Edward Schillebeeckx - Second Vatican Council

Second Vatican Council

During the Second Vatican Council, Schillebeeckx was one of the most active theologians. He drafted various council interventions for Dutch bishops such as Cardinal Bernard Jan Alfrink, and gave conferences on theological ressourcement for many episcopal conferences present in Rome. Due to his having been the "ghost writer" of the Dutch bishops' Pastoral Letter on the upcoming Council in 1961, he was rendered suspect with the Congregation of the Holy Office, led by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani (President) and the Dutchman Sebastiaan Tromp (secretary). This was the first of three instances in which Schillebeeckx had to defend his theological positions against accusations from the Roman authorities. As a result, Schillebeeckx drafted his mostly negative comments on the schemata prepared by the Preparatory Theological Commission (headed by Ottaviani) anonymously. These anonymous comments on the theological schemata debated at Vatican II, and the articles he published, also influenced the development of several conciliar constitutions such as Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium. Concerning the latter document, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Schillebeeckx was mainly involved in the debate on episcopal collegiality, attempting to move Catholic ecclesiology away from a purely hierarchical structured vision of the church, focusing too heavily on Papal authority (as a result of the declaration of Papal infallibility in Vatican I's constitution Pastor Aeternus). This, according to Schillebeeckx and many others at Vatican II, was to be balanced by a renewed stress on the role of the episcopal college. In this way his influence was far greater than that of a formal peritus, a status the Dutch bishops had not granted to him. Already in 1963, together with Chenu, Congar, Karl Rahner, and Hans Küng he was involved in preparing the rise of the new theological journal Concilium, which was officially founded in 1965 with the support of Paul Brand and Antoine Van den Boogaard, and which promoted "reformist" thought.