Introduction: Benedict XVI and Conciliar Hermeneutics

IT IS A PRIVILEGE FOR US, the Jesuit scholars who have authored the articles of this special edition of Nova et Vetera (English) on the thought of Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI, to present them as a tribute to His Holiness the Pope Emeritus on the occasion of completing his ninetieth year. We do so with loyalty and esteem, extending our grateful congratulations ad multos annos.

I

In displaying the range of Benedict’s thought, these studies offer commentary on what likely represents the chief achievement of his pontificate: adroitly guiding the reception of the Second Vatican Council, the golden jubilee of whose opening occurred during his incumbency.¹ This achievement eminently suited the pontiff precisely because his priestly life, from its early days, was focused on realizing it. From November 1962, Joseph Ratzinger exercised an active role in the Council as a peritus. Moreover, he wrote extensively on it as professor in Bonn (1959–1963), Münster (1963–1966), Tübingen (1966–1969), and Regensburg (1969–1977). Further trained while he shepherded the Archdiocese of Munich (1977–82), his experienced voice, when speaking as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, influenced St. John Paul II’s magisterial implementation of the Council’s teaching.² In 2012, his substantial writings on Vatican II were gathered in his collected works.³ Our Jesuit authors cite a variety of these writings in both the original and English translation. In order to place their articles in context, we shall review important statements on conciliar hermeneutics with which Benedict framed his papacy, together with their origins, and also comment on the debate of which they are a part.

II

Benedict’s famous Christmas address to the Roman Curia given in his first papal year probes into why the Council has proven so difficult to put into effect. As an answer, it distinguishes between two hermeneutics: “‘discontinuity and rupture’” and “reform,” or “renewal in continuity.”⁴ The first splits asunder the pre- and post-conciliar periods, stressing that Vatican II’s “innovations alone” represent its “true spirit.” This spirit is essentially divorced from the letter of the conciliar texts, which are deemed compromises designed to settle disputes among various ecclesiastical factions. Adhering to what is distinctively new, the true spirit must therefore “go courageously beyond the texts” in order to fulfill Vatican II’s legacy, however “vaguely” it might be envisaged. We see something of this hermeneutic in Massimo Faggioli’s advocating “a non-originalist reception” of the Council that, understood primarily as an event, “unleashed” dynamic energy “for the transition to a new age of Catholicism.”⁵

By contrast, the second hermeneutic views the Council’s true spirit as tethered not only to the letter of the texts but also, first and foremost, to “the one subject” of the Council, the Church that, while developing, always remains the same. In no sense does authentic renewal discount the tension between continuity and discontinuity in the Council’s texts, but it does posit a subtle approach to reconciling it. In fidelity to the mission given Vatican II at its convening by Pope John XXIII, the Council endeavored to express “truth in a new way,” and this entailed adhering to “the teaching of the Church in its entirety” but expounding it through the methods “of modern thought.”⁶ Accordingly, Benedict associates continuity with principles lodged deep within the Church’s essential patrimony and discontinuity with the letter of the text.

Because discontinuity can be ambiguous, Benedict, in explaining the hermeneutic of reform, advises that we carefully discern discontinuity in Vatican II. It may represent an innovation connected or not to a principle of the patrimony. If not connected, it may be purely contingent and dispensable when proven ineffective. If connected, the principle must be grasped, affirmed, and preserved within the innovative expression that seeks to make it appropriately intelligible to a particular historical situation. Although the letter of the text possesses a certain contingency, the principle that the letter articulates is “permanent.” It always remains within the deposit of faith “as an undercurrent, motivating decisions...