Trad Godfathers at Vatican II: Bishop Carli

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Read part I The Coetus: Trad Godfathers at Vatican II
Read part II: Lefebvre on the Eve of the Council

Part III: The Case of Bishop Luigi Maria Carli

Bishop Luigi Maria Carli is perhaps the member of the five-man steering committee of the Coetus Internationalis Patrum whom our readers know least; he certainly was not its least consequential member, however, in terms of the clout he brought to it.

His confreres in the Italian Conference of bishops had learned to respect this intelligent and efficient prelate, who had degrees from the Lateran (at the time, in the 1930s, called the “Apollinare”) in theology and in utroque jure (viz. in both Canon and Civil Law). His dissertation in theology was on the death and Assumption of Our Lady in the Greek homilies of the seventh and eighth centuries—a topic that required expertise in classical, biblical, and Byzantine Greek.^[1] As an academic, he was tapped as seminary rector in the diocese of Comacchio, where he was also vicar general. His legal expertise led him to be president of the Regional Tribunal of Flaminio (in Rome) after serving as a judge there since 1955. He was consecrated bishop of Segni, a suburbicarian See, on September  21, 1957.

What he brought to the steering committee of the CIP during the Second Vatican Council, therefore, was not only an actionable knowledge of the Italian ecclesiastical landscape, but also a measure of influence: he knew many prelates at Rome through his legal connections, and he was the Ordinary of the diocese of Segni, the home diocese of Archbishop Pericle Felici, the secretary general of the Council. This influence may explain why Bp Carli gave more speeches during the Council, fifty-six, than did the rest of the CIP leadership: Bp de Castro Mayer gave fifty, Dom Prou, OSB, thirty-five, Archbishop Lefebvre twenty-eight and Bp Proença-Sigaud, twenty-five. This influence is also what caused Cardinal Döpfner, a leader of the liberal faction, to fear him above all other opponents.^[2]

Like the other bishops of the world, Bp Carli had received the letter from Cardinal Tardini dated June 18, 1959 soliciting his wishes and suggestions for the ecumenical council Pope John XXIII had called. Unlike Archbishop Lefebvre, whose response was delayed by the pressures of his recent change of assignment,^[3] Bishop Carli was able to respond on 8 August 1959. He prefaced his vota with a letter to Pope John XXIII, written in the beautiful formal ecclesiastical Latin of the time (“The letter most courteously sent in Your August Name . . . I, prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness . . . I invoke the Paraclete Spirit that by the protection and mediation of Mary the Mother of God He may illumine with heavenly light your mind and that of the future Council Fathers as well as strengthen your and their will with His sweet strength”).^[4]

Like Archbishop Lefebvre, Bp Carli took the duty of expressing his wishes and concerns seriously; he tells the pope that he has “not ceased thinking over before God the subjects that might, it seems, be treated for the good of our Holy Mother the Church, as far as I may know.”^[5] He adds that some of his concerns were specifically Italian, while others applied to the Church universal.

Bp Carli divided his vota into three categories: a.) Doctrine; b.) Discipline of the Clergy; c.) Discipline of the Christian People.

a. Doctrine

Bp Carli’s principal concern was the spread of hedonism. Born in 1914, he had grown up in a world in which men lived with little, and he was alarmed at the spread of distractions (entertainment, leisure) after World War II. He therefore proposed that the Council should teach that man should order his life, both private and public, with a view to his supernatural end. He called for a condemnation of materialism and secularism.

In the sphere of matrimony, he wished the superiority of consecrated virginity to be clearly proposed, as well as the indissolubility and proper ends of marriage.

He also called for the condemnation of materialist evolutionism, the notion that life and its variety came about through purely material means; polygenism, the notion that man descends from more than one original couple; and moral relativism. In this, Bp Carli essentially wished for eminent aspects of Pius XII’s teaching (as found, e.g., in his Encyclical Humani generis of August 12, 1950) to be taught at the conciliar level.

With respect to ecumenism, Bp Carli called for a precise definition of “Catholic Tradition,” as this would help to clarify discussions with Protestants. He had also given some thought to the constitution of the Church, particularly the papacy and episcopacy. Regarding the Pope, he sought a definition that might help bring about a rapprochement with the Eastern Orthodox:

The manner in which the Sovereign Pontiff must exercise his jurisdictional primacy over the universal Church in practice is not defined by divine institution, but is entrusted to his prudence under the ordinary assistance of the Holy Ghost, according to circumstances of time and place, without prejudice to what is of divine right.^[6]

Regarding the bishops, he proposed the following three points: 1.) the office of bishop is truly a sacrament of the New Law; 2.) the college of residential bishops, as successor to the college of Apostles in their apostolic mission, is part of of the Church’s essential structure, under the preeminence of the Sovereign Pontiff; 3) as a college and in communion with the Sovereign Pontiff, residential bishops are endowed with the charism of infallibility—therefore, they alone have the strict and natural right to be called as a Council and to vote in its deliberations (others may too, but only as a gracious concession by the Pope).

b. Discipline of the Clergy

In this respect, Bp Carli showed himself every bit as efficiency-minded as Archbishop Lefebvre. He asked for clearer documents from the various Congregations (=dicasteries). He pointed out the need for uniformity among bishops within a region in catechetical texts and methods (dioceses produced their own catechisms in those days), in women’s dress codes for sacred spaces, in Catholic Action and its relation to other pious associations, in the administration of Confirmation and First Communion (local customs prevailed), in the rates of stole-fees, and in the relations between the clergy and civil authorities. Such a uniformity would help guarantee discipline, maintain episcopal authority, and edify the people by getting rid of the temptation to go “diocese-shopping,” as it were. The same concern for episcopal authority and the edification of the people informs his proposal that laymen no longer involve themselves in solemn religious acts (processions and the like), as their participation sometimes devolved into unseemly spectacles.^[7] On the other hand, he also proposed that laymen do take over teaching non-religious subjects in the schools, in order to free up priests and religious for the apostolate.

We have seen that Archbishop Lefebvre, from his vantage point in vast Africa, promoted smaller dioceses in which a bishop might better get to know his priests and people. Bishop Carli’s Italy, on the other hand, was a crabbed mosaic of tiny dioceses: he sought the grouping of small dioceses to form larger ones. He provided a number of reasons for this proposal, which all bear the stamp of experience. The drawbacks of small dioceses were that they involved needless expenses in men and funds, that they limited the scope of a bishop’s activity, and that they limited the possibility of moving clergy among assignments (especially of promoting the good ones to higher posts). Lastly, a small diocese discouraged vocations:

It may seem too much to ask excellent young men to keep their future life within the limits of a small diocese where there are few rectories, where changes in postings are rare or non-existent, whence arise nearly daily quarrels and rivalries (lites simultatesque) among priests! As a result, they either enter the religious life, where the chances of being moved are greater, or they remain in the world.^[8]

As for the interior life of priests, Bp Carli proposed obligatory exercises once a year, or at least every other year. He solemnly recommended common life for the clergy, especially for the younger clergy and in smaller parishes. For their intellectual life, he wished to see priests attend week-long professional development sessions, “settimane di aggiornamento per il Clero.” He also thought it imprudent to entrust the direct managing of funds to priests, as this was a source of temptations and of contempt on the part of the faithful. That said, he also believed that priests ought to be given a reliable and decent living (“certus et decorus . . . vivendi modus”).

Bp Carli’s concern for a sound clergy emerges in his proposal for priestly training and advancement through minor orders:

After a full three years of high school [in minor seminary], let there be a six-year theological cursus. The Subdiaconate should not be conferred before the twenty-third birthday—but the obligation of celibacy and divine office should only be temporary.^[9] The diaconate should be conferred no less than a year after the subdiaconate; that is where the obligation of celibacy and divine office should be perpetual; the same could be said of perpetual profession for Religious. We would thus be granting more time to weigh the obligations of the clerical state, and a return to secular life will be possible in practice as late as twenty-four years of age.^[10]

Bp Carli also believed that something had to be done about the outdated privileges of Canons, who were priests bound to choral office at the cathedral. Their “colleges” had often accumulated all manner of privileges during the Middle Ages. For Bp Carli, these were “the cause of interminable disputes.” He deemed that their obligation to sing or recite the office together “in chapter” should be limited to holy days of obligation, and that bishops ought to have the right to oblige them (obligandi [!]) to teach catechism, to teach at the seminary (for free, scholam gratuitam [!!]), to hear confessions, and provide other services of the sort. In this, Bp Carli showed himself something of a revolutionary who did not shrink from upsetting a well-established apple cart if he thought it beneficial to the diocese.

Lastly, Bp Carli had a few requests regarding the religious orders and the conflicts of jurisdiction their presence in a diocese might precipitate. The problem was that of “exemption”: members of religious congregations were not subject to the jurisdiction of the local bishop. For Bp Carli, the historical circumstances justifying exemption (episcopal oppression of religious orders within their dioceses) no longer applied. Furthermore, exemption was detrimental to the life of the Church: far from serving the local Church as they were called to do, religious could actually impede it by not conforming to diocesan standards in teaching the Catechism to children. Furthermore, exemption was a scandal to the faithful, who perceived a sort of double-standard between diocesan and regular clergy. This was especially the case when religious, who made a vow a poverty, failed to live up to that vow and the bishop was powerless to reform them. The worst abuse caused by exemption, in Bp Carli’s view, is that religious men were free to crisscross smaller dioceses to poach vocations by promising an easy and inexpensive formation;^[11] we have seen also that Bp Carli complained that religious orders could suggest that joining them opened up more vistas than joining the clergy of a small diocese.

c. Discipline of the Christian People

Here Bp Carli addressed the problems he saw affecting the Church in the run of the Christian people. He had thirteen concerns, which he presented as a list:

1. Present-day Christians were seeking to reconcile the faith with effective neo-paganism: priests needed to be stricter (rigidius, “more rigid”) in the confessional.
2. The institution of godparents ought to be suppressed: it serves no spiritual purpose, while waiting for them to attend the baptism often caused dangerous delays in conferring the sacrament.
3. Neighboring dioceses should coordinate their standards so that Christian feasts and celebrations (Saints’ days, Confirmation, First Communion and Weddings) may be shorn of their excessive profane luxury and diversions, at least within the purview of the Church.
4. The celebration of Baptisms, Weddings, and funerals should no longer be distinguished by class: let all Christians have access to the same service in the Church of Christ, irrespective of wealth or prestige.
5. First Communion ought to be noted in the parish registry. This would ensure that the pastor or his delegate have made a judgment about the child’s proper dispositions.
6. The proper age for Confirmation, and its link to First Communion, ought to be defined more precisely.
7. Regarding holy days of obligation: either they should all be permanently transferred to a Sunday, or their obligation (outside of Sundays) should be limited to hearing Mass—the obligation to abstain from work should be dropped if they fall on a weekday.
8. Regarding abstinence from work: the then-current distinction was between servile labor, to which abstinence from work applied (and concerning which a bewildering list of exemptions had grown up), and liberal occupation, to which it did not. Bp Carli proposed that a better criterion be found.
9. Catechesis ought to be made an obligatory part of the sanctification of feast days. For adults, this would take place as part of Mass, say after the Epistle and after the Gospel (post Epistolam et post Evangelium).
10. The Easter duty should extend to the entire year: one ought to be able to fulfill one’s duty to receive Communion once a year at any time, not just between Palm Sunday and the second Sunday of Easter—although that period should be recommended.
11. Bp Carli proposed changes to the law of fast and abstinence: it should be limited to Fridays in Lent, Ash Wednesday, Holy Saturday, the Vigils of All Saints’ day, of the Immaculate Conception, and of Christmas. All other days of fasting and abstinence (such as Ember days) should be abolished.
12. Likewise, the seasons in which weddings might not be celebrated with solemnity (flowers, music, chant, lighting, carpets, etc.) ought to be limited only to Lent (at the time, solemn weddings were also prohibited in Advent). And should the bishop allow a wedding in Lent, it should include the blessing of the bride.
13. Bp Carli also wished for there to be a stronger manifestation of the internal forum in persons contracting a marriage—in other words, there ought to be a procedure to establish that they are exchanging consents validly. His aim was to reduce annulment cases; as a means he proposed that the pastor interview the contracting parties ahead of time and have them sign affidavits confirming that they were acting free from force or fear.

Assessment

With Bishop Carli we encounter a bishop who, like Archbishop Lefebvre, was both strongly attached to orthodoxy and practical, if not pragmatic, in his approach to actual governance within the Church.

The doctrinal topics that concerned him were in line with those of Pius XII. Indeed, the latter had treated of materialism in his 1957 Encyclical on the centenary of the appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Lourdes in terms that inform Bp Carli’s vota:

[T]he world . . . is also undergoing a terrible temptation to materialism. . . .  It rages also in a love of money which creates ever greater havoc as modern enterprises expand. . . . It finds expression in the cult of the body, in excessive desire for comforts, and in flight from all the austerities of life. It encourages scorn for human life, even for life which is destroyed before seeing the light of day.

This materialism is present in the unrestrained search for pleasure, which flaunts itself shamelessly and tries, through reading matter and entertainments, to seduce souls which are still pure.^[12]

Bp Carli’s proposal on the definition of the superiority of virginity over matrimony as a state^[13] and the hierarchy of ends in matrimony^[14] also reflect the teaching of Pius XII, which itself echoed that of Pius XI and the entire theological tradition before him; the vague language in Gaudium et Spes would come as a surprise to Bp Carli and many other bishops, who sent a note to the central commission to ask why the hierarchy of ends had been obscured, as we shall see in a later article.

The same “Pian” outlook informs Bp Carli’s call for the condemnations of material evolutionism and polygenism: Pius XII had condemned them in his Encyclical “Humani generis” of August 12, 1950.

On the other hand, Bp Carli’s call for the definition of Catholic Tradition and the Primacy of the Pope reflect a theologian who had done some thinking of his own, and had reached conclusions that looked beyond the horizon of Pius XII’s teaching. In fact, to some extent he anticipated Vatican II, which would address Tradition in its Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation Dei Verbum and the relationship between bishops and pope in the Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishop Christus Dominus.

The disciplinary topics that Bp Carli broaches show him to be a bishop in the Tridentine mold: he advocated simplicity, efficiency, and centralization. One sees this in his proposals to abolish extraneous and profane elements from the life of the Church, to flatten the hierarchy of classes in the celebration of certain sacraments, to standardize practices among neighboring dioceses, and to reclaim episcopal authority over “exempt” religious congregations and cathedral canons. His idea to have catechesis for adults at odd times during the Mass too goes back to the Council of Trent. Likewise, his concern for the validity of matrimony has a long history and is in continuity with the Tridentine reform regarding canonical form.

On the other hand, some of his idiosyncratic proposals are startling from the man who would strike fear in the hearts of the progressive leadership at Vatican II. The transfer of Holy Days of Obligation to Sunday and the abandonment of fasting and abstinence on Ember days are just the sorts of thing that Traditionalists today object to. The guiding principle here seems to be the removal of obstacles: by the late 1950s folks had got into the habit of working on holy days of obligation that fell on a weekday (much as even American Traditionalists do to this day) and the Ember Days no longer made sense to a decreasingly agrarian people.

As for his proposal that the institution of godparents ought to be abolished—and I’ll quote the Latin, lest there be any doubt: Institutum patrinorum in Baptismate et Confirmatione videtur abolendum^[15]—is a true outlier, and can only be explained by the bishop’s impatience at the delays occasioned by the families’ insistence that a godparent from far away be present at the Baptism or Confirmation.

There are, then, points of contact with Archbishop Lefebvre’s vota: zeal for souls, efficiency, doctrinal rigor. The differences are due to their different circumstances: brand new Christianity in Africa versus a diocese in Italy founded in the fifth century. It was their common defense of zeal for souls and doctrinal rigor that led to their meeting of the minds at the Council and their common resistance against the might of the progressive wing.

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^[1] L. M. Carli, La morte e l’assunzione di Maria Santissima nelle omelie greche dei secoli VII–VIII (Roma: Officium libri catholici, 1941).

^[2] Ralph Wiltgen reports that Döpfner “later admitted that there was no bishop at the Council whom he feared more,” The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber: The Unknown Council (Hawthorn Books, 1967), 89. The secular press soon identified Döpfner as a liberal cardinal (along with Alfrink and Léger); see “Council of Renewal,” Time Magazine, October 5, 1962. He was also among the prelates who would implore Paul VI not to release Humanae Vitae; see “Birth Control: Pronouncement Withdrawn,” Time Magazine, June 21, 1968.

^[3] He had just been nominated Archbishop of Dakar; see our last instalment in this series.

^[4] “Litteras quas, Tuo augusto nomine . . . humanissime misit . . . ad pedes Sanctitatis Tuae provolutus . . . Spiritum invoco Paraclitum ut, auspice et mediatrice Dei Genetrice Maria, Tuam mentem eorumque qui . . . futuri Concilii Patres erunt, superna inundet luce voluntatemque suavi corroboret fortitdine.” Acta et Documenta Concilio Œcumenico Vaticano II apparando (henceforth AD) I.II.III, 603, in Philippe Roy-Lysencourt, Les Vota préconciliaires des dirigeants du Cœtus Internationalis Patrum, Concile Vatican II 1 (Institut d’Étude du Christianisme, 2015), 21–22.

^[5] “[C]oram Deo corde revolvere non destiti ea quae in bonum Sanctae Matris Ecclesiae, quod quidem ego noverim, tractari posse videntur,” ibid.

^[6] “[M]odus, quo Summus Pontifex practice exercere debet primatum jurisdictionalem in universam Ecclesiam, non est divina insitutione definitus, sed Ejus prudentiae commissus sub ordinaria Spiritus Sancti adsistentia, juxta temporum locorumve circumstantias, servatis de cœtero quae juris divini sunt,” AD I.II.III, 604, in Roy-Lysencourt, 23.

^[7] Bp Carli does not specify. A documented example might be scantily-clad pompom girls cheering in Corpus Christi processions.

^[8] AD I. II. III, 606–607; Roy-Lysencourt, 24.

^[9] Manifestly, and as the words to follow indicate, this was to make withdrawal from the seminary before the diaconate easier. Bp Carli sought to avoid imprudent promotions to priestly ordinations; we’ve seen Lefebvre, in his promotion of clerical celibacy, mention “the increase in distressing situations.”

^[10] Latin text in AD I.II.III, 607; Roy-Lysencourt 25n5.

^[11] “Religiosi diœcesim perlustrantur . . . vocationes expiscaturi, promittentes facile et gratuitum fere studiorum curriculum,” AD I.II.III, 608; Roy-Lysencourt 27n11.

^[12] Pius XII, Encyclical Letter “Le Pèlerinage de Lourdes,” nos. 45–47, Discorsi e Radiomessaggi di Sua Santità Pio XII 19 (1957-1958): 873–885. English version at Papal Encylicals Online, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12peler.htm [accessed 2/2///2025].

^[13] Pius XII, Encyclical Letter of March 25, 1954 “Sacra Virginitas,” no. 32: “This doctrine of the excellence of virginity and of celibacy and of their superiority over the married state was . . . revealed by our Divine Redeemer and by the Apostle of the Gentiles.” Discorsi e Radiomessaggi di Sua Santità Pio XII 16 (1954–1955): 371–398. English version at Papal Encyclicals Online, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12sacra.htm [accessed 2/2//2025].

^[14] Pius XII, Address to October 29, 1951“Now, the truth is that matrimony, as an institution of nature, in virtue of the Creator’s will, has not as a primary and intimate end the personal perfection of the married couple but the procreation and upbringing of a new life.” Discorsi e Radiomessaggi di Sua Santità Pio XII 13 (1951–1952): 333–353. English version at Papal Encyclicals Online, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12midwives.htm#:~:text=Show%20how%20nature%20has%20given,on%20the%20part%20of%20midwives.%20  [accessed 2/2/2025].

^[15] AD I.II.III, 608, Roy-Lysencourt 28n13; emphasis in the original.