Abstract
‘Subversive illiberality’ might summarize this book, which is at times, nevertheless, almost a compulsive read. Rist is a lay theologian who has taught at various institutions and universities in Scotland, Jerusalem, Rome, Canada and the USA. Early on in the book, he notes: ‘my aim in this book is not to write a detailed history of the decisions of the First Vatican Council, still less to evaluate them theologically’ (p. 40). Nonetheless, one is treated to an exhilarating and controversial gallop through history effectively beginning in the late eighteenth century, although he notes that the problems of infallibility go all the way back to Gregory VII in the eleventh century!
The theme of what became known as infallibility was already in the air, he argues, before the advent of Pius IX, and he devotes considerable space to the machinations behind the First Vatican Council, which had been preceded by the Syllabus of Errors, compiled in 1864, earlier in Pius IX’s pontificate. Pius had been alarmed by the growth of tendencies towards local usage and also hints of challenges to orthodoxy. ‘Gallicanism’ in France had haunted him, although Rist argues convincingly that it was Döllinger, Möhler, Strossmayer and others in Germany, more radical critics, about whom he should have been concerned. At the council, Ultramontanists won the day and the critical minority had left Rome even before the final vote. Leo XIII, Pius’s successor, often seen as a more liberal force on account of his innovative Catholic social teaching, nonetheless continued in a conservative direction and, with his successor Pius X, began the witch-hunt that dogged the Church during the ‘Modernist Crisis’. Rist reveals his true theological colours here, in his response to the rise of historical critical biblical studies, which he summarily rejects to a large degree. Thereafter, he maps continuing papal repression under Benedict XV, Pius XI and Pius XII.
John XXIII presents the first signs of puzzlement relating to the nature of the Second Vatican Council. What was he really hoping would issue from the council? Ultimately, Rist concludes that he encouraged an atmosphere of change, albeit prescinding from personal intervention. Paul VI intervened more often, and again Rist muses on Paul’s ultimate hopes for the council; the conclusion which emerges is that Paul’s instincts desired change. The story of Humanae Vitae is a rehearsal of the now familiar interpretation of all that led to Paul’s fateful decision. He also sees John Paul II and Benedict XVI as enigmatic figures, inasmuch as they aimed at a restoration of the ‘ordinary magisterium’, effectively reversing changes in the teaching that emerged from Vatican II. Rist’s view of the present pontificate leaves us in no doubt whatsoever of his negative view of Francis. At one point he notes: ‘At best they (clergy and uncritical laity) may grant that he has made mistakes. Only very recently have they begun to ask, however hesitantly, “Is the Pope a Catholic?”: a question unheard for centuries’ (p. 184).
At times the book becomes something of a rant. Rist’s analysis of ‘creeping infallibility’ over the past 150 years, however, is cogent. Ironically, the five suggestions he offers as his conclusion, which would be cheered by many both within and outside the Roman Catholic Church, appear to bespeak the very liberalization of which his overall argument is critical. The book concludes as paradoxically as it begins.