BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

The historical fact:
'In Vatican-II, tradition
and renewal met in embrace'
Interview with Mons. Agostino Marchetto
By Luca Caruso
Translated from

December 27, 2012

In recent months, the Vatican Publishing House published a new book by Archbishop Agostino Marchetto entitled Il Concilio ecumenico Vaticano II. Per la sua corretta ermeneutica (The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: Towards its correct interpretation).



It is Mons. Marchetto's secondwork on the Council. The first appeared in 2005, also published by LEV, and entitled Il Concilio ecumenico Vaticano II. Contrappunto per la sua storia )The Second Vatican Council: Counterpoint to its history).

The archbishop has served in the diplomatic service of the Holy See in different countries, and then, for almost nine years, he was the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerants.

But he has always armed himself with the instruments of his 'passion' for historical research, and his books constitute a critical study of the historiography of Vatican II.

The second book puts together 28 articles he wrote for publication between 2004 and 2011, along with some unpublished interventions. This compares to the 49 articles he anthologized in 2005, which had been first published between 1990 to 2003.

In this interview with Korazym, the prelate goes over the principal themes of the second book as well as some issues with the post-Conciliar follow-up 50 years since the Council opened.

Excellency, at the time the Council opened, you were 20 years old or thereabouts. What are your own direct memories of the event?
I entered the seminary at the age of 19. I was able to follow something of Vatican II on TV but reading newspapers was regulated. However, a teacher would bring us books that were coming out about the Council, and we read them all with great interest. Each professor would then give his own version of what was taking place.

In 1964, I came to Rome and took park in a public ceremony of the Council, which left me greatly impressed at the brilliance of the ecclesiastical world. It is true that the Council was like the explosion of the Church's universal presence, and I thought that for the world at large, Vatican II was a sign of the unity of the human family. Charles de Gaulle said that the Council was not the greatest event of the century only for the Catholic Church but for the whole world. And he was not the only one who thought so.

How did the internal polarization arise between progressivists and conservationists regarding the Council?
Without having to use parliamentary jargon, I think a more neutral terminology should be used, namely, majority view versus minority view, which were both variable during the four years of the Council.

One can say that, in general, the majority was for renewal of the Church, whereas the minority was more concerned about remaining faithful to Tradition. But these are the two great tendencies in Catholicism which should collaborate and join together.

I think that in Vatican II, Tradition and renewal did embrace each other, and that, to me, was its greatness as an Ecumenical Council and the expression of a Catholic Church in communion with Rome.

Could Vatican II have developed other than the way it did?
The measure that was used to reach conclusions which everyone could accept was dialog, then putting to a vote and thereby accepting each other's views. “Audiatur et altera pars” - listen to the other side. This was not compromise, a term which has been used to dismiss the Council documents. I find it rather a sign of catholicity - that both sides should have the proper consideration for each other.

Cardinal Frings used to say, "These are not compromises but formulations on which we can all agree. The characteristic principle of Catholicism is to put things together (et et). faithfulness to Tradition in the process of renewal, which Benedict XVI calls reform and which John XXIII called aggiornamento.

But there were two extreme positions that became important for the consequences they had after the Council: on the one hand, Lefebvre and those who followed his 'strictly traditionalist' line, and those in the majority who later claimed that Paul VI's work was anti-Conciliar, that he 'buried' Vatican II, the progressivist view that dominated the immediate post-Conciliar years. [Yet he gave them the Mass they desired and designed, and started all the necessary implementation of the Vatican-II documents. Unfortunately, he also allowed all the progressivist dogs (both ideas and persons) to run loose wafting the bogus 'spirit of Vatican II' and basically define for the public what Vatican II was about! What then do they fault him with - that he wrote Humanae vitae in 1968? Nowhere does any Vatican II document say that contraception and abortion were to be suddenly part of Catholic teaching! He even allowed all the priests who suddenly thought it was their duty to get married to go ahead, marry, but to leave the priesthood. And thank God for not Protestantizing the clergy as much as the Mass had been Protestantized!]

But your own hermeneutic has always been that of reform in continuity, as Benedict XVI described it in his address to the Roman Curia in December 2005. Were you behind that? [The question amounts to a thoughtless insult to Benedict XVI, as if he were incapable of defining his position himself and needed others to do it for him!]
No. I knew nothing about that address until after it had been delivered, although my first book on Vatican II came out in June 2005. One must remember that in Rapporto sulla Fede (The Ratzinger Report, 1984), Cardinal Ratzinger was already advocating that line. [I must bring up once again my pet observation about this interview book with Vittorio Messori. Georg Weigel credits it, to a large measure, for having spurred John Paul II to call a Special Synodal Assembly in 1985 to mark the 20th anniversary of the end of Vatican II, and to consolidate its teachings for proper implementation in the Church.]

In your new book, you identify three main lines of interpreting the Council...
Benedict XVI speaks of "reform in continuity of the one subject Church". as the Pope himself says that at different levels, there can be continuity and discontinuity. Although I am a bishop, I don't write as a bishop, but as a historian who uses the historico-critical method, and I have always held, since 1990, that this hermeneutic of continuity is confirmed in an analysis of the historical facts of the Council.

Historical facts tell me that in Vatican II, this putting together of positions took place, the desire for renewal while maintaining continuity with Tradition - this 'et-et' - not to destroy but to reinforce by reform.

For some time, there have been claims that Vatican II represented a rupture in the Church, not just among the extremists of those who were the majority at the Council and their successors, but also from the other extreme, among the diehard traditionalists.

The first group says "The Council has happened, let us just go on", as if the Council were a permanent thing, that Vatican II had sowed some seeds and that it only remains to harvest its fruits. [That seems to be a gross and inexplicable mis-statement of the progressivist view, which considers that Vatican II created a 'new Church' altogether which must not have any of the old in it! That is the rupture they mean. I frankly do not understand all these interviews that appear in the Catholic media, when no one seems to question any statement made by the interviewee, no matter how startlingly off as the above statement was! The interviewer certainly has the duty to have the interviewee clarify himself when necessary, as in this case.]

The traditionalists say instead that Vatican II did represent a rupture and that the Church should simply go back to pre-1965. These positions are not pretty. They are both willfully blind - their convictions prevent them from seeing what can be seen.

Nonetheless, Vatican II was an event that has left no one indifferent...
And that is rightfully so, because it was a great event. It is a beacon for the Church, or as the Pope says, a compass. But in order that the compass works, one must ensure certain conditions are met regarding its correct history and its correct interpretation.

Could you illustrate to us these conditions?
I always identify three 'readings' or 'scannings', if you will, to which I add adjectives. First, the history must be factual, truthful, and not ideological (in which the interpretation is not objective but depends on the person doing the interpretation, on his preconceptions and prejudices, and who would seek to bend the 'facts' to show what he personally thinks the Council should have done. We still do not have that kind of factual history, principally because many of the initial historiographers of Vatican II used the notes and papers of selected Council participants as their primary sources, rather than the Council documents themselves.

The second scanning has to do with the hermeneutic, or interpretation, which must be based on factual history, not selected views.

And the third stage is the reception - how the Council is perceived and accepted in the life of the Church. The Council documents must be properly received and perceived in order to take effect on the life of the Church. So the reception must be adequate and appropriate, as well as faithful to the Council itself. [It was this reception that concerned John Paul II most when he called the 1085 Synodal Assembly on the 20th anniversary of Vatican II. One must note that the most concrete outcome of that Synodal Assembly was the new Catechism of the Catholic Church drawn up by a committee headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, and incorporating the facts of Tradition and prior Magisterium with the teachings of Vatican II. One could consider it the primary instrument and guide for the reception of Vatican II by the universal Church.]

But the reception phase is not another Council! It is not intended to be a period of 'creativity' that is almost without bearing on the Council itself.

So in order to do justice to Vatican II, we need a correct interpretation of historical facts in order to achieve the right reception, in which we have a long way to go.

And what are the risks inherent in this?
I think a fascination with the new plays a large role. For many, he Council amounts only to whatever new it said, losing sight of that fusion of Tradition and renewal, resulting in a partial and erroneous view of what was a complex event.

In the Council, Tradition and renewal were brought together, but afterwards, everyone took from it what he wanted, and it was no longer the Council! I believe that is the post-Conciliar tragedy.

But we cannot accuse the Council, as some do, of having been ambiguous in some respects. The Council represents the extraordinary Magisterium of the Pope in communion with all the bishops of the world. Post-Council is not the Council. After the Council, the ordinary Magisterium continues, that we must accept and respect. But let us not confuse the teaching of the Council [represented in its 16 documents] and the extra-Magisterial opinions and interpretations that are made of the Council documents afterwards.

What was the influence of 1968?
After the Council, there was a crisis in accepting the teaching of the Church, a crisis in organized laity, a theological crisis, a crisis in the priesthood and in religious life. This crises in the Church coincided with the crisis of Western society, when all its traditional values were turned upside down.

What was the relationship between these two crises - the ecclesial and the secular? The 1960 counterculture movement influenced the atmosphere of contestation within the Church. The countercultural hostility to institutions and rejection of authority found its counterpart within the Church and her institutions.

But I would say that dissent in the Church came earlier - there were aspects that predated the crisis of 1968 and the post-Conciliar crisis in the Church. [Once again, the interviewer misses the obvious follow-up: What were these precedents??? Were they ever openly manifested??? I can't think of one. The movement for liturgical reform that went back to the 1920s? Did it ever rise to open dissent when priests refused to say the Mass as it was, or devised their own Masses?]

Last November, I posted Cardinal Raffaele Farina's presentation of Mons. Marchetto's second book
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8527207&p=364
- in which the Cardinal makes a remarkable and original distinction between aggiornamento, which is the process of bringing the Church 'up to date' with the world that was undertaken by Vatican II, and the subsequent reforms resulting from such aggiornamento. It leads me to reflecting on what a more media-savvy Church might have done right after Vatican II to disseminate the Vatican II documents systematically, with 'implementing norms' for bishops and priests, and explanatory texts for the faithful, instead of leaving the field free for all the opponents of the Church to present their versi0n(s) of Vatican II as they pleased... And so, the Church has been in post-Conciliar damage control mode all these decades...

Meanwhile, it seems 'scandalous' that 50 years since Vatican=II opened, there has yet to be a history of the Council to counteract the 5-volume progressivist version from the Bologna school that has been around since the 1970s. The closest we have to one would be Joseph Ratzinger's collected writings on Vatican II published in his COLLECTED WRITINGS in time for this 50th anniversary.