Theology Today - Vol 21, No. 4 - January 1965 - BOOK REVIEW

525 - The Problem of Catholicism

The Problem of Catholicism
By Vittorio Subilia
190 pp. Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1964. $4.50.

The meetings of the Second Vatican Council have had such amazing results thus far that there has been very little critical appraisal of them. Indeed, such criticism as I have seen has tended to appear in the Roman Catholic rather than the Protestant press. For the most part Protestants seem to have hesitated to offer any criticism lest their speaking out should in some way damage the "new climate."

Dr. Subilia, Dean of the Waldensian Seminary in Rome, and an official observer at the Council, representing the World Reformed Alliance, has somewhat shattered the spell by his book. But let there be no mistake about it; this is no angry onslaught against the papacy of the kind which used to be the Protestant stock in trade. It is instead a quiet and scholarly examination of the work of the Council. But Dr. Subilia conducts this examination in the light of a central thesis which constitutes, in his opinion, the "problem of Catholicism."

Briefly stated, the author's thesis is as follows. Vatican II has done and will do heroic work in clearing away the useless accumulations of the centuries and in bringing the Roman Catholic Church into position to minister significantly to the twentieth century. About this there can be no question. Dr. Subilia presents carefully documented studies of the Council's work in such questions as the renewal of the liturgy, the place of the laity, the re-assessment of the episcopacy, the re-evaluation of the relationship between Bible and tradition,

In all of these matters and more, beside the Council has done a splendid job in renewing Roman Catholicism. But, as I understand him, the au-

526 - The Problem of Catholicism

thor is saying that Protestants dare not rest their evaluation of the Council's work in any or all of them. For significant though they may seem, all of them are really marginal in that they do not touch the living heart of Roman Catholicism. The author strongly suggests that when all of these reforms have been completed, the Roman Church can then say to Protestants, "What is so objectionable any longer? What possible reason is there now to prevent your coming home?"

But the fact is, as Dr. Subilia points out, that the real issue which separates us will never have been touched. In his opinion it will never be touched. Roman Catholicism can adapt itself in scores of ways to scores of new situations, assuming forms which may seem startlingly new. But nothing will ever be done in any way to compromise its central thesis.

And what is that central thesis? In a long chapter entitled "The Ecclesiological Disagreement" the author discusses it. In essence, it is a complete identification between Christ and the church. The Roman Church is his continuing presence upon the earth and therefore, in its essence, outside of history.

"The promise of the divine presence becomes so embodied in the Church that it has ceased to be a promise. It has passed from the hands of God into the hands of chosen men, approved and blessed of God. It has become a reality, a fixed reality, endowed with guarantees and assurances to demonstrate its divine-human character. The Church's own existence can no more be separated from it. The conjunction of the Head and the members of his body is now a phenomenon conceived organically, and the Christological-ecclesiological organism that results can no longer suffer dissolution; indeed any sickness it suffers can only be passing and epidermic. Where the Church is, there is Christ, and where the voice of the Church sounds, there sounds the voice of Christ. The Church is the extension of Christ's incarnation in his ministry of Prophet and Teacher. It is his fulness, his perennial visible representative, his presence in history through every age" (p. 126).

If I have quoted at length from Dr. Subilia, it is because words like these are central to his case. His conclusion would seem to be that when Vatican II finally adjourns, while we shall certainly have a new ecurnenical climate (which we should welcome), the great and crucial debate will never have taken place. Protestants must not be deceived into supposing that because of all that has been changed, the essentials will have been changed. For such will not be the case and cannot, in the nature of things, ever be the case.

The author freely admits that our situation is not good because of our lack of an ecclesiology or our dependence upon one which has been flimsy and superficial. He seems to encourage a continuing encounter at this level which will help Protestantism to formulate its own doctrine of the

527 - The Problem of Catholicism

church and not surrender meekly to one which, though it has great coherence, contains large elements which are basically inimical to the Protestant concept of the Gospel.

It is probably unfashionable to say so in this ecumenical age, but it seems to this reviewer that Dr. Subilia is saying some things in this book which we cannot afford to ignore. It would be tragic if our hostilities in any way damaged the new climate. And, incidentally, there is nothing in Dr. Subilia's book which is any way hostile or polemical. But it would be equally tragic if we did not see that the central questions are still on the agenda, in no real way resolved. The first encylical of Paul VI, published in the summer of 1964, after Subilia's book, is perhaps the best confirmation of the author's thesis.

At the same time, it seems to this reviewer that Dr. Subilia can be accused of not taking a sufficiently dynamic view of the situation. Statically as the Roman Church may conceive itself, marginal as it may think certain reforms in which it is now engaging, the fact is that under the dynamism of the Holy Spirit some of these marginal reforms could lead to a vast disturbance of the unchanging center. What will be the ultimate effect, for example, of the preaching of the Gospel every Sunday, if the liturgical reform is taken seriously? Or of the use of evangelical hymns in Roman Catholic worship? Or more important still, what will be the ultimate effect of the new seriousness about the Scriptures which is so evident in contemporary Roman Catholicism?

The classic theologian may put these down as marginal reforms. But since these are all instrumentalities of the Holy Spirit, they release forces which the classic theologian can neither predict nor control. It is possible that when the great debate comes, as come it must, it will be in terms very different from any which either side could at the moment imagine.

Howard G. Hageman
Newark, New Jersey