Lecture 35: From Vatican I to Vatican II
Rome, so that the Roman See is ever afterward the Apostolic See, the See
of Peter.After Vatican I, the prerogative of infallibility has been exercised only once,
in the de¿ nition of the doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. The doctrine teaches that Mary was taken up, both body and soul,
into heaven. This means that either she did not die or (the majority view,
shared by the Eastern Orthodox) she died and then was the ¿ rst person after
Jesus to be resurrected bodily to eternal life. This doctrine supports the
important Catholic piety of devotion to Mary as the queen of heaven. While
the Eastern Orthodox agree with the doctrine, they believe only ecumenical
councils have the right to de¿ ne doctrine. Protestants believe that no one can
legitimately be required to believe the two Mariological doctrines de¿ ned
by the pope, because they are not found in scripture. The de¿ nition of the
Assumption of Mary was thus a low point in ecumenical relations, shortly
before the important new move toward ecumenism taken by Vatican II.With the encouragement of the pope, neo-Thomism became the dominant
form of Catholic theology after Vatican I, though it came increasingly under
challenge in the 20th century. Neo-Thomists drew an especially sharp line
between the natural order and the supernatural order. Thomas Aquinas
af¿ rmed both faith and reason, but taught that faith, being supernatural, had
access to higher truths than natural reason alone. Thomas’s critical use of
Aristotle’s philosophy (a product of natural reason) was taken as a model
for the critical use of natural science in modern Christian thought. Hence
for neo-Thomists, the best of human reason, modern science and philosophy
could be used in Christian theories of human nature, while the supernatural
order was strictly the domain of theology. In some of its forms, neo-Thomism
could be criticized as “extrinsicist,” because it made the supernatural order
of grace extrinsic to ordinary human life.Henri de Lubac, a patristic scholar and leading critic of neo-Thomism,
found abundant teaching in the church fathers and in Thomas himself
about the natural desire for God, which amounted to a natural desire for
a supernatural happiness. Another papal encyclical in 1950 warned the
critics of neo-Thomism that the supernatural must remain gratuitous, a gift
God does not owe human nature. Hence Catholic theologians frequently