Many Rorate readers will already know about the magnificent website The Josias, which, among other merits, explains and defends traditional Catholic Social Teaching better than any other site I have ever seen. Recently, The Josias published a remarkable three-part essay by Thomas Pink called "Vatican II and Crisis in the Theology of Baptism" (part 1, part 2, part 3). This, to be quite honest, is the best article I have read in years about the unmooring of Catholic theology from traditional Catholic doctrine since the Second Vatican Council, and a deeply insightful explanation of how we have ended up with the debacle of Pope Francis.

In 2015 the Dialogos Institute held an important conference in Norcia, Italy on the interpretation of the controversial Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on Religious Liberty Dignitatis Humanae Rorate Caeli reported at the time (here and here). Now the Dialogos Institute has published a volume containing the interventions held at the conference.

At the blog of the Dialogos Institute, Prof. Alan Fimister gives an interesting account of a colloquium held last summer on Dignitatis Humanae in relation to previous magisterial teachings (about which we reported at the time). He notes that all participants held as a basic principle that no authoritative and binding document of the teaching office of the Church can overthrow the teaching of a previous document of the same or higher authority. There were, however, two approaches to showing how Dignitatis Humanae did not overthrow previous teaching on religious liberty. One was to argue that Dignitatis Humanae was of a lower grade of authority than the previous established teaching, and that its own teaching is therefore not binding and must rejected on the basis of the previous teaching. The other approach was to argue that Dignitatis Humanae, if interpreted properly does not in fact contradict previous magisterial teachings. Various ways of giving such a reading were proposed. Fimister himself seems to agree most with Thomas Pink’s proposal: “the Declaration refers only to the abstract competence of the state qua state and so does not touch upon the powers of the state as instrument of the Church.” But Fimister then somewhat modifies Pink’s thesis with the help of St. Augustine’s argument that a state is only really just (and therefore only really a state) when it worships the true God:

A vigorous and extensive discussion on Vatican II, and the plausibility of interpreting its decrees as being in continuity with the teachings of the Magisterium of the pre-Vatican II era, has been carried out since the early part of this year in the pages of Sandro Magister's websites, Chiesa (with English translation) and Settimo Cielo (in Italian only). As Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP put it in the course of the discussion: "The heart of the debate is here. We all agree, in fact, that the doctrines already defined [by the dogmatic magisterium of the former Church] present in the conciliar texts are infallible. What is in discussion is if the doctrinal developments, the innovations of the Council, are also infallible."

1) High Up, Let Down by Pope Benedict. (April 8, 2011) -- Noted by Rorate Caeli. An article describing the disappointment of Roberto de Mattei, Brunero Gherardini and Enrico Maria Radaelli over the approach of Pope Benedict XVI towards Vatican II, and concluding with a defense of the hermeneutic of continuity written by Francesco Arzillo.