Sebastiaan Tromp

He received Holy Orders on 8 October 1922 and thus became a Jesuit priest;[1] he completed his theological studies in 1926 at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

[2] Until 1929, Tromp taught as a professor of Latin, Greek, and fundamental theology at the Theologicum of the Jesuit Order in Maastricht, when he was relocated to the Gregorian University as an instructor in the same subject.

[1] The purpose of these visits was to expose the teaching of Neo-Modernist theological propositions—especially those directly condemned in the 1907 encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis.

[2] While progressive theologians despised his doctrinal orthodoxy, he was not a humorless academic, and became a much-loved preacher during annual meetings of the minor seminary at Rolduc.

[3] His preparations—or schemata—were shelved, after some Western European Council fathers appealed to Pope John XXIII for total free debate on all issues.

At the Council, Karl Rahner was joined by Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI), Aloys Grillmeier, Otto Semmelroth and Hans Küng, all of whom worked for the German Cardinals Josef Frings of Cologne and Julius Döpfner of Munich and Freising.

[citation needed] Ratzinger was opposed to this radical move by the Rahner group, believing that it effectively derailed the Council.

It is true that the documents bore only weak traces of the biblical and patristic renewal of the last decades, so that they gave an impression of rigidity and narrowness through their excessive dependency on scholastic theology.

[5]One of Tromp's most notable contributions is his support of Pope Pius XII in ghostwriting the encyclical Mystici corporis Christi in 1943.

[1] Recently Tromp's theology has merited some attention in relation to the Vatican II definition on the identity of the Catholic Church with the Body of Christ, which he greatly influenced.

[8] In Mystici corporis, Pius XII avoided this issue, calling Mary simply the "mother" of the mystical body.