ZENIT carried this story last night on Pope Benedict XVI's view of Vatican II and its implementation:

The crisis that arose in the Church after the Second Vatican Council wasn't due to the conciliar documents, but rather in their interpretation, says Benedict XVI.

According to Benedict XVI, the reception of the Council's messages took place according to two interpretations that "confronted each other and have had disputes between them."

The first interpretation is the one the Pope called "hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture" "between the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church." According to this view, what is important about the Council is not its texts but the spirit of renewal brought to the Church, the Holy Father said. This view, he observed, "has often been able to make use of the media's liking, and also of a part of modern theology."

The other interpretation is "the hermeneutics of reform," which was proposed by the Popes who opened and closed the Council, John XXIII and Paul VI, and which is bearing fruits "in a silent but ever more visible way," said Benedict XVI. According to this view, the objective of the Council and of every reform in the Church is "to transmit the doctrine purely and fully, without diminutions or distortions," conscious that "our duty not only consists in guarding this precious treasure, as though we were concerned only with antiquity, but in dedicating ourselves with a firm will and without fear to the work that our age calls for," the Pope said.

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