Continuity, Innovation and Discontinuity in the Second Vatican Council

Abstract

The problem of continuity and/or discontinuity of Vatican II is linked with other problems regarding the authenticity of its interpretation and the fidelity to its intentions: Continuity Council as text as final point Discontinuity Council as event as way Elements of discontinuity: Generally a certain change of direction in relation to the prevalent tendencies of the preceding (post-Tridentine, anti-liberal and anti-modernistic) times. More especial: 1) The peculiar character of Vatican II: understanding the task of the Council not in a negative and partial way (as condemnation of ‘heresies’ and fighting against ‘abuses’), but rather as a theological and spiritual response from the word of God to the call of the times. 2) Reform as ‘aggiornamento’ (not primarily as abolition of temporary ‘abuses’ returning to an ideal state, but opening to the needs of time). 3) Differenciation or modification of the ‘exclusivistic’ elements of ecclesiatical doctrine. 4) Rehabilitation of previous reform movements in the catholicism, which formerly had been rejected as more or less ‘unorthodox’ (Catholic Enlightenment, Liberal Catholicism, ‘Modernism’). 5) Some conciliar affirmations do not only complement, but really correct the magisterial assertions of the immediate preceding time. - Especially in the question of religious liberty no ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ is possible. But: there was not a ‘rupture’ with a preceding homogeneous tradition! The problem: How can be described an higher continuity faced with real ruptures, discontinuities and paradigm-shifts? Here some reflections: 1) Vatican II is rooted in long-term ecclesiastical developments, which began more ore less a half century before the Council. 2) Ecclesiastical Tradition is not a static, uniform and homogeneous reality, but a dynamic and living network of convictions, options and practices. Here is also the place for ‘Renaissances’, that is recovery of former traditions connected with the dismissal of traditions and doctrines of the immediate past. The biologic model of a living organism, adopted to the Church since the time of romanticism, cannot be applied fully to human history. To human history belong Renaissances, returns to former times and to forgotten traditions. 3) But for many new perspectives of Vatican II, as for the new relation to the worldly realities in Gaudium et Spes, for religious liberty, for the esteem of the non-Christian religions, for the optimism regarding the possibility of salvation of Non-Christians and even atheists, for the new valuation of judaism and the rejection of the Church’s own anti-Jewish traditions, this answer cannot be sufficient. These positions are historically new. But that does not mean that they have no roots in the Christian conception of God and the human person and that they would pure adaptation to the modernity. E.g. in the issue of religious freedom: In a certain moment the fundamental value of personal dignity will break the shell of a doctrine like that of the ideal of ‘Catholic State’. Or, theologically speaking: ecclesiastical tradition must go through death and resurrection; the continuity of the Spirit proceeds through the discontinuity of the death which is temporary and historically relative.