Abstract
Dom Christopher Butler (1902–1986) was a thinker. As a result, Peter Philips’s study of him is primarily an intellectual biography. Philips, a priest of the diocese of Shrewsbury, UK, whose apostolate has been mainly among students, draws on Butler’s many published writings and on some of his voluminous correspondence with family and friends to provide a clear and sympathetic picture of Bishop Butler’s life of the mind.
Philips compresses Butler’s early life into one chapter: birth in 1902 into a middle-class High-Church Anglican family in Reading, classics, philosophy, and theology at Oxford (a brilliant student), ordination in the Church of England, doubts and entry into the Roman Catholic Church in 1928 under the influence of Downside Abbey and Abbot Leander Ramsay. He became a Benedictine there the following year. Philips shows an understanding of the monastic atmosphere of Downside at the time, and for this reviewer this aspect could have been expanded in the biography. Butler was headmaster at Downside and elected abbot in 1946. In 1961 he was elected Abbot-President of the English Benedictine Congregation and thus was to be a Council Father at Vatican II.
These career data are interwoven with the intellectual influences on Butler, especially von Hügel and Newman, and with his intellectual development and struggles. Butler’s training in historical-critical Biblical studies was a major factor in his hesitation to become a Catholic.
The subsequent nine chapters take us through Butler’s writings and life in a chronological-topical way: philosophical and scriptural articles while at Downside (Ch. 2), influence besides Newman of Bernard Lonergan, SJ (Ch. 3), writings on ecclesiology and apologetics (Ch. 4). Then there are two chapters (5 and 6) on Butler’s participation at Vatican II and how it developed his ideas. He was elected a member of the Theological Commission and was respected by Pope Paul VI.
Chapter 7 is entitled ‘A Bishop in the Spirit of Vatican II’. Butler was made auxiliary of Westminster in 1966, area bishop of Hertfordshire. He was involved in diocesan affairs of course, but was also a voice at national and international levels, promoting the new attitudes unleashed by Vatican II, but in a way that was loyal to the Church. For example, regarding Hans Küng’s Infallibility: an Enquiry, although ‘Butler thought his views on infallibility must be rejected, he nevertheless felt Küng had “important things” to say’ (p. 168). Chapter 8 further shows Butler interpreting the Council in his writings and lectures.
Chapter 9, ‘Humanae vitae’, shows the point at which Butler was most uncomfortable with Roman authority. He published controversial articles affirming the primacy of conscience and the restricted nature of infallibility. He said, ‘theologians and clergy should be careful not to apply a higher note of truth or obligatoriness than the Church herself assigns to it. Creeping infallibility is not only an offence against the truth: it is pastorally disastrous’ (pp. 208–9).
Chapter 10 presents Butler’s thoughts and efforts in the area of ecumenism, which was a strong emphasis of his from the time of Vatican II till his death. He was an active and founding member of ARCIC I. However he was not the most radical of ecumenists: Adrian Hastings ‘found Butler’s “position somewhat unpredictable. Mostly he seemed very helpful but at times he fell back into quite rigid attitudes and reactions which somewhat bewildered most of us”’ (pp. 224–25). Philips here, as he does throughout, gives substantial background information on the issues Butler was dealing with. In this chapter he goes beyond what is strictly relevant to Butler’s involvement.
The final chapter is on Butler’s last years (he died in 1986), which ‘were dogged by considerable ill health, his mind becoming seriously impaired’ (p. 264). But the greater part of the chapter is on his last books, The Church and Unity (on ecumenism and ecclesiology) and An Approach to Christianity (apologetics).
Chapter 11 also contains a good summary of what Philips sees as Butler’s message: ‘His underlying quest for the unity and coherence of the human person found in a passionate, loving, and grace-filled response to the mystery of God’ (p. 264). ‘His greatest achievement will always be regarded as his contribution to the Second Vatican Council, and his attempt to encourage a better understanding of the Council among Christians in the years following it’ (p. 265).
To this reviewer the main impression this book gives of Butler’s thought is of the ambivalence of a keen intellect. In a letter to his brother Hilary (an Anglican priest in Victoria, B.C., Canada) he wrote, ‘I am in a predicament that by instinct I am “progressive” but theologically cautious’ (124 n. 8 [p. 308]). This was at Vatican II when collegiality was being discussed. Butler was in favour of the notion, but opposed to its being taken as a dogmatic definition. He saw too clearly to take a simplistic position.
As a physical book, Christopher Butler is attractive: good paper and binding, with eight pages of colour plates. It is unobtrusively well typeset by Weldon Press (Douai Abbey). There are a few errors in proper nouns (‘Geishmann’ 82 n. 8 [p. 293], but correctly ‘Geiselmann’ 129 n. 43 [p. 302]) and in words that spelling checkers might not catch (‘sewing [sic] the seeds’ p. 35).
On the whole Philips has a good writing style, and he in no way intrudes himself on the reader. This book will be a good addition to the library of those who are interested in theology and personalities at, and after Vatican II, or in the history of modern English monastic figures.