The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council ─ A Counterpoint for the History of the Council

Debates continue to rage about the correct interpretation of Vatican Council II. With his 2005 Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano Contrappunto per la sua storia Archbishop Agostino Marchetto makes a significant contribution to those debates by elucidating the historiography of the Council and the Council Fathers. He addresses critical issues and controversies which are often points of confusion and misinformation. Now with Kenneth D. Whitehead's translation of Marchetto's work, English language readers can also benefit from this comprehensive survey which analyzes the vast literature about the Council, its participants, and the complex proceedings, inner workings, discussions, meetings, disputes, negotiations, and factions, which comprised its organizational dynamics.

Marchetto reminds us that to correctly understand the Council we should first and foremost read, assess, and evaluate the content and substance of the Council's official documents. He provides a strongly expressed counterbalance to the hermeneutic of rupture formulated by the so-called `Bologna school' whose interpretation of the Council has become de rigueur in many ecclesiastical and Catholic academic circles. The Bologna school has succeeded in presenting the Second Vatican Council as a kind of "Copernican revolution, a passing to another Catholicism", a break with the past. They tout the "spirit of the Council" which they characterize as a radical mood of transformation. With the official documents of the Council as his evidence, Marchetto challenges their viewpoint as myopic and historically incorrect, and argues for a hermeneutic of renewal within the continuity of the tradition of the Church.

Archbishop Agostino Marchetto is Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Interant Peoples, and the Titular Archbishop of Astigi, Spain.