Pope John XXIII's New Pentecost

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reforms that, among other things, enable the world's bishops to decide for themselves whether they wish parts of the Mass to be said in the language of their own countries. The vote goes much deeper than ceremonials; it is somewhat like the U.S. State Department's allowing its embassies to decide foreign policy. A power historically held by the Curia—the right to change the liturgy—now goes in some degree to national, linguistic or continental bishops' conferences. The way is thus opened to a decentralization bound eventually to extend into such areas as missionary activity and control of seminaries. Atlanta's Archbishop Paul Hallinan called the shift "a vote against old ideas. This first chapter really paves the way for everything else."

∙THE SOURCES OF REVELATION. In the crucial debate on the sources of revelation, the schema prepared by Cardinal Ottaviani uncompromisingly emphasized the separateness of the two sources recognized by the Catholic Church—Scripture and tradition.* But Protestants recognize only one source—Scripture—and the progressives of the council, seeing no point in stressing Catholic-Protestant differences, wanted to present Scripture and tradition as two channels in the same stream. For nearly two weeks the debate raged on. Finally, 1,368 council fathers voted to shelve the Ottaviani document—but the vote was still short of the needed two-thirds majority. Pope John, watching the proceedings in his apartment over closed-circuit TV, ruled that there was no point in continuing to discuss a document that so many bishops disapproved of. He halted debate and sent the proposal to be rewritten by a new committee co-chaired by Cardinal Ottaviani and Augustin Cardinal Bea, Jesuit head of the newly created Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and the leader of the council progressives. Said Canadian Father Gregory Baum, a council theologian: "This day will go down in history as the end of the Counter Reformation." Said the Pope: "Now begins my council."

∙THE NATURE OF THE CHURCH. When the time came to discuss Cardinal Ottaviani's draft proposal on the nature of the modern church, the progressives were ready. Ottaviani had tried to get the bishops to end the council's first session with a pious discussion of the Virgin Mary, but the council decided instead to press on to consider the nature of the church before adjourning. The purpose of the progressives was to get any objections on record and thus provide guidance that could be used in rewriting the schema after adjournment. There proved to be many objections to the Ottaviani draft, which was a stand-pat restatement of monarchical church authority. Bishop Emile Josef De Smedt of Bruges, Belgium, rose to speak: "Shouldn't this schema be purged of its triumphalism, its clericalism, its juridicism? This exercise in minor logic is unworthy of Mother Church." When he sat down, Bishop De Smedt received the loudest applause of the council. At council's end, the document was sent back for rewriting, thus opening the way for more tolerant Catholic positions on church-state relations, religious freedom, and the tempering of hierarchical authority by giving the laity a bigger role in the church.

Bishops Seduced? During the deliberations, the conservatives and their backers continually sniped at the