[M]ay the 50th anniversary of its beginning [of Vatican II], which we will celebrate in the fall, be an occasion to deepen the study of its texts, the condition for a dynamic and faithful reception. "That which above all concerns the Council is that the sacred deposit of the Christian faith be kept and taught in a more efficacious way," Pope Blessed John XXIII affirmed in his opening address. And it is worthwhile to meditate and read these words.
The Pope charged the Fathers to deepen and present such a perennial doctrine in continuity with the millennial Tradition of the Church: "to pass on the doctrine, pure and whole, without attenuations or distortions," but in a new way, "according to what is required by our times." (Address of solemn opening of the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican II, October 11, 1962). With this key for its reading and application - according to a view, certainly not of an unacceptable hermeneutic of discontinuity and of rupture, but of a hermeneutic of continuity and of reform -, listening to the Council and making ours the authoritative indications are the path to ascertaining the ways with which the Church may offer a significant response to the great social and cultural transformations of our time, which have visible consequences also on the religious sphere.
Here is the original in Italian.
As an aside, I was glad to see yet another variation of this principle put forward as regards this matter of "continuity" and "reform": ermeneutica della continuità e della riforma...
