About the book by Roberto de Mattei, The Second Vatican Council. A story ever written, Lindau, Torino 2010
Tale masterful historical turning point of
Alessandro Gnocchi and Mario Palmaro
seems strange because it is the first time that happens, but after decades of liberal clichés of the Vatican and its spirit, the effect is undeniably beneficial: climbed atop the 632 pages of essay by Roberto de Mattei, you can finally look in the eye as equals decades of production on this entry into service by the school of Bologna.
In the study of the Roman historian, there are documents, method and criteria to measure without an inferiority complex with the joyous war machine that historiography, led by Giuseppe Alberigo first and then by Alberto Melloni, had produced up to today 's only serious and comprehensive reconstruction of the phenomenon reconcile. Reconstruction tendentious, ideological and even subversive, certainly, but made by people the craft of history, unquestionably, knows him well.
than forty years after the closure of the council and before the smoking ruins of the new Pentecost, this merit alone would be worth the effort to read the essay by De Mattei. But it is not only because, as you scroll through pages and chapters are more clear perspective of the debate is far from finished with the simple reception of the concept of "hermeneutics of continuity" that deludes so many beautiful souls, but impractical of the world.
's speech to the Curia which, in 2005, Benedict XVI spoke of the contrast between two hermeneutic of the Council, far from having ended the speech, has in fact opened the confrontation between two irreconcilable visions of the church. The historical work of De Mattei stands authoritatively in this agony, alongside that of a philosophical and theological Romano Amerio a Brunero Gherardini.
And, after reading it without blinders, it is difficult to imagine that, in the crash said the progressive school, can not stand those torn-between between the finding of the disaster and the obsessive repetition of the mantra that the reason for the crisis would be the failure to apply the full council.
In light of the facts narrated in this work, is all too evident that the "continuity" or not there is, despite the attempt to deny the existence of a real breakthrough, at least in some passages the conciliar documents. De Mattei report shows that the problems of writing and reading of the texts of the Council are born well before Vatican dell'assise and are the result of a theology and a philosophy devoted to "break" with the past.
Finally we are in front of the contention between those who argue that if the Vatican has a flaw, is to not even be a Vatican III and those who argue that, if fault it is, is that to have laid the foundations. Like it or not, this is the land of conflict and this is the matter of the litigation. But the two positions be mistaken to confer an assessment of the council intended to mirror as a "rupture", having a positive or a negative depending on the lens used.
The reading is actually and openly progressive, where the council is understood as an "event" foundational "new Pentecost." But De Mattei, while highlighting dangerous subversive forces inside and outside the council hall, never speaks of a subject in some new way: by removing its horizon historiographical the mythical concept of "event reconcile," eliminates automatically to the "new church".
The two ratings are not symmetrical because it is not just to replace a minus sign where others had put a plus sign, because the subjects under consideration are different in nature: a church fully in accordance with the new school Bologna, again according to the Roman historian.
This study thus marks a historic turning point: the passage from mythology to the season of rational criticism. Therefore not afraid to document the existence of divergent views and tensions that have torn apart the work of the Council, for too long obscured by pious hands. Under the lens of history shows that a curious and dramatic paradox: the "new theology" that had worked for demythologizing the sacred texts and to eliminate the metaphysical philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas, singled in the sixties in the Second Vatican Council, the only metaphysical event in the history of the Church.
In this perspective, it will be much more difficult to continue to preserve the idyllic image of an event that was, according to the facts described, the plot of a terrible battle. Of course, that does not detract from the authoritative character of the twenty-first Ecumenical Council in Church history. But there is evidence of the facts with which to be reckoned. The author shows the letters alarmed Paul VI, Cardinal Siri in which denounces the turn taken by some committees of the Council, compares the documents by which Pius XI and Pius XII forbid Catholics to participate in ecumenical prayer meetings with the new trends emerging from the council and so on ... for pages and pages, which is located at the bottom of a legitimate and honest question: the misinterpretation of the texts of the Council is sufficient to explain the breadth and depth of the crisis in the Church? The professor does not respond, but adds a consideration of elementary logic: "The existence of a plurality of hermeneutics, however, attests to a certain ambiguity or ambivalence of documents." This does not mean the statement impallinare the need for a hermeneutic of continuity. So much so that there are those who, for some time, thinks so authoritatively: "The results that followed the council seem cruelly opposed to the expectations of everyone, beginning with those of John XXIII and Paul VI (...) it was expected a leap forward, and there was instead faced with a progressive process of decadence (...) The post-conciliar Church is a great site, but it is a site where the project has been lost and continues to manufacture each according to his taste ". Signed Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 1985.
[Source: The Gazette of December 7, 2010]
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