By George Weigel
Despite his humble origins as a baker’s son from Trastevere, Cardinal
Alfredo Ottaviani, longtime curial head of the Holy Office (“successor
to the Inquisition,” in journalese) and scourge of the nouvelle théologie
of the 1950s, was a formidable figure in pre-conciliar Catholicism.
Ottaviani’s approach to theology was neatly summarized in the Latin
motto of his cardinalatial coat of arms, Semper Idem [Always
the Same], and his fierce defense of what he understood to be orthodoxy
made him a not-implausible model for the character of Cardinal Leone in
Morris West’s novel The Shoes of the Fisherman.
Despite the caricatures of the world press, Ottaviani was no monster;
indeed, he was reputed to be a man of considerable personal charm. Nor
was he a dyed-in-the-wool conservative politically; he wanted the
council to condemn all forms of modern war, another cause in which
Ottaviani (whose Vatican II batting average did not rise above the
Mendoza Line) failed. But perhaps his greatest defeat at the council
came on the question of Church and state. For before and during the
Vatican II years, Cardinal Ottaviani stoutly, and, ultimately, futilely,
resisted the development of doctrine that led the world’s bishops to
approve the council’s “Declaration on Religious Freedom.”
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