VATICAN II: THE HISTORY AND THE NARRATIVES MASSIMO FAGGIOLI The author discusses the relationship between historical studies and the hermeneutics of the Second Vatican Council. He seeks to develop a critical understanding of the two-sided debate about how to under- stand and assess the event of the council by showing how one side argues not on the basis of historical understanding of the council but on the basis of “narratives,” which are constructs governed more by ideologies than by historical research and analysis. Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past. —George Orwell 1 F ROM A HISTORICAL POINT OF VIEW, Vatican II is a complex event, given its global dimension, duration, agenda, and long-term consequences for the church and our world. 2 But the council is complex also in terms of “institutional memory”: memory of an event that has changed the church. It is indeed clear that “institutional memory” is often not the contrary, but the companion or the other side, of “institutional amnesia”—the need for institutions to forget some aspects of their past in order to maintain integ- rity and cohesion. On the other hand, memory is not always helped by MASSIMO FAGGIOLI received his PhD from the University of Turin and is assistant professor at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. He has recently published, besides a number of books and articles, the following volumes: Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning (2012) and True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum concilium (2012). He is now working on a book on the history of church government in the 20th century and after Vatican II. 1 The “Party slogan,” in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer, 1949). 2 Vatican II is not merely the 16 final documents, and not merely the experience of the council between its announcement on January 25, 1959, and its conclusion in 1965; it is also an event, because the evaluation of its consequences has elevated it to the level of an epochal change in the history of Christianity. Vatican II, as an ongoing phenomenon in the church, has assumed the character of “event”: see Joseph A. Komonchak, “Riflessioni storiografiche sul Vaticano II come evento,” in L’Evento e le decisioni: Studi sulle dinamiche del concilio Vaticano II, ed. Maria Teresa Fattori and Alberto Melloni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997) 417–49, and Joseph A. Komonchak, “Vatican II as an Event,” in Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?, ed. David G. Schultenover (New York: Continuum, 2007) 24–51. Theological Studies 73 (2012) 749