Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch’s response to my post from a couple of weeks ago raises issues both of interpretation and of fact, which must be carefully distinguished from each other. First, the issue of interpretation. From his long response, we are entitled to gather that he shares the view of the liberals who believe that Vatican II was betrayed, through subsequent misinterpretation, by conservative forces in the Roman Curia and elsewhere. This view is a mirror image of the view of those conservatives, such as Cardinal Ratzinger, who considered some of the postconciliar developments a betrayal, through subsequent misinterpretation, of what the council actually said. (It seems the only thing that everyone can agree on when it comes to Vatican II is that the council has been betrayed through misinterpretation.) Whose interpretation of Vatican II is correct? Gallons of ink have been spilled on the question, with no definitive answer in sight.

On this issue of interpretation, everybody has his opinion, and Professor MacCulloch is certainly entitled to his. But his desire to associate Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, with the forces of Curial reaction at the council leads him to make a factual assertion, which I questioned in my post — and continue to question after his response. Here’s what he wrote in his book, pages 970–71: “One bishop amidst the crowds who found the whole proceedings [i.e., Vatican II] thoroughly uncongenial and dismayingly chaotic, and whose vote was consistently in the small minority against such statements as Gaudium et Spes, was a Pole who during the council’s sessions became Archbishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyla.”

Gaudium et Spes was one of the two or three central documents — some would contend, the central document — of Vatican II. The phrasing “whose vote was consistently against . . . such statements as Gaudium et Spes” implies that Wojtyla voted against it. MacCulloch now says: “It is not possible to gather who voted in which direction from the published Acts of Vatican II.” Okay; so what is the source for the assertion? “My account is based on the private judgments of the French Dominican theologian Christian Duquoc, and the distinguished and much-lamented Dominican theologian Eduard Schillebeeckx.” I don’t recall ever hearing the name Christian Duquoc before this exchange, so I can’t comment on his credibility as a source for this assertion. I am aware of the late Father Schillebeeckx, who was indeed a distinguished theologian but had a strong parti pris on the side of the “conservatives-betrayed-Vatican-II” camp. Put the “private judgment” of these two sources against the long account in George Weigel’s definitive biography — which recounts Wojtyla’s participation in the writing of, and support for, Gaudium et Spes — and I think it remains much more likely that Wojtyla was, in fact, a supporter of the document. And this is true even if we leave out of consideration the fact that John Paul II made key passages from Gaudium et Spes central to his papacy.

Professor MacCulloch is disappointed by John Paul II’s conduct of the papal office, and — as I mentioned at the top — he is entitled to his opinion. But the sources he adduces for his factual assertion are, in my view, insufficient to establish his contention that John Paul was an opponent of Vatican II and committed, as pope, to undermining it.