Revered and Reviled: A Re-examination of Vatican Council I by John R. Quinn

Abstract

Reviewed by: Revered and Reviled: A Re-examination of Vatican Council I by John R. Quinn Peter J. Gruber C.O. Revered and Reviled: A Re-examination of Vatican Council I BY JOHN R. QUINN New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2017. viii + 117 pages. Hard-cover, $49.95. ISBN: 9780824523299. The two Vatican Councils are often perceived as polar opposites. Vatican I is often seen as closing the door to the modern world, while Vatican II is understood as thrusting those same doors open. This discontinuity is especially pronounced in the descriptions of the ways the two councils construe the papacy and the episcopate. What Bishop John R. Quinn advances, however, is that no such discontinuity exists, that the First Vatican Council’s clarifications on the papacy prepared the way for the Second Vatican Council to fill in the teaching on the role of the bishops. Quinn writes that this book is for the “moderately educated reader who wishes to have a deeper knowledge of the important issues of papal primacy and of the infallible teaching magisterium of the Pope” (vii). Throughout, he argues against a maximalist interpretation of Vatican I and papal infallibility, which asserts that “the Pope by reason of the primacy must govern all aspects of church life all over the world and that he is infallible in almost all his public teachings” (vii). This extreme interpretation of Vatican I is maintained not by modern-day ultramontanes, but by those who moved too quickly to reject its pronouncements; for example, Hans Küng caricatures infallibility in this way in order to further his own rejection of it. Where Küng sees rupture, Quinn sees continuity. In chapter one, Quinn discusses how, contrary to his intentions of a weaker, controllable papacy, Napoleon actually prompted the growth of a more centralized government within the church and a more prestigious papacy. The end result was the rise of a more extreme ultramontanism throughout Europe, which a-historically reconstructed the primacy of the papacy in terms of sovereignty. In chapter two, Quinn turns his attention to Pius IX and his Syllabus of Errors, paying attention to the influences that led to its formulation ahead of Vatican I. By contextualizing the most alarming propositions with attention to their originating documents, the reader is led to see how the allergy of papal theologians to historical context resulted in pithily expressed propositions that polarized public opinion. Whether or not the Syllabus was covered by papal infallibility divided the ultramontane camp of Manning and the more balanced camp of Newman. Ultimately, despite the intentions of Pius IX, Quinn concludes, “Vatican Council I did not become the Council of the Syllabus” (33). Chapter three shifts attention to the Council itself and the drafting of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ, Pastor aeternus. Situating the [End Page 111] primacy of the pope within the context of primacy of jurisdiction, this constitution does not reduce the role of bishops to being mere functionaries of a papal sovereign—an exaggerated “maximalist” interpretation. Since the Council was suspended before the second section of the document concerning the role of the episcopate could be debated and enacted, in many cases the maximalist interpretation of papal primacy errantly prevailed, only to be corrected definitively at the next Vatican Council. Chapter four hones in on the central question of papal infallibility. Without getting caught in the weeds of the many details now available to historians, Quinn incisively surveys the polarization of the issue both prior to and during the Council, which ultimately led to a restrained definition palatable to almost all the Council fathers. Appended to the end of this chapter, Quinn summarizes Newman’s line of reasoning from his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk in explanation and defense of papal infallibility. Chapter five reevaluates Vatican I by addressing the fourfold contention of August Hasler that the Council was invalid. This brief foray into the controversy raised by Hasler gives Quinn an opportunity to further contextualizes the personality of Pius IX and bolster the legitimacy of the Council in the mind of the reader. In Chapter six, “Newman and Vatican I,” Quinn turns his attention to Newman himself. Newman...