BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Benedict XVI inspires
the new historiography
of Vatican-II

Two new readings rediscover 'uninterrupted Church tradition'
and the non-dogmatic weight of the Council

by Roberto de Mattei
Translated from




ROME - The Second Vatican Council, which until recently appeared to have been outsourced to the historiographic reading of the so-called 'school of Bologna', is starting to be the object of a new phase of historico-critical reflection which takes off from the now celebrated address by Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005.

Papa Ratzinger himself has returned to his argument many times. The last time was in his address to the participants of the plenary assembly of the Congregation for the Clergy on March 16, 2009, in which the Pope recalled the need to be true to 'the uninterrupted ecclesial tradition' and "to promote among priests, but especially among seminarians, a correct reception of the texts of the Second Vatican Council, interpreted in the light of the Church's entire doctrinal teachings".

[Actually, he last referred to Vatican-II briefly but very powerfully in his Sept. 8 address to the bishops of Brazil's West sector, to whom he said:

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In the decades that followed the Second Vatican Council, some have interpreted openness to the world not as a demand of the missionary ardor in Christ's heart, but as a transition to secularization, seeing in it some values of Christian importance such as equality, freedom and solidarity, and willing to make concessions and discover areas of collaboration.

Thus we have heard interventions by some ranking Church officials speaking out in public debates on ethics, responding to the expectations of public opinion, but neglecting to speak of certain fundamental truths of the faith like sin, grace, the evangelical life and the 'last things' [hell, purgatory, the Last Judgment]."

Without realizing it, many ecclesial communities have ended up in self-secularization: Hoping to please those who have distanced themselves from the Church, some of our colleagues have seen instead many who were in the Church leave, defrauded and disillusioned.

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The only way to make Vatican-II credible - Cardinal Ratzinger always maintained, as he does now, as Benedict XVI - is to present it as part of the entire and single tradition of the Church and its Faith.



This is the niche carved out by the recent book Vatican II. Renewal within Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2008) by Matthew Lamb e Matthew Levering, professors at Ave Maria University in Florida.

Benedict XVI's December 2005 address, which opens the book, is followed by many contributions dedicated respectively to the four conciliar constitutions, nine decrees and three declarations of Vatican II.

The authors are all prestigious. Among them, two American cardinals (the late Avery Dulles and Francis George, current president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops); noted theologians like Dominican Fr. Charles Morerod from the Angelicum University (and secretary of the International Theological Commission); and well-known scholars like philosopher of law Russell Hittinger.

The common fundamental theme is that Vatican II can only be understood in continuity with the bimillenary tradition of the Church, according to Leo XIII's formula, "vetera novis augere et perficere” (to augment and complete the old with the new).

The thesis is demonstrated through a textual analysis of the documents, which would be considered 'reductive' by those who maintain the qualitative priority of the 'event' itself compared to its decisions, which as Giuseppe Alberigo [editor of the Bologna school Vatican-II interpretations] wrote, "they cannot be read as abstract normative dictates but as an expression and prolongation of the event itself".

A second entry into this new historiography is the recent book by Mons. Brunero Gherardini, Concilio ecumenico Vaticano II. Un discorso da fare (The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: A discourse to be made), published by Casa Mariana Editrice di Frigento by the Franciscans of the Immaculate.

The work's importance is not only due to its content but for the author himself, who is a dean at the Pontifical Lateran University, postulator for the canonization of Pius IX, editor of the journal Divinitas, and the last representative of the great 'school of Roman theology".

Further reinforcing the book's authoritativeness are the preface buy Mons. Mario Oliveri, Bishop of Albenga, and Mons. Alberl Malcom Ranjith, Archibshop of Colombo.

The central theme of Mons. Gherardini's book is the pastoral nature of the Council, a point on which advocates of varying views about Vatican II are substantially in agreement.

Vatican II was a pastoral council [as opposed to doctrinal]: this was always made clear by John XXIII, Paul Vi and their successors up to the present Pope.

But what are the consequences of this 'pastorality' which is, ultimately, the relation of the Church to the world?

Vatican II, Gherardini points out, being a pastoral council, did not have a 'defining' doctrinal character. The absence of any defining intentions seems contradicted by the adjective 'dogmatic' which the Council used for two of its important constitutions: Lumen gentium and Dei verbum.

In fact, says the author, these documents were called 'dogmatic constitutions' only because they recapitulated and reproposed, as truths of the faith, dogmas that had been defined in preceding Councils.

The fact that only these two documents were called dogmatic makes it evident that the others did not have a dogmatic nature.

Of course, Vatican II has its own specific teaching which is authoritative, but as Gherardini explains, "its teachings which are not traceable to previous definitions, are neither infallible nor irreformable, and therefore, not even binding - which means that whoever rejects them cannot be called heretical for doing so. But those who would impose this order of teachings as infallible and irreformable are acting contrary to the Council itself."

It follows that one can apply a dogmatic character to Vatican-II documents only insofar as it reproposes dogma defined by previous councils as truths of the faith.

"Indeed, the doctrines which properly come from Vatican II itself, can absolutely not be considered dogmatic, because they are devoid of an indispensable formal definitiveness and therefore of the corresponding voluntas definiendi (intention to define", Gherardini says.

This is not to say Vatican II must be consigned to the attic or be ignored. "This has to do with respecting the nature, the purpose and the pastorality that the Council claimed for itself".

Benedict XVI states that Vatican II should be read in the light of Tradition, advocating a 'return to the truth of the text' which goes beyond the intentions or consequences of the Council as 'event'.

Nonetheless, Mons. Gherardini acknowledges that the texts present an ambiguity which could be subject to historical and theological criticism.

A typical example is the constitution referred to as 'pastoral', Gaudium et Spes, dated December 7, 1965 [the day before the Council ended], about the Church in the world today.

The word 'pastoral' describes its 'humanistic' approach of sympathy, openness and understanding of man, history and 'aspects of daily life and human society', with particular attention to 'the problems that seem to be most urgent'.

"The 19th- and 20th-century myth of Progress permeates the document: progress in culture and institutions; social adn economic progress; technological progress; and in general, 'human progress'.

"It is a newly-minted Christianity that enlarges its own domain :to the anonymous Christians of Karl Rahner and the implicit Christians of E. Schillebeeckx, beyond the Christians matured by the Conciliar sessions".

Gaudium et Spes, though it contains an implicit doctrine, is nonetheless devoid of a binding value in the points where it deviates from the Tradition of the Church.

Indeed, when a Council presents itself, as well as the content and the rationale of its documents under the category of pastorality - self-defining itself as pastoral - it thereby excludes every intent to define: "Therefore, it cannot claim to be dogmatic, nor can others confer this character on it".

Unlike all the other ecumenical councils in history, Vatican-II was not characterized by its doctrinal impact - much less dogmatic - but by the novelty of its approach, its assessments and the movement and activity that it introduced into the Church.

And the paradox lay in this: it was subsequently attempted to elevate to dogma a Council which had openly stated it did not intend to affirm any absolute principle. Pastoral concerns are not judged by its principles but by their concrete results.

Mons. Gherardini, echoing what Cardinal Ratzinger said in the 1995 Rapporto della Fede [The Ratzinger Report], points out that the ecclesial disaster that followed Vatican II, has assumed, with continued progression, gigantic proportions.

"It would not be difficult for an attentive observer and above all, for a consistent Catholic, to recognize the disaster and see it as among the effects of that relativism that I would compare it to the build-up of a tsunami that is slimy and overwhelming".

In the appeal to the Holy Father that concludes the book, Mons. Gherardini suggests that it is necessary to udnertake a careful and scientific analysis of the individual documents of the Council, or the documents in their ensemble, and of every topic they refer to, as well as the sources cited, both immediate and remote.

Such an analysis should also be comparative to the twenty other councils, to determine once and for all if Vatican II was an evolutionary continuity or if it represented any partial or total rupture.

Indeed, the Second Vatican Council cannot be greater than the Church and her Tradition.



A great article and a great development. I have been meaning to translate excerpts from Mons. Gherardini's book which have appeared in the blogs Disputationes Theologicae and Messainlatino.