Vatican II in the conflict of interpretations

The paper deals briefly with several different historiographical interpretations of the Second Vatican Council. It then critically analyses how the conflict surrounding an interpretation of Vatican II was in turn subject, within the Catholic Church and due especially to Benedict XVI, to an interpretation that dismissed the hermeneutical approach accentuating the aspects of renewal and break with tradition and proposed an interpretation of continuity as the only authentic one coherent with the Council. Finally, the article points out how, out of various interpretations of Vatican II, different ecclesiastical expressions and experiences - more or less divergent and sometimes diametrically opposed - have developed in recent decades and that the historic interpretation of the significance of the Council must not be made dependant on their success.