Thursday, August 12, 2010

Hermeneutics of Vatican II: an outsider's perspective

Rodney Trotter, "Benedict and Catholicism" (Reformation 21, August 9, 2010), a blogger on the wibsite of The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, writes:
My good Catholic friend, the well-known German lay intellectual, Count Wolfram von Hofmeister-Behr, has brought to my attention this article, outlining Benedict XVI's thirty year campaign to undo the liberalizing trends of Vatican II. One thing perplexes me, however, as humble Prod outsider to all things Catholic: if V2 was such a liberal moment, from where did Humanae Vitae (1968) come? It seems entirely consistent with earlier Catholic teaching; and if the standard liberal Catholic narrative is correct, what we are then left with is (a) a pre-V2 conservative Catholicism; (b) a radical break where the church gets liberalised (presumably by those kept at bay under (a) but who, for some inexplicable reason, still have a lot of power all of a sudden -- quite an achievement in an organization of such complex and arcane bureaucracy where the pace of change is glacial at best); then (c) a long fight back of the conservatives who, as far as Humanae Vitae is concerned, seem to have a lot of power very, very soon after V2 closes. Doesn't quite seem to add up; but **if** V2 was not the liberalising moment that the Catholic liberals nostalgically see it to be, but something else, then an alternative narrative can be offered which perhaps makes more sense of the before and after. Maybe the situation is more complicated than simply seeing John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as villains, undoing the work of their predecessors.

I only raise the point because the liberal Catholic narrative of V2 is the one with which most Protestants seem to operate; and if it simply isn't true, that obviously has implications for how we understand the RCC and the significance of the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
[Hat tip to J.M.]

2 comments:

John Weidner said...

What Mr Trotter misses is that the Church is more than the sum of the human opinions within it.

Humanae Vitae wasn't an indicator that the Church was conservative or liberal. It was an indicator that the Holy Father cannot teach heresy. That's what Papal Infallibility really means. If Hans Küng had been the Pope, he would have done much the same—the Holy Spirit would have protected him against error in anything so basic.

Moreover a council is also protected against error. A council is not liberal or conservative; it is an expression of Catholic Truth. That truth is always "liberal," in the good sense of the word. And it doesn't need to be "conserved;" it is always here and always new and always old.

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

There is one lesson to be learned from this particular blog topic: do not, under any circumstances, get your ideas of Pope Benedict and/or Fr Ratzinger from the Christian Science Monitor.