A Council for the Global Church: Receiving Vatican II in History

2013.

Introduction

Vatican II, Historicity of Theology, and Global Catholicism

This book collects and brings to a unity a series of my studies on Vatican II published in the last decade—a decade that has been quite momentous in the life of the Catholic Church and for the reception of the council. The succession of three popes (John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis) and the first resignation of a pope in the modern era are, in fact, only symptoms of deeper changes in Catholicism and in particular in the debate about Vatican II, the most important event in the history of modern Catholicism after the Council of Trent. In this sense, the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II (2012–2015) has been not just a celebratory date like previous anniversaries, but a stimulus to renewed attention to that moment of change and reform in a Church that was not expected to change.

For some, not only was Vatican II not supposed to change anything in the Church, but the official debate and doctrinal policy on Vatican II attempted to reinforce the idea that Vatican II was over and done with. For a few years, between 2000 and the election of Francis, Vatican II was treated as a kind of uncomfortable memory. It was uncomfortable for Catholic traditionalists because Vatican II proved that tradition in the Church also means transition. For Catholic radicals, it was uncomfortable because Vatican II reminded them that change in the Church takes time and implies not only dialogue with the world outside, but also mediation and compromise within the Church. This uncomfortable memory of Vatican II was, of course, asymmetric, as the traditionalists quite successfully convinced high-level Church officials of the need to bend the debate on Vatican II toward a hermeneutic of continuity, forgetting that Benedict XVI in his famous speech of December 22, 2005, spoke of continuity and reform—in other words, continuity and discontinuity.

In this sense, it is clear that the transition from Benedict XVI to Francis represents also a transition from one era in the debate on Vatican II to a new era, and not only because of the evident biographical differences between Benedict, the last pope who was at Vatican II, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the first pope who was ordained well after Vatican II, in 1969.[1] The event of the resignation of Benedict XVI and the beginning of Francis’s pontificate was a practical demonstration of the necessity of the Second Vatican Council for the theological, spiritual, and intellectual viability of Catholicism today. The recentering of the papal office around the episcopal ministry as bishop of Rome, the need to reconsider the functions of the Roman Curia, the emphasis on the Synod of Bishops as part of a more synodal Church, the message on the poor and on a poor Church—all these key elements in the pontificate of Francis are simply unthinkable without Vatican II.

This demonstration of the deep conciliar identity of the Catholic Church happened, since February 2013, with very few explicit mentions of Vatican II. But far from being forgetfulness, Francis’s lack or scarcity of direct mentions of Vatican II are part of the new direction of the Vatican doctrinal policy about Vatican II (and not only). While the pope theologian Benedict XVI embraced the need to lead the debate, Francis leaves to historians and theologians the debate on the council. Benedict imagined a redirection of the reception of Vatican II, while Francis wants to speed up the reception and implementation of the pastoral council.

All this means not only a new start in the life of the Church along the trajectories drawn by Vatican II, an event that for the vast majority of contemporary Catholics happened before they were born. It means also a rediscovery of the profound historical nature of Christianity and of the Catholic Church in particular, and therefore the need for a renewed appreciation of historical theology, of Church history, and of the history of the Christian theological tradition as a fundamental way to understand Christianity.

Among the many changes brought by the papal transition of 2013, this is probably one of the most forgotten. The sensational change of pontificate has attracted attention once again to the protagonists of the council. This is hardly surprising in a mainstream culture that is anything but historically aware and is exclusively focused on the moment. But the present moment in the life of the Church contains enormously significant implications for the future of theological studies and for the role that theological studies can play in the future of Christianity at different levels.

1. The Role of History in the Study

of Christianity and Catholicism

The first issue that arises from the alignment between the anniversary of Vatican II and the transition to the first non-European pope concerns methodology in the studies of Christianity and of Catholicism in particular. The twentieth century was the century of the encounter between Catholic theology and historical consciousness.[2] In the last few decades, part of the anti–Vatican II rhetoric has clearly been nourished by an anti-historical surge in the mode of neo-essentialism. There is no doubt that the state of the health of historical theology reflects the health of the memory of Vatican II and its accomplishments and shortcomings.

This is not new to those who remember how long the very possibility of writing a history of the Council of Trent had been a matter of contention in the Church: four centuries, until the beginning of Vatican II. For more than three centuries after the end of the council in 1563, the acta of Trent were not available to scholars. The publication of the first scholarly history of Trent had to wait for Hubert Jedin, after World War II;[3] the last volume of the complete edition of the documents of Trent was published only in 2001.[4] Similarly, there is no question that having a long and detailed History of Vatican II published just thirty years after the end of the council was unprecedented, and was even considered threatening in some quarters.[5] It is also not a coincidence that the Council of Trent is being rediscovered precisely at this moment in the history of the reception of Vatican II.[6]

Here the historiographical work on Vatican II provided a sometimes-neglected service to Catholic theology as such at the turn of the twenty-first century. It is useful here to parallel with what Mark Juergensmeyer calls the sociotheological turn in religious studies. Juergensmeyer argues that the sociotheological turn represents "a third way—a path between reductionism (denying that religion can have any real importance) and isolationism (delinking religion from its social milieu)."[7] In a similar way, it can be said that Church history—at least the Church history that engaged Vatican II—represents a third way between ecclesiastical history (important for the Church as an institution, mostly in an apologetical attitude) and an intellectual history of theological ideas (potentially detached from the impact of theological thinking on the Church as a community, and tendentially uninterested in the institutional-juridical element of the Church).

There is no question that we have witnessed a certain weariness of the classic, nineteenth- to twentieth-century critical Church history in these last few years. Church history is perceived to be still too confessional for the scholars of religion using the methods of social studies, and it is perceived as way too secular for theologians who think a nonhistorical approach is the way to be obedient to the Church. Vatican II—both the historical event and the historiography on Vatican II—disproves that weariness and is a powerful case for Church history as relevant both for the humanities and for theology. A historical approach to theological ideas is one of those instances on which official Catholic culture often forgets the countercultural potential of its own intellectual tradition vis-à-vis our antihistorical, detemporalized, and present-obsessed culture.

2. Vatican II and (Post)Modernity

There is also a second reason that reveals the relevance of reflecting on Vatican II, fifty years after its conclusion and in future perspective. The clash around Vatican II as continuity versus discontinuity in the Catholic tradition has been completely unfruitful from an intellectual point of view. One of the most notable features of the debate in the last few years has been the reaction against a traditionalist reading of Vatican II and especially against the creeping and silent acceptance of this traditionalist narrative of Vatican II by Catholic theology and Catholic leadership (including some quarters in the Roman Curia).[8] In other words, in the last few years, it has become more important than ever to monitor the exchanges between the traditionalist, anti–Vatican II milieu on the one side and official Catholicism on the other, in order to estimate the influence of traditionalism on official Catholic doctrinal policy and in order to verify how little mainstream Vatican II theology has penetrated the traditionalist camp.[9] What Alberto Melloni called the third quest in the studies on Vatican II during the decade 2003–2013 (between the fortieth and fiftieth anniversaries) gave a clear result in terms of the intellectual achievements of that debate, with the names of Peter Hünermann; John W. O’Malley, SJ; and Christoph Theobald, SJ, standing out above all others.[10]

What is going to be more relevant, in a future perspective of a Catholic historiography that rejects the illusion of self-sufficiency, is the issue of periodization—namely, the position of Vatican II on the issue of modern versus postmodern. Vatican II was undoubtedly a modernizing council, of the Catholic Church and of Catholic theology, as Vatican II tried to come to terms with a modernity condemned during the long nineteenth century.[11] Less explored is the triangular relationship between Catholic tradition, Vatican II, and postmodern culture. While Vatican II dealt with the huge changes in geopolitics (end of the empires, decolonization, de-Europeanization, and the Cold War), the cultural landscape of Western society after 1975 is affected by changes in biopolitics (abortion, contraception, homosexuality, bioethics).[12] In other words, the perception of the postmodern and of its relevance for Catholicism is much more evident today, at fifty years from Vatican II, than when the studies on Vatican II began in the mid-1980s.

Vatican II closes the anti-modern period of Catholic theology and magisterium, but what remains to be investigated is its relationship with postmodernity. A simple answer is, sometimes, to see in Vatican II and in the 1960s of Catholic theology the last breath of a modern world that has been abrogated by postmodernity. In this, the debate on Vatican II raises a serious methodological issue for Catholic culture and Catholic theology in postmodernity: that is, the issue of the compatibility between understanding Vatican II (and Catholicism in the twentieth century, for that matter) and tending to deconstruct Church history in a series of narrower fields of Catholic studies defined by gender, ethnic-national culture, local versus global, etc. It is a legitimate question whether or not understanding Vatican II historically and theologically still needs a general, classical Church history kind of approach, which is less and less practiced in academia (both secular and ecclesiastical) for various reasons, without giving up the new methodological insights of postmodern historical and social studies. In other words, the studies on Vatican II are at crossroads where a tradition of historical and theological studies still done with a universalistic approach meets a postmodern approach to the subject.[13] But the debate on Vatican II needs more and more to be part of a long-term understanding of Church history and of the history of the ecumenical councils, as is clear from a recent book dedicated to the idea of reform in Church history.[14]

The research on Vatican II has made huge steps forward in these last twenty-five years, thanks to the variety of methodologies and approaches: theological history of Vatican II (history of ideas), biographical approach (prosopography of Vatican II), social history of Vatican II (groups of influence, think tanks), history of canon law, history of bureaucracy (of the Roman Curia and of the elites of the Church), history of the mass-media perception and transmission of the event, and history of the outsiders (women of Vatican II, lay people, ecumenical observers, etc.). Church history as a discipline has a lot to learn from other methodologies, and this might well be the key for its survival as a historical discipline in the no-man’s-land between historical theology, secular history, and social studies. But the studies on Vatican II also tell us a lot about the need to respect the object of study: an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church.

3. The History of Vatican II and Global Catholicism

A third reason for the importance of Vatican II concerns how a historical understanding of the Church and of theology is related to the global Church. From a theological perspective, the relevance of the historical studies about Vatican II and of historical theology in general also depends on how much of an impact historical thinking can have on the Church as an institution and as a community of believers. Far from being a completely detached discussion that takes place in the ivory tower, the theological and historiographical question on Vatican II has had an impact on the life of the Church. It is difficult to ignore the impact that O’Malley’s book What Happened at Vatican II had in rescuing the memory of Vatican II.[15] In that year, in 2008, the project for the History of Vatican II had been concluded already for a few years (the last volume had been published in 2001), and most Vatican II Catholics and theologians considered the legacy of the council in grave danger.[16] Vatican II recovered the historical awareness of Catholic theology; in a similar way, in the most delicate moment in the reception of Vatican II half a century after its conclusion, historians rescued the council from the grip of an ideological debate fueled in some ecclesiastical quarters by persons interested in taming the council for political-ecclesiastical considerations in the name of an abstract continuity and in spite of the basic historical facts about the most important religious event in twentieth-century religious history.

This rescue is important not only because, in the words of Avery Dulles, True theology must not panic when scholarly inquiry threatens to demolish what had previously been regarded as unassailable truth.[17] The historical dimension of Vatican II and its discontinuities are also necessary to recover the relationship between the council and the global identity of Catholicism. The attempts to de-historicize theology and to submit Vatican II to the ideology of absolute continuity lead necessarily to a re-Europeanization of Catholicism, which has become more global than ever. Here is where intellectual debate on theology meets the pastoral dimension.

The event of Vatican II is still having consequences, sometimes at a deep level. The discontinuities introduced by the council still emerge, not only with regard to the Church of the early twentieth century, but also concerning the epochal consequences of the council for the global Church. In the history of the Catholic Church, incidents are many, but events charged with consequences such as Vatican II are few. Vatican II is certainly a uniquely consequential event in the last four centuries of the Church’s history.

See Massimo Faggioli, Pope Francis: Tradition in Transition (New York: Paulist, 2015). ↵

See Peter Hünermann, Geschichtliches Denken und Reform der Kirche, Cristianesimo nella Storia 34, no. 3 (2013): 741–54. ↵

See Hubert Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, 4 vols. (orig. pub. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1949, 1957, 1970, 1975). English translation of the first two volumes by Ernest Graf, A History of the Council of Trent (London: T. Nelson, 1957 and 1961). Jedin’s final two volumes were never translated into English. ↵

See Concilium Tridentinum: Diariorum, actorum, epistularum, tractatuum nova collectio, ed. Görres-Gesellschaft (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 1901–2001). About the relationship between historians of the councils and ecclesiastical authorities, see the new edition of Paolo Sarpi’s Istoria del Concilio Tridentino, rev. ed., ed. Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 2011). The Venetian Sarpi’s book was published in London in 1619 and immediately condemned to the Index of Prohibited Books. ↵

See Giuseppe Alberigo, ed., Storia del concilio Vaticano II, 5 vols. (Bologna: Il Mulino; Leuven: Peeters, 1995–2001), published in English as History of Vatican II, ed. Joseph Komonchak (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995–2006). The Storia del concilio Vaticano II was published in Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian. It is often forgotten that the historiographical work on Vatican II fulfilled Paul VI’s desire to have the council studied and analyzed with the help of the Archivio del concilio Vaticano II created by his decision immediately after the end of Vatican II. See L’Archivio Vaticano II (1965–1999): Trentacinque anni di inventari e pubblicazioni; Intervista a mons. Vincenzo Carbone, in Centro Vaticano II: Ricerche e documenti, vol. 1, no. 0 (2000): 42–46. ↵

See John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013). ↵

See Mark Juergensmayer, The Sociotheological Turn, Journal of the American Academy of Religion (2013): 939–48. ↵

See Vatikan und Pius-Brüder: Anatomie einer Krise, ed. Wolfgang Beinert (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2009). See also Klaus Schatz, Ein kirchliches 1789? Zu einer traditionalistischen Sicht auf das Zweite Vatikanum, Theologie und Philosophie 88, no. 1 (2013): 47–71. ↵

See especially Giovanni Miccoli, La Chiesa dell’anticoncilio: I tradizionalisti alla riconquista di Roma (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2011). ↵

See the introduction to the new edition of the History of Vatican II in Italian: Alberto Melloni, Il Vaticano II e la sua storia: Introduzione alla nuova edizione, in Storia del concilio Vaticano II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo, 2nd ed. (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012), 1:ix–lvi, esp. 1:xlii–li. ↵

John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008) 53-92. ↵

See Stephen Schloesser, Dancing on the Edge of the Volcano': Biopolitics and What Happened after Vatican II, in From Vatican II to Pope Francis: Charting a Catholic Future, ed. Paul Crowley (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2014), 3-26. ↵

About this, see Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, The Burdens of Church History, Church History 82 (June 2013): 353–67. ↵

See Christopher M. Bellitto and David Z. Flanagin, eds., Reassessing Reform: A Historical Investigation into Church Renewal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012). Reassessing Reform can be read as a Festschrift for a book, in this case Gerhart Ladner’s Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), but it has also clear implications for the debate on Vatican II: "The majority of the essays in this volume presume this narrative of continuity with change in the idea of reform. . . . The concept of continuity with change has implications not only for the medieval and early modern centuries, but also for the debates concerning Vatican II." Bellitto and Flanagin, Reassessing Reform, introduction, 9. ↵

O’Malley’s What Happened at Vatican II has been translated into  Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish. ↵

About this, see Massimo Faggioli, Council Vatican II: Bibliographical Overview 2007–2010, Cristianesimo nella Storia 32 (2011–12): 755–91; and Council Vatican II: Bibliographical Survey 2010–2013, Cristianesimo nella Storia 24, no. 3 (2013): 927–55. ↵

Avery Dulles, The Craft of Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1999), 156. ↵

The Debate on Vatican II in a Catholicism Made Global

1

Fifty Years of Debate on Vatican II

From Paul VI to Francis (1965–2015)

If the history of the conciliar event is necessary for the hermeneutics of Vatican II, also the history of the reception of the council is part of our understanding of it. Every Catholic has developed consciously or unconsciously an historical-theological framework where the position of Vatican II in Church history is located. The interpretation of Vatican II today cannot be disconnected from an interpretation of the history of the interpretations of Vatican II in these last fifty years.

1. Vatican II: Acknowledged, Received, Refused (1965–1970s)

On December 8, 1965, the end of Vatican II meant the return of bishops and theologians from Rome to their local churches, but it did not mean the conclusion of the debates or the end of the Roman Curia’s attempt to control the final outcome of the council. This was in contrast to 1564, when not long after the end of the Council of Trent, Pope Pius IV established the Congregation of the Council in charge of interpreting the decrees of the council and forbade the publication of any glosses or commentaries on them. In 1965, although the final texts of the council had been approved and solemnly promulgated by Pope Paul VI in order to be translated and spread in the Catholic Church, the conclusion of Vatican II did not entail a prohibition on commenting on the final texts. Hence the end of Vatican II did not imply that the Holy See and Roman Curia held a strict monopoly on the interpretation of the council texts.[1] Rather, the first opportunity for theologians to debate the council’s final documents was given by a series of commentaries on the texts, published for theologians, priests, seminarians, and religious men and women, and also a broad readership eager to gain more familiarity with the texts of Vatican II.[2]

Of particular interest is that the most important of these commentaries came not from bishops who oversaw the drafting process but from theologians acting during Vatican II as consultants (periti) in the official commissions or as private theologians serving their bishops during the preparations for their interventions in the aula, the plenary meetings in St. Peter’s basilica and in the council commissions. Some of the authors of these commentaries (for example, Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger, and Edward Schillebeeckx) became the main characters of the debate about Vatican II from the 1970s on. What is important to note now is the eminently academic background of these commentators—theologians by profession and not always holders of ecclesiastical offices with direct pastoral duties.

In the meantime, the bishops were active on another level of the debate on Vatican II, having committed themselves to initiatives for an ecclesial reception of Vatican II through a significant wave of diocesan and national synods (Austria 1968–1971, the Netherlands 1970, and Germany 1972–1975) and the continental assemblies of bishops (for Latin America, the CELAM convened in Medellín in 1968). Moreover, the theological landscape of the first year of the post–Vatican II period began with a fruitful season of ecumenical dialogues.

This separation of tasks between theologians and bishops is a feature of the debate on Vatican II and a marker of post–Vatican II Catholicism, at least until the end of the pontificate of John Paul II. He acted as the last and only guarantee for Vatican II, sometimes in a rather nominalistic yet unequivocal intention to receive the legacy of the council. John Paul II revisited in a creative way some crucial teachings of Vatican II, such as, for example, ecumenism, in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint (1995) and interreligious dialogue beginning with the World Day of Prayer in Assisi (1986) and in his travels, especially in the Middle East. In contrast, the role of the bishops and of the national bishops’ conferences in the interpretation of Vatican II in the life of the Church was reduced under John Paul II. A more significant and clearer change happened in April 2005 with the election of Benedict XVI, who as cardinal prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1981–2005) had been a powerful interpreter of Vatican II and not a mere enforcer of John Paul II’s doctrinal policies. An analysis not only of Benedict’s famous speech to the Roman Curia of December 22, 2005, but especially of the most important decisions of Benedict XVI is essential in order to understand the change happened in the approach of the papacy to Vatican II with the conclave of 2005.

The main commentaries on the final documents of the council represented an attempt to cast light on the deeper meaning of the texts against the background of the history of the debate, and to elaborate hypotheses on the Catholic Church’s path after Vatican II. In the very first years after the council, the ideological spectrum of Catholic theologians on Vatican II seemed to be unanimous in their enthusiastic acceptance of the final documents and their view of the novelty of Vatican II, for example in ecclesiology, liturgy, biblical revival, ecumenism, religious freedom, and interreligious relations. The tensions between the letter and spirit of Vatican II did not play much of a role at that time, and neither did the supposed tension between the hermeneutics of continuity with the whole Catholic tradition and the awareness of a discontinuity from Catholicism of the past, especially of the long nineteenth century from Pius IX to Pius XII.[3]

Nevertheless, behind the acceptance of Vatican II as a major turning point, even in the ranks of theologians of the so-called majority, the nuances of how to read Vatican II—by applying, receiving, or interpreting it—could not conceal important differences. The focus on nuances of how to read could not conceal differences in thoughts about the content. That kind of theological unanimity about Vatican II, arising from the moral unanimity Paul VI sought for the approval of the final documents, would not last. Toward the end of the council, the debate concerning the content and the role of the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes revealed the division within twentieth-century theologians between the neo-Augustinians (Daniélou, de Lubac, Ratzinger, von Balthasar) and the neo-Thomists (Chenu, Congar, Rahner, Lonergan, Schillebeeckx).[4]

The foundation of the journal Concilium in 1964 represented the most notable attempt to spread the message of Vatican II by a group of scholars representing the vast majority at Vatican II (Hans Küng, Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx). By 1970, the group had already had important defections (Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger), signaling a rupture in the theologians’ attitude toward Vatican II. A new international review, Communio, was founded in 1972 by Joseph Ratzinger (elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005), Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Henri de Lubac as an attempt to offset the progressive Dutch-based journal Concilium and to scan the turmoil and confusion of battling ideologies and the clash of philosophies of life at the present day.[5]

The impact of 1968, a politically intense year around the world, on the Catholic Church and Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968) had its toll on the reception of Vatican II and produced the first revisions of the council’s interpretations, inaugurating less enthusiastic and more wary views of the council. These revisions were also a way of reading the council that had more to do with ideological standpoints than with the history of theology and Church history. On one hand, the controversies of the early seventies for the Catholic Church did not bring together again the theologians of Vatican II, but contributed to an increasing rift between the interpretations of Vatican II. In particular, Paul VI’s final defeat in drafting Lex Ecclesiae Fundamentalis (Fundamental Church Law), which tried to canonize a narrow ecclesiological interpretation of Vatican II, made the Holy See more and more wary toward some implementations of Vatican II. The debates on the need for this Fundamental Church Law between 1965 and the mid-1970s (a law that was never promulgated but was recycled in many parts of the 1983 Code of Canon Law) showed the variety of interpretations of Vatican II present inside the Roman Curia and within the former progressive majority at the council.

The former conservative minority at the council proved more coherent in its fight against Vatican II. The small sect created by Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre in 1970, the Society of Saint Pius X, represented quite effectively the awkward (to say the least) features of a contemporary Catholicism deliberately rejecting Vatican II and attached to a premodern theological culture and antidemocratic political worldview.[6] The excommunication of Monsignor Lefebvre in 1988 did not have significant effects on the debate about Vatican II, but at the beginning of 2009, Benedict XVI’s lifting of the excommunications of the four bishops ordained by Lefebvre in 1988 cast significant light on a veiled yet very active rift within European and North American Catholicism concerning the role of Vatican II. On the other hand, the issue of modernity in Catholicism was going to be part of the most important pontificate in the post–Vatican II period. John Paul II’s election in 1978 unleashed a new impulse for the reception of Vatican II by a bishop of Rome who, as bishop of Krakow, had been very active at Vatican II in the commission for the drafting of the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes and later as the author of a bulky commentary on Vatican II.[7]

2. Vatican II Celebrated and Enforced (1980s–1990s)

In the 1980s and 1990s, the debate on Vatican II focused less on the contributions from academia and began to become more influenced by the doctrinal policy of the Holy See, especially by Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (appointed in 1981). Both were first-rank participants at Vatican II—the first a prominent bishop from Poland (the most Catholic country in the Soviet-controlled Eastern European bloc), and the second a theological counselor of Cardinal Frings of Cologne (one of the most important German bishops and a courageous critic of the Roman Curia during the debates on the floor of Saint Peter). These two men shaped a complex and sometimes contradictory Vatican policy toward the heritage of the council and its role for contemporary Catholicism.

After the theological interpretation of Vatican II that took place in the recodification of canon law, which led to the Code of 1983,[8] John Paul II convened an extraordinary assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 1985 on the twentieth anniversary of the conclusion of the council to overcome polarization and bring about greater consensus. The 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops and its Final Report provided the debate with some guidelines for the interpretation of the council, without questioning the riches of Vatican II or its key role for the future of the Catholic Church. The synod’s Final Report of 1985 affirmed that the Council is a legitimate and valid expression and interpretation of the deposit of faith as it is found in Sacred Scripture and in the living tradition of the Church. Therefore we are determined to progress further along the path indicated to us by the Council. The synod was clear in recognizing the deficiencies and difficulties in the acceptance of the Council. In truth, there certainly have also been shadows in the post–council period, in part due to an incomplete understanding and application of the Council, in part to other causes. However, in no way can it be affirmed that everything which took place after the Council was caused by the Council.

Concerning the issue of how to interpret Vatican II, the 1985 synod was resolute in explaining that it is not licit to separate the pastoral character from the doctrinal vigor of the documents. In the same way, it is not legitimate to separate the spirit and the letter of the Council.