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Hermeneutic of the Hermeneutic of Continuity - sspx.org

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JMJ

Since I'm looking at the 'four things', I thought this article would be good.  Unfortunately, with the new SSPX.org website, I've been unable to locate the original article. This is a copy the I emailed to myself.

This is an article that, I believe, was written in response to a conference given by Msgr. Pozzo.

P^3




Hermeneutic of the Hermeneutic of Continuity



Reflections on the implications and final consequences of the hermeneutic of continuity


The pontificate of Benedict XVI has been marked by certain fundamental events, provoking reactions which were not always fully foreseeable or easily measurable: suffice it to mention the polemics which followed the Motu Proprio “Summorum Pontificum.” This act, which brought an openly hostile reaction in general, was likewise an opportunity for some to discover the true liturgical patrimony of the Church, and by the same token to discover an ecclesiology and a theological system not only different from but also incompatible with that elaborated over the last fifty years and summarily imposed upon the “People of God.”

Among these decisions characterizing the pontificate of Benedict XVI, the most significant seems to us the principle of the “hermeneutic of continuity,”1 which is expressed most systematically in the famous address to the Roman Curia of December 22, 2005. This discourse was not followed by any striking or newsworthy reactions as in other cases, but it gave rise to a movement of thought and of opposing positions which is still developing and which merits our attention.

The following reflections are an effort to analyze in a very succinct manner the claims of this principle of the hermeneutic of continuity, and in particular to consider it in the context of the unprecedented situation of the Church today, in order to trace out all of its implications.

A true principle alongside an unproven hypothesis


Forty years after the close of the Council, Benedict XVI acknowledges that certain deeply problematic situations have followed in the wake of that historical event. He immediately defines this difficulty as a problem of how the Council was received, tied to a problem of interpretation (hermeneutic) of the Council texts themselves: too often, he affirms, the Council has been interpreted and therefore applied in rupture with the constant Tradition of the Church, contrary to the objective meaning of the Council texts and contrary to the intention of the Council Fathers themselves. The hermeneutic of continuity is therefore presented as the way to an authentic interpretation of the Council, in accordance with its real intention and above all in perfect harmony with Tradition.

The statement of Benedict XVI has the advantage of underlining a fundamental principle, namely, that there can be no rupture but only continuity in the magisterial teaching of the Church: what the Church has always taught can neither be superseded nor set aside but constitutes Her patrimony, which one may neither reject nor modify in its fundamental content.

Let us point out right away that the truth affirmed by Benedict XVI is in one sense extremely simple, and that it belongs to rudiments of the faith and to the fundamental principles defining the very nature of the Church. Consequently, the fact that he judged it necessary to make this truth a guiding light of his pontificate is in itself a first very significant admission of the doctrinal crisis in the Church. By issuing this solemn reminder of a very simple, elementary truth which has been set aside in common teaching and practice, the Pope is inevitably giving an objective indication of the gravity of the present situation.

Here, the normal grandiloquent commemorative speeches on the Council give place to a reminder of elementary principles: this fact constitutes a first admission that something went wrong.

Clearly, moreover, the very fact of asserting that there must be no rupture in the teaching of the Church has inspired a desire in some people, and in priests in particular, to look more closely at the Church’s Tradition and past, which has led in many cases to the progressive discovery of a patrimony which to them was absolutely new and of which these priests feel they were cheated: such is doubtless the most positive effect of the hermeneutic of continuity.

Nevertheless, the hermeneutic of continuity is a double-edged sword, not so much in its abstract, intrinsic value as in its concrete application: it claims that the Council texts are in perfect continuity with the constant Tradition of the Church, and when it highlights some grave, objective problem of rupture, it systematically reduces the problem to one of interpretation of the Council itself, to some deviation which occurred after the Council. The absolute fidelity of the Council to the preceding Magisterium seems to remain an indisputable given. Thus the “fault” would be placed on some heterodox line of thinking incompatible with Catholic doctrine and foreign to the Council, but which paradoxically managed to direct a good deal of the Council’s application and concrete results.2

Diving now into our subject matter, we mean to situate the hermeneutic of continuity in its historical context as we try to grasp all of its elements: without entering into detail as to the specific content of the Council, which has already been abundantly treated, we will show that the hermeneutic of continuity postulates a series of elements which do not save the Council but rather indirectly prove its failure.

1 It is for the sake of convenience that we use the expression “hermeneutic of continuity,” insofar as it is certainly the most commonly employed to describe the type of hermeneutic indicated by the Pope, in contrast with the hermeneutic “of discontinuity or rupture.” More precisely, the Pope speaks of a “hermeneutic of reform.” ↑

2 Msgr. Guido Pozzo, current secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, in a recent discourse on July 2nd of last year at Wigratzbad (Germany), speaks of a “para-conciliar ideology” which supposedly “took hold of the Council from the beginning and superimposed itself over the Council itself. By this expression, we are not referring to something regarding the texts of the Council, nor the intention of its members, but the general framework of interpretation in which the Council was placed, and which acted like a kind of internal conditioning of all future reading of the documents and events. The Council is not the para-conciliar ideology, but there was in large part a mystification of the Council as an ecclesiastical event and in its presentation by the mass media, and that mystification is the para-conciliar ideology.” It is a serious admission: obviously accompanied by the contextual absolution of the Council. ↑

Part I: The Eclipse of the Magisterium


Finality of the Magisterium


First we need to focus our attention on the specific finality of the Magisterium, and in particular of a Council which declared itself “pastoral.”

The question is of prime importance, insofar as a thing’s finality represents its reason for being and what characterizes and specifies it more than any other element.

We must not forget that the Magisterium is by definition the proximate rule of faith, that is to say, the source which, directly, is meant to tell me and make me understand what I should believe and what I should do in order to be a good Catholic and save my soul. In this sense, the Magisterium is distinct from Holy Scripture and Tradition which, though sources of Revelation, are distant rules of faith, that is to say, they require the explanations of the Magisterium as an intermediary, if their content is to be properly understood. Yet, if the solemn Magisterium of a Council cannot manage to make itself understood, to the point that forty years later — the time of a biblical generation — a pope has to call for a proper interpretation in pointing out basic hermeneutic criteria, it can only mean one thing: that Council failed in its specific finality.

Next if we add to this general consideration the fact that Vatican II presented itself as “pastoral” from the outset, wanting to make as clear as possible that its goal was to be understandable to all, through formulations in harmony with the sensibility of modern man; it means that the Council intended itself to be explicitly and eminently “hermeneutic,” in the questions it would treat, that is to say, capable of providing clear, solid and accessible answers. But if after forty years a pope is calling for its proper interpretation, it means that the Council has failed in the very “pastorality” which was to be its hallmark.

The Magisterium is the only interpreter of the Magisterium


Granting that the problem of the Council amounts to a problem of proper interpretation, a question immediately arises: whose help is the Pope seeking in order to guarantee a hermeneutic of continuity? Most of all: why is he asking for help?

If we consider the content of the address, the Pope seems to be denouncing certain theological schools, as well as a certain attitude widespread in the Church. At the same time, he seems to be asking the help of theologians more than of bishops or other organizations directly dependent upon himself.

Yet, if the Magisterium has to be interpreted, the only competent body is the Magisterium itself. No one can explain what the authority means, more clearly than the authority itself, and above all no one has the authority to do so, except itself.

We can wonder: why did the Magisterium not intervene after the Council in the way described by the Pope?

If it has done so, why has it not succeeded in its intention of making clear exactly what the Council meant? Abstracting from any other consideration, can we consider trustworthy a Council whose interpretation is not clear, and a Magisterium which has not succeeded in providing the desired clarity during the period inaugurated by the Council?

The dilemma appears rather simple: if the Council did not fail, the only body truly competent to shed light on the Council seems to have failed: the post-conciliar Magisterium.

Or else, more simply, both have failed.

In determining a priori to justify the Magisterium of the Council, the hermeneutic of continuity is indirectly condemning the Magisterium which should have guaranteed its proper interpretation — and condemning as intensely as it would have liked to justify. In a certain sense, the hermeneutic of continuity declares the incapacity of the Magisterium to intervene effectively. Here we have an obvious contradiction, fruit of the “intangibility” of the Council. Consequently, there will only be a satisfactory response when one has the courage to look calmly into the Council itself, evaluating its finality, its atypical nature and its anomalies, redefining its dogmatic implications and value of its content: a genuine interpretation starts above all by examining the thing it is supposed to interpret. That day does not seem near, and the current impasse is probably going to last for a certain time.

Up to now, the Council has been systematically explained through the sole self-sufficient, self-referential and indisputable authority of the Council itself. With such a premise, inevitably, there can be no serious examination of the problem of continuity with the constant Tradition — nor ultimately can the problem be of any serious interest.

In this regard, the reaction of the episcopacies to the “wishes” of Benedict XVI is symbolic and extremely significant. The universal uproar against the Pope’s soft-spoken invitation to recover something of Tradition — naturally without calling the Council into question — together with the indifference of many bishops, shows that it is sadly the very college of bishops which has developed a humanly incurable aversion to the Church’s past, and which, in itself and its behavior, is the very embodiment of that “rupture” whose damage Benedict XVI is trying to control. Sadly, such is the most representative fruit of the Council and its aftermath, slowly ripening over the course of the last fifty years.

As for the theologians — another ripe fruit — it seems we can affirm that the basic ambiguity of the Council, together with the corresponding absence of precise dogmatic definitions, has produced and continues to produce a considerable number of theological schools, each characterized by its own particular originality. Consequently, the most famous post-conciliar theologians appear as a varied group of “gurus,” each one seeking his own originality, rather than as representatives of a coherent, systematic theology, built around a basic unity. This fact is important: since the Council has no official theology but is upheld by various heterogeneous schools of thought, any theological hermeneutic intended to tie it back to Tradition or to anything else would first have to justify its own “school,” before taking on a jungle of diverse and sundry theses which condemn the effort to failure from the outset.

Given this situation, it seems that the hermeneutic of continuity is not going to be able to count much on the help of bishops or of theologians.

Ultimately, the Pope seems to be asking other people — and theologians in particular — for an answer and a clarity which he alone is able to provide.

Two revealing symbols of the post-conciliar Church: the liturgical reform and the interreligious gathering at Assisi

Let us take the liturgical reform as an example to illustrate what we have said about the relation between the Council and the post-conciliar Church. It is a topic which has lately given rise to a certain debate as the publication of the Motu Proprio “Summorum Pontificum” opened a certain critical analysis — albeit very mild — of the 1969 reform.

It is a universally acknowledged fact that the missal of Paul VI was the first and most obvious fruit of the Council. This “gift” was imposed on the “People of God” as an application of the principles of the Council in the domain of the liturgy, and took place barely four years after the close of the Council.

It is surely a legitimate question whether the liturgical reform went farther than the principles of the Council, as a careful hermeneutic of continuity might suggest; but in case of a reply in the affirmative, one would have to have the courage to ask who bears the responsibility, either the turbulent, heterodox theological schools, or those who had the authority to watch over the application of the Council.

We will simply point out that the promulgation of the Council documents and of the new missal do unfortunately bear the signature of the authority, acting both during the Council and after the Council. Consequently, reducing the current problems systematically to interpretations of the Council given in the aftermath, drawing a distinction between the Council and the post-conciliar Church, does not seem quite to conform to reality.4

We might make a similar observation as to the implications of the interreligious gathering at Assisi in 1986. That gathering was the climax of a long ecumenical, interreligious effort and the unprecedented model of every initiative of its kind.

It was also the darkest day in the entire history of the Church.

One could say that the gathering at Assisi was an exaggeration; that it went beyond the principles of the Council: we can make the argument, of course — but the fact remains that this initiative, like the promulgation of the Council, does sadly bear a papal signature.

To sum up, the hermeneutic of continuity forces us to admit that something went wrong in the exercise of authority.

A recent observation by Msgr. Guido Pozzo


It is interesting to cite here the recent statements of Msgr. Guido Pozzo, to which we have already referred. The prelate considers that the first cause of the hermeneutic of rupture is the elimination of the anathema.

“The first factor is the elimination of the anathema, that is to say the clear opposition between orthodoxy and heresy. In the name of the so-called “pastorality” of the Council, one would defend the idea that the Church is renouncing all condemnation of error and all definition of orthodoxy as opposed to heresy. One would oppose the condemnation of errors, the anathema which used to be pronounced by the Church on all that is incompatible with Christian truth, to the pastoral character of the Council teachings, which henceforth intend neither to condemn nor to censure but only to exhort, illustrate or bear witness.

“In reality, there is no contradiction between the firm condemnation and refutation of errors in doctrine and morals, and love of the one who falls into error as well as respect for his personal dignity. On the contrary, it is precisely because the Christian has a great respect for the human person that he strives beyond all boundaries to free him from error and false interpretations of religious and moral reality.

“The adherence to the person of Jesus Christ, Son of God, to His Word and His mystery of salvation, demand a simple and clear response of faith, such as that found in the symbols of the faith and in the regula fidei. The proclamation of the truth of the faith always implies as well the refutation of error and the censure of ambiguous and dangerous positions which spread uncertainty and confusion among the faithful.

“It would therefore be erroneous and unjustified to consider that after Vatican II, the dogmatic affirmation of the Magisterium ought to be abandoned or excluded, even as it would be just as erroneous to consider that the explicative and pastoral nature of the documents of Vatican II does not also imply a doctrine which demands a level of assent on the part of the faithful according to the different degrees of authority of the doctrines presented.”

Msgr. Pozzo is adopting here a judgment of the Council which has always been expressed by “traditionalists”5 but, as a good interpreter of the hermeneutic of continuity, he reduces it strictly to the period after the Council or, to use his same expression, to the “para-conciliar ideology.” Naturally, we are not calling into question the good will of Msgr. Pozzo, but this manner of proceeding immediately highlights the basic contradiction: in all honesty it seems difficult to accuse the post-conciliar Church of having eliminated anathemas, when the text of the Council does not contain a single one.

On this point, it is obvious that the attitude of the post-conciliar Church is in perfect continuity with what the Council expresses (or rather, does not express): but both the Council and the post-conciliar Church behave in a way which is absolutely new in the history of the Church; in a word, it does not seem honest to continue looking for scapegoats among those born after 1965 only. Above all, we cannot fail to point out that the anathema can only be pronounced by him who has the authority to do it: in practice, by him who also has the responsibility of the Magisterium. If, therefore, we have done away with anathemas, it means that the authority mandated to establish them somehow failed.

Taking all these aspects into account, the hermeneutic of continuity, in the precise way it is invoked, appears dangerous to the Magisterium itself: the more we try to save the Council, the more we run the risk of destroying once and for all the authority which should have guaranteed its just interpretation, and above all, the only authority whose job it now is to remedy the evils afflicting the Church.

A principle which is good in itself runs the risk of being pernicious if it is applied without the necessary discernment, precisely on account of its intrinsic value; the maxim which has it that the Council must necessarily be in continuity with Tradition is a preconceived idea which falsifies the whole status quaestionis and proves an ideological approach — with our apologies to Msgr. Pozzo. The fear of a calm discussion on the Council, with the serenity and intellectual honesty it requires, is only the umpteenth indication of its intrinsic weakness.6

3 Sadly, the only significant action of John Paul II towards Tradition does not exactly seem to put it in a positive light. We refer to the condemnation of the Society of Saint Pius X in 1988, accused of having an “incomplete and contradictory” notion of Tradition. That condemnation was doubtless a blow against a traditional behavior, even more than against individual persons. It is interesting to point out that Benedict XVI effectively refers all of the post-conciliar problems to an interpretation of rupture with Tradition, whereas his predecessor systematically referred these problems to a partial and incomplete application of the Council. On one side it was error by excess, on the other, error by defect. ↑

4 The Motu Proprio “Summorum Pontificum,” intended as a concrete and exemplary application of the hermeneutic of continuity in the domain of the liturgy, merely brought the old and the new together to emphasize their supposed continuity and foster mutual enrichment, excluding any kind of judgment by hindsight on the quality of the liturgical reform. In that sense it does not directly call into question the application of the Council accomplished by the reform of Paul VI.

    But if the new were already in perfect continuity with the old, bringing them together would not really have had any meaning and would have been quite simply superfluous, since the new rite is itself an expression of continuity. Above all, why would the old rite not have been welcomed back very simply and naturally by the universal Church? It is once again an attempt to celebrate a continuity, which they are unwilling to admit has been lost. ↑

5 Anathemas, that is to say condemnations of errors contrary to defined truths, have always characterized the traditional Magisterium, whether in the context of a council or not. They express the will of the teaching Church to “define” and consequently to “oblige.” Their absence from the documents of Vatican II has always been presented as a sign of the absence of the will to “impose,” and therefore as a proof of the non-infallibility of those documents.
    The argument rests on the fact that the Church cannot define a truth of the Faith without at the same time imposing it on intellects as a truth which must be believed. ↑

6 The discourse of Msgr. Pozzo deserves a few additional remarks, on account of the institutional authority of the speaker. He identifies in a synthetic manner three factors as causes of the hermeneutic of rupture. The first is the elimination of the anathema, of which we have already spoken; the second is the translation of Catholic thought into the categories of modernity: “The opening of the Church to the concerns and demands of modernity (see Gaudium et Spes) is interpreted by the para-conciliar ideology as the necessity of conciliating Christianity and modern philosophical thought and cultural ideology. It is question of an intellectual and theological operation essentially bringing back the idea of modernism, condemned at the beginning of the 20th century by St. Pius X.”

    There is no denying that Msgr. Pozzo is saying something very true when he sees in the present crisis a renewal of the modernist ideas condemned by St. Pius X. However, the source of the problem comes earlier, and is much more radical; unfortunately, he could freely proclaim the contrary and would be just as welcome in the round of contrary opinions all claiming to be faithful to the Council. How is it possible? Nor can we reduce everything to a dysfunction of the interpretation, any more than in the other cases cited. The Council wanted above all to confront the modern age, modern anthropology, modern thought... as Benedict XVI himself abundantly explains in his address of December 22, 2005: “the Council had to determine in a new way the relationship between the Church and the modern era.” Yet, the Council chose to do so without denouncing or condemning the apostate and immanentist spirit of modern thought, but in seeking a new approach: anathemas were exactly what was lacking in the Council, those “guardrails” to which Msgr. Pozzo alludes. It seems to us rather normal that the Council should have opened the way to different and contrary interpretations, by neither defining nor anathematizing as had classically been done. It is quite simply impossible to wish to impose one interpretation over another after 45 years, all in maintaining the fundamental ambiguity of the conciliar documents. Msgr. Pozzo is free to express himself as he does above, but other figures in the Church, such as the bishops, can express themselves just as freely..., and may bring resolutely different nuances; the only freedom which is not granted to anyone is the freedom to eliminate the first cause of the ambiguity, the amphibology, the circiterism (to use a term dear to Amerio), which allows the coexistence of the most contrary positions.

    The third factor to which Msgr. Pozzo alludes is a misinterpretation of the idea of “aggiornamento.” This theme appears to be tied to the preceding, although it has its own characteristics which we will present below:

    “By the term ‘aggiornamento,’ Pope John XXIII meant to indicate the primary duty of Vatican II. However, in the thought of the Pope and the Council, this term did not express all that was done in its name in the ideological reception of the post-conciliar Church. ‘Aggiornamento,’ in the papal and conciliar sense, was meant to express the pastoral intention of the Church to find more suitable and opportune ways of leading the civil conscience of the modern world to recognize the eternal truth of the salvific message of Christ and the doctrine of the Church. Love for the truth and missionary zeal for the salvation of men are at the basis of the principles of action of ‘aggiornamento’ willed and understood by Vatican II and by the pontifical Magisterium which followed it.

    “On the contrary, through the para-conciliar ideology, spread especially by neo-modernist Catholic intellectualist groups and by the secularist, worldly powers of the mass media, the term ‘aggiornamento’ was understood and proposed as the reversal of the Church’s attitude toward the modern world: from antagonism to receptivity. The ideological Modernity — which must not be confused with the legitimate and positive autonomy of science, politics, the arts, and technical progress — took for its founding principle the refusal of the God of Christian Revelation and of Grace. It is therefore not neutral as regards the faith. The very thing which led to the idea of a reconciliation of the Church with the modern world thus paradoxically led to forgetting that the anti-Christian spirit of the world continues to be active in history and culture [but that is a fact which the Council does not seem to have sufficiently emphasized — Author’s note]. The post-conciliar situation was already so described by Paul VI in 1972:

‘By some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God. We see doubt, uncertainty, confusion, anxiety, dissatisfaction, opposition. Doubt has entered our consciences, entered by windows which were supposed to have been opened to the light. In the Church also there reigns this state of uncertainty. We believed that after the Council sunlight would shine upon the history of the Church. But instead of the sun, we have clouds, storms, darkness, searching, and uncertainty. How can this have happened? An enemy power has intervened whose name is the devil, that mysterious being to whom St. Peter alludes in his letter.’ (Paul VI, Homily of June 29, 1972)

    “Alas, the effects of what Paul VI described have not disappeared. A foreign way of thinking has entered the Catholic world, sowing confusion, seducing many souls and disorienting the faithful. There is a ‘spirit of auto-demolition’ that pervades modernism, which has taken control, among others, of a large part of the Catholic press.”

    The discourse of Msgr. Pozzo is extremely telling and resurrects the famous description of Paul VI. The Pope spoke of a “fissure” which nonetheless does not yet seem to have been identified in the analysis provided by the prelate. We will not repeat what we have already pointed out, and which appears obvious, as to the origin of this “fissure.”

    We simply note that “aggiornamento” means a relation with a contingent “today” which will already be gone tomorrow: it therefore implies a complex relation between transcendent elements and elements that change; on this point as well, the Council did not wish to establish solid and definitive points of reference (and in a certain sense it could not provide them on account of the contingency of the “today” to which it meant to bind itself) but it plunged into a movement of adaptation which has not yet ended and which in fact will never end, on account of the very flow of History. We have there an essential aspect of the hermeneutical problem, which we will examine over the course of this study, and to which refer our reader.

   For the moment, suffice it to underline the fact that nothing contingent can ever be definitive or the object of immovable definitions, by its very nature, but is strictly confined to the sphere of historical development. Note that the Church has always had to adapt Herself to new situations, so in that regard the Council would not constitute an exception; but the Council seems to overlap — without the necessary distinctions — that which belongs to the domain of doctrine and that which concerns historical contingency. This lack of clarity and distinction represents a permanent factor of confusion and of dogmatization of what is not dogmatizable. Generally speaking, appeals to the authority of the Council never face up to this most obvious problem. ↑

Part II: Final Consequences fo the Hermeneutic of Continuity


The hermeneutic of continuity proves the non-infallibility of the Council


By definition, an infallible text cannot be interpreted. If an infallible text does in fact require an interpretation, the content of the interpretation is what automatically becomes infallible and not the original text, to the extent that the interpretation expresses the formulation which is categorical and definitive and therefore able to be binding. Indeed, a definition necessarily treats of something definitive: to define what is not definitive would mean defining the indefinable, and attempting to render fixed and immovable the very flow of becoming. Consequently, no authority can oblige one to believe something before one even knows what it is or what it expresses (hence the absolute precision of classic dogmatic formulas): attempting to do so would amount to asking someone to swim without letting him enter the pool.

The application of this principle becomes even stricter if the responsible authority itself recognizes a grave necessity for interpretation.

Yet if, after forty years, the Council documents require a correct interpretation, it is the proof that the Council cannot bind the Catholic conscience.

By the same token, on a purely theoretical level, the proper interpretation could be binding: but we know that a proper interpretation, in order to be authentic (in the modern sense of the term) must be continually reformulated in order to express something always living and therefore always true. With such a hermeneutic method, there can no longer be anything dogmatically binding, because there can no longer be semantically stable dogmatic formulas. This aspect of the problem deserves a few additional comments.

1965 — 2005 — 2010


We have already alluded to certain implications of the “pastorality” of the Council, when we pointed out its intention of using language and expression adapted to the sensibility of modern man. Consequently, the language of the Council documents nuances its expression according to the cultural climate and the apprehensions and enthusiasm typical of the 1960’s. However, the social, cultural and religious context of the third millennium has undergone such a transformation that, from a genuinely and honestly hermeneutic perspective, the pastoral texts of the Council would not need reinterpreting but rather replacing, with other texts better adapted to today’s humanity. If one truly wanted to continue using them as the basis of an authentic interpretation, one would have to have the courage to admit that each interpretation would have a contingent value, relative to the historical moment during which it was formulated, and that at the same time it would have to continue to take the new reality into account, and therefore continue to provide answers always in conformity and therefore always true.

A genuine hermeneutic, in the modern sense of the word, presupposes a continuous effort capable of producing new questions, new answers and new expressions, in parallel with and proportionate to the evolution of humanity, with its life, its problems, and its expectations.

Adapting to man in his concrete being, his being in the world — as the Council desired to do — necessarily means adapting to a continual becoming.7

To give a recent example, the address to the Curia in 2005 is the expression of a precise intention of the Pope formulated and expressed at a precise moment in his pontificate. He would probably reformulate differently today what he expressed five years ago, taking into account what has happened in the Church over those five years, and the change in his own sensibility and that of his flock... and also the way his “signals” have been welcomed by the bishops.

To return to the Council documents, if we push to the extreme the hermeneutic process as described, the documents would end up meaning something indefinable, or making affirmations which are shifting and ultimately even contradictory. In this sense the Council texts, taken literally, are in fact incapable of conveying a single, definitive meaning.

The conclusion may seem an exaggeration, but the theological, doctrinal and moral Tower of Babel characterizing the Church today is really comparable to a mix of true and false, of good and evil, of beautiful and ugly, of absolute and relative, of being and non-being... the result of a fundamental attitude which is only understandable within a perspective that has renounced defining, and therefore renounced teaching. If such is truly the state of things, then humanly speaking, the Church can no long receive a teaching or even be governed.

Nothing can any longer be taught because nothing can be defined in the classic sense of the term. No text and no dogmatic formula can any longer claim to have a definitive, intrinsic, universal, and eternal meaning.

Such is ultimately the trap into which the Church has fallen with the Council. It is the trap where the Magisterium imprisons itself when it insists on saving the Council documents. Following the same metaphor, the hermeneutic of continuity provides a channel of communication with Tradition, yet without freeing the minds of student and teacher from the cage into which the Council has pushed them.

An illegitimate analogy: The historical problem of the reception of councils


Most likely with the intention of making the present crisis seem less apocalyptic, one often evokes the difficulties which the Church has encountered in the application of decisions of previous councils. Suffice it to recall the Council of Nicaea or the Council of Trent. In a word, looking back through history shows us that we need to have patience and we need to continue to hope.

Although we certainly share this confidence in Divine Providence, there seems to be a certain basic confusion in this reasoning which is worth pointing out. It is true that the Council of Trent — for example — encountered many pockets of resistance and certainly was not applied in a day; nonetheless the fundamental cause of these difficulties seems to have been the contrary of the problems of the hermeneutic of Vatican II. Indeed, the Council of Trent encountered obstacles precisely on account of its dogmatic and disciplinary clarity: its texts were and still are self-explanatory, with such a clarity that they certainly frightened those parts of the Church and of the clergy reticent to engage in the necessary Catholic reform and in the sacrifices it implied.

Vatican II, on the contrary, was welcomed and applied in a climate of general enthusiasm, especially by the most modernist segment of the clergy, now accused of having never properly understood what the Council meant.

Paradoxically, the comparison with previous councils once again shows the fact that the problems which followed Vatican II have to be blamed above all on its own intrinsic deficiency, totally absent from any other council in history.

Hermeneutic of continuity and “super-dogma” of the Council


It seems particularly enlightening to our topic to recall an expression employed by the then Cardinal Ratzinger,8 an expression which has since entered the common parlance and is often used to illustrate the dysfunction which has occurred in the interpretation of the Council and to which the hermeneutic of continuity is proposed as a solution. The Council was supposedly transformed into a “super-dogma,” as though everything came into being with the Council, and all reference to the eternal Tradition of the Church had been abandoned. The expression is very clear and incisive, and it has the fundamental advantage of summing up in a word the complex problem of turning the Council into an absolute. However, this expression, like the hermeneutic of continuity to which it corresponds, threatens to overshadow the source of the problem. Once again, it is meant to bring the Council back to its proper proportions, correcting its application and interpretation as a “super-dogma,” yet at the same time preserving all of its content. In a word, the problem is one of proper measure, not of substance.

This interpretation does not seem to deal with the entire problem, especially if we imagine, ad absurdum, what it would be to apply the same thinking to the other councils of the Church. If for example we were to turn the dogmatic decisions of the Council of Trent into an absolute, the Church would not become “Tridentine” to the detriment of other truths not directly treated by the Council of Trent, but would remain perfectly Catholic. If one were to “super-dogmatize” the decisions of Nicaea, the Church would remain what She is, and even extremely strengthened and confirmed in the Faith of all time. The reason is that the Faith is a theological virtue whose object is God, and therefore it can never be too dogmatic, in the sense that an error of “excess of dogma” or “excess of one particular dogma” does not exist. If for example one were to “super-dogmatize” the dogma of the Incarnation, that is to say, if one were to insist enormously on this dogma, that “super-dogmatization” as such would never lead to an error. Such an emphasis would simply increase the explicit knowledge of that dogma, and thus the entire dogmatic structure would be reinforced. Indeed, the Faith is a simple and integral unicum, not the result of some kind of balancing act or a mixture of heterogeneous components.

Consequently, the fact that the “super-dogmatization” of Vatican II has led to the very grave situation which we know and which the Pope acknowledges, is a sign that the Council itself contains, intrinsically, elements which are not in accord with Tradition: its being turned into an absolute appears as an inevitable consequence of its lack of ties to the past. This turning into an absolute has only emphasized the innovative elements already present in the Council, without creating them ex novo or independently of the Council itself.

One might illustrate the lack of ties to the past by the absence of anathemas — already mentioned — which characterizes both the Council and the post-conciliar Church, in a perfect continuity.

7 In a word, the hermeneutic of continuity is obliged to harmonize elements which appear resolutely irreconcilable: Tradition, the Council documents, the present evolution of humanity. ↑

8 The expression was first employed by Cardinal Ratzinger on July 13, 1988, during a conference to the Chilean bishops in which the Cardinal, commenting on the “Lefebvre case,” presented certain analyses and reflections in which we find the seeds of the fundamental principles of the hermeneutic of continuity. We cite here a short passage:

“It is a necessary task to defend the Second Vatican Council against Msgr. Lefebvre, as valid, and as binding upon the Church. Certainly there is a mentality of narrow views that isolate Vatican II and which has provoked this opposition. There are many accounts of it which give the impression that, from Vatican II onward, everything has been changed, and that what preceded it has no value or, at best, has value only in the light of Vatican II.
    “The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.
    “This idea is made stronger by things that are now happening. That which previously was considered most holy — the form in which the liturgy was handed down — suddenly appears as the most forbidden of all things, the one thing that can safely be prohibited. It is intolerable to criticize decisions which have been taken since the council; on the other hand, if men make question of ancient rules, or even of the great truths of the faith — for instance, the corporal virginity of Mary, the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, the immortality of the soul, etc. — nobody complains or only does so with the greatest moderation. I myself, when I was a professor, have seen how the very same bishop who, before the council, had fired a teacher who was really irreproachable, for a certain crudeness of speech, was not prepared, after the council, to dismiss a professor who openly denied certain fundamental truths of the faith.
    “All this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the Church of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for something else without telling people. The one way in which Vatican II can be made plausible is to present it as it is, one part of the unbroken, the unique Tradition of the Church and of her faith.” (English translation from The Wanderer, June 22, 2000)


Conclusion


It seems to us that the entire issue born of the hermeneutic of continuity has the advantage of drawing into the light the fundamental problem of the Council: it is a structural problem, before even being a problem of content.

— The Council does not teach in the classical sense, but brings together old expressions and content with new expressions and content; elements of a dogmatic nature and considerations of a pastoral and contingent nature.

— The product which results does not have a definitive value but rather constitutes a basic platform for a constant and ceaseless reinterpretation, always living and modern, which one cannot anchor in a particular historical moment nor express through fixed and immovable statements.

What we are dealing with here is an irrepressible hermeneutic movement, which can never be stopped until the Council itself is stopped, that is to say when the movement it set in motion will have reached an end.

Probably, to reach this result, it will be necessary above all to convert intellects back to the idea that there exists an absolute truth, which can be expressed and described through definitive dogmatic affirmations, which neither ask nor require any supplementary hermeneutic.

Such are the classic dogmatic formulas of the constant and eternal Tradition of the Church: far from constituting an “incomplete and contradictory” notion of Tradition, far from constituting a “petrified” Tradition, these formulas are the only vehicle capable of transmitting the Apostolic Faith up to the end of time.

Don Davide Pagliarani
(Tradizione Cattolica no3, 2010)
Translation by STAS Editions, approved by the autho

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