Understanding Vatican II: Deconstructing the Myth

The Second Vatican Council was, as the Good Pope envisioned, the opening of the window of the Church to the Holy Spirit. VII provided the Church with the tools to engage modernity and to effectively dialogue with a changed world. A new personalist approach to presenting the alterable truths which Jesus suffered and died to leave us, has sparked the beginnings of a new springtime in the Church. John Paul the Great’s anthropology, though his writing can be dense for non-specialists, is a personally compelling way to understand what the Church has always taught about God and man’s Covenant relationship with Him. In fact, this blog tries to popularize JP the Great’s thought so that his understanding of the awesome reality of who we are and who we should become is more readily available to non-specialists. John Paul the Great was in a sense, formed by the Council and is perhaps its most fruitful implementer. It seems to me then, that it is important to have a good understanding not only of what the Council said but also of the history of the development of the documents. A couple of articles have recently appeared which have cast a new light on the “current wisdom” in which Vatican II is (mis)characterized as a fight between progressive bishops and theologians and traditional, neo-scholastics. In this common view, the latter of course lost the fight. Those who espouse this view often try to depict the council as a break with the past. Sandro Magister writes on Cardinal Ruini’s refutation of this popular view. The Cardinal took the occasion to discuss this common (mis)perception of Vatican II at the presentation of a new book, published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana and written by Bishop Agostino Marchetto. Bishop Marchetto is a Church historian and the secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People. The book is entitled The Ecumenical Council of Vatican II: A Counterpoint to Its History. Zenit interviews Marchetto on his new book. Marchetto takes particular issue with the so called Bologna School which is a major purveyor of this mischaracterization of VII. He emphasizes the continuity of the Council with the past and takes pains to refute the simplistic view that the Council was a fight between liberals and conservatives. This is of fundamental importance because this mistaken view is held by some extreme traditionalists who then reject the council and by dissenters of Church dogma who see it as their license for dissent. I hope that the book will be available in English as my Italian is not so good. It will provide an important corrective to the history by legend to which most of us have been subjected up to now.