The Council between Vatican moderation and grassroots impatience. Toward a historicization of the Papacy of Francis I

Abstract

The study stems from widespread doubts in doctrine regarding the more or less binding nature of the constraints imposed on interpreters by the principles and provisions of the Council. This is because (as has been observed on several occasions) Vatican II does not propose precise doctrinal theses to be accepted or anathematized, but proceeds through a discursive exposition of the themes on which it intends to dwell in order to give the churches criteria for discerning values, on the basis of which the community concerned can take the responsible decisions of the case. However, this expository pedagogy has allowed critics to construct general hermeneutics based on “narratives” that are sometimes misreading with respect to a comprehensive reconstruction (tota lege perspecta) of the binding system observed. It is to this rigid methodology of deciphering texts, which favours above all the rejection of unwelcome conciliar indications, that the author alludes in relation to the consequential prescriptive decisions, mainly taken during the pontificates (both beneficial, moreover) of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. In the papacy of Francis I, on the other hand, the author recognizes a conscious choice to return to the founding hermeneutics of the first postconciliar pope, who succeeded John XXIII as president of the ecumenical assembly; both of whom were, in truth, open to the grace of a self-integration of the system, if necessary confirmed through a further widespread institutional experience, expressed in appropriate synodal forms, guaranteeing the equal dignity of the members of the people of God.