It seems disagreeing with Rahner and von Balthasar may place a text in a warped anti-version of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum...
Considering
this (
Catholic World Report: "
If you’re looking for the review, 'Vatican II and the ‘Bad News’ of the Gospel', it has been removed"); and
this (
Eerdmans: "
We
were thrilled to learn Monday that Catholic World Report had published a
positive review of Ralph Martin’s book 'Will Many Be Saved? What
Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New
Evangelization.' Our delight turned to bewilderment, however ..."),
we cannot help but post said text here. It is actually a text with a
highly favorable reading of Vatican II, but some idolized third rails
seem to have been touched.
And spread it around the web in samizdat mode, please, before we are perhaps kindly asked to remove the content.
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Vatican II and the “Bad News” of the Gospel
Ralph Martin’s new book clarifies what the Council actually taught about salvation outside the Church
David Paul Deavel
April 01, 2013
Ruefully
observing statistics showing that only 6 percent of American Catholic
parishes considered evangelism a priority, the late Cardinal Avery
Dulles once lamented, “The Council has often been interpreted as if it
had discouraged evangelization.” Ralph Martin’s new book, Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New Evangelization,
aims to explain why this interpretation has taken root despite the fact
that the Council documents, particularly the keystone document Lumen Gentium (LG), are brimming with talk about evangelization as the Church’s main job. In fact, Paul VI’s encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi
stated that the objectives of the Council were summed up in one
statement: “to make the Church of the 20th century ever better fitted
for proclaiming the Gospel.” Yet the opposite happened.
Martin
thinks, and with reason, that the loss of impetus to evangelize is
based upon the widespread notion after the Council that almost everybody
will be saved—except maybe really evil people like Hitler and Judas.
Having the sacraments or an explicit faith in Christ is seen as a nice
add-on. But essentially the theology of salvation could be summed up by
the 1989 cartoon movie All Dogs Go to Heaven.
Of
course this theology had backing from big names. Karl Rahner declared
that the Council had a “theological optimism…concerning salvation.”
Richard McBrien’s commentary on LG claimed that the Church now
considered the human race as “an essentially saved community from whom a
few may, by the exercise of their own free will, be lost.” Even the
Jesuit scholar Francis Sullivan, author of a very careful study of the
teaching on salvation outside the Church, tended in his more popular
writings to throw caution to the wind and claim a “general presumption
of innocence which is now the official attitude of the Catholic Church.”
These claims were never undergirded by any actual citations or close
readings from the Council, which marked a doctrinal development indeed,
but not one of automatic salvation or “presumed innocence.”
While
the question of the salvation of those who have never heard the Gospel
has been bubbling up in a new way since the 16th-century discovery of
peoples in the New World, it had been coming to a steady boil over more
than 100 years before Vatican II. The categories of invincible ignorance
(whereby one could not be held accountable for not knowing about Christ
and the Christian message) and implicit faith (whereby the invincibly
ignorant might embrace as much truth as God has allowed one to receive
and thus embrace Christ implicitly) have been around for a while. That
arch-traditional pope Pius IX had already given assent to the
possibility of salvation outside the visible boundaries of the Church in
encyclicals in 1854 and 1863. This view was even included in a draft
document of the First Vatican Council (which was never finished because
of the Franco-Prussian war’s interruption). The Second Vatican Council’s
teaching of this possibility of salvation outside the sacraments and
explicit faith, then, was the culmination of a long doctrinal
development that had already been given expression by the papal
Magisterium a century before Vatican II.
Martin
affirms this development, noting that LG 16 very clearly indicates the
possibility of salvation outside of the visible Church and explicit
faith. That key passages states:
Those
who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or
his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart and
moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it
through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal
salvation. Nor shall divine providence deny the assistance necessary for
salvation to those who, without any fault of theirs, have not yet
arrived at an explicit knowledge of God, and who, not without grace,
strive to lead a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them
is considered by the Church to be a preparation for the Gospel and
given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.
(LG 16)
Notice,
however, that simple ignorance, even ignorance that could not be
helped, is not a sufficient condition for salvation—sincere seeking of
God, a real attempt to follow the dictates of conscience, and an embrace
of whatever truth is given are all necessary. To such people “divine
assistance” will be given. But notice also that the Council Fathers said
that such people “may” achieve eternal salvation. But what is so
striking is that even when this passage is quoted, the final lines which
warn of the dangers to those outside of the faith are rarely quoted and
even more rarely commented on at length:
But
very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their
reasonings, have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and served the
creature rather than the Creator. Or else, living and dying in this
world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair. Hence to
procure the glory of God and the salvation of all of these, the Church,
mindful of the command of the Lord, “Preach the Gospel to every
creature,” fosters the missions with care and attention. (LG 16)
Far
from a human race that is presumed innocent or essentially saved, the
Council Fathers see a world in which salvation is neither assured nor
easy. It is a world in which, “very often,” rejection of Christ has been
a reality, is still possible, and is a main reason for Christian
missions. Indeed, the Council also warned about the severe judgment
falling on Catholics who do not persist in charity and faithfulness.
The
Council’s “optimism,” Martin rightly notes, is about the possibility of
salvation outside of the Church, not the probability that everybody
inside or outside it will be saved. The Council doesn’t give odds on
this question or tell us whether hell is densely populated or not, nor
does Martin attempt to do so. But he notes that the “very often” is
attached to the negative possibility. In a chapter examining the
scriptural references in LG 16 he demonstrates that this “bad news” is
indeed biblical. Where, then, did the All Dogs view of the Council come from? Mostly from two sources: Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar.
While
Martin is clear that he respects both theologians and acknowledges
their own pastoral desires, what is demonstrated in the two chapters
covering their thoughts is how little backing they had in their own
theories. Rahner, while occasionally acknowledging that the Council did
not actually say anything new doctrinally on this topic, used the tactic
that would later characterize the Bologna school: in Ratzinger’s words,
the Council’s texts were interpreted as “a mere prelude to a still
unattained conciliar spirit…” Thus, Rahner’s foundations for hope in
universal or near-universal salvation were founded upon his own
particular theological vision—a vision that gave little attention to the
whole witness of either Scripture or Tradition on this point and (as he
later acknowledged) underestimated the reality of sin.
While
Rahner may have ignored Tradition and Scripture, Balthasar professed to
be a man who paid attention to it all. Martin’s brief against him
shows, however, that on his professed “theological hope” for universal
salvation (best glimpsed in his book Dare We Hope That All Be Saved?),
Balthasar has a tendency to ignore and occasionally mischaracterize his
sources. Martin offers devastating critiques of Balthasar’s use of
Scripture, the Fathers, and indeed logic. Balthasar quotes scriptural
passages without even their immediate context, adduces witnesses who do
not say what they purportedly say (e.g., Maximus the Confessor’s
supposed embrace of universalism), and claims that one cannot love
people sincerely if one believes that anyone could possibly reject
God—the last a strange claim indeed given his view that the saints stand
high as theological authorities. Finally, he seems to back up his
positions with rather extravagant extra-biblical speculations about
conversions in hell.
Balthasar
and Rahner and many of their followers believed that the Church’s
missions would be successful only if we could stop telling people the
bad news. Whether or not they actually agreed with the speculative views
of the theologians, many bishops and pastors embraced the idea that the
Church would be better off if it stopped talking about sin and hell and
accentuated the positive. As one theologian in 1973 wrote, with this
strategy, “men will storm her doors seeking admission.” The result has
been less than spectacular. Rare are the people who will spread the
faith merely because the Church says so if there is no point to it other
than drawing new members into “our community.” To paraphrase Flannery
O’Connor, if the Church isn’t a place of salvation, it is simply an Elks
Club. And the Elks aren’t doing that well these days either. It was
Rahner, after all, whose talk about the “optimism of the Council”
yielded at the end of his life to essays on the “winter of the Church.”
Martin
does not spare bishops or popes in his criticism of this strategy of
talking only about the positives. Paul VI’s and John Paul II’s
encyclicals on evangelization, Evangelii Nuntiandi and Redemptoris Missio,
are scored for omitting “the traditional focus on the eternal
consequences that rest on accepting or rejecting the gospel that
motivated almost two thousand years of mission.” Martin calls for an end
to this “unwise silence” about a significant part of the Christian
message. It is a particularly heartening sign that his book is blurbed
by seven US bishops. Perhaps these endorsements are a sign that what
Russell Shaw once called the US bishops’ “Potemkin Village” is now being
torn down.
Martin’s
one misstep is that he too quickly passes by the question of the danger
to non-Catholic Christians. While Vatican II’s recognition of the power
of salvation at work among other Christians separated from the Catholic
Church is accurate, it is perhaps a little too pat. Martin does not
mention the dangers to Christians whose baptisms are valid but who do
not have the fullness of the sacraments or the guidance of the
Magisterium to help them in a world in which, as he notes, the culture’s
morality moves further from Christian teaching every day. The bad news
is for all of us—Catholics, other Christians, and non-believers. We all
need to hear it if the good news is to make sense. And we all need to
hear it because it’s true.
About the Author: associate editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture and adjunct professor of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota).
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Our thanks to Angelqueen for providing the full version of this forbidden text... (Tip: Pertinacious Papist: CWR removes Deavel's review of Ralph Martin's book).(The book cover image comes from Eerdmans.)
