Modernists During Vatican II: Ambiguity Was A Strategy for Subversion
"The Council opened some doors. Other doors it left ajar because it saw the times were still not ripe." ~ Fr. Giovanni Caprile of La Civilta Catholica, Chronicler of VII.
Ambiguity: The wedge for the progressive blade to return to its place and continue felling the tree of orthodoxy.
Ambiguity isn’t entirely understood when described as a compromise between conservatives and progressives.
Instead, as Atila Sinke Guimarães observed, “ambiguity […] obeyed strategic designs to facilitate handling the conservative reaction in the conciliar assembly, [while paving] the way for future and more explicit developments in the thought of the progressive current.”
Can we, however, prove these intentions? If so, the Hegelian Benedictine interpretation, the hermeneutic of continuity, and the like, shall be less tenable.
Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx, a modernist Dominican, testified that in the council, “a few intended to adopt formulas with double meaning so that the field would be open to the interpretation of ‘papal collegiality.’” In other words, cloudy phrases were a friendly gesture to the sensitivities of conservatives, with a backdoor to the progressive agenda.
Indeed, Cardinal Suenens appeared to agree with our analysis, asserting that “the texts are sometimes far richer in what they imply than in what they openly affirm.” Insinuation instead of proclamation, mistification instead of revelation, cloaking instead of showing.
This esoteric tendency in style certainly raises suspicion rather than confidence.
Yet, the ambiguous style, instead of raising strong concern, seemed to have sedated the conservative current. What occurred was that through ambiguity, Paul VI achieved unanimity concerning the texts.
Unanimity could not be achieved if the modernist tug for revolutionary formulations was too jarring; they might have awakened the dreaded opposition of the conservatives. “We could not go farther,” observed Fr. Yves Congar, “without causing ruptures.” As Msgr. Philips, the main writer of Lumen Gentium, lamented, “How difficult it is to satisfy even one’s own friends when in opposing fields!”
Still, such practices come at a cost.
Certain texts, noted Suenens, either “lose their point, or at least their forcefulness.” Indeed, when the subversive doctrines of the progressive current mingle with those of the conservative, confusion is wrought. And God is not the author of confusion, but clarity; anything else, as the Divine Master has counseled, is “from the devil.”
Nevertheless, to preserve this false unity, from which the progressive only stands to gain, Fr. Karl Rahner observed that unity was attained by the “tactic of leaving questions unsolved or by other means which, at first sight, may appear as an unfortunate compromise.” Of course, an “unfortunate compromise” with the conservative current.
Ideally, overt renovation was the modernist’s preference, rather than delays by obscure formulation. Delay, however, was ultimately preferred. After all, Suenens related them to “temporary stopping places on a long climb.”
As the Masons would say, “Never pronounce a word of impurity before them.”
So, ambiguity was not a saving grace for the conservative, as common opinion seems to hold, but a toxin for sedation and a shepherd’s cloak for subversion. Like the serpent, like the dove, the modernists have proved themselves wiser than the sons of light.
Source: In the Murky Waters of Vatican II by Atila Sinke Guimarães