The Hermeneutics of the Second Vatican Council

The centrality of the Second Vatican Council's documental corpus causes its interpretation to be of the greatest importance. The interpretation of the previous councils, focused on an exact contraposition with the errors they wanted to reject, is not applicable in the case of Vatican II. Its peculiar physiognomy demands its own hermeneutics and formal principles: paying attention to the history of the text; considering the texts as coming from a single magisterial subject; the need of articulating continuity and novelty in the context of the traditional dogmatic development.