Gaudium
et spes
Vatican II’’s invocation of
analogical reasoning is carried over to its Pastoral Constitution on the Church
in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes. In its determined attempt to forge
strong links between the Catholic Church and modernity, Gaudium et spes
appears to verse much papal teaching of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This is so much the case that Joseph Ratzinger stated that the document gives
the impression of being “a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind
of countersyllabus.” He continues:
The one-sidedness o the position
adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pus X in response to the situation
created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was,
to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe,
but there was still no basic statement of the relationship that should exist
between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789 . . .
The text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of
the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era
inaugurated in 1789. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology,
trans. Mary Frances McCarthy [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987], 38-82)
Describing Gaudium et spes
as a “countersyllabus”—effectively as a reversal of the affirmation of the nineteenth-century
Syllabus of Errors—offers a forceful example of discontinuity between Vatican
II and the prior magisterial tradition. Indeed, the difference between the two
documents is at times pronounced. While the Syllabus, with its archly
dialectical mode of expression, sought to distance the church as far as
possible from liberal modernity, roundly condemning its errors, Gaudium et spes
places a marked accent on the analogical similarity between Catholicism
and the quest for truth and justice in sectors of contemporary society.
John O’Malley, once again, highlights
the conciliatory style characterizing Vatican II. The council’s approach “reminds
people of what they have in common rather than of what might divide them.” (John
O’Malley, “Trent and Vatican II: two Styles of Church,” in From Trent to
Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations, ed. Frederick J.
Parrella and Raymond E. Bulman [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006], 313)
The pastoral constitution, in particular, is characterized by a vocabulary of “mutuality,
friendship, partnership, cooperation—and dialogue.” (O’Malley, What Happened,
267) . . . In Gaudium et spes, the council sought to reimage the
relationship of Christianity to the surrounding culture. It was not a matter of
fortifying the borders of the Christian faith—and condemning positions outside it.
IT was, once again, a matter of exploring the links that bind together men and
women of very different backgrounds and beliefs. (Thomas G. Guarino, The
Disputed Teachings of Vatican II: Continuity and Reversal in Catholic Doctrine
[Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2018], 119-20. 121)
