The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

significant, if not particularly surprising, that from 1956 on, every director of the Ecole Biblique has also been a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. When de Vaux died in 1971, the Commission’s list of ‘consultants’ was updated to include the name of his successor at the Ecole, Father Pierre Benoit.⁵ When Benoit died in 1987, the new director, Jean-Luc Vesco, became a ‘consultant’ to the Commission in turn.⁶

Even today, the Pontifical Biblical Commission continues to supervise and monitor all biblical studies conducted under the auspices of the Catholic Church. It also publishes official decrees on ‘the right way to teach… scripture’.⁷ In 1907, adherence to these decrees was made obligatory by Pope Pius X. Thus, for example, the Commission ‘established’, by decree, that Moses was the literal author of the Pentateuch. In 1909, a similar decree affirmed the literal and historical accuracy of the first three chapters of Genesis. More recently, on 21 April 1964, the Commission issued a decree governing biblical scholarship in general and, more specifically, the ‘historical truth of the Gospels’. The decree was quite unequivocal, stating that ‘at all times the interpreter must cherish a spirit of ready obedience to the Church’s teaching authority’.⁸ It further declared that those in charge of any ‘biblical associations’ are obliged to ‘observe inviolably the laws already laid down by the Pontifical Biblical Commission’.⁹ Any scholar working under the Commission’s aegis — and this, of course, includes those at the Ecole Biblique — is thus in effect constrained by the Commission’s decrees. Whatever conclusions he might reach, whatever the revelations to which his research might lead him, he must not, in his writing or his teaching, contradict the Commission’s doctrinal authority.

The head of the Pontifical Biblical Commission today is Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Cardinal Ratzinger is also head of another Catholic institution, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This designation is fairly new, dating from 1965, and probably unfamiliar to most laymen; but the institution itself is one of long-established pedigree. It has, in fact, a unique and resonant history behind it, extending back to the 13th century. In 1542, it had become known officially as the Holy Office. Prior to that, it was called the Holy Inquisition. Cardinal Ratzinger is, in effect, the Church’s modern-day Grand Inquisitor.

The official head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is always the reigning Pope, and the executive head of the Congregation is today called its secretary, although in earlier times he was known as the Grand Inquisitor. Of all the departments of the Curia, that of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the most powerful. Ratzinger is perhaps the closest to the Pope of all the Curia cardinals. Certainly they have many attitudes in common. Both wish to restore many pre-Vatican II values. Both dislike theologians. Ratzinger sees theologians as having opened the Church up to corrosive secular influences. A deeply pessimistic man, he feels that the Church is ‘collapsing’, and only the suppression of all dissent can assure its survival as a unified faith. He regards those who do not share his pessimism as ‘blind or deluded’.¹⁰

Like the Inquisition of the past, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is in large part a tribunal. It has its own judges, the chief of whom is called the ‘Assessor’. The ‘Assessor’ is aided by a ‘Commissar’ and two Dominican monks. These individuals have the specific task of preparing whatever ‘investigations’ the Congregation chooses to undertake. Such investigations generally pertain to breaches of doctrine on the part of clerics, or anything else that might threaten Church unity. As in the Middle Ages, all investigations are conducted and pursued under conditions of total secrecy.

Until 1971, the Pontifical Biblical Commission and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were supposed to be separate organisations. In reality, however, the separation between them was little more than nominal. The two organisations overlapped one another in a multitude of respects, ranging from their functions to the membership of their governing bodies. In 1969, for example, eight of the twelve cardinals presiding over the Congregation also presided over the Commission.¹¹ A number of individuals acted as ‘consultants’ for both. At last, on 27 June 1971, Pope Paul VI, in an attempt to streamline bureaucracy, amalgamated the Commission and the Congregation in virtually everything but name. Both were housed in the same offices, at the same address — the Palace of the Congregation at Holy Office Square in Rome. Both were placed under the directorship of the same cardinal. On 29 November 1981, that cardinal became Joseph Ratzinger.

Numerous contemporary priests, preachers, teachers and writers have been muzzled, expelled or deprived of their posts by the body over which Ratzinger now presides. The victims have included certain of the most distinguished and intelligent theologians in the Church today. One such was Father Edward Schillebeeckx, of the University of Nigmegen in Holland. In 1974, Schillebeeckx had published a book, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology. In this work, he appeared, in the eyes of his adversaries, to be questioning the literal truth of certain dogma, such as the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth. In December 1979, Schillebeeckx was hauled before a tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where one of his judges publicly accused him of heresy. He survived his investigation by the tribunal, but in 1983 he was again summoned to a tribunal of the Congregation, this time for his latest book, Ministry: A Case for Change.

What were Schillebeeckx’s transgressions? If only tentatively, he had questioned the Church’s position on celibacy. He had sympathised with arguments for the ordination of women. Most seriously of all, he had suggested the Church should ‘change with the times’ rather than remaining fettered to immutably fixed doctrines.¹² The Church, he contended, should respond to, and evolve with, the needs of its faithful, instead of imposing draconian codes upon them. He had argued, in short, for a dynamic pastoral approach, as opposed to the static one favoured by Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger. Once again, Schillebeeckx survived the Congregation’s investigation and interrogation. To this day, however, he remains under close scrutiny, and his every word, written or spoken, is carefully monitored. It goes without saying that such assiduously vigilant surveillance will exert a profoundly inhibiting influence.

A more telling case is that of the eminent Swiss theologian Dr Hans Kung, formerly head of the Department of Theology at the University of Tubingen. Kung was generally acknowledged to be among the most brilliant, most influential, most topically relevant Catholic writers of our age — a man who, following in the footsteps of Pope John XXIII, seemed to offer a new direction for the Church, a new humanity, a new flexibility and adaptability. But Kung was also controversial. In his book Infallible?, first published in German in 1970 and in English the following year, he challenged the doctrine of papal infallibility — which, one must remember, had never existed in the Church until 1870 and had only then been established by a vote. ‘No one is infallible’, Kung wrote, ‘but God himself.’¹³ Further, ‘the traditional doctrine of infallibility in the Church… rests on foundations that cannot be regarded as secure’.¹⁴ Kung also recognised the distinction between theology and history, and the former’s propensity to parade itself as the latter. He attacked the sophistry of such Church ‘scholars’ as Cardinal Jean Danielou, who, in 1957, had published The Dead Sea Scrolls and Primitive Christianity, a work primarily of theological propaganda: ‘Theologians such as Danielou… now bring an aura of pseudo-learning to the role of Grand Inquisitor, are appointed Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church and fulfil its expectations.’¹⁵

After the election of John Paul II, Kung was critical of the new pontiff’s rigidity in morals and dogma. ‘Is the Catholic theologian’, he asked, ‘going to be allowed… to ask critical questions… ?’¹⁶ Was John Paul II really free, Kung wondered, of the personality cult which had bedevilled earlier popes; and was he not perhaps excessively preoccupied with doctrine, at the expense of ‘the liberating message of Christ’?

Can the Pope and the Church credibly speak to the conscience of today’s people if a self-critical examination of conscience on the part of the Church and its leadership does not also simultaneously occur… ¹⁷

Kung’s outspokenness made him, of course, an irresistible target for the inquisitional tribunals of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Having evaluated his statements, the tribunal accordingly passed judgment. On 18 December 1979, the Pope, acting on the formal recommendation of the Congregation, stripped Kung of his post and pronounced him no longer qualified to teach Roman Catholic doctrine. He was informed that he was no longer a Catholic theologian, and was forbidden to write or publish further. Kung himself effectively summarised what had befallen him: ‘I have been condemned by a pontiff who has rejected my theology without ever having read one of my books and who always has refused to see me. The truth is that Rome is not waiting for dialogue but for submission.’¹⁸

Under the directorship of Cardinal Ratzinger, the Congregation, during the last decade, has become increasingly entrenched, intransigent and reactionary. Ratzinger is vehemently critical of all changes in the Church since the Second Vatican Council of 1962-5. The Church’s teachings, he maintains, are being ‘tarnished’ by doubt