The Second Vatican Council's Twin Imperatives

The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI by Aidan Nichols OP

The major constructive achievement of the Council was the recovery of the tradition of the pre-Tridentine Church, and notably of tradition in its crucial patristic phase when Christian religion took on its classic form. It was a Council of patristic (and biblical) ressourcement, intended to usher Catholics into a larger room than that of the last few centuries. Moreover, the same theologians who forged this neo-patristic synthesis - essentially, the French and German language divines of the inter-war period - were convinced that it would provide a new basis on which to address the world of today and its problems. Its greater anthropological depth would enable the Church to be more human without becoming less divine.

...The unity of the Council's twin imperatives of ressourcement and aggiornamento, founded as this was on the theological anthropology of the Fathers, proved more fragile than had been expected. Once aggiornamento had parted company from ressourcement, adaptation could degenerate into mere accommodation to habits of mind and behavior in secular culture. Using the excuse of pastoral necessity, insouciance towards the tradition as a whole might be justified or even obligatory in an effort to relate the hypothetically reconstructed Christian origin to contemporary needs and expectations. Many of those needs and expectations must, indeed, be take with great seriousness. However, the manner in which the Christian origin ('the Gospel') is related ('relevant') to them cannot be determined by overshooting the past: that is what 'Tradition' means. The task today is to take forward the constructive movement of the Council's achievement: the binding of tradition and contemporaneity in a living unity. For this, the work of both historical and systematic theologians will play a part. The historical theologian echoes the words of Jesus in St. John's Gospel:

Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost (John 6, 12)

The systematic theologian forges the language in which the meaning of Tradition may be received anew, in response to the concerns of the present-day, but also challenging, complementing and transforming those concerns by the divine power which Tradition holds. It is in its positive contribution to this two-fold project that the theology of Joseph Ratzinger must be judged. (pgs. 295-96)