On 14 November 1962, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani presented the schema on Revelation for debate.
He lauded the pastoral value of the schema since it was based on truth, which remained always and everywhere the same.
Pushback from the Council floor was immediate, led once again by Liénart’s immediate non placet, supported by Alfrink, Frings, Bea, König, Suenens, Léger, Ritter and Patriarch Maximos IV.
Stefan Gigacz sums up the debate:
As deadlock emerged, it was Ancel who proposed that Pope John might appoint additional experts from the opposing school of thought to prepare a completely new schema.42 Now another Cardijn ally took the floor, namely De Smedt, who criticised the lack of ecumenical spirit in the draft schema. In a statement that met with thunderous applause, he warned that ‘if the schemas prepared by the Theological Preparatory Commission are not drafted in a different manner, we shall be responsible for having crushed, through the Second Vatican Council, a great and immense hope.’
It was during this debate that a purported opposition between ‘doctors’ (teachers) and ‘pastors’ began to be articulated. This drew a swift response from the French bishops, who, aware that they were regarded as favouring the pastoral approach, wanted to eliminate any misunderstanding. ‘The separation between doctrine and pastoral is inadmissible,’ stated Archbishop Guerry in an interview with La Croix:
It is a mistake. It weighs like an ambiguity on the Council because it risks ending up by dividing the Council Fathers into two groups: on one side, those who faithfully safeguard and defend doctrine; on the other, pastors concerned primarily with fulfilling their pastoral (mission)…’
Or to put it in terms of the Cardijn dialectic, the point was not to oppose ‘truth of faith’ and ‘truth of reality’ but to identify a method to reconcile them.
SOURCE
Stefan Gigacz, The Leaven in the Council, Chapter 7, The Council opens without Cardijn (Australian Cardijn Institute)
