VATICAN CITY, JUNE 20, 2005 (Zenit.org).- A Curia official has written a new book on the Second Vatican Council, giving the Holy See’s point of view on that milestone event.
“Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II. Contrappunto per la Sua Storia” (The Second Vatican Council: Counterpoint for Its History) is written by Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, and published by the Vatican Publishing House.
The book tries to overcome “the grave conditionings resulting from an ideological view of the Council, which has imposed itself monolithically in the market of publications on this event,” the author said Friday.
The book is “a history of the historiography of the Council, especially of what has been written from 1990 to the present,” the archbishop told ZENIT.
Archbishop Marchetto, 64, added that his “interpretation is intended as a counterpoint to harmonize certain aspects” of the Council’s historical interpretation, “which are not correct,” such as “the contrast that some others have drawn between John XXIII and Paul VI.”
Bologna Group
The archbishop’s work offers an extensive criticism of several books, particularly those on Vatican II, including volumes published by Giuseppe Alberigo and the Bologna Group.
According to Archbishop Marchetto, the latter’s work reflects erroneous points of view, such as reducing the importance of the Council and emphasizing the commissions and participants’ personal diaries.
This tendency mentions “new schemes which never existed,” states that there was no head in the conciliar assembly, and is biased when addressing the question of religious freedom, said the author.
The archbishop praised the Lateran University’s new Research Center on Vatican II, as well as the Paul VI Institute.
Among those attending the presentation of the book in Rome’s Town Council was Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar of Rome.
