Abstract
The 50th anniversary of Vatican II has generated a vast number of publications that have focused on the message, history and central figures of that transforming Council. The publication under review is a fine example of this recent wave of publications. This is a very readable account of the life and times of the American Jesuit John Courtney Murray who was a key contributor to the Declaration on Religious Freedom. And what times they were! The publication of the Declaration at the very end of the Council marked a decisive shift in the Church’s approach to religious freedom and to the relationship between Church and State. The earlier Syllabus of Errors, with its denial of religious freedom, was replaced by a clear and unambiguous statement on religious freedom as a fundamental human right. Furthermore the Declaration asserted that this right is rooted in the very dignity of the human person as this is known through reason and revelation.
The journey from the Syllabus to the Declaration was a difficult one because it raised important but unsettling questions about change and development in Church teaching. Almost from the beginning of his career as a theologian Murray was involved in robust debates with fellow theologians and the wider Church family. Murray’s engagement with the ‘received opinion’ on Church–State relations led him to advocate, in the early 1950s, that it ‘ought not to be received.’ His principal theological adversaries were Joseph Fenton and Francis Connell, both professors at the Catholic University of America and both vigorously opposed to Murray’s take on Church–State relations and the question of religious freedom. The pages of the American Ecclesiastical Review, where Fenton was editor, channelled their views while Theological Studies, which Murray edited, was the primary vehicle for the dissemination of his views. In the course of his scholarly research and writing in Theological Studies, and elsewhere, Murray crossed swords with the powerful Cardinal Ottaviani whose intervention resulted in the effective silencing of Murray for several years. Ottaviani argued that the received theological framework of ‘error has no rights’ and its implications both for religious freedom and Church–State relationships was firm and immoveable. He maintained this position right through the debates of the Council.
The opposition encountered by Murray before the Council was replicated, if not intensified, once the Council began deliberating on the question of religious freedom. The author gives a very clear account of the politics and machinations evident during the council. These machinations ensured that Murray’s invitation to be a peritus arrived considerably later than that of his chief adversary Joseph Fenton. These machinations also ensured that the journey of the various drafts through the Council was precarious. As a result the Declaration only received final approval during the penultimate days of the Council.