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Interpreting The Council: Archbishop Manning and the Vatican Decrees Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Jeffrey Paul von Arx
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Extract

Contemporary Roman Catholics have realized in the last thirty-five years that when an ecumenical council has concluded, it is far from over. The interpretation of the decrees of the Second Vatican Council has become today as critical and controverted as the formulation of the decrees was during the Council itself. The present controversies centre on ecclesiology—the nature of the Church—and questions at issue concern continuity and innovation. Did Vatican II, and especially the Decree on the Church in the Modern World, reform the structure and the governance of the Church toward a greater degree of consultation, subsidiarity, decentralization—‘collegiality’, to use the expression of the Council itself? Or was the vision of the Council for the Church in basic continuity with the centralized, papal-monarchial Church of the First Vatican Council? Around these questions centres most of the contention that engages the Church today: debates having to do with the rôle of bishops’ conferences, the operation of the Roman curia, the relationship of the magisterium or teaching authority to theologians.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , May 2002 , pp. 229 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2003

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References

Notes

1 See especially the articles of Altholz, Josef L.: ‘Gladstone and the Vatican Decrees’, The Historian, 25 (May 1963), pp. 312–324 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The Vatican Decrees Controversy’, Catholic Historical Review, 57 (1972), pp. 593–605 Google Scholar; ‘Gladstone, Lord Ripon and the Vatican Decrees, 1874’, Albion, Fall, 1990, pp. 449–459; also the chapter ‘Gladstone and Vaticanism’, in Norman, E.R.’s Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England. (London (1968), pp. 81–104 Google Scholar; Matthew, H.C.G., ‘Gladstone, Vaticanism and the Question of the East’, in Baker, Derek, ed., Religious Motivation: Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian (Oxford, 1978), p. 417–442 Google Scholar; Arnstein, Walter L., Protestant versus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England (Columbia, MO, 1982), pp. 184–197 Google Scholar; McClelland, V. Alan, ‘Gladstone and Manning: A Question of Authority’, in Jagger, Peter, ed., Gladstone, Politics and Religion (London, 1985)Google Scholar; and Leslie, Shane, Henry Edward Manning (London, 1921), pp. 244—248 Google Scholar.

2 Altholz, ‘Gladstone and the Vatican Decrees’, p. 324.

3 Altholz, op. cit., p. 322. Dollinger’s letter was dated October 24, 1874.

4 Gladstone, W.E., ‘The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation’, in Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion: Three Tracts (London, 1875), p. lxi Google Scholar.

5 Gladstone, op. cit., p. lxii.

6 See for example, E.R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England, p. 101; Altholz, ‘The Vatican Decrees Controversy, 1874–1875’, p. 601; Arnstein, op. cit., pp. 195–6.

7 See Butler, Cuthbert, The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne (New York, 1926), Vol. II, pp. 101–102 Google Scholar.

8 See von Arx, Jeffrey P., ‘Archbishop Manning and the Kulturkampf , in Recusant History, Vol. 21, No 2 (October, 1992), p. 262 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Manning, H.E., The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance (London, 1875), p. 15 Google Scholar.

10 Manning, op. cit., p. 19.

11 Ibidem, p. 30.

12 i.e., not to argue from a Roman Catholic point of view, but in a way that would be accessible to all British Christians: see above, ‘Archbishop Manning and the Kulturkampf, p. 259.

13 Manning, The Vatican Decrees . . ., p. 32.

14 Ibidem, pp. 36–7.

15 See Gladstone, Expostulation, pp. xxxvii and lxiii.

16 ‘The relations of the Catholic Church to the Civil Powers have been fixed immutably from the beginning, because they arise out of the Divine constitution of the Church and out of Civil Society of the natural order’ (The Vatican Decrees . . ., p. 43); on the deposing power, see p. 78.

17 See von Arx, , “Manning’s ultramontanism and the Catholic Church in British Politics,” Recusant History, Vol. 19, No 3 (May, 1989), p. 342 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Ibidem, p. 335.

19 Ibidem, p. 342.

20 The Vatican Decrees, p. 55.

21 Vatican Decrees, p. 85.

22 Vatican Decrees, p. 88.

23 Ibidem, p. 91.

24 Ibidem, pp. 91–92.

25 Ibidem, p. 92.

26 See Petři Privilegium, part HI, (London, 1873)Google Scholar. Manning believed that the German Catholic church historian and inopportunist Ignaz von Döllinger had been the inspiration if not the author of Hohenlohe’s circular and had also influenced the Prussian foreign minister, Count von Arnim, to pressure his government to intervene.

27 von Ketteler quoted in Manning, op. cit., p. 117.

28 Ibidem, p. 118.

29 Ketteler, quoted in Manning, op. cit., p. 117.

30 Ketteler, quoted in Manning, op. cit., p. 120.

31 See von Arx, , ‘Catholics and Politics’, in McClelland, V. A. and Hodgetts, M., eds., From Without the Flaminian Gate (London, 1999), pp. 260–261 Google Scholar.

32 Manning, The Vatican Decrees . . ., pp. 133–4. One of the earliest uses of the term ‘secular’ by Manning that I have been able to discover.

35 Ibidem, pp. 135–6.

34 Ibidem, pp. 137–138.

35 Ibidem, pp. 138–9.

36 Ibidem, p. 140.

37 Altholz, , ‘The Vatican Decrees Controversy, 1874–1875’, in Catholic Historical Review, vol. 57 (1972), pp. 593–605 Google Scholar; Norman, E.R., chapter 4, ‘Gladstone and Vaticanism’, in his Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London, 1968), pp. 80–104 Google Scholar.

38 Altholz, op. cit., p. 593.

39 ‘In the little that depends on me, I shall be guided hereafter, as heretofore, by the rule of maintaining equal civil rights irrespectively of religious differences. ... I hold that our onward even course should not be changed by follies, the consequences of which, if the worst come to the worst, this country will have alike the power and, in case of need, the will to control.’ Gladstone, ‘The Vatican Decrees’, pp. lxxiv-v.

40 ‘But I have little fear that the stream of our equal legislation will be turned aside, much less turned back; or that our public peace will be broken. The destinies of the British Empire are in strong hands, guided by calm heads, and supported by a balanced and steady public opinion.’ Manning, The Vatican Decrees, p. 140.

41 Ibidem, pp. 178–9.

42 Matthew, H.C.G., ‘Gladstone, Vaticanism, and the Question of the East’, in Baker, D., ed., Religious Motivation: Biographical and Sociological problems for the Church Historian, pp. 417–442 Google Scholar.

43 Matthew, p. 418.

44 ibidem, p. 420.

45 Ibidem, p. 428.

46 Ibidem, p. 435.

47 Ibidem, pp. 441–2.