Speaking to clergy from the northern Italian dioceses of Belluno-Feltre and Treviso, he said: “The Council has given us a great road marker, we can go forward full of hope”.
Vatican II was “essential and fundamental” to the future of the faith, he said.
Pope Benedict was answering a question from a priest who, describing himself as a member of the Vatican II generation, said that many of his counterparts were disheartened following the enthusiasm that accompanied the Council.
The priest’s concerns echoed those of many other Catholics, who feel that the recent motu proprio relaxing restrictions on the Traditional Mass has undermined the authority of the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
But the pope encouraged his audience to stress the positive elements that grew out of the Council, including “the renewal of the liturgy”.
He said: “It seems to me that we must rediscover the great heritage of the Council, which is not a ’spirit’ reconstructed behind the texts, but the great Conciliar texts themselves, re-read today with the experiences that we have had and that have born fruit in so many movements, in so many new religious communities.”
Commentators who were previously nervous about the direction of the current papacy welcomed the pope’s words. Father Joseph Komonchak, writing for the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal, commented: “I see no reason to fear that he is about to go back on the great conciliar texts on the church’s relationship to the modern world.
“[Pope Benedict] distinguishes two extremes … a progressive mentality that thought everything can and ought to change in the church and an absolute anti-conciliarism, between which, he says, a third and more valid interpretation had difficulty making its way. The idea that Pope Benedict wants to return us to ‘those thrilling days of yesteryear’, that is, before the Council, should be discredited.”
Pope Benedict spoke to the Italian priests of his own experience of the Council. “I too lived through Vatican Council II,” he said, “coming to St. Peter’s Basilica with great enthusiasm and seeing how new doors were opening. It really seemed to be the new Pentecost, in which the church would once again be able to convince humanity.”
The pontiff observed, however, that historically great church councils have always been followed by periods of turbulence. “So it is not now, in retrospect, such a great surprise how difficult it was at first for all of us to digest the Council, this great message,” he said. “To grow is always to suffer as well, because it means leaving one condition and passing to another.”
Benedict XVI went on to discuss the post-conciliar age, which he argued was defined by two great moments in history.
The first was the “explosion” of revolutionary activity in 1968, which the pope said triggered a “cultural crisis” in the West. The “new, healthy modernity” put forward by the Council Fathers found itself facing a violent ideological rupture with the past, he said.
Some Catholics, he added, embraced Vatican II as an invitation to begin a “cultural revolution that wants to change everything”, while others rejected the Council because they understood it in the same terms.
The second turning point came in 1989 with the collapse of Communist regimes across Europe.
“The response was … total scepticism, so called postmodernity,” the pope said. “There was the affirmation of materialism, of a blind pseudo-rationalistic skepticism.”
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