Pope Francis has embraced the ‘hermeneutic of reform’ that Pope
Benedict XVI proposed as the key to interpreting the teachings of
Vatican II.
In a letter dated November 19 and released November 23, the Pope
appointed Cardinal Walter Brandmüller as his special envoy to the
December celebration of the 450th anniversary of the conclusion of the
Council of Trent (1545-63), the nineteenth of the Church’s 21 ecumenical
councils.
Cardinal Brandmüller, 84, is the president emeritus of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.
“It is appropriate that the Church recall with a more prompt and
attentive zeal the very fruitful doctrine that came to pass from that
Council held in the Tyrolean region,” Pope Francis said in his
Latin-language letter, as translated in a literal (if stilted) manner.
“Indeed, not without reason has the Church already for a long time
directed such concern to that Council’s decrees and counsels that ought
to be commemorated and observed, since, when very grave matters and
questions appeared at that time, the Council Fathers applied all
diligence, that the Catholic faith might appear distinctly and be better
perceived.”
“Indeed, with the Holy Spirit inspiring and prompting, it concerned them
chiefly that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine not only be
guarded but also shine forth more clearly, that the salvific work of the
Lord be spread through the whole world and that the Gospel be extended
to all the earth,” Pope Francis added.
“Heeding indeed the same Spirit, Holy Church of this age even now
revives and reflects upon the most glorious Tridentine doctrine,” he
continued. “As a matter of fact, the ‘hermeneutic of reform,’ which Our
Predecessor Benedict XVI set forth in the year 2005 in the presence of
the Roman Curia, relates not less to the Tridentine than to the Vatican
Council.”
Quoting Pope Benedict’s 2005 address, Pope Francis added, “In fact, this
manner of interpreting places under a brighter light one evident
property of the Church that the Lord Himself bestows on her: ‘she is
clearly one ‘subject’ which, with the hastening ages, grows and is
increased; nevertheless, she always remains the same. And so she is the
one subject of the sojourning People of God.’”
Pope Francis’s letter on the Council of Trent follows a letter, dated
October 7 and released November 12, in which he said that “the best
hermeneutics of the Second Vatican Council” has been done by Archbishop
Agostino Marchetto.
“You have manifested this love [for the Church] in many ways, including
correcting an error or imprecision on my part – for which I thank you
from my heart –but above all it is manifest in all its purity in studies
done on the Second Vatican Council,” Pope Francis added in that letter.
In its description of Archbishop Marchetto’s The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: A Counterpoint for the History of the Council, published in English in 2010, the University of Chicago Press states:
This important study by Archbishop Agostino Marchetto makes a significant contribution to the debate that surrounds the interpretation of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Archbishop Marchetto critiques the Bologna School, which, he suggests, presents the Council as a kind of “Copernican revolution,” a transformation to “another Catholicism.” Instead Marchetto invites readers to reconsider the Council directly, through its official documents, commentaries, and histories.
In a recent essay published in L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal
Kurt Koch, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting
Christian Unity, wrote that the interpretation of the Council offered by
Archbishop Agostino Marchetto is more relevant than ever.
Archbishop
Marchetto, wrote Cardinal Koch, has “taken up and deepened the
hermeneutic of reform supported by Pope Benedict XVI.”