Hermeneutics of the Second Vatican Council

This field of research is taught in some universities and explored by learned societies such as the School of Bologna and the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Sciences.

This peculiarity can be derived from the intention of the Council itself, which was not to define "one point or another of doctrine and discipline" but to "re-establish in value and splendor the substance of human and Christian thought and life".

On the one hand there is an interpretation that I would call "hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture"; it has often been able to avail itself of the sympathy of the mass media, and also of a part of modern theology.

On the other hand there is the "hermeneutics of reform", of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church, which the Lord has given us; it is a subject that grows over time and develops, but always remains the same, the only subject of the People of God on the move.Benedict XVI has returned to the same question on other occasions[9][10], underlining the importance of the Second Vatican Council being received in the light of the entire doctrinal baggage of the Church[11] The main scholars who support the hermeneutic of continuity are Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, President of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, Avery Robert Dulles and Francis Eugene George, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, Dominican Bishop Charles Morerod and the legal philosopher Francis Russell Hittinger.

[12] A critique of the hermeneutic of continuity contests its theological rather than historical approach, with the presumed consequence of taking away importance from the Council considered as an event.

[13][14] The hermeneutics of rupture, also known as the hermeneutics of discontinuity, tends to give value to the Council as an event, also in consideration of some particular characteristics of Vatican II: the absence of a specific historical purpose, the rejection of the originally Roman Curia-backed preparatory schemes, the assembly elaboration of the documents and also the perception of the Council as a crucial event by public opinion.

[7] Many Catholic traditionalist groups, such as the Society of Saint Pius X, and some scholars such as the philosopher Romano Amerio,[8] also support the perception of the Second Vatican Council as a hermeneutic of discontinuity from sacred tradition and the pre-Concilliar Magisterium of the Catholic Church, accompanying it with a strong criticism of the Second Vatican Council, questioning some of its texts and especially its legacy (in contrast to progressivists who see the discontinuity as a good thing).