In 1962, the archbishop of New York gave me my new assignment: Go to Rome for three years and do not return until you have a doctorate in Canon Law. Clear, blunt, and at first blush unattractive.
Of all the fields of study during my five years in the seminary, after graduating from college, I must confess that Canon Law for me was the least interesting. But, then, no one had offered me any choice.
What made the whole enterprise wonderful and enriching was being in Rome for the first three of the four sessions of the second Vatican Council.
And, it resulted in a powerful credential—to have a doctorate in Canon Law from a distinguished papal university. Some people actually paid attention, later, to what I said!
The very concept of Canon Law, in the sense of legislation, was rooted in an old and traditional ecclesiology that in later centuries defined the church as well as the state as a “perfect society”.
Of course, the church had to have its customs, rules, and regulations—but weren’t their exponents more teachers than lawyers? That kind of thinking marked my doctoral studies and dissertation.
A doctoral dissertation is proof that the student “knows his stuff”, that he can advance a scholarly point of view after suitable research and analysis and defend it.
One of my archdiocesan colleagues was in his third year of research for his dissertation in Philosophy. It was a becoming a break-through book! I didn’t want that.
My approach was to pick a clearly defined and clearly limited topic, study it historically, call attention to the challenges it posed, research the authors commenting on it, and advance what I hoped to be a small contribution in the field.
The ecclesiology of the Code interested me, and my philosophy was to be “short and sweet” or, at least, not unnecessarily long.
Because it was short, it confirmed the prejudice of some of my colleagues that I was less scholarly. (But, it was adjudged a work at least magna cum laude.)
I came to see canonists at their best to be not so much legalists, splitting hairs over the meaning of canonical documents, but as a kind of structural theologians, building the necessary supports and procedures for the life of the Christian community.
(Pardon what may seem as vague and Romantic language, but then I was studying in Rome, you know!)
While I was commuting to the university, sporadically, for two years and then working on my dissertation for the third, the great review, analysis, and necessary restructuring of the life of the Church was being undertaken each fall in the council in the Vatican, under the leadership, first, of John XXIII and, following, of Paul VI.
During my first year in Rome, I found that a limited number of priests were on staff and attending the daily council session in St. Peter’s basilica. That intrigued me!
For my next two years in Rome, the second and third sessions of the council, I was accepted for a staff position, too!
Each section of bishops in the basilica had one priest to assist them: to be a gofer of sorts, passing messages to others in the basilica, distributing working documents, distributing ballots (IBM punched cards) for voting, and returning them to the computer center, and assisting as otherwise requested.
It also meant hearing all the speeches, having all the working documents, and mixing with all the members of the council.
I learned a lot at the council. It was worth cutting Canon Law classes to be there!
6 March 2021
