I welcome any topic these days that's not about 'the scandal' or 'crisis'... Father Scalese, a very congenial blogger, actually has a more current entry about the 'crisis' which presents his usual blend of common sense and insight, but I felt I should translate this first. The good father is a Barnabite (formally, the Clerics Regular of St. Paul, founded in 1530 as one of the first Counter-REformation orders) who returned last January to italy after give years as a missionary in the Philippines.
The key to reading
Benedict XVI's Ponitificate:
The hermeneutic of continuity
by Fr. Giovanni Scalese, CRSP
Translated from
April 6, 2010
Father Scalese reproduces his first column for ECO, the journal of the Barnabites, in its 1/2010 issue. The column is called 'Osservatorio ecclesiale' - and he interprets it to mean he is to comment on what is happening in the Church. He continues...
Is there a need for this? I think so, because sometimes, even if we are actively participating in the life of the Church, we do not really take note of what is happening around us, and we continue reasoning and judging reality with schemes which may have been valid twenty years ago but are no longer appropriate for understanding the present.
I remember about 30 years ago, at the start of John Paul II's Pontificate - I was a great admirer of Paul Vi, and one day I expressed my perplexity about the orientation of the new Pope.
Mons. Andrea Erba, who was a simple priest then, told me, "Do not forget that the Church always moves ahead". At the time, the answer did not impress me, but now, I must say he was completely right. The Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, continues along its way - it would be myopic not to see the evolution taking place in her, just as in society and any other reality.
I believe something similar is happening today. It will soon be five years since Benedict XVI was elected Pope, but one would think not everyone is aware of it even now. There are many who continue to 'think' of the Church as if Karol Wojtyla were still Pope, and persist in making unpleasant comparisons between the two Popes and to judge the present Pontiff by his predecessor.
They forget one simple truth: John Paul II is dead, and Benedict XVI leads the Church today. One can agree or not with the decisions of the reigning Pope, but one cannot ignore the signs that his interventions are already leaving on the Church.
If it is true that everyone, including the Pope, is a child of his time, it is similarly true that everyone (and for more reason, the Pope) makes his contribution to the time in which he lives and works.
This column does not intend to make value judgments, positive or negative. As an observatory, it should limit itself to observing reality. Each one can then proceed to make his own judgment - but in order to do this, we must be conscious of what is taking place around us.
With this premise, we can ask ourselves what are the basic orientations of this Pontificate. This is the question we will seek to answer this year in this column. Since this is the first issue of ECO for 2010, the question is whether there is a key, a unifying criterion, that can allow us to 'read' the pontificate of Benedict XVI.
It would not have been by chance (for a believer, nothing can be considered chance, but everything fits into a precise divine plan) that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope in 2005, on the 40th anniversary of the conclusion of Vatican-II.
Indeed, one of the first issues confronted by the new Pope was the interpretation that must be given to Vatican II. He did that in his memorable address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005 (eight months after his election).
On that occasion, Benedict XVI posed this question: "Why has the reception of Vatican II, largely by the Church itself, been such a difficult process?"
To which he gave this answer:
It all depends on the correct interpretation of the Council or - as we would say today - on its proper hermeneutics, the correct key to its interpretation and application.
The problems in its implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarrelled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.
On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call "a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture"; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology.
On the other, there is the "hermeneutic of reform", of renewal in the continuity of the one subject - Church - which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.
And he proceeded illustrating the opposing ‘interpretations’ and the various outcomes of their respective applications. We cannot here follow Papa Ratzinger’s argumentation. Anyone can read it in its entirety on the Vatican web site.
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222_roman-curia...
For now, we shall content ourselves with highlighting a few points:
1. The address on December 22, 2005, although it was formally an address during the traditional presentation of Christmas wishes, has a value that we might call ‘programmatic’, being the first great discourse of his Pontificate.
[I would not say that. It was perhaps the first on a specific issue, but the homily at the first Mass he celebrated as Pope on April 20, 2005, and at his formal installation on April 25, were just as great and memorable as general statements of his program.]
2. The problem of the correct interpretation of Vatican II, 40 years after it ended, takes on a fundamental importance at this critical moment in the life of the Church. It is no longer possible to repeat the same stereotypes. One must take a critical attitude – not to place the Council itself in question – but to ask ourselves:
- What did the Council really say?
- Has that message been correctly understood?
- Have the teachings of the Council been put into practice, and with what results?
3. Benedict XVI, fully exercising his magisterial functions, as an authentic interpreter of Vatican-II, shows us the right interpretative key: the so-called ‘hermeneutic of reform’, explained by him as “renewal in continuity of the one subject – the Church”.
From That time on, the texts of Vatican-II could no longer be interpreted in the light of a phantasmal ‘spirit of Vatican II’ (about which no one knows what its exact features are, nor who are supposed to be the custodians), but only in the light of the Church’s uninterrupted Tradition.
Not because there is no possible development within that Tradition, but because
renewal must be carried out in the continuity of the one Church, which remains the same Church, before and after the Council.
4. Personally, I find in this ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ the key to reading not just Vatican II, but the Pontificate of Benedict XVI itself. His decisions, his actions, can be understood only in this light.
Many portray Papa Ratzinger as a traditionalist Pope, nostalgic, and an advocate of ‘restoration’ – and that is because they continue to aaply to him those worn-out ideological schemes that summarily divide persons into progressives and conservatives. But in doing so, they risk understanding nothing of Benedict XVI’s ‘policies’.
But
if, instead, we try to read his many interventions in the light of the ‘hermeneutic of reform’, then everything he does makes sense.
Papa Ratzinger does not intend to take a step back into the past – all he wants is that the Church renews herself but remains herself.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/04/2011 13:32]