiercely marian Cardinal of Poland, Stefan Wyszynski referred to Paul VT’s very recent encyclical Ecclesiam suam, in which the Pope had called attention to the fundamental importance of the blessed Virgin in the life of the Church. That had prompted the Polish bishops to send the Pope a memorandum (and similar ones had followed from other episcopal groups) requesting that Mary should be pro­claimed ‘Mother of the Church’, and that her chapter should be promoted from last to second in the schema, so that it would better illustrate the role of Mary in relation to Christ and his Church.

He was followed by Cardinal Leger of Montreal, another Cana­dian, who thought it necessary ‘to renew the marian doctrine and cult’: such a reform, already begun among theologians, ‘must also reach the pastors and the faithful, and this final chapter of the Con­stitution on the Church offers the best opportunity for promoting it’. Emphasising the need for precise and sober terms, the Cardinal questioned the use of such titles as ‘Mother of men’, ‘Handmaid of the Lord Redeemer’, Generous companion’ and ‘Mediatrix’. The origin and the meaning of them all should be scrutinised in the light of the best theological research before their use was endorsed by the fathers in a conciliar text. He was followed by Cardinal Julius Dopfner on behalf of the ninety German-speaking and Scandinavian bishops, who affirmed that the chapter on Our Lady contained solid doctrine and should be left essentially as it was — without additions upon the role of Mary as Mediator, Cardinal Bea (President of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity) added that that title was still disputed by theologians, and so should not be included in a conciliar text at all. Such a text was not a manual for private devotion; it required the highest theological proof. Then Cardinal Corrado Mingo of Monreale (Italy) gave an emotional speech in favour of the title ‘Mediatrix’ being amplified to read ‘Mediatrix of all graces’. He complained that the title Mater Ecclesiae had been deleted from the 1963 textus prior without justification and contrary to the wishes of the Pope expressed on 11 October in the Basilica of St Mary Major and again at the closure of the second session on 4 December. There, in St Peter’s, Paul VI had spoken of ‘the unanimous and loving acknowledgement of the place, privileged above all others, which the Mother of God occupies in the Holy Church.’

In his turn, Bishop Hervas y Benet of Ciudad Real (Spain) com­plained that the new textus emendatus was too severe an adaptation from the textus prior, not corresponding to the wishes of the fathers. It had reduced the doctrine of Mary to an absolute minimum, despite the fact that the fathers had been assured that ‘by inserting the schema on the Virgin Mary into the schema on the Church, no such diminu­tion was intended or would be carried out’. Speaking the next morn­ing, Cardinal Leon-Josef Suenens of Malines (Belgium), agreed upon the danger of minimising the importance of Mary. He said that the new text did not place the spiritual maternity ‘which Mary continues to exercise in the Church even today’, in its proper light. He described the text as defective in expressing what the faithful believed as to the co-operation of the Virgin in Christ’s work of redemption. He felt that the schema should bring the faithful to realise that they were associated with the maternal action of Mary in carrying out their apostolate. It was a valuable and independent contribution.

On behalf of the eighty-two bishops of Portugal, Bishop Fran­cisco Rendeiro of Faro asked that the title ‘Mediator’ should be retained. Among the faithful who knew that the matter had already been discussed publicly by the fathers, its omission would generate scandal. Taking up this issue, Bishop Ancel of Lyon commended that the title ‘Mediator’, brought into the text but not endorsed therein (and thus left open for further study), should be listed with other such titles to avoid the impression that it was a privileged one: indeed that was so done.

Speaking on behalf of the eighty-two bishops of Spain, Archbishop Garcia y Garcia de Castro of Granada took to task the Theological Commission for their radical revision of the textus prior, rather than adaptation according to the mind of the fathers. He asked that the original title of the chapter, ‘Mother of the Church’, should be restored, since it corresponded to pontifical documents, issued by six popes from Benedict XIV to Paul VI as well as the writings of Irenaeus, Augustine and Pope Leo the Great. To omit the doctrine implied in that title would undermine the devotion so far shown to the Virgin by Christians. Thus the debate progressed: there were fourteen speakers on 16 September, sixteen the next day and three on the last day including Cardinals Frings of Cologne and Alfrink of Utrecht. At one stage the Ordinary of the Poles in exile, Archbishop Guiseppe Gawlina spoke of devotion to Mary as no obstacle to ecumenism: he quoted Luther’s dissertation on The Magnificat:

‘Come to God through Mary; from her you learn to believe and hope in God... Mary wishes that you come not to her, but through her to God.’ Last words: four days later, the same director of the Polish hospice in Rome was dead!

Cardinal Frings’ speech was a summary piece of advocacy. On the previous night one of the two drafters of the compromise text for the Theological Commission, Fr Carlo Balic, had gone to the German Cardinal and persuaded him that the unresolved controversy over the two titles, ‘Mediator’ and Mater Ecclesiae, could nullify all that had been achieved. The German Cardinal was to urge acceptance of the compromise text as it stood; and to this he agreed. He said in his address that Chapter VIII contained nothing contrary to Catholic faith or to the rights of the separated brethren. It offered a middle road between diverse opinions ‘and in a certain way may be considered a compromise’. At that state, it would need an improbable two-thirds majority to make major changes to the text: so, he asked, let each father ‘sacrifice some personal ideas, even very right ones’, and — when detailed points have been corrected — approve the schema. He said:

‘Theologians can then take this text for a starting point to make more profound studies of those doctrines which are not yet clear, and can better develop those which are still in dispute.’ He was supported in this by Cardinal Alfrink; and the text was then referred back to the Theological Commission for further revision, which was to include written interventions and comments submitted before the third session began.

Cardinal Frings’ speech proved crucial, not to say decisive. Archbishop Roy of Quebec, as relator, presented the further conclu­sions of the Theological Commission. The new text spoke of Mary’s motherly affection for the Church while not explicitly using the title Mater Ecclesiae (which lacked attestation in tradition). Her mother­hood in the order of grace was expressed with precision: the word ‘Mediatrix’ was to be used on the same footing as such as ‘Intercessor’ or ‘Adiutrix’, i.e. without being given a technical meaning. At the same time the context was to contain a declaration upon the transcen­dence of Christ’s mediatorship. Pastoral comments were filled out to be more extensive, showing how all apostolic activity in the Church has a perfect exemplar in the Mother of God, who is also Mother of Men. The vote upon the textus emendatus (an amendment re­-amended) was taken on 29 October 1964: 1559 voted affirmative, 10 voted negative, 521 voted affirmative juxta modum (i.e. offering further qualifications). So the necessary two-thirds majority had been achieved.

In the last stage, the Theological Commission again examined the text, in the light of the 521 modi. Archbishop Roy was able to explain that though the title Mater Ecclesiae was omitted from the final text, it was equivalently expressed in Article 53 where it states:

‘Taught by the Holy Spirit, the Catholic Church honours [Mary] with filial affection as a most beloved mother’ (tam quam matrem amantissimam). As to the title ‘Mediatrix’, the suggestion of Bishop Ancel of Lyons was taken up, being adopted in Article 62: ‘The Blessed Virgin is invoked by the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix and Mediatrix. These however are to be so under­stood that they neither take away from nor add anything to the dignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator. For no creature could ever be classed with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer... The Church does not hesitate to profess this subordinate role of Mary’ (tale munus subordinatum Mariae). ‘Christ the one Mediator’ has already been established as Article 8, with due references; and was again established in Article 60 (within Chapter VIII): it appeared six times in all, in three Decrees.

The final vote upon Luman Gentium VIII, after the modi had been dealt with, was taken on 18 November: of the 2120 fathers present, 2096 voted affirmative (placet) , 23 voted negative (non placet) with a single invalidity. The following day, for the record, a final vote was taken upon the whole of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gen­tium on the Church: of the 2145 fathers present, 2134 voted placet, 10 voted non placet with one invalidity. A solemn vote and promulga­tion was taken on 21 November 1964, the last day of the Council’s third session: of the 2156 fathers present, 2151 voted placet, 5 voted non placet. Thus the mariological text moved into the Church’s histori­cal record.

 

Pope Paul VI's separate and subsequent promulgation

There were, throughout the Second Vatican Council, particular inter­ventions of the Pope — either John XXIII or Paul VI — into the working of the commissions or plenary decisions. One such, and a strong one, concerned the title Mater Ecclesiae. On the day when the final vote was being taken upon Lumen Gentium VIII, the text that only implicitly included that tide, Paul VI made a statement at a public audience which bade well to overturn the process. He said on 18 November: ‘We are happy to announce to you that we shall close this session.., by joyfully bestowing on our Lady the title due to her, Mother of the Church.’

This he did on the last day of the 1964 third session, in his closing address. Gerard Philips — with Fr Carlo Balic, one of the two principal drafters of the marian chapter (as we have seen) — in his history of the Constitution summed it up by saying that the Pope took an affirmation of tradition a step further, with the help of a vocabulary that had come into use only in recent times. He said that this lively session ‘ended with a peaceful gesture, which makes it impossible to speak of winners and losers, terms which are in any case quite out of place in speaking of a council. This will be clearer to future generations than it is to us.

Almost a half of Pope Paul’s closing address on 21 November 1964 was taken up with the Virgin Mary, ‘sentiments of sincere and filial gratitude to the holy Virgin’ who had been protectress, patron and counsellor from the outset. For him by the promulgation of the Constitution Lumen Gentium, ‘which has as its crown and summit a whole chapter dedicated to our Lady, we can rightly affirm that the present session ends as an incomparable hymn of praise in honour of Mary.’ Never before had a Council presented such a vast synthesis of Catholic doctrine as to the place Mary occupies in the mystery of Christ and his Church — ‘to which she is closely linked asportio maxima, portio optima, portio praecipua, portia electissima’.

Because so many fathers from various parts of the Catholic world had pressed him for an explicit declaration of ‘the motherly role of the Virgin among the Christian people’, and because it seemed so fitting, the Pope decided to proclaim Mary Mater Ecclesiae ‘for the glory of the Virgin and for our own consolation’. She was to be ‘Mother of all the people of God, of the faithful as well as of the pastors.. . honoured and invoked by the entire Christian people with this most sweet tide’. Paul VI went on at length about this, calling Mary ‘the model of faith and of the full response of any call from God, the model of the full assimilation of the teaching of Christ and of his charity; so that all the faithful, united in the name of the common mother, may feel themselves ever more rooted in the faith and in

union with Jesus Christ... The humble handmaid of the Lord, exists only in relation to God and to Christ, our sole Mediator and Redeemer... (And thus) those not part of the Catholic community may understand that devotion to Mary is not an end in itself but a means essentially ordained to orient souls to Christ and so unite them with the Father in the love of the Holy Ghost.’

At this stage, and with a promise to visit the Portuguese shrine of Fatima, the Pope resorted to prayer to ‘the Virgin Mother of the Church... auxilium episcoporum. . .‘ He went on: ‘look with benign eyes on our separated brethren and condescend to unite us, you who brought forth Christ as a bridge of unity between God and men... The day had begun in dark humour, as the Pope came into St Peter’s to concelebrate a last solemn Mass with twenty-four fathers from sees with national shrines in honour of the Blessed Virgin. The mood had changed; Pope Paul was interrupted seven times during his last address, applause increasing throughout. A standing ovation greeted the announcement of the title Mater Ecclesiae, signifying the assent of the Council fathers — but not all of them, for some voiced their criticism of the Pope’s independent action later when they had returned home. Cardinal Bea of the Secretariat for Promoting Chris­tian Unity, pointing out that the issue had never been put to a plenary vote, asked: ‘By what right then can one pretend to know something about the presumed majority opinion of the Council?’

Paul VI was perfectly correct, and in no way overriding, in the sequence of his actions — a twofold exercise of his own supreme authority, and that of the Church. He first conformed himself to his College of Bishops by promulgating the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which included the new marian title in an ‘equivalent’ manner (as we saw). Afterwards, the first action completed, the Pope then invoked his own personal authority to state explicitly what he and the College had just stated implicitly or ‘equivalently’. Thus it is that a Pope may guide a Council, rather than surrender to it. It is interesting to recall in this context that so far back as during the debates of the first session on the Church, two Cardinals had been wont to employ the phrase Mater Ecclesiae, Suenens of Malines and Montini of Milan! Atso early a stage these far-sighted Cardinals were sensing the vital importance of integrating mariology with ecclesi­ology.

 

What development of mariology has there been between 1960 and 1965?

In the period of the Council there occurred a clear re-orientation of the way our Lady was perceived, and following that of the ways of marian devotion. Pio Nono in the nineteenth century had given a strong impetus to marian thought. Movements had grown up: for instance Pius XI had approved the Legion of Mary, and then the feast ‘Mary, mediatrix of all graces’. Devotion to the rosary had been fos­tered since the time of Leo XIII (who had given eleven of his forty-two encyclicals to the subject of Mary); but it was during the reign of Pius XII that an astonishing upsurge of devotional practice occurred. The years of the 1950s have been called ‘the age of Mary’: the recorded statements of Pius XII on the blessed Virgin add up to more than those of his five predecessors — encyclicals, addresses, sermons. Our Lady became more prominent in the minds of theologians and lay folk alike, and the magisterium became clearly engaged with this marian movement, this rising enthusiasm whose momentum carried through into the reign of a Pope with a much cooler approach to mariology, John XXIII. The preparatory phase of the Council’s first marian document belonged in that atmosphere.

When the Catholic bishops of the world were consulted during the ante-preparatory phase (before 14 November 1960) 2000 epis­copal vota were received in Rome. Some 300 asked for a new definition on mediation, 50 each on spiritual maternity and on co-redemption, and 20 on marian royalty. Some 200 asked that something be said about Mary at the Council, while half that number asked that nothing be said. Some 1400 vota were silent upon the subject. With this in view the Theological Commission constructed its first schema, which was approved as such in March 1962, being given its nihil obstat by the Central Commission on 10 November. On 23 November it was presented to the fathers of the Council as two schemata within one volume, upon the Church and on Mary. The marian schema, drawing overmuch on recent papal statements, remained unaltered into the second session, though gathering its new title Mater Ecclesia. The great change came in the period before the third session; and that was the reason why some of the fathers grew so angry in their speeches in 1964, confronted as they were by a newer mariology, more rooted in scripture and tradition, for which they were unprepared. It was Mgr Gerard Philips of Louvain who was most directly responsible for the changes. Up to 7 March 1964 five successive drafts had been prepared, and the last was then put before the Theological Commiss­ion for final ammendment and — with a further amending process in early June — publication to the fathers.

Some of the fathers asked to have old phrases and formulas worked into the new schema, familiar from papal documents; others wanted new thought to go through, especially uniting the visions of ecclesiology with those of mariology. When in 1943 Pius XII pro-mitigated his encyclical, Mystici corporis Christi, he gave 109 sections to the life of the Church, and sections 110-111 to an ‘Invocation of the Virgin Mother of God’. The Council fathers, by contrast, gave their longest chapter on the Church to ‘The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the mystery of Christ and the Church’.

 

Marian devotion after Vatican II

Most people who had followed the Council with enthusiasm thought that the Church was due for a period of unqualified expansion, with a strong increase of vocations to the priesthood and religious life alike. Instead the Church moved into a severe unrest, which partially took the form of a challenge to what had hitherto been one of the most flourishing features of the life of the Church: marian devotion. As Fr Eamon R. Carroll 0 Carm puts it: ‘Even when there were no attempts to play down devotion to Mary, there was often embarrassed silence from preachers and teachers. People were used to hearing sermons about the blessed Virgin; all of a sudden there was silence from the pulpit — no homilies about the Mother of God.’ The recita­tion of the rosary became less common, either publicly or privately. Pieties were reduced in the parishes, or were replaced by the new dispensation, evening Masses; and no other devotions were, for a while, offered. The charismatic movement grew up, with its focus on the work of the Spirit of Christ among us; and it took a long time for charismatics to come to know our Lady as the Spirit-filled woman of faith evident in the gospels and the Church’s tradition.

With the diminution of marian devotion has disappeared —perhaps as well in our age — the world of marian sacramentals: rosary, scapulars, medals, holy pictures and other badges of religious devo­tion. Undoubtedly some aspects of marian devotion were overdue for purification, but not surely for elimination. And when all of this was at its most vulnerable, it encountered the hard-fought struggle for women’s rights, such as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a vehicle among others of the feminist movement for equality. Women began to see Our Lady as employed by Church authorities to keep women in subjugation; and so they lost interest in her as being a model for the past. Her humility, her obedience, her ‘passive virtues which included a world-ignoring purity, made her — in the words of Marina Wamer’s book title - Alone of all her sex (a phrase indeed from a fifth century Latin poet), in Miss Warner’s view at the expense of all other women.

Gradually, through the excellent improvements in the liturgical life of the Church (and one remembers, for instance that from 1 January 1970 New Year’s Day had become ‘The Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God’); and through steady ecumenical advances (and one remembers not only the work of ESBVM but such as the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Consultations in the United States, with

their publications), marian devotion is returning in stronger state, resting upon the true tradition of the Church and its scriptures, to where it might have expected to be after Vatican II. This has been splendidly helped by Paul VI's Apostolic Exhortation, Marialis Cultus (‘To honour Mary’) of 2 February 1974; and by frequent exemplary acts and statements from the present Pope. A more real mariology has come into currency and therefore with it a more real and abiding devotion.

 

Bibliography

 

Bernard &Barbara Wall, Thaw at the Vatican: session two (Gollancz 1964). Xavier Rynne, The Second Session (Faber 1964).

Xavier Rynne, The Third Session (Faber 1965).

Ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, Commentary on. the documents of Vatican II, Vol 1 (Bums & Oates/Herder & Herder 1967): Gerard Philips, Dogmatic Con­stitution on the Church: History of the Constitution; Otto Semmelroth, Chapter VIII.

Ralph M. Wiltgen SVD, The Rhine flows into the Tiber: a history of Vatican II (Hawthorn 1967).

Ed. Kevin McNamara, The Church: a theological and pastoral commentary on the Constitution on the Church (Veritas PubI. 1968/1983); Donal Flana­gan, 8. The Blessed Virgin Mary. Mother of God, in the mystery of Christ and the Church.

Guiseppe Alberigo & Franca Magistretti, Constitutionis dogmaticae Lumen Gentium: Synopsis historica (Istituto perle Scienze Religiose, Bologna 1975).

Gerard M. Corr OSM, “‘Mother of the Church”, an ecumenical title?’, Marianum III (1975), 281-90.

Eamon R. Carroll OCarm, ‘Mary after Vatican II’, St Anthony Messenger (May 1984), 36-40.

 

I should like to thank Fr Gerard Corr, a former staff member of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity from 1960, for reading this text and advising amendments. A mariologist, he had been directly involved in this Chapter VIII at draft stages during the Vatican Council. At the time of final proofs (March 1987), volume 37 (1986) of Marian Studies (University of Dayton, Ohio) had not yet reached this author. It is to include a series of four confer­ence papers on Lumen Gentium VIII from the May1986 National Convention of the Mariological Society of America.