Baloney from Bologna: Benedict promoter of 'discontinuity'

In a daring move, Ruggieri, Komonchak, and other promoters of the "discontinuity" of Vatican II with respect to the Church of the past have finally replied to Benedict's critique with the audacious claim that he is on their side. Sandro Magister, "Confirmed: The Council Was an 'Historic Transition.' The School of Bologna Annexes the Pope" (www.chiesa, December 11, 2007), writes:

ROMA, December 11, 2007 – For almost two years, the memorable discourse in which Benedict XVI had criticized and rejected the interpretation of Vatican II as a "discontinuity and rupture" had gone without any response. None of the historians and theologians who were its apparent targets had replied to the pope's arguments.

But now the response has finally come, in quasi-official form, with four essays by four highly representative scholars, published in the latest issue of "Cristianesimo nella storia," the magazine of the Institute for Religious Studies in Bologna.

The Bologna institute, founded by Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti and professor Giuseppe Alberigo, is the one that produced the "History of Vatican II," the history of the council most widely read in the world, in five volumes completed in 2001 and published in seven languages. It is a "History" that interprets the Council more as an "event" than in terms of its documents, more in the "spirit" than in the "letter," more as a "new beginning" than in continuity with the existing Church.

The authors of the four articles in reply to the pope are Giuseppe Ruggieri, from Italy, the director of "Cristianesimo nella storia"; Joseph A. Komonchak, an American; France's Christoph Theobald; and Peter Hünermann of Germany.

* * * * * * *
Komonchak dismisses as lacking any real target the pope's criticisms against the theoreticians of the Council as a "rupture." And he instead draws upon passages from the discourse of December 22, 2005, in which Benedict XVI said that behind the "apparent discontinuity" of certain conciliar affirmations – in particular the one on religious freedom – there was, instead "full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself, as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time."

In Komonchak's judgment, the discontinuity exemplified by the pope is not at all "apparent," but real. On this and other questions, separation from the previous centuries is all too clear. In substance, therefore, the pope also agrees with those who see in Vatican Council II the most tremendous transformation of the Church in recent centuries.

Ruggieri is more subtle. If the pope, in the discourse on December 22, 2005, defended the continuity of the Council with the previous tradition of the Catholic magisterium, it is because from the point of view "typical of the theologian," which was his, "he could do nothing but subscribe to this conception."

But from the historical point of view, Ruggieri objects, everything changes. The "novelty" of Vatican II is an undeniable fact. And Ratzinger himself contributed to this, when he was German cardinal Josef Frings' expert consultant at the Council. According to Ruggieri, it was the young Ratzinger who wrote the explosive address that Frings read in the assembly hall during the first session, an address that broke completely from the ecclesiastical magisterium of the last two centuries. From this, Ruggieri deduces:

"What the 'History' directed by Alberigo affirms about the novelty of Vatican II is summarized well in this address by Frings." Read: by Ratzinger.

Throughout "Cristianesimo nella storia" the Council is interpreted as event rather than document. Theobald quotes the following sentence from Alberigo: "The Council as such, as an event of communion, of encounter and exchange, is the fundamental message that constitutes the context and kernel of its reception." Again, Ruggieri writes: "The Council transmitted itself. In this sense, the new 'doctrine of the church' is not the fruit of Lumen Gentium and of the other ecclesiological fragments present in the various conciliar documents, but of the conciliar celebration as such. [...] The problem of the reception of Vatican II is primarily that of the collegiality of the whole church."

Sandro Magister pointedly asks: "But isn't this vision the very same one that Benedict XVI had criticized under the heading of the 'hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture'?" Here is how the pope described it, he notes, at that time:

"The hermeneutic of discontinuity [...] asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts. These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague. In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit."

These dissidents have their work cut out for them in denying that they have never written in just such terms, observes Magister. Their own "History" is also an 'event' that goes beyond the text and has a reception yielding results in thought and practice. Benedict has simply thrown down the gauntlet by putting all of this in black and white, describing and criticizing the "spirit" of the school -- or should we say, the Baloney -- of Bologna. The paradox of "Cristianesimo nella storia," Magister observes, is that, in order to respond to the pope, they cling to the "letter."