Research methods for the periti project

Abstract

Although the Second Vatican Council (1962-5) is the most important religious event of the last century, it remains curiously underdocumented. It is surprisingly difficult to have an accurate and comprehensive picture of who was present, what was said, what was done, and what was meant. Even a complete list of the Council Fathers, the voting members of the Council, is difficult to find. Even more mysterious are the periti, the theological assistants to the Council itself and/or particular Council Fathers. These men, priests and religious, were selected for their expertise in numerous aspects of theology and history. They would go on to become university presidents, newspaper editors, radio directors, bishops, saints, criminals, and in one instance, pope. The more they are studied, the more we find their direct influence on the inception, discussion, revision, and promulgation of the Council documents themselves. For the first time, there is now an open access list of the 479 council periti and 49 private periti, all supported by over 30 data points for each peritus and over 700 references. While I have written elsewhere about the content of the list of periti, this essay will discuss my research methods in depth: how could one simple list of names cause so much mayhem?

Introduction

The landing page for the finished project is here:

“The Periti of Vatican II.” https://sharonkabel.com/periti-of-vatican-ii/

I wrote about my findings at the New Liturgical Movement and The Pillar.

“The Periti of Vatican II: A New Research Project by Sharon Kabel.” New Liturgical Movement (blog), January 25, 2023. https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2023/01/the-periti-of-vatican-ii-new-research.html#.Y9nIK3bMJPY

“Documenting the ‘experts’ of Vatican II.” The Pillar, April 11, 2023. https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/documenting-the-experts-of-vatican

This essay is a summary of my research methods that led to those findings.

In 1980, the Vatican published a list of 479 names – the 479 council periti at the Second Vatican Council. The list looked like this:

So, each name was recorded as:

Lastname Latinized_first_name, AbbreviatedOrder

I, II, III, IV

My original plan was to OCR (optical character recognition) the document, copy and paste the list, and do some relaxing research deep dives into some of the periti.

Unfortunately, from a researcher’s perspective, the formatting of this list renders this impossible. If I ran the list through OCR, the formatting prevented me from copying and pasting the names in a sequential way. The lack of the ‘vernacular’ first name meant I could not easily research by full name. In fact, I could not be sure what the first and last names actually were. There was no syntactical delineation between the names, except for a comma to set apart the (latinized and abbreviated) religious order.

This list of names felt like a barrier to research itself, and I can’t resist fixing a list.

Literature Review

Regarding the periti generally, A great deal of literature has also been written on specific groups of periti. Works tend to focus on the nationality (the then-infamous Squadra Belga) or on religious orders (the Sulpicians may have the most careful documentation of their order’s role in the Council). There are also many more works on the periti, but not necessarily on their role as periti. Hans Kung, for example, is famous for many things besides his role at the Council.

My primary interest was in complete or partial lists of periti.

The core text for the council periti is:

“Index Peritorum.” In Acta synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II. Indices, 937–49. Vatican City: Typis polyglottis Vaticanis, 1980.

To my knowledge, there is only one other freely available list of periti online:

Chow, Gabriel. “Periti of the Second Vatican Council.” GCatholic (blog). http://www.gcatholic.org/events/list/Vatican2-Periti.htm. The periti are organized by status – eventually pope, eventually bishop, priests, laicized, etc. – and alphabetically by last name. Each peritus’ country and flag are provided, and occasionally the peritus’ name at the time of the Council.

There are partial lists of periti in the following sources:

Pyne, Tricia T. “The Archives of the Second Vatican Council Fathers Project: A Report from the United States.” U.S. Catholic Historian 30, no. 3 (2012): 51–63.

Weiser, François. “Les experts au concile Vatican II, 1962-1965. Note de recherche sur les conditions de possibilité d’un champ transnational.” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 224, no. 4 (2018): 64–75. https://doi.org/10.3917/arss.224.0064.

———. “The Periti of the United States and the Second Vatican Council: Prosopography of a Group of Theologians.” U.S. Catholic Historian 30, no. 3 (2012): 65–91.

A more complete list of my references can be found at References at the end of this paper.

Materials and Methods

1: Names and Countries

With the Vatican’s list, I had no reliable pieces of uniquely identifying information. ‘Council sessions attended’ was unhelpful, except perhaps as a cross-reference once I found the peritus. ‘Religious order abbreviation’ helped, but only for the religious – and most periti were diocesan. Even among the religious, I had to figure out the Latin abbreviation.

The Latinized first name proved to be a mixed blessing. The famous periti were easy – Ratzinger Ioseph is Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. Even then, what counts as his “real” first name? Technically, it would be Josef, but is that how people would search for it?

Georgius could be George (American), Jorge (Chilean), Jacques-Georges (Syriac), Giorgio (Italian), or Georgi (Bulgarian). The last name might give me a clue – Estevez is probably not from Ireland – but I could never assume. A French-sounding name could come from France, Canada, Belgium, or any one of their mission territories. A Catholic priest is uniquely hard to pin down geographically, especially an order priest. He may have come from any country, been ordained anywhere, been assigned anywhere, studied anywhere, learned any language, or served any role.

I iteratively developed a list of author identifiers, so that I was not dependent on any one system.

My searches were quick and simple: What could find in a 1-minute search in a search engine and the Catholic News Archive? I searched their last name and possible first name. Names either accrued links – usually to Wikipedia pages, Google Books, or articles – or I flagged them as ‘unconfirmed.’

About 75 periti in, I realized that I should be tracking ‘country of origin’. Aside from the author identifiers, that was the one piece of metadata I did my best to find for each peritus in Phase 1.

2: Enrich and standardize

This was the most time consuming round. I had grouped my list of 479 names into 3 subgroups: the obvious, the somewhat obvious, and the unconfirmed names. The more I searched, the more data points I found that I wanted to include. Choosing a new data point to collect meant going back through all previously searched periti to extract that information.

Because I had ‘country of origin’ for most periti, I sorted by country (instead of alphabetically by last name for Round 1). I could more easily search similar sources and find patterns. French records behave differently than, say, Hungarian records, and I would search a bit differently for each of them.

For example, most Wikipedia pages from most countries have a link out to Wikidata. In 2022-2023, the French Wikipedia did not interlink with Wikidata. For any French-looking names, I needed to search them separately in Wikidata. (Since publishing this project, Wikipedia has moved the link to Wikidata to a drop down menu on the opposite side of the page, and French pages now link to Wikidata.)

This round was extremely messy, and out of order. A lot of names that I thought I had confirmed had to be ‘demoted’ to unconfirmed. Sometimes what I thought I found was not substantial enough. For example, I did find an Arthur Gibson who was possibly a priest in the 20th century, but that’s not enough to connect him to my list.

3: Cross-check with literature searches

This was a more fun, but still time consuming round. Most of it was spent standardizing the Selected Mention column, changing the data from links to a hyperlinked label (such as “Subject of book” or “Mentioned in article”).

I used the Catholic News Archive (CNA) throughout every step of this project. Near the end of the project, I used the CNA in two significant ways.

I found several dozen private periti by searching the CNA (and only the CNA) from 1960-9 for:

(expert OR peritus) AND council

Since publishing this project, I have had several readers email me about a private peritus I missed. Each name has been added to my spreadsheet.

Secondly, I went through my list of stubbornly unconfirmed periti. I ran their names through the CNA using all of the search strategies I’d developed over the past 3 months. The CNA helped me confirm another 10 periti.

Data points

Eventually, I settled on four groups of metadata I wanted to include for each peritus.

The Vatican’s list

(Retyped and corrected.)

1. Last name
2. Latinized first name
3. First name
4. Order (if applicable)
5. Session I?
6. Session II?
7. Session III?
8. Session IV?

Author identifiers

9. Wikipedia: A Wikipedia page was the ideal identifier because of the level of information, and the degree of interlinking with other identifiers.
10. Wikidata: A Wikidata page was useful for finding other identifiers, and Wikipedia pages in other languages.
11. Virtual International Authority File (VIAF): VIAF’s ‘About’ section could tell me nationality, a Wikipedia page I may have missed, and variants of their name.
12. Worldcat Identities: Worldcat Identities could tell me variant names, books about them, books by them, years published, languages published, and holding institutions.
13. FindAGrave: FindAGrave could tell me birth place, burial site, year born, year died, and in some cases rich biographical detail not found in any other identifier.
14. Catholic Hierarchy: Catholic Hierarchy told me rank, birth year, death year, and dates ‘promoted’.
15. Selected mention: While many periti were verifiable through ‘traditional’ avenues – i.e. they wrote a book, so I can find them in catalogs and author lists – many periti left their mark in other ways. They may have written religiously for their diocesan newspaper. They may have been fiercely loved by their hometown. They may have a lecture series or golf tournament named after them. After a lot of deliberation, I decided to count these as their own identifiers.

Biographical information

16. Ethnicity/country of origin: I admit that I conflated country of origin and ethnicity, which led to occasional problems. For a priest who was born in America, I put “USA.” What about Luigi Ligutti, who was born in Italy, but emigrated to America? His archival collection and almost all of his priestly career was in America – rather famously, as he worked with rural American populations. What about Konrad Kernweisz? He was born in what is now Romania, but his name is clearly German – Banat Swabian, to be exact. All of this was complicated by the fact that any priest’s Wikipedia page or online tribute might be in any language and from any country. The final complicating factor was my stubborn ignorance on obvious cultural markers. I did my best to be consistent, and I sincerely hope I have not reignited any ethnic conflicts. I owe a great deal of thanks to my long-suffering husband, who has done his level best to remind me of esoteric historical details, like the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
17. Birth year: Extracted from one or more of the identifiers. In case the numbers didn’t match, I used the most commonly used year.
18. Death year: Same as above.
19. Age at council: 1962 minus birth year.
20. Age at death: Self evident.
21. Highest episcopal title: Did they ever attain the rank of superior general, abbot, bishop, cardinal, or pope? I counted archbishops as bishops, and cardinal-deacons as cardinals.
22. Sainthood: Have they attained the rank of Servant of God, Venerable, Blessed, or Saint?

Extra stuff

23. Important: Is this peritus famous in general, (such as Pope Benedict or Hans Kung) or was this peritus influential around the time of the Council (such as Georges Tavard, who may not be in the headlines now, but certainly was back then)?
24. Photo no reuse: I found lots of photos of periti, but the photos may be under copyright.
25. Photo reuse: I found a public domain photo on Wikipedia, Wikidata, or the Catholic News Archive.
26. Change during council: did the peritus die, or become a bishop (and therefore voting member of the council) during the council? There is one case of the reverse: John L. Swain, SJ, was appointed vicar general of the Jesuits (1960), was a Council Father during session III (September-November 1964), stepped down as vicar general (October 1964), and served as a peritus for session IV (September-December 1965).
27. Memoir on Vatican II: Did the peritus write a book or article on his time at the council?
28. Typo in original list: Was the peritus’ name misspelled in the Vatican’s list? The most egregious example is John Courtney Murray, who is listed as Courtney, Murray. The first name is missing entirely, and the names are out of order.
29. Credibly accused: This column only applies to American periti, as very few countries have conducted reviews of priests credibly accused of child sexual abuse. Of the few countries that have, their findings are only partially public. France, for example, had a gargantuan report on their abuse crisis, but nowhere can I find a publicly available list of the priests’ names. I checked American names in Pro Publica’s “Credibly Accused” database. Non-American periti are noted as “n/a”.
30. Sexual ethics watch: This column initially was to note the peritus’ stance on Humanae Vitae or contraception, but it expanded to capture a variety of stances. “Obedient” generally refers to public support of Humanae Vitae; “Disobedient” or a more detailed comment could refer to a ‘progressive’ stance on Humanae Vitae, Marian apparitions, women’s ordination, or liturgical reforms. In rare cases, I noted a criminal offense.
31. Left priesthood and/or married: Did the peritus leave the priesthood, and/or get married?
32. Notes: This column captures anything that I thought was important to know about the peritus, that was not captured by any other column. Because I am primarily interested in where the worked and what he was famous for. You will note I cared predominately about periti who worked at newspapers, journals, and publishers.

Using FindAGrave as part of my research workflow did not occur to me until near the end of the project. Because it was near the end, I had to re-search every name. The silver lining is that I had so much information – so many identifiers, so many clues about the peritus’ life – that I could more effectively use FindAGrave’s simple search interface. It would have been hopeless to use FindAGrave, had I not had an idea about country of origin, birth year, and death year.

This was a thrillingly iterative process. I might strike out on all identifiers, but then find a chance mention in Google Books or JSTOR – then I would re-search the identifiers and find a treasure trove of information.

Search strategies

Autofill

It was not until near the end of the entire project that I hit upon two of my best search tactics. What plagued me throughout the project was not being sure about the peritus’ first name. I might search 2-10 variations on a first name in WikiData, VIAF, or Worldcat Identities. What I learned (painfully) was that I can search last name first for many tools, and use autofill to save me minutes of agony.

Searching VIAF for:

Zalba, M

and waiting briefly would reveal two autofilled entries:

Zalba, Marcelino 1908-2008

Zalba, Marcelino, S.J

Both are connected to the same entry, a Spanish Jesuit peritus.

Last name + letter of first name, then waiting for autofill, is how I confirmed almost 3 dozen otherwise unfindable periti.

Using OCR typos

My second dynamite strategy – less broadly applicable but for me more exciting – was to use OCR errors in my favor. OCR is how PDFs and documents are made searchable, so that we can CTRL+F or “Search inside” for a particular word. OCR is a powerful tool, but is only as good as the legibility of the text it’s scanning.

Order priests were a challenge. Ostensibly, their order would make my life easier. There are many Thomas Gallaghers, but not many Thomas Gallaghers who are Dominicans (O.P., for Order of Preachers). However, not all identifiers and databases note the religious order. Those who do may not do so consistently, and if I search with the order – which term do I use, and am I positive that I’m not accidentally missing the right result? What if Dominican or OP is noted elsewhere in the record, but not in the field I’m searching?

The Catholic News Archive would be an ideal database to search for this, were it not for the uncorrected OCR. By no means is this a complaint – the CNA is such a phenomenal tool, and anyone can log in and clean up the OCR. It’s simply a reality of searching. I would love to search “thomas gallagher OP,” but capital letter O’s are sometimes ‘read’ as zeroes by OCR.

So, I ev0lved. I searched with a zero instead of a letter O:

“gallagher 0P”~1

That particular syntax is a proximity search: it means that I am searching the CNA for ‘gallagher’ and ‘0P’ within one word of each other. I found several relevant articles about a Thomas Gallagher. I went to VIAF, searched for Gallagher, T, waited for the autofill, and found him. (Later, I used the same idea to search CNA for the Missionary Oblates of Mary: 0MI vs. OMI.)

Using Catholic lingo

I had great success adding “monsignor” or “msgr” to my periti names, as many of these priests were monsignors (a now defunct title). I might also add the language-appropriate version of council, rome, or vatican. Finding the right guy in one tool meant double checking all of the other identifiers, even if I had just looked.

What I didn’t include

There are two major pieces of information I chose not to include.

The first is diocese. When someone asked me about this, I immediately asked – which diocese? The one they were incardinated in? The one they were in at the time of the council? Either of these is actually extremely difficult to find, again, owing to the type of lives Catholic priests have. Diocesan borders also may change over time.

The second is Council Father. Again, this was asked to me from an early reader of my project. Why not note which peritus assisted which council father? This could help readers draw conclusions of all sorts! I tried this out on a few periti, and came to a shocking realization.

I had assumed, like the question asker, that the periti were at the Council at the invitation of a Council Father. In reality, almost all periti were Council periti, summoned by invitation of the Pope and serving a particular commission. I had to recalibrate a fundamental assumption I had about how the council worked. The few references I found to periti who did serve a particular council father filled me with dread, such as Sulpician John R. Sullivan. He began as peritus to Archbishop Thomas Connolly (Seattle) then was transferred to Cardinal Shehan (Baltimore). This is a level of granularity that I am unwilling to handle.

Results

Currently, the list contains 479 council periti, 49 private periti, over 700 references in Zotero, and over 10,000 data points.

Of the 479 council periti, I was able to find information about all but 19.

Discussion

What can we learn from this project? What is it like to research 20th century Catholic records less than 100 years later?

What’s in a name?

This entire project rested on names. Most periti had more than one iteration of their name. They may have had their writing translated into other languages, they may have had a religious name, they may have gone by initials, or the Vatican’s list may have been wrong. Countless times, I searched to near-satisfaction, then discovered a new iteration of a peritus’ name. Re-searching the new name brought fresh discoveries and an updated research workflow. A few examples:

• Antonius Ramselaar: I began searches with the Latin name. I found newspaper articles that said Anthony, I tried that. I saw a VIAF entry for Antoon, I tried that, I finally saw Toon.
• Georgius Eldarov: I found works published by him with a variety of first names: Georgi, Giorgio M., George. All OFM Conventual, so I knew they were likely the same person. When I said the last name out loud, my husband independently suggested Georgi, because the last name was Cyrillic. Lo and behold! I almost flagged him as a mystery peritus when in fact he was the most prominent Bulgarian Catholic of the last century.
• The peritus: Santiago Maria Ramirez Ruiz de Dulanto, OP. How the Vatican’s list wrote it: Ramirez Ruiz Iacobos OP.
• Periti double header with Dionysius Robitaille and Petrus Kenneth. My initial searches kept mentioning a Kenneth Robitaille, who was neither of those periti, but was a third guy – who, if you can believe it – was possibly a private peritus. K. Robitaille was described as Archbishop Philip Francis Pocock’s “secretary and right hand man”. Still on the hunt for Dionysius, I stumbled across a recommended post on Twitter that Dionysius can be “Dennis.” Given the French last name, I search for Denis, and found him immediately.

• Placido A S. Ioseph Podipara, Order of Carmelites: This order is generally abbreviated as OCarm or O. Carm. The vernacular abbreviation is usually CMI; the Latin, BMVI. The Vatican’s rendition? “Carm BMVI.”
• Ioannes Toomey: I found a John J Toomey, PA but the dates seemed off, and my Toomey wasn’t listed by the Vatican’s list as a Passionist. I found another Toomey, but MM (Maryknoll). I checked the religious orders on Catholic-Hierarchy.org, and realized I had assumed “PA” was an order. There were no listed religious orders abbreviated as PA. Maybe PA is an abbreviation of a job title? Off to the CNA! There were 2 John J Toomey’s in similar regions (CT and NY). In the same month, one died and one was given a new assignment, so there’s similar newspaper coverage. Original findagrave was the right one.
• Theodoricus Worlock: I had trouble with this name, so I approached it sideways and Googled “monsignor warlock. I found Derek Worlock, along with a Wikipedia page. His Wiki page says that “He attended every session of the Second Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965.” The Vatican’s list only has him attending sessions 2-4. Both are partly right and partly wrong: he was a peritus at sessions 1-3, and a Council Father at 4.
• Henricus Ewers: I found very little on him, until I tried the VIAF autofill trick (Ewers, H). That led me to Heinrich, which led me to previously missed Wikipedia and Wikidata pages.
• Patritius Gillespie: This one was particularly fun. FindAGrave has a possible Patrick born in Ireland in 1902. Searching the CNA leads me to a regular column called “Vicar General Recollects” in the Catholic Commentator. The column was written by Patrick Gillespie, Vicar General of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I had assumed “PAVG” was a religious order, but VG is probably Vicar General. Now that I had more identifying information (do you know how many Patrick Gillespie’s have existed?), I searched Find A Grave, filtering by Louisiana and death year (1982 – another data point I got from the CNA). Lo and behold, there is a Patrick Gillespie buried in Baton Rouge, and his tombstone has “PAVG”!

The catholicity of Catholicism

The missionary nature of the Church nullifies (or at least seriously complicates) the ability to make inferences based on names and geographical markers. A few examples:

• Luc Gillon was Belgian but only has a Congolese Wikipedia page
• Antoine Hacault was a Canadian but only has a German Wikipedia page
• Killian Flynn was an Irish peritus who worked in Africa but only has a Polish Wikipedia page
• Michael Hrynchyshyn, ethnically Ukrainian but born in Canada, prompting a discussion with my husband about the Russian Civil War and Ukrainians emigrating to Canada in the 1920s
• Adolfo Ledwolorz, who I assumed was Polish, but all of his books were in German. I found a vita (in his own words) in a footnote on the Wikipedia page for his hometown. He went to school in Breslau. My husband patiently re-explained the German Empire to me.
• William Onclin, who went by a variety of first names, but mostly “Willy.” I assumed American, but in fact he was Belgian, but he only has a Spanish Wikipedia page. Because of my initial scarce results, I assumed he was a minor figure. Once I searched under “Willy,” I found a lecture series and book series named after him, and one article described his work on “sweeping changes in the Code of Canon Law.”
• Jaroslav Mala was Croatian, born in Yugoslavia, but only has a Hungarian Wikipedia page.
• Konrad Kernweiss, whom I assumed was German, kept appearing in Romanian books. My husband explained the Transylvania Saxons and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Human error and digital fragility

Perhaps because of the unprecedented size and scope of Vatican II, one may get the impression that record keeping was at times a bit slapdash. Given the errors in the Vatican’s list of periti, one wonders if the list started with a harried monsignore running around with a clipboard asking for names.

As I cross-referenced the Vatican’s list with Father Weiser’s list of American periti (see References), I found several issues.

• Fr. Weiser has Martin J. Flynn. The Vatican’s list has Martin G. and Martin F. Flynn. Are they all right, all wrong, or all partly right?
• I had partly confirmed peritus Francis Hurt, and assumed he was American as he co-authored works with American periti. However, he was not on Weiser’s list. I noodled around and found a Franz Hurth. Among other things, he was Karl Rahner’s professor and was involved with Casti Connubi.
• I found a mistake I made: Bernard Joseph Kelly is the correct peritus, and I had cataloged Bernard Matthew Kelly, a Council Father and, later, apostate.
• The peritus and Shroud of Turin expert Edward Wuenschel, CSSR: His name was mangled by the Vatican’s list as Eduardus Wuenackel. Weiser included each peritus’ diocese in his list, which helped me untangle this mystery.
• One almost-error was my own: I assumed Jean Danielou had been a peritus. Halfway through my project, I discovered a feud: Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani had allegedly threatened to boycott the Council if Danielou became a peritus. According to my notes, Danielou was only a pre-Council peritus.

I encountered so many odd things and typos in the Vatican’s list that I decided to make my own table of all religious orders present at the Council, by all the most commonly used names. I’ve mentioned a few religious order naming issues already, but here are a few more:

• Paulus Goossens, CICM: The one significant mention I found of Goossens lists him with 2 White Fathers. He himself is not a White Father, but the Vatican did misspell his order.
• Ianuarius a S. Corde Fernandez is either a Servant of God or Venerable. The Vatican’s list misspelled his order’s abbreviation – ORSA when it should be OAR.
• Gregorius Martinez de Antonana: his order is CMF; the Vatican’s list put down CFM. They made the same mistake with fellow CMF peritus Antonius Peinador Navarro, in addition to forgetting “Navarro.” One hates to point an accusing finger, but it is hard to ignore the trend of typos and manglings in the more unusual (less Italian, perhaps) names.
• The order Diocesan Workers (“Sac. Op.” in the Vatican’s list) got maddeningly mixed up with Dominicans (“OP”) and priests (“sacerdote”, abbreviated as sac. in many results).
• I relied almost entirely on Catholic-Hierarchy.org’s list of religious orders (in References below). There were a rare few orders I did not find there, such as the De La Salle Brothers.

The heart of this project is a list that, for decades, existed only in a physical format. When records are converted to the digital world, you increase access and usability, but you amplify errors. The Vatican’s list had a number of typos and ambiguities. Once those are digital, they can spread like wildfire: it takes next to no effort to copy/paste a fake quotation, to screenshot a fake image, and to perpetuate a terrible game of Telephone. You can easily make mistakes in print, but the quantity and quality can increase in digital formats.

I’ll share a few specific examples of the perils of relying on digital records.

• I started this project in August 2022, and finished around January 2023. In December, four months after starting the project, I was already encountering link rot – dead links because of deleted websites, changes in URLs, etc. – in my Zotero records.
• Mere days after I published this project, Worldcat announced they were shuttering Worldcat Identities. In its place is Worldcat Entities, ostensibly the same but in my opinion, there is less detail in the name of a slicker interface. Over 300 periti had an entry on Worldcat Identities; hopefully, all of those links redirect to Entities – but who knows how long that will last?
• Google Images gave me results that should have appeared in a regular Google search. In November, a good 3 months into the project, I was searching for information on Servo Goyeneche. I saw a promising photo result in Google Images. When I clicked through, I found an article and a 2-page photo spread of periti – none of which I had seen before. Every database and search engine has its own way of indexing information and mapping my search terms, but this seemed a bit much. What else was I missing by not searching by image?

Further complicating digital research is the unique nature of Catholic records. Parish bulletins, for example, can be a treasure trove of information for a project like mine. Not only is there no database (that I know of) for parish bulletins, I’d be lucky to find any old bulletins from any parish posted online. Archival research is in many ways a dramatically different skill, even more so for Catholic archives, and even more so for Catholic religious order archives.

Conclusion

Sometimes, the ability to collate and connect so many data points made for grim afternoons. While searching for private periti mentioned in the CNA, I came across an article discussing a lecture from prominent Catholic intellectual, Daniel Callahan.

After gathering many Catholic accolades to his name, Callahan left the Church in the late 1960s. This is not an uncommon story, sadly, but what makes this clipping remarkable is the list of Catholic speakers who followed Callahan.

• James Groppi – married in 1976, excommunicated
• Jose Lemercier – private peritus, left the priesthood and married in 1967 after a disastrous religious experiment in Mexico
• Charles Davis – one of the most prolific Council periti from America, very publicly opposed Humanae Vitae, apostasized and married in the late 1960s

A great deal has been written about the unraveling of (topic of choice) within (institution of choice) in the mid-20th century. It is hard not to see that unraveling before, during, and after the Council. It is just as true that there were and are many menders of the tapestry.

Many periti lived remarkable yet quiet lives in the eyes of the world, contributing new and true ideas to their disciplines.

• A whole issue of Revue thomiste was dedicated to the life of Marie-Michel Labourdette O.P.
• Fernand Boulard developed the cartographically famous Boulard Maps.
• Sulpician Raymond Brown would go on to become an editor of the Jerome Biblical Commentary.
• John H. Miller, CSC, became an editor for the New Catholic Dictionary.
• Andrea Spada edited the newspaper Eco Di Bergamo, allegedly the only newspaper that Pope St. John XXIII read cover to cover.
• Mario Luigi Ciappi, OP, served as personal theologian to 5 popes.
• Paolo Dezza baptized Israel Zolli.
• Atanasii Velyky, OSBM was directly involved in an historic Ukrainian translation of the Bible.
• Wilfrid Paradis, after serving as a combat medic and serving the Council, returned to the States and wrote a book on the history of his native New Hampshire.
• There was clearly affection and great respect among some of the periti. Vincenzo Carbone edited Pericle Felici‘s diaries on the Council. Luigi Boglioio wrote an article on Louis Boyer. Antonio Piolanti said of Of Karlo Balic:

“a titan of a man, built almost on an abyss of contrasts – a great soul of unlimited horizons and immense desires. A type of coincidentia oppositorum was easily detected in the vigorous spiritual physiognomy of this worthy son of strong and gentle Croatia: the heart of a child and Hieronymic impetus, the tenderness of a mother and authoritativeness of a leader, acute and penetrating intelligence, resolute and fiery determination, warm generosity and Dantesque indignation”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Balic

I started the project with a list of names, but those names represented people who were passionate about what was true. I was able to complete this project because of people similarly dedicated to preserving and cleaning digitally what is true.

• Eman Bonnici is the name of a Find A Grave user. He diligently added enormous amounts of biographical information for the grave sites of Catholic clerics, saving me incalculable time.
• One reader took my data and created a series of data visualizations.
• Since the publication of my project, I have had readers send me information about nearly 10 additional private periti. I had not heard of any of these periti, and many of them had open causes, or books about them, or websites devoted to them and lovingly maintained.

Appendix: Religious Orders

References

Journal articles, books

“Index Peritorum.” In Acta synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II. Indices, 937–49. Vatican City: Typis polyglottis Vaticanis, 1980.

Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II. Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1970.

Anderson, Floyd, ed. Council Daybook, Vatican II, Session 1-4. Washington, D.C: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1965.

Congar, Yves. My Journal of the Council. Edited by Denis Minns. Translated by Mary John Ronayne and M. Cecily Boulding. Hindmarsh, SA: ATF Theology, 2012.

Doria, Piero. “L’Archivio Del Concilio Vaticano II: Storia e Sviluppo.” Accessed December 8, 2022. https://ixtheo.de/Record/1635668700.

Haley, Ihor. Iudex peritus peritorum. Roma: Pontificia Università lateranense, 2008.

“Il Concilio Vaticano II: Notiziario 12.” La Civiltà cattolica, 1963, 174–87.

“La preparazione del Concilio Vaticano II: Notiziario n. 6.” La Civiltà cattolica, 1960, 634–45.

Pyne, Tricia T. “The Archives of the Second Vatican Council Fathers Project: A Report from the United States.” U.S. Catholic Historian 30, no. 3 (2012): 51–63.

Weiser, François. “Les experts au concile Vatican II, 1962-1965. Note de recherche sur les conditions de possibilité d’un champ transnational.” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 224, no. 4 (2018): 64–75. https://doi.org/10.3917/arss.224.0064.

———. “The Periti of the United States and the Second Vatican Council: Prosopography of a Group of Theologians.” U.S. Catholic Historian 30, no. 3 (2012): 65–91.

Web sites, web pages, blogs

Chow, Gabriel. “Periti of the Second Vatican Council.” GCatholic. http://www.gcatholic.org/events/list/Vatican2-Periti.htm.

Catholic Research Resources Alliance. “Catholic News Archive.” Accessed December 15, 2022. https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/.

Catholic Research Resources Alliance. “Catholic Portal.” Accessed December 15, 2022. https://www.catholicresearch.org/.

“Centre for the Study of the Second Vatican Council – List of Archives.” Accessed December 1, 2022. https://theo.kuleuven.be/en/research/centres/centr_vatii/centr_vatii-arch/centr_vatii-arch_index.html.

Liturgical Pioneers / Pastoral Musicians and Liturgists. “Liturgical Pioneers / Pastoral Musicians and Liturgists.” Accessed December 1, 2022. http://liturgicalleaders.blogspot.com/.

Catholic-Hierarchy. “Male Religious Orders.” Accessed December 15, 2022. https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/country/xrel.html.

Find A Grave. “Member Profile: Eman Bonnici.” Accessed December 1, 2022. https://www.findagrave.com/user/profile/46572312. This is the account of a wonderfully diligent user, whose posts saved me hours of research.

Catholic-Hierarchy. “The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church.” Accessed December 15, 2022. https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/. “Current and historical information about its bishops and dioceses.”

Miranda, Salvador. “The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church.” Accessed December 1, 2022. https://cardinals.fiu.edu/cardinals.htm. “A digital resource created and produced by Salvador Miranda, consisting of the biographical entries of the cardinals from 494 to 2021 and of the events and documents concerning the origin of the Roman cardinalate and its historical evolution.”