The Council that might have been… [Updated 9/14/2015]

On July 23, 1962, the Secretary General of the Second Vatican Council sent out to all those with a right to participate in the Council a book that contained the first draft-texts that were to be debated when the Council opened on October 11th of the same year. The following texts were included:

On the sources of revelation
On defending intact the deposit of faith
De deposito fidei – Latin text
On the Christian moral order
De ordine morali christiano – Latin text
On chastity, marriage, the family, and virginity
De castitate et al – Latin text
On the sacred liturgy
On the communications media
On the Church’s unity.

(A second book, containing the drafts on the Church and on the Blessed Virgin Mary, would be distributed only after the Council had opened.}
I offer here my translations of the first four of these texts, prepared by the Theological Commission, which expected that they would be the first ones debated. Instead, the Council first debated the fifth text, on the liturgy.

At the request of several people I have scanned and uploaded the original Latin text of three of these texts. I’ll try to get to the others later.
And I now add the Latin text of the draft on the Blessed Virgin May as well as my translation of it. The draft was only six pages long as printed, but it was accompanied by twenty-two pages of endnotes!

Draft on the Blessed Virgin 1962
Schema de BVM

One very useful way of studying the conciliar process and its products is to compare these officially prepared texts with the final texts issued by the Council, to note similarities as well as differences in orientation, style, and content, and then to account for the differences.
As far as I know, no other English translations of these texts are available.

I am now readying these translations for publication next year by Orbis Press.


All these PDFs can be downloaded in one PDF here.

Hello,
Would you be interested in providing the source material for your translation?  I would enjoy mirroring your efforts inline with the original material online at http://TraditionalCatholic.net
Faithfully yours,
In Christ Jesus,
John Anthony Marie

On striking difference between the Vatican II Preparatory Commission's schemas and the final Vatican II docuмents is what On chastity, marriage, the family, and virginity has to say about mixed marriages:

21. Mixed Marriages Where a marriage between two Catholics can be contracted without extraordinary difficulties, the good of religion for the most part requires that Catholic men and women avoid so-called mixed marriages, especially with unbelievers. But the faithful also have the duty, in accordance with the dictates of prudence and the other virtues, to avoid marriage with those who are opposed to God or religion or with those who are Catholics in name but not in life. Although the Church, using her power, may permit mixed marriages, nevertheless the Catholic party, as divine law dictates, must in the conceded mixed marriage avoid dangers to the faith and indifferentism, must always carefully see to the Catholic education of the children, and lovingly and prudently try to bring the spouse to the Catholic truth. Pastors should take special care for those who are joined in a mixed marriage. The Sacred Synod knows that in some places mixed marriages cannot be avoided, but from the fact that this can happen in some places false principles or dangerous inducements should not be deduced.

… It also rebukes those who say, and indeed under the pretext of benefitting the Church, that mixed marriages are generally and in themselves to be fostered rather than tolerated. That position is also mistaken which maintains that a marriage can be declared invalid or dissolved solely because of a failure of love. …

Pius VII, Brief Etsi fraternitatis, October 8, 1803 (CIC Fontes, II, p. 718):

Quote from: Pius VII, Brief, «Etsi fraternitatis», October 8, 1803

And the first of these is that the Catholic Church has always forbidden and rejected as illicit, pernicious and detestable the marriages of Catholics with heretics, as we could demonstrate from innumerable decrees of Councils and of Supreme Pontiffs.... And although in some areas because of difficulties of time and place, such marriages may be tolerated, this should be considered to be an equanimity which in no way implies approval or consent but mere patience, necessary but not voluntary, in order to avoid greater evils...;

collate this with many other docuмents, especially those listed in the note to D 1499 and in the note to CIC c. 1060. With regard to canons 10 and 31 of the Council of Laodicea (Mansi II, 565 and 570), it should be noted that they are to be interpreted in the light of the whole teaching of the Council, which did not even permit the faithful to pray with heretics and schismatics.

Vatican II threw this teaching out due to Vatican II's promotion of the heresy of ecuмenism.

1917 CIC c. 1060 says:

Most severely does the Church prohibit everywhere that marriage be entered into by two baptized persons, one of whom is Catholic, and the other belonging to a heretical or schismatic sect; indeed, if there is a danger of perversion to the Catholic spouse and children, that marriage is forbidden even by divine law.

The 1983 Code on mixed marriages is much, much more lenient.