The Continuity vs Rupture debate

Pope Benedict XVI distinguishes between two approaches to understanding Vatican II:

1) the “hermeneutic of continuity” – i.e. the idea that there is a fundamental continuity between the theological, liturgical and moral understanding of the pre-Vatican 2 Church and that of the post-Vatican 2 Church;

2) the “hermeneutic of rupture/discontinuity – i.e. the idea that there is a fundamental discontinuity between the theological, liturgical and moral understanding of the pre-Vatican 2 Church and that of the post-Vatican 2 Church.

A lot of Catholic theologians (and bishops and priests), however, seem to be on the hermeneutic of rupture side of the debate, arguing that the texts of the Council reflect a fundamental discontinuity, and invoking the so-called “spirit of Vatican 2”, which argues basically that Vatican 2 gave a mandate for change/development in certain areas, and that therefore anything and everything can and indeed should be changed, and that pretty much nothing is exempt from this rule.

If the hermeneutic of rupture people are correct in their analysis, one of the following must logically follow:

1) the Church got it wrong before Vatican 2 on things such as liturgy, but has now got it right (in which case, if the Church misunderstood the meaning and purpose of liturgy for 1900 years, why should we believe that the “spirit of Vatican 2” people have finally got it right?);

2) the Church got it right before Vatican 2, and its understanding of liturgy (for example) was “true for its time”, but the modern church (or at least that part of it where progressive hermeneutic of rupture types are in the ascendancy) has got it right “for the time in which we now live” (in which case one is pretty much advocating the Modernist heresy that truth is contingent on time and place rather than something absolute);

3) the Church got it wrong before Vatican 2 and has now got it wrong in a different way (in which case there’s no point being a Catholic at all);

4) the Church got it right before Vatican 2 and has now got it so radically wrong that it is now scarcely Catholic in any meaningful sense (in which case one might consider hopping across to the SSPX).

None of these positions is acceptable to an orthodox Catholic, whereas Pope Benedict’s view – that there’s a fundamental continuity between the two periods, but that the “spirit of Vatican 2” folk have misrepresented and misapplied Vatican 2 in such a way as to create an appearance of rupture – is surely the only position that (a) reflects the facts and (b) saves us from the need to become Lefebvrists or Russian Orthodox.