NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

Here is a translation of the first of two reaction articles in Corriere della Sera today:

VATICAN-II AND 1968:
2 CHALLENGES OVERCOME BY THE CHURCH
By Gian Guido Vecchi

It's somewhat like Aristotle's mesotes [doctrine of the mean): the 'correct middle' which is not simply 'the way' to go, but also connotes the art of the kybernetes, the steersman who 'governs' the ship and succeeds in keeping it straight and firm during a storm.

It can be a bad experience, especially if the ship is the Church tossed here and there 'in the years around 1968' by the revolutionary enthusiasms that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

Everyone more or less was caught up in that storm and "I myself was, in that context, almost too timorous with regard to what I should have dared," Benedict XVI said in a November 2006 interview with Fr. Johannes Nebel which opens the book Il mondo della fede cattolica by the late Cardinal Leo Sheffczyck.

"Of course, there was a storm," says Prof. Lorenzo Ornaghi, rector of the Catholic University of Milan, "and perhaps, we are still not rid of the confusion."

He notes that the Pope praised the 'clarity' that Sheffczyck knew how to keep then.

That is the point, Ornaghi says. "The Pope's interview contains an important reaffirmation of the identity of the faith, and above all, its comprehensibility. The element of confusion that perhaps we still under-estimate, arose from what, in 1968, was meant to be a cultural revolution [even within the Church], with a break from all preceding ideas - and that was reflected even in the contamination of language: words became opaque, not helpful to understanding, because they were no longer able to go to the essence of problems. Whereas the vitality of faith depends on being able to speak to men of our time and to be understood by them."

In December 2005, on the 40th anniversary of the closing of Vatican-II, Benedict XVI said that in the years following Vatican II, "two opposing hermeneutics fought each other" and it was one of those, the 1968 hermeneutics which interpreted the Council as 'discontinuity and rupture...created confusion."

The other which 'bore fruit and continues to do so' is the hermeneutic of reform, of 'renewal in continuity.'

It is not true, Benedict says, that there was a break between the pre-conciliar church and the post-Conciliar Church, nor is it true that nothing changed. The 'correct middle', therefore.

"But no, if that were so, then there should be three interpretations," says Paolo Prodi, professor of modern history in Bologna, where Giuseppe Alberigo's Institute of Religious Sciences became the center and reference point of the 'progressivists.'

Prodi is not convinced about opposing hermeneutics. [But what's to deny? And why 3? The 'middle way' in this case is precisely the so-called hermeneutics of continuity that the Pope champions - 'renewal within continuity'. The only third way is a non-acceptance of Vatican-II altogether, as the most extreme Lefebvrians and the sedevacantists do - and that way is no interpretation at all of Vatican-II, since they don't even recognize its legitimacy.]

"That there was a strong enough tension, yes, and I myself broke away from the Institute, but my way of thinking rejects the idea that there were two interpretations. Reality is more complex than a dilemma. Revolutions in history only scratch the surface, I've never believed in them, so even I see continuity. But I think that the announced reforms, the 'updating' intended by John XXIII, has been diluted over the years."

But Prodi says that is not the point now. "Look, I tend to historicize Vatican-II: the Church faced and settled its accounts with the modern age, well and good. The problem is the modern age has been over for some time now."

In short, he thinks it is time that Vatican-II becomes simply an issue for historians.

That seems to be the thinking as well of Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant'Egidio Community: "I always keep in mind what was said by Fr. Yves Congar, a great theologian and cardinal: When one speaks of Vatican-II, he said, it must always be in the context of its intersection with 'the spirit of 1968'. Vatican-II was reported in the media - and the public experienced it 'directly' in a way. But public opinion derived an image that was mediated through the simplification of the media. And it has been four decades since 1968. Vatican-II remains an epochal event, but it is time to look at it historically, with serenity."

Historian Lucetta Scaraffia would go beyond that. "Today, there is a tendency to think that Vatican-II meant a succession of dogmas. Whereas, the betrayal of the Council was really in seeing new dogmas where there were none. This has been a subject of discussion within the Church."

"The Pope, being an intellectual," she says, "sees clearly that the Church is itself a laboratory for culture, that interpreting tradition means discussing it, and that, and this continuous discussion gives vitality to the Church - honest confrontation, not conflict motivated by power."

"In an age that tends to reject the Catholic vision, the Pope re-proposes it in a cultural context. He does not enunciate dogma but instead places weight on reason. It is a big challenge - one must be able to sustain a rational argument. Outside the Church, it is not understood much, and for Catholics themselves, it is not easy to live up to. But in a world of conflict, when people don't speak to each other, it is our good fortune to have one of the greatest intellects of our time as Pope."

Corriere della Sera, 21 ottobre 2007

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I must take issue with Scaraffia's assertion that many Catholics may not be equal to the Pope's appeal to reason as a basis for faith.

I want to believe that the majority of Catholics - those who are Catholic by birth, as well as those who are converts as a result of missionary work - believe mainly on the basis of genuine faith, which is faith by grace, faith that that does not require rational arguments to define, articulate or explain. That Catholicism is also rational is all very well, but for people like us (I count myself among them), we have not felt it necessary to be reasoned out to us.

Whereas the Pope's appeal to reason, I believe, is directed mainly at the doubters, the waverers, the nominal Catholics - those who do not have faith by grace alone but need rational arguments to confirm them in their faith, or not....And to the faithful who may be called on to explain their faith to others, as in a St. Peter quotaton that the Pope often cites, we must be ready to explain to others 'the reason for our hope.'

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At the roots of
the Pope's self-criticism
By Alberto Melloni

I think Mr. Melloni sees the interview as a Gotcha! moment!

The interview with Benedict XVI about the late Cardinal Scheffczyck says something about his theologian colleague, who was elevated to cardinal rank by John Paul II at the suggestion of Joseph Ratzinger (something noteworthy even to understand the functioning of the Wojtylian Curia).

And it says something on how Papa Ratzinger reads the post-conciliar years, of which he was and is a leading player, and his own role in it.

By calling and by choice, Ratzinger has taken a position repeatedly about the years that followed Vatican-II. Even towards the end of his four volumes that chronicled the Council, he already expressed his concerns about the event in which he had played a role, in his work on collegiality, which he and Karl Rahner signed together, and other key points.

Theologians - who since the anti-modernist repression at the start of the 20th century to the persecution of nouvelle theologie in the 1950s - suffered much every time they tried to face new or difficult themes, had three intense years of unprecedented experience working side by side with bishops, with the council committees, with other Church authorities, and in a certain way, even with the Pope.

The objective goal at the time was to place new challenges that would not be reduced to a simple 'application' of Vatican-II but a true 'reception'.

It is well known that Ratzinger lived through those years, initially, sharing the effort of the journal Concilium which meant to furnish, on an international scale, points as well as tools for reflection and analysis.

But his academic experience in Tuebingen - which he speaks about extensively in the autobiography he wrote when he was a cardinal - progressively disillusioned him, pushing him towards an ever darker analysis of what was happening under Pope Paul VI. In a crescendo of severity, the difficulties and turbulences became successively, between 1965 and 1985, problems, confusions, dangers. [But isn't it the historical consensus that Paul VI's Pontificate after 1965 was increasingly darkened by the chaos that followed the Council? From all accounts, he was to be trhoubled by it to the end of his days.

Paul VI must have shared enough of Ratzinger's views for him to name him in 1977 not just Archbishop of Munich but cardinal after a few weeks. And he named him cardinal on the basis of his contributions to theology.

I have not read any accounts anywhere of any particular link or even contacts between Paul VI and Joseph Ratzinger before he named him Archbishop. So if Paul VI thought that Ratzinger's views were in any way counter-productive to the Church and to his Pontificate, he did not have to name him anything and could have left him in comparative oblivion as the college professor that he was. But he didn't.

There had to be a reason, and no one has ever said Paul VI was stupid. Unwise perhaps in giving in to the 'protestantization' of the Mass, but not stupid. So, Mr. Melloni, let us not make a post-facto extrapolation of Ratzinger's views to make them appear anti-Paul VI! ?]

These were theses and issues which Ratzinger did not limit to confidences, but to public discussion and which have remained a leitmotiv of his preaching as Pope.

The interview about Cardinal Scheffczyk reaffirms and adds some details of some importance, starting with his collaboration with Scheffzyck. The Pope today, speaking of the work of the doctrinal commission of the German bishops conference, says not only that the work of some theologians was not only 'confused and volatile' but that "the doctrinal position of the Church itself was no longer always clear."

He does not limit himself to criticizing the Church of Paul VI in the years of the German bishops' Wuerzburg synod, but also reproaches an excessive prudence in grasping the point of conflict between too audacious theses and 'dogma'.

This conservative self-criticism would merit a more timely examination in depth of the archives because many passages are known of those German discussions, including the less elegant after-effects (such as the heavy accusations appearing in the second volume of Hans Kueng's memoirs).

But, in my opinion, the most interesting statement in the interview, even for today, is the interpretation that the Pope gives to his commitment, or rather his 'combat': "for the vitality of the faith in our epoch, for its expression and comprehensibility by men of our time, for being faithful to the profound identity of that faith."

It is a statement that could raise many questions: Vatican-II would appear to be simply a 'pre-event', instead of having been the way through which the Church - not a group of theologians - was able to conjoin vitality, communicability and faithfulness to Catholic identity. But perhaps, it would an interpretative excess to deduce this from an argumentum ex silentio. [But that's turning the Pope's words and position upside down! His point is clearly that the 'revolutionary enthusiasm' of progressivist theologians caused so much confusion in the post-Conciliar years that this militated against the 'vitality, communicability and faithfulness to Catholic identity' that Vatican-II intended! And he has never ever treated Vatican-II was merely a 'pre-event' but for the historic event that it was.]

Just as one could compare the attenuation of a certain polemical verve over the Council and its aftermath compared to other interviews given in the 1980s and 1990s. [Why not? He's the Pope now. A Pope is not supposed to be combative!]

Certainly that triad - vitality, communicability, faithfulness to Catholic identity - offers a key to reading this phase of Ratzinger's Pontificate, its latest oscillations [What oscillations?], its most recent choices.

Corriere della Sera, 21 ottobre 2007

And what has Benedict XVI done all these 30 months, Mr. Melloni, but to reaffirm compliance with the genuine spirit as well as the letter of Vatican-II?]