Two Interpretations of Vatican II Myth or Reality
Two Interpretations of Vatican II Myth or Reality
Two Interpretations of Vatican II Myth or Reality
let your speech be “yes, yes: no, no”; whatever is beyond these comes from the evil one. (Mt. 5:37) l August 2008
Reprint #82
TWO INTERPRETATIONS
OF VATICAN II?
MYTH OR REALITY
More than 40 years after the Council’s close, we are The Hermeneutic of Rupture
faced with the paradox of a Council that meant to speak
a new language more comprehensible to modern man, The first reading is that of the progressivists,
yet which today remains the object of discussions about incarnated in Italy by the Bologna School, inheritor
its correct interpretation. We have grown accustomed of the school founded by Don Giuseppe Dosseti.
to hearing of the “two hermeneutics of Vatican II,” two Theirs is the revolutionary view. This view places the
interpretations of the conciliar documents that have emphasis on the points of rupture between Vatican
been championed in the turbulent post-conciliar period II and the pre-conciliar Church, which include some
with two very different, if not opposite, readings of the doctrines (papal primacy, the powers of the bishop,
same documents. the priesthood, religious freedom, ecumenism, the role
of the People of God, marriage and sexual morality,
liturgy) comprised under the heading of ecclesiology.
19
THE ANGELUS ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTICLE REPRINT
dawning of the new Church of the Spirit esoterically
adumbrated in the documents of Vatican II. If the
Church is sick, its current crisis is in reality a sign of
According to the revolutionary view, the Council was healing and rebirth. It is not out of bad faith that they
the occasion of a “new Pentecost,” a radical refounding choose not to complain or speak of it (they know there
of the Church by a purification of all the blemishes that is a crisis, but tactically prefer not to say so), but because
disfigured its face and hindered its mission. The new they really think that nothing negative is happening.
Church would be a more “spiritual” Church, outlined in Those who resist this transformation by defending the
Pope Paul VI’s famous speech closing the Council and now pathetic “ancient forms” and their embodiment
in the “sympathy” this speech expressed for the modern of the Faith are not containing the spread of error and
world. The ecclesiology underlying the hermeneutic of iniquity so much as hindering the chiliastic advent of
rupture adopts as its strategic axis the laicization of the the Age of the Holy Spirit. Those who, like Cardinal
clergy and the clericalization of the laity for the purpose Martini, call for a Vatican Council III are calling for
of bringing about a utopia imagined by some to be an explicit, public ratification of the “new Church”
the way to redouble the fervor and intensity of the life announced obscurely and equivocally in the documents
of faith. It consists in dissolving boundaries between of Vatican II.
clergy, religious, and laity; confusing the secular The hermeneutic of rupture is based inevitably
and religious worlds, to culminate in an indistinct, upon a theology of modernist inspiration, that is to
egalitarian, gnostically hyper-democratic reality. In this say, subject to modern philosophy, anthropology, and
view, several theologically central and symbolically political philosophy. Consequently, it sees no difficulty
decisive aspects of the “ancient” Church are questioned: in speaking of a rupture, a surpassing, a revolution,
the celibacy of priests and the power of Peter and the a change on the level of authority, theology, dogma
bishops. and morals: the essence of modern culture, indeed, is
But it is equally obvious that in this interpretation, the negation of the very idea of immutability and the
the new idea of “the People of God” could not have eternity of Truth, and hence the refusal, in general of
prevailed without effecting the desacralization of the holy the fact that problems can be expressed in terms of
sacrifice of the Mass, which, in the Tridentine Missal, truth and falsehood, that is, of non-contradiction. But
was much too evocative of the majesty of God and the if the essence of modernity is the negation of truth in
kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Dossettian general (which, if it is, is immutably and eternally equal
view outlined here, the new, post-conciliar Church to itself), then its essence is the negation of the Word,
is conceived of as true insofar as it aligns with the the negation of God–atheism. Now it is evident, on the
values that came to the fore in the Enlightenment, the theological plane, that the hermeneutic of rupture is
French Revolution, and in socialist and modern liberal- indefensible, for were it correct, that would mean that
democratic political theories. Salvation is no longer for almost 2,000 years, the Church has taught error—
conceived of as a supernatural reality, ultimately, the which is impossible given its holiness and infallibility—or
result of the action of grace and the free cooperation that a truth of faith, a dogma, can change, which is
of the baptized with it; rather, it is seen as a process—it logically absurd. “Rupture” would mean that in fact the
matters little that it is implicit—of immanentizing Church is not a divinely founded institution, and that
the Christian eschaton as a politico-social terrestrial the Christian faith is thus false.
praxis of redeeming humanity by freeing it from war,
injustices, poverty, divisions, and the lack of rights or of
work. Salvation thus becomes the result of man’s work, Hermeneutic of Continuity
of which Jesus becomes merely the perfect symbol or What is presented to us as the hermeneutic of
human archetype, and the Church is conceived of as continuity aims to propose the thesis according to which
the conscious and most enlightened forerunner of this there is no break, no discontinuity, between Tradition,
process. the Magisterium before Vatican II, and the doctrines
For the hermeneutic of rupture (or revolution), the advocated during and after the Council. According to
crisis in the Church after the Council is not disturbing this view, the Council must be read and interpreted in
for two reasons: like every revolutionary view of history, light of Tradition as a homogeneous development, as
it is based on the conviction that the destruction of the a modernization and restatement of the same truths in
past and of every sign referring to it is the indispensable a language and with a cultural awareness adapted to
condition of the inauguration of the New World modern man. In this view, there has been no leap, no
Order and the full incarnation of Good in history, qualitative break between the pre-conciliar and the post-
and that this destruction coincides with the advent of conciliar Magisterium. In this view, indeed, only the
the revolutionary world dreamt of by the utopians. application of a bad interpretation by many theologians
In the second place, the forms which are weakening or churchmen has deformed the spirit of Vatican II and
or becoming extinct (ministerial priesthood, cloisters disoriented the faithful, making them believe they were
and monasticism, liturgy, confession, the authority of dealing with a new Church, and not simply a renewed
bishops, Catholic schools, etc.) were seriously imperfect Church. The hermeneutic of rupture is herein abstractly
and would have hindered, had they remained, the condemned as erroneous, without, however, disciplinary