Writing the history of the council. Hermeneutical Criteria, historiographical problems and reception processes of Vatican II

The paper offers a history of the research on the second Vatican council and an historical explanation of the reaction caused by the team led by G. Alberigo among some circles in Rome. According to the paper the attempt of Alberigo's is a negative response to the Second Vatican Council as such. The very fact of the persistence of Vatican II at the core of the catholic debate, on the contrary, demonstrates how much Vatican II needs an historical research, which is not a rebuilding of the backstage or a comment of decisions, but a real work on the real event. A short and weak second quest on Vatican II was launched mostly around a famous and ambivalent speech of Benedict XVI in 2005, where theological hermeneutics of continuity and reform vs. rupture and discontinuity were used to explore the post-conciliar years, around 1968. With John O'Malley, Peter Hflnermann, Giuseppe Ruggieri and Christoph Theobald a third quest started and its result is the most important fruit which the 50th anniversary of Vatican II may reflect on.