In his 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict XVI described two different hermeneutical approaches to the meaning and significance of the Second Vatican Council, which he labeled, respectively, a “hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture” and a “hermeneutics of reform.”Footnote ¹ From one perspective, Vatican II represents a dramatic break with styles and traditions that had characterized Roman Catholicism for centuries, if not millennia. The other, more “official,” perspective is that the final documents of Vatican II reflect a deep continuity with the ancient and recent traditions of Roman Catholicism. Rather than a break with those traditions, they are reforming developments of them.Footnote ²

This debate reflects divisions that were present at the council (and before) and continue to affect theological and disciplinary debates within Roman Catholicism. At the root of these debates are deep attitudes toward tradition—its authority, internal conflicts, stability, and capacity to change. As is well known, Roman Catholicism, particularly in its post-Reformation iterations, has favored authority and stability over internal conflict and innovation.Footnote ³ When the growth of critical historical awareness made it impossible to deny the role that change and internal conflict had played in the creation and transmission of the Roman Catholic tradition, Roman Catholic philosophers and theologians proposed various theories of development as ways of acknowledging and yet domesticating the realities of historical change.Footnote ⁴ Once viewed with suspicion at best and hostility at worst,Footnote ⁵ by the time of Vatican II, such theories had achieved official respectability and shaped the tone and content of several of its important documents, particularly the fundamental Dei Verbum and the controversial Dignitatis Humanae.Footnote ⁶

Over time, increased sensitivities to historical discontinuities and conflicts threatened this marriage of historical consciousness and theological stability.Footnote ⁷ In recent years, John Thiel and Kathryn Tanner have addressed questions of stability and change within the Christian tradition. Their agreements and disagreements will shed some light on the controversy concerning the interpretation of Vatican II; an extension of their arguments, in light of the theories of Alasdair MacIntyre, provides a way forward for the debate and heuristic clues for resolving some of the issues of continuity and discontinuity that arose at Vatican II and afterward. The controversy surrounding Dignitatis Humanae supplies a good test case for assessing the value of MacIntyre's insights and will conclude this article.

John Thiel's exploration in Senses of Tradition critiques theories of traditional development that attempt to preserve its continuity “prospectively,” that is, by characterizing change as a progressive unfolding of potentialities latent in it from its beginnings.Footnote ⁸ Such theories have replaced typically ahistorical neo-Scholastic interpretations of traditional continuity and have played a prominent, if contested, role in Roman Catholic thought since the nineteenth century.Footnote ⁹ According to Thiel, these descriptions may be true of a tradition as seen from God's timeless perspective. However, they risk overlooking the experiences, points of view, and limitations of actual human participants in traditions who are inevitably situated in their own particular finite historical locations.Footnote ¹⁰ They also fail to do justice to the real historical course of a tradition, its complex interactions with its social and intellectual environments, surprising novelties, historical discontinuities, and seemingly abrupt changes of direction.Footnote ¹¹ According to Thiel, an adequate Roman Catholic theological account of tradition must not only be faithful to that tradition's classical beliefs regarding its authority, stability, and normative character, but also must acknowledge innovation and discontinuities in the history of doctrine and practice that critical history reveals.Footnote ¹² A “retrospective” account will examine the tradition's twists and turns from the point of view of the present locations of its members, and discern in the points of continuity between present and past the mysterious ways in which the Holy Spirit has shaped and is shaping the tradition's paths.Footnote ¹³

Drawing on and developing the classical ideas of the Sensus Fidei and the plurality of inspired meanings in Scripture (literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical), Thiel proposes four ways in which this sense activates itself and shapes tradition: the literal sense, the sense of continuity in development, the sense of dramatic development, and the sense of incipient development.Footnote ¹⁴ The first two are characterized by their commitment to tradition's stability and normative character. The literal sense—the authoritative beliefs, evaluations, and practices whose meaning and truth are largely taken for granted as they are transmitted across generations—is resistant to change and, as the heart of a tradition, provides the “gravitational field” of stability for the other senses.Footnote ¹⁵ Although inherently stable and containing elements that are permanent achievements, the literal sense is not infallible as such; it contains elements that are revisable and even reversible or replaceable.Footnote ¹⁶ The occasions when some elements are revised or reversed are the work of the sense of dramatic development.Footnote ¹⁷ As evidence of the working of this sense, Thiel cites John Noonan's description of the Roman Catholic Church's retraction of its approval of slavery and its affirmation of religious liberty.Footnote ¹⁸ The sense of incipient development recommends beliefs and practices that have not played an important role in the tradition's past and are relatively new among small numbers of the faithful.Footnote ¹⁹ Any number of internal or external factors can stimulate the novel recommendations of these senses. Shifts in sociocultural assumptions may challenge expressions of the literal sense; as, for example, modern feminist criticism has challenged the exclusive use of patriarchal metaphors in liturgical language and theological discourse about God.Footnote ²⁰

The literal sense retains its dominant role in the dynamic relationship between stability and change. Some elements of the literal sense are beyond the reach of these other senses. Although not as numerous or readily identifiable as many people think, some beliefs, whether defined as infallible or not,Footnote ²¹ are so basic to the tradition that they cannot be reversed or abandoned without creating a new tradition.Footnote ²² Moreover, proposals of the dramatic and incipient senses will not automatically be counted as genuine exercises of the Sensus Fidei.Footnote ²³ They will only be accredited as authoritative elements of the tradition when, as a result of their “enacted faithfulness,”Footnote ²⁴ they are recognized as “veridically compelling” by the Sensus Fidei of the whole church and incorporated into the tradition's literal sense.Footnote ²⁵ This normally occurs when they are validated as genuine expressions of the second sense, as developments that are continuous or congruous with the received literal sense.Footnote ²⁶ Thus, though not immutable, the literal sense remains the anchor that restrains the boat. This sort of assessment is at the basis of Benedict's argument that the alleged discontinuities of Vatican II are, in fact, continuous with the Roman Catholic Church's traditional teaching.

The discernments of the dramatic and incipient senses, even though coherent with the received literal sense, are genuine novelties, not the unfolding of latent potentialities such as prospective views of development theorized. Rather, theologians, the magisterium, and other architects of the tradition (including at times the ordinary faithful) will retrospectively seek to display the continuity of the genuinely new with the old by reconfiguring the tradition's literal sense, searching for, identifying, and creating revised patterns of older beliefs and practices that exhibit this new continuity, rendering the tradition “more coherent, more truthful, and more universal.”Footnote ²⁷

Thiel insists that these continuities, which in a later article he analyzes as analogies, are available to the eyes of faith in ways that they are not available to the eyes of a secular and merely chronological history that generally sees only gaps between the new and the old in tradition's historical record.Footnote ²⁸ His favored example is the dogma of the immaculate conception. Careful historical research shows that this dogma was not held continuously throughout the Roman Catholic tradition's history. Nevertheless, “to the degree that a retrospective approach regards the apostolic tradition in faith and from the present moment, it can see and affirm continuity across the apparent brokenness of history” by finding “relational continuities” to past beliefs that “need not be troubled by chronological gaps.” These “relational continuities” are “affirmations of the sinlessness of the Savior, the dignity of Mary as the mother of God, and Augustine's intensification of Paul's strong doctrine of human fallenness.”Footnote ²⁹

In an article devoted to an analysis of the role of analogical thinking in tradition, Thiel concedes that, measured by the standards of chronological history, claims for traditional continuity “evaporate like morning dew in the sun.”Footnote ³⁰ However, the standards, not the claims, are incorrect. “Faith claims for traditional continuity…can be no more measured by chronological history than the truth of the gospels can be measured theologically by the Jesus of history or the resurrection of Jesus can be measured theologically by the laws of physics.”Footnote ³¹ Rather, the “eyes of faith,” surveying the “chaos” of the chronological record, perceive “meaningful patterns of unity,” meaningful analogies or similarities, among traditional items past and present. These structural similarities, or homologies, rather than chronological contiguity, provide the bases for claims of traditional continuity, bridging what would appear to be unbridgeable historical gaps. These analogies draw the novelties of the dramatic and incipient senses into the gravitational field of the literal sense, highlighting a continuity that stretches from the present to the apostolic age. Such analogies are not “capricious”Footnote ³² or “casual resemblances”;Footnote ³³ they are a proper subject of argumentFootnote ³⁴ and need to be confirmed by the judgment of the church.Footnote ³⁵ They form the basis of a retrospective reconfiguring of the tradition that discerns wider continuities and more coherent trajectories than previously seen, resulting in a narrative of the tradition that is “more coherent, more truthful, and more universal.”Footnote ³⁶ For example, although the ante-Nicene theological tradition had been largely subordinationist, its theological reconfiguration after the Council of Nicaea discerned a pattern of continuity and coherence not previously seen and yet was absorbed into the normative literal sense of the tradition.Footnote ³⁷

Where Thiel sees continuity Kathryn Tanner sees discontinuity. She agrees with him that a genuine understanding of tradition needs to proceed retrospectively in order to reflect accurately the facts of history, but faults his theory for failing to meet its own critical standards.Footnote ³⁸ In her view, Thiel overestimates the pull of the gravitational field exercised by the literal sense on the other senses of tradition because he overlooks the fact that it lacks the mass and stability required to play the role that he assigns to it. It lacks the required mass because there is less historical consensus to the Sensus Fidei than he believes. A diachronic view reveals very little agreement among Christians even concerning the most basic of topics—the identity of Jesus Christ, the proper interpretation of the Bible, the practice of baptism, and so on.Footnote ³⁹ Perhaps more importantly, a synchronic view reveals the same measure of diversity and disagreement. What little agreement exists is so “semantically thin,” that is, so abstract and open to conflicting interpretations, that it cannot serve as a norm to measure the proposals of the other senses of development.Footnote ⁴⁰ In other contexts she argues that tradition (comparable in meaning to Thiel's “literal sense”) lacks this stability because the Christian materials (e.g., the Bible and the creeds) are themselves diverse and ambiguous, the result of ongoing theological and political conflicts and pressures.Footnote ⁴¹

Thiel replies that Tanner's mistaken points of departure force her to underestimate the power of the literal sense. He argues that her examples of synchronic conflict miss the mark because he is confining his observations to empirical traditions, in this case to the Roman Catholic tradition, not to some abstract “Christian” tradition. Therefore, there is less synchronic disagreement than she thinks.Footnote ⁴² Furthermore, her approach is skewed as well because she measures the past solely through the eyes of chronological time and overlooks the continuities discerned by the “eyes of faith,” the congruence between past and present expressions of the faith that he argues form the basis of the tradition's continuity.Footnote ⁴³

Significant hermeneutical and theological differences exist at the heart of these differing interpretations and assessments. Tanner approaches both the “Christian materials” and the history of their interpretation from a postmodern and historical-critical point of view that emphasizes their internal variety, ambiguities, and points of conflict, all of which stimulate the diachronic and synchronic disagreements that in her view undermine the alleged gravitational pull of the literal sense. Although he also assumes and appeals to the methods and results of historical-critical research in his critique of “prospective” views of tradition, Thiel emphasizes the theological coherence of the canonical Scriptures and the tradition that is built on them.Footnote ⁴⁴

These hermeneutical differences are related to different theological points of view. Tanner, reflecting traditional Protestant concerns, stresses the inadequacy and fallibility of all human words as they struggle to approximate and express the Divine Word.Footnote ⁴⁵ The unavoidable partiality and imperfection of all such human attempts are at the root of the inevitable instability of the “Christian materials” and the history of their very fallible traditional interpretations. On the other hand, Thiel's Roman Catholic sensibilities emphasize the pneumatological and incarnational dimensions of Scripture and tradition. Their coherence results from their unity as “expressions of the same divine voice,” which the faithful, illumined by the assistance of the same Holy Spirit who has shaped and is shaping the tradition's path, are able to discern.Footnote ⁴⁶

Although these differences are deep, there are also important similarities. First, Tanner and Thiel agree that an adequate theory of tradition must respect the varied facts of a tradition's history, rejecting a prospective view in favor of a retrospective one that emphasizes the creative role that novel interpretations play in configuring and reconfiguring the historical data in light of current circumstances.Footnote ⁴⁷ Second, both agree that prior interpretations (including points of consensus or the literal sense) are changeable, though perhaps not in toto. As mentioned before, in Thiel's view, some elements are contained within the literal sense that are unerring and so basic to the tradition that they may not be abandoned or replaced without transforming the tradition into another one. Smaller in number and less readily distinguishable than many people think, they constitute only a part of the literal sense, the remainder of which, though it is resistant to change, can and may well change under pressure from the other two senses.Footnote ⁴⁸ Furthermore, the literal sense itself may be smaller and its stability more precarious than first appears.Footnote ⁴⁹ In his reply to Tanner's critique, Thiel concedes that the literal sense “slides in meaning” because it is always being “negotiated in meaning” against the other senses of tradition, which slide in meaning even more.Footnote ⁵⁰ If the literal sense is restricted to what believers agree about at a given time and “believers argue about almost everything,” then its range may be small indeed, even given the restriction of his analysis to the Roman Catholic tradition.Footnote ⁵¹

Tanner, in spite of her emphasis on tradition's fragility, also seems to require that traditions have some stable points of consensus. Every tradition must “restrict the reign of diversity”; otherwise it will be a “completely amorphous mush.”Footnote ⁵² These restraining parameters include appeals to certain Christian materials (e.g., the Bible, the creeds, certain formulas, and rituals such as the Eucharist and baptism) and affirmations and key values (e.g., the overriding significance of the life of Jesus for Christian discipleship) as reference points for tradition's ongoing investigation and argument.Footnote ⁵³ Because the positive interpretation of each of these elements is so contested, Tanner sees them as insufficient to serve Thiel's purposes.Footnote ⁵⁴

Thiel agrees with Tanner about the relative semantic thinness of the literal sense but disagrees that “thinness amounts to little that is meaningful or authoritative.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Thiel may be right, although he does not push the point very hard. Perhaps the stable points that Tanner allows have more substance than she admits. At the minimum, she agrees that they have enough content to play the negative role of excluding certain points of view as incompatible with the frame of the ongoing argument that is tradition's life.Footnote ⁵⁶ Thus, Nicaea would exclude subordinationism but would have, as post-Nicene debates clearly show, little if any agreed-upon positive content. This may or not be true for the history of a particular doctrine. It does not seem to me, however, to be adequate for an analysis of the “fit” that she insists on among different doctrines or beliefs. For example, if belief A (e.g., the acceptability of slaveholding) is to be rejected on the grounds of its lack of fit with belief B (e.g., the common Fatherhood of God), the latter belief must have enough positive meaning to warrant the rejection of the former. Furthermore, she recognizes that some judgments of exclusion have “passed the test of time without great controversy” and thus bear a very strong prima-facie presumption in their favor.Footnote ⁵⁷ The beliefs on the basis of which these exclusions are made may be close to (if not identical with) the basic beliefs that Thiel sees as essential to a tradition's identity.Footnote ⁵⁸

Finally, both agree that the configurations and reconfigurations of a tradition are contestable and that not every proposed configuration or reconfiguration will be equally acceptable. Contestants need to appeal to arguments and standards of argument to back up their interpretations. Though his use of perceptual metaphors such as Sensus Fidei and “the eyes of faith” might obscure this point,Footnote ⁵⁹ Thiel's nonfoundationalism precludes appeals to self-certifying experiences or foundational beliefs to warrant theological judgments.Footnote ⁶⁰ He acknowledges that “a purported and well-intentioned discernment of the Spirit may yet be false,”Footnote ⁶¹ and that the exercise of one of the senses of tradition “by no means guarantees the truthfulness of its judgments.”Footnote ⁶² Furthermore, although unmentioned, his appeal to historical analogies as warrants for a particular configuration of a tradition requires an appeal to argument as well. There are after all weak and strong analogies, and claims for the latter, which are required to warrant an assertion of continuity, need to be substantiated by argument.Footnote ⁶³ Similarly, Tanner's view of tradition as an “argument” about the meaning and relevance of certain materials for a life of discipleship clearly requires that the contestants appeal to some common standards and warrants.Footnote ⁶⁴ An argument is, after all, not a shouting match; she notes that appeals to certain normative materials must at least be “plausible”; that is, they must meet standards of coherence or fit with other Christian beliefs and practices.Footnote ⁶⁵

This discussion raises several issues that are relevant to the debate about the proper interpretation of Vatican II that Benedict XVI noted in his remarks. Are some of its teachings (e.g., concerning religious liberty or the soteriological value of non-Catholic and non-Christian religions) in fact discontinuous with traditional teachings, or are they examples of development, assimilable to the tradition's literal sense? Do these alleged ruptures support Tanner's arguments concerning the radical ambiguity and instability of traditions, or do they, as Thiel contends, display a deeper continuity?

We must consider the relationship between the senses of dramatic development and incipient development and their relationship to the other two senses more closely. Although often found together, they are distinguishable.Footnote ⁶⁶ Unlike the sense of incipient development, the sense of dramatic development is an “extraordinary judgment in a time of crisis.”Footnote ⁶⁷ It appears far less frequently in the life of the tradition, fits less easily into the sense of continuity in development, and is more disturbing to the literal sense than the latter.Footnote ⁶⁸ To see why, assume for the moment that Thiel is correct that the perception of relevant analogies by the “eyes of faith” fills in the gaps left by a simple chronological account of a tradition's past and that non-question-begging criteria for distinguishing strong from weak analogies to justify those claims have been developed. Although this may support a proposal by the incipient sense of a novel addition such as the dogma of the immaculate conception will it support a proposal of the sense of dramatic development? This reconfiguring of the tradition does not fill in the gaps as much as warrant the abandonment or replacement of a traditional belief or practice, previously perceived as a coherent element of the tradition's literal sense but perhapsFootnote ⁶⁹ now perceived as an inadequacy or a misstep in the tradition's past.Footnote ⁷⁰ Such a step is more threatening to the stability and authority of a tradition's literal sense than the addition of a novelty because it is less easy to domesticate. Frequent acceptance of such proposals might well, after all, undermine a tradition's credibility and authority.Footnote ⁷¹ Unless Thiel can show how such dramatic developments are legitimately assimilable to the literal sense as developments in continuity, they strengthen Tanner's argument that the literal sense lacks the stability and mass to serve the purposes that he has assigned to it.

Perhaps the key difference is that in Tanner's view a tradition's life is a blend of coherent and incoherent, continuous and discontinuous, elements that exhibit the all-too-human fragility of the conclusions of its ongoing argument and the “thinness” of its agreements. This “thinness” permits multiple interpretations and multiple configurations of the current and past materials of the tradition to support those interpretations. The continuity of a tradition consists in the commitment of its participants to an ongoing argument about the most adequate or plausible interpretation of those materials.Footnote ⁷² Although he admits the apparent discontinuities that historical-critical research displays, Thiel sees underlying some of them a deeper coherence that is the result of and reveals the Holy Spirit's guidance of the tradition's life as a vehicle of God's revelation. Thiel's believer appears to discern a pattern of coherence in the tradition, Tanner's to create it.Footnote ⁷³ Nevertheless, both insist, to varying degrees (Tanner much less so), on a tradition's integrity and make general appeals to coherence as a standard to preserve it. Both draw on examples of literary interpretation as models: Thiel to the narrative coherence underlying the twists and turns of a novel's plot,Footnote ⁷⁴ Tanner to the skill and tact involved in the interpretation of a poem.Footnote ⁷⁵ Elsewhere, Tanner proposes examples of considerations for measuring the adequacy of an interpretative proposal: Does it “make better sense” of various accounts of Jesus' ministry? Does it “hold together” the elements of the tradition better? Is it more consistent with treasured Christian beliefs and practices and other important (e.g., scientific) beliefs that members of the community hold?Footnote ⁷⁶ As she acknowledges, these are “messy” arguments.Footnote ⁷⁷ Left unanalyzed, coherence is an amorphous criterion that is difficult to apply, particularly to developments that reject as well as affirm traditional claims, and to a narrative as ambiguous and mysterious as this tradition's life is claimed to embody. Such a narrative may well yield a plurality of alternative readings, each with its own coherence and degree of tolerance for different dramatic developments.Footnote ⁷⁸ Some means to measure narrative coherence would be very helpful here.

Tradition's continuities and discontinuities play a central role in Alasdair MacIntyre's critical and constructive project, and are key elements in his critique of Enlightenment liberalism and the development of his own moral philosophy and epistemology.Footnote ⁷⁹ Several of his proposals will prove useful in extending Thiel's and Tanner's arguments, refining the description of the relationship between dramatic development and narrative coherence, and suggesting a way forward in the debate about Vatican II.

MacIntyre's concept of tradition covers a wide range of items, including traditions attached to particular practices such as medicine and agriculture,Footnote ⁸⁰ traditions of intellectual inquiry such as the Aristotelian or Augustinian,Footnote ⁸¹ and broad cultural traditions such as those of the Scottish EnlightenmentFootnote ⁸² or liberal modernity,Footnote ⁸³ in which traditions of various practices or inquiries are embedded. Though not discussed at length, it appears that the relationships among various traditions and sorts of traditions are likewise varied. Rival traditions may be embedded in one larger cultural tradition, as were the Socratic/Platonic and Sophist traditions in post-Homeric Athens;Footnote ⁸⁴ separate traditions may have different degrees of overlap;Footnote ⁸⁵ individual traditions may split into rival traditions; and rival traditions may discover sufficient agreement to merge into one tradition.Footnote ⁸⁶ MacIntyre is particularly interested in traditions that are allegedly incommensurable, that is, that appeal to different core concepts and basic standards of assessment with the result that rational adjudication of disputes between them seems impossible.Footnote ⁸⁷ In his later work, he argues for the possibility of rational engagement between (or among) incommensurable traditions, which engagement reveals the inadequacy of both relativism and perspectivism.Footnote ⁸⁸

MacIntyre believes that, despite this variety, the dynamic lives of traditions share common characteristics and are best understood in a narrative fashion, in other words, retrospectively and teleologically. A tradition's story will be understood only when its current circumstances are understood against the story of its past successes and failures, its past is configured and reconfigured in the light of its current problems and achievements, and its goal or goals, and the conditions for meeting them, are more adequately clarified as it moves toward achieving them.Footnote ⁸⁹ Thus, he emphatically rejects claims that traditions are essentially conservative, concerned primarily with preserving past stability.Footnote ⁹⁰ An ongoing tradition is better characterized in dialectical terms as “an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those with critics and enemies external to the tradition who reject all or at least key parts of those fundamental agreements, and those internal, interpretative debates through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted.”Footnote ⁹¹ It is this narrative continuity, rather than identity of preserved content, that is the basis of tradition's stability.

Taken alone, this characterization, highlighting tradition's dialectical features, is somewhat misleading, since it omits a particularly salient feature that he acknowledges elsewhere; that is, it does not fully acknowledge the stability of a tradition's ordinary life. In fact, elsewhere, in a manner akin to Thiel's description of a tradition's literal sense, MacIntyre emphasizes that traditions' ordinary lives originate and often proceed calmly enough for long periods of time, relying on commonly accepted texts and persons taken as authoritative givensFootnote ⁹² and encountering no major difficulties.Footnote ⁹³

Despite these concerns, MacIntyre's characterization is apt, since, as he sees it, such periods of calm are routinely disturbed. Interpretative difficulties and disagreements give rise to unanswered questions and perceived inadequaciesFootnote ⁹⁴ and prompt traditions to reflect upon themselves and their activities.Footnote ⁹⁵ Whether occasioned by internal factors (e.g., ambiguities or inconsistencies in key texts) or external factors (e.g., encounters with a rival tradition or novel problematic situations), a tradition's success or failure will be measured (at least partially) by its ability to progressively address these difficulties by adding to, emending, reformulating, or abandoning some traditional beliefs and interpretations of texts, developing new forms of authority, and so on.Footnote ⁹⁶ A tradition that fails to meet these challenges can be said to fall into a “crisis,” that is, to be marked by increasing incoherence and resourcelessness in the face of its problems. Such a tradition is at risk of being “defeated” if it cannot overcome its crisis whether or not a more coherent and resourceful rival emerges that can successfully address its problems.Footnote ⁹⁷

Alternatively, a tradition may make progress confronting its challenges if it develops conceptual resources that at later stages enable it to meet several requirements; such progress will be assessed retrospectively and prospectively. Retrospectively, these conceptual innovations must begin at least to furnish a coherent solution to a previously intractable problem or problems and do so in several ways that preserve continuity with the shared beliefs in terms of which the tradition had been defined up to that point.Footnote ⁹⁸ First, they preserve whatever was valid from the previous stages of the tradition, as Aquinas did, for example, by preserving what was valid in the Aristotelian and Augustinian traditions even while transcending their limitations.Footnote ⁹⁹ Second, they appeal to the same standards of assessment (texts, practices, forms of experience, etc.) that have characterized the tradition up to the present. Appeal to other standards would mark a shift to a rival tradition.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Finally, they preserve narrative continuity by retelling the story of the tradition's past in a way not possible previously. Placing Aristotle's claim that correcting an error involves explaining it into his own narrative context,Footnote ¹⁰¹ MacIntyre argues that a mark of progress is that the new stage of the tradition makes the difficulties and problems of the previous stages intelligible in a way not previously possible. This constitutes a redescription of the nature of the problems and controversies, an account of the factors, past and present, which featured in their origin and persistence, and an analysis of why the earlier stage's conceptual resources were unable to resolve them and why the new resources can.Footnote ¹⁰²Prospectively, the new resources preserve continuity by providing a more adequate conception of the goal(s) of the tradition's practices and inquiries and the direction in which the tradition should proceed to achieve that goal or goals.Footnote ¹⁰³ This is not to say that these new resources will necessarily achieve a fully adequate conception of the tradition's goal, only that it will be more adequate than what has preceded it. A fully adequate conception that provides a single unified explanation of the tradition's subject matter may be currently unachievable.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

MacIntyre cites Plato's confrontation with his rival Sophist tradition in the Republic to illustrate a tradition making progress. Its dramatic narrative points the way to a solution of the epistemological crisis indicated by the apparently insoluble controversy between Socrates and the Sophists concerning the nature of justice described in its opening books. The allegory of the cave and the modification and extension of Socrates' dialectical strategy in the central books redescribe the impasse of the opening books, the origins of that impasse, and the reasons why the impasse was not resolved. They also suggest a resolution by refining Socrates' dialectical strategy in light of the metaphysical theory of Forms, a strategy that, preserving Socratic insights, indicates more adequately the goal of the tradition's inquiry: a fully adequate definition of the Form of justice in light of its relationship to the Form of the good and the educational and methodological requirements for achieving this goal. Once this redefinition is achieved, and it is clear that Plato did not think he had achieved it, the tradition's inquiry will be complete.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ The Republic's narrative continuity is consistent with considerable conceptual change.

A consideration of the Second Vatican Council's alleged dramatic development of the Roman Catholic tradition's teaching on religious liberty, one of the most sharply contested issues at the council, establishes the value of MacIntyre's analysis. The questions then (and now) concern whether it was a betrayal of that church's historical tradition or a reforming development of it. The heated debates and political maneuverings before and during the council sessions reflected the intensity with which partisans of opposing views approached the topic, and the depth of their disagreements,Footnote ¹⁰⁶ which are highlighted by the two very different initial draft proposals prepared for presentation to the council.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The so-called traditionalist draft, prepared under the supervision of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, essentially reiterates what it perceives to be classical Roman Catholic doctrine, particularly as it had been articulated by the popes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this view, the civil authority (or the state) is obliged to honor and serve God in the only way acceptable to God, namely, in the Roman Catholic Church.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Thus, in a predominately Roman Catholic society that church's worship should be publicly acknowledged and its moral teachings embodied in civil law.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Furthermore, the civil authority should exclude from public activity anything that would impede the Roman Catholic Church from achieving its eternal end.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Although no one should be coerced into accepting the Roman Catholic faith, the civil authority has the duty to bring about the conditions that will enable the faithful, particularly those who are less educated, to persevere in their faith. Thus it has the right, and perhaps the duty, to regulate the public worship of other religions and the public expression of their views.Footnote ¹¹¹ In certain circumstances, for example, to secure a greater good or prevent greater evils, the civil authority may have the right, even the duty, to exercise a prudent toleration toward other religions, thus imitating “the example of divine Providence which permits evils from which it draws greater goods.”Footnote ¹¹² In the less-than-ideal circumstances of a non-Roman Catholic society, the “civil Authority should concede civil liberties to all the forms of worship that are not opposed to natural religion.”Footnote ¹¹³

On the other hand, so-called progressives, led by, among others, Bishop Emile De Smedt and John Courtney Murray, SJ, situated their approach to the issue in what they perceived to be a course of doctrinal development that began with the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII and culminated with Pope John XXIII's Pacem in Terris.Footnote ¹¹⁴ In fact, Murray believed that the question of the development of doctrine was at the heart of the disagreement between the two parties.Footnote ¹¹⁵ This progressive understanding was that the experience of twentieth-century totalitarianism and the growth of political awareness had prodded the human community and the church into a greater awareness of the dignity of human life, the rights and freedoms associated with that dignity, the rights and responsibilities of conscience, the necessary limitations of the role of the state, and its duty to protect those rights and freedoms.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Furthermore, the exigencies of modern pluralism and the need for peaceful coexistence as well as sensitivities altered by the ecumenical movement had stimulated the church's reflection on this topic.Footnote ¹¹⁷ In light of these circumstances it became increasingly clear that the human freedom to profess and practice religious beliefs without outside interference, governmental or otherwise, was not a matter of toleration grounded in pragmatic considerations but one of human dignity and the human relationship with God and God's truth. These insights and demands led to a rereading and reinterpretation of traditional, and especially papal, thought following what De Smedt called the “Law of Continuity” and the “Law of Progress.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ To its critics De Smedt's “Law of Continuity” was a chimera and his “Law of Progress” a simple abandonment of the traditional teachings emphasized by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century popes.Footnote ¹¹⁹ As is well known, the DeSmedt-Murray view came to dominate and found expression, with some significant revisions, in the council's Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae).

This debate closely resembles the epistemological crises that MacIntyre claims may periodically disturb a tradition and, if left unresolved, can lead to its “defeat.” For example, Murray's description of the two views on the topic notes their diametrical opposition and the consequent fruitlessness of dialogue between them.Footnote ¹²⁰ Other commentators describe the debate in similar terms as being between “seemingly insoluble oppositions,”Footnote ¹²¹ or “diametrically opposed conceptions,”Footnote ¹²² and as reflecting “different philosophical a prioris.”Footnote ¹²³ The fact that an ad hoc commission appointed to reconcile the two draft proposals was unable to produce an internally consistent acceptable document highlights the systemic and fundamental nature of the disagreement between them.Footnote ¹²⁴ Although both sides appealed to the same tradition and traditional authorities, each read them so differently that it seemed impossible to bridge the hermeneutical gap between them.

Dignitatis Humanae attempted to resolve this disturbing conflict of opinions by endorsing, with qualifications designed to mitigate the concerns of the conservative minority, the progressive position, which Thiel identifies as a clear instance of dramatic development.Footnote ¹²⁵ John Noonan offers the most sweeping judgment in this regard. After a survey of theological and magisterial teaching authorizing the use of force to compel theological assent by heretics, he concludes that Dignitatis Humanae's rejection of such teaching “showed that development could mean a flat rejection of propositions once taught by the ordinary magisterium. Ottaviani, Ruffini, and Lefebvre did not make up the doctrines for which they fought. Not just the teaching of three nineteenth-century popes was rejected. The repudiated doctrine was the teaching of theologians, bishops, and popes going back to St. Augustine in the fourth century.”Footnote ¹²⁶

Although more than a few commentators support Noonan's interpretation,Footnote ¹²⁷ it appears to exemplify the “hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture” criticized by Pope Benedict and to be at odds with the interpretation of the declaration by its drafters and the Council Fathers, who, in increasing measure through successive versions, emphasized the continuity of Dignitatis Humanae with traditional teaching. For example, given the history of religious persecutions and wars, its brief and somewhat bland concession that “in the life of the People of God, as it has made its pilgrim way through the vicissitudes of human history, there have at times appeared ways of acting which were less in accord with the spirit of the gospel and even opposed to it”Footnote ¹²⁸ is couched between assertions of traditional continuity such as the following: “Throughout the ages, the Church has kept safe and handed on the doctrine received from the Master and from the apostles”; “the doctrine of the Church that no one is to be coerced into faith has always stood firm” (DH §12). The acknowledgment of novelty in its teaching (“in taking up this matter of religious freedom this sacred Synod intends to develop the doctrine of recent popes”) is carefully preceded and balanced by the assertion that “it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the one true religion and the one Church of Christ” (DH §1). The resulting picture of the church searching “into the sacred tradition and doctrine of the Church—the treasury out of which the Church continually brings forth new things that are in harmony with the things that are old” (DH §1) conforms to the idealized picture of tradition found in Dei Verbum (“Now that which was handed on by the apostles includes everything which contributes to the holiness of life, and the increase in faith of the People of God; and so the Church, in her teaching, life, and worship perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes” [DV §8]). It is unclear whether this prospective view of tradition, described and criticized by Thiel, is adequate to the historical facts either in general or in this particular case.Footnote ¹²⁹

What is clear is that although the document's supporters were anxious to assert its continuity with the tradition's past, they were not satisfied with their attempts to establish it. Although the historical argument intended to establish continuity had been one-half of the original draft prepared under De Smedt's supervision,Footnote ¹³⁰ it was subsequently omitted after the third draft, perhaps because it was unable to meet criticism from all quarters and found to be insufficiently persuasive.Footnote ¹³¹ As a result “the difficult and complex question of the historical evolution of the Church's teaching on religious freedom … was left to theologians.”Footnote ¹³²

Both Thiel and Noonan judge this example of a dramatic development proposed to resolve an epistemological crisis a success. To Noonan it represents “a deeper course of development reversing an earlier course of development,”Footnote ¹³³ and it follows from Thiel's argument and assessment that its rereading of the tradition yields a narrative continuity that is “more coherent, more truthful, and more universal.”Footnote ¹³⁴ Yet both must reply to the objection that the change is so dramatic and its connection to the tradition's past literal sense so tenuous that it cannot be coherently assimilated to the literal sense as a “development,” and to Tanner's argument that attempts to do so only reveal how porous and fragile the literal sense actually is.

While Thiel's proposed theory of dramatic development is designed to meet this theological challenge, it requires extension and development to meet Tanner's arguments and objections adequately. MacIntyre's theory of epistemological crises and their resolution may well provide help to do this.

Recall that, in Thiel's view, a proposed dramatic development is successful to the degree that it exhibits continuity via analogical coherence with the tradition's literal sense. MacIntyre's theory offers a set of interlocking heuristic clues for describing and establishing this coherence. We have seen that a successful resolution of an epistemological crisis will (1) propose a conceptual innovation or innovations that provide a coherent solution to the problem(s) that have proven to be intractable, and do so in a way that maintains continuity with the tradition's past by (2) appeal to the same standards of assessment and criteria of truth to which the tradition had previously appealed; (3) preserve prior valid core elements of the tradition; and (4) retell the story of the tradition's past in such a way that the steps (or missteps) that led to its current impasse become intelligible. Finally, (5) it will further the tradition's progress by formulating a more adequate conception of the goal of the inquiry and the steps needed to reach it.

The magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church had traditionally taught that the right or even perhaps the duty of a predominately Roman Catholic state to repress the public exercise of non-Catholic religions was founded on certain central theological truths: the objectivity of moral and religious truth, the duty of human beings and states to acknowledge and obey that truth, the consequent evil of moral and religious error, the role of the Roman Catholic Church as the authoritative guardian and interpreter of that truth, the importance of moral and religious truth to the common good, and the obligation of states to promote the common good and restrict evil. Such was the coherence of this view that any change in the traditional position was seen to threaten one or more of the central truths upon which it was founded. On the other hand, such a doctrine had placed the Roman Catholic Church at odds with a moral consensus about the inviolability of certain human rights that had emerged as a reaction to the totalitarian repression of religion and other areas of human life in the twentieth century. The awkward fact was that the Roman Catholic Church shared this moral consensus, harshly criticizing totalitarian repression and advocating human rights, especially insisting on the right to religious freedom. Although it is arguable that they were referring to their church's freedom in making their case, various popes, in addition to appealing to theological considerations, had appealed to general philosophical considerations—traditions of natural law—that might be applicable to the rights of other religious traditions as well.Footnote ¹³⁵ The Roman Catholic Church found itself in the position of arguing for a right for itself, and perhaps implicitly for others, that it traditionally wanted to deny those same others explicitly, seeming not only inconsistent but hypocritical. A solution to this doctrinal crisis, if possible, would involve finding a way to forgo the right of repression without abandoning all or at least some of the traditional beliefs upon which it had rested.

Preconciliar discussions, as well as conciliar debates, drew a number of innovative conceptual distinctions designed to break the impasse. For example, Bishop De Smedt's initial Relatio to the declaration, pursuing the thought of John XXIII, argued that drawing a distinction between teachings and institutions and between errors and persons erring provided a hermeneutical key for rereading the traditional documents that had condemned religious liberty. According to De Smedt, the traditional condemnation was based on its rejection of erroneous teachings (secularism, relativism, laicism, indifferentism) from which the right to religious freedom was allegedly derived. Now, however, authentic bases for religious freedom had been proposed; in fact, steps toward establishing those bases can be discerned in the writings of Popes Leo XIII, Pius XI, Pius XII, and John XXIII. Consequently, the erroneous teachings remain condemned, but the modern freedoms and the institutions derived from them can enjoy the approval of the church.Footnote ¹³⁶ Murray also proposed conceptual innovations designed to meet the same need, distinguishing between society and the state, moral and civil liberty, and the common good and public order.Footnote ¹³⁷ Society, the ensemble of social institutions and relationships, has a much broader reach than the state, which has a specific and limited social role designed to guarantee human rights and to ensure the order required for society to function. The state's concern is the public order, not the broader common good. Civil liberty, which is simply freedom from coercion by the state either to perform or to refrain from certain actions, does not eliminate moral and religious obligations to the truth. Murray insisted, with the tradition, that no one has a moral right to perform an action that is objectively evil.Footnote ¹³⁸

On the basis of these distinctions, Dignitatis Humanae proposes its solution to the crisis. The apparent reversal of a traditional belief can be coherent with previous tradition; the affirmation of religious freedom need not imply the affirmation of secularism, indifferentism, and so on. “Religious freedom…has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society. Therefore, it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine concerning the moral duties of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ” (DH §1, my emphasis).Footnote ¹³⁹ In light of this immunity, the state may only legitimately employ its coercive powers in the restraint of religious practices in order to preserve public order (described as public peace, respect for the rights of all, and the preservation of public morality), which is a basic part of, but not the whole of, the common good (§§4, 7).Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Beyond that, “for the rest, the usages of society are to be the usages of freedom in their full range. These require that the freedom of man be respected as far as possible, and curtailed only when and in so far as necessary” (§7). The Roman Catholic Church has always claimed, and continues to claim, this liberty for itself (§13). Now, in a departure from previous teaching, it claims it for other religious bodies as well (§4).Footnote ¹⁴¹

Dignitatis Humanae argues that its claims are thoroughly traditional, in effect that they meet criteria two through four of the five criteria listed above for the successful resolution of an epistemological crisis. Dignitatis Humanae appeals to the same norms—reason (DH §§2, 3); revelation, that is, scriptural testimony to the witness of Jesus and the Apostles (§§9–11); and the time-honored teachings of the church—which have governed the tradition from its inception (§9, esp. n. 27). They also embody teachings and values that have been central to the tradition throughout the ages, particularly those regarding human dignity, the necessary freedom from coercion of the act of faith that such dignity and the nature of faith itself demand (§§3, 9), and the freedom of the church to fulfill its spiritual mission (§13). The Council Fathers concede that the church has not always lived up to these core teachings and values, but insist that these are deviations from the norm, not the norm (§12). They do not address the arguments of Noonan and others about the degree to which the repression of heresy, sometimes violent, was theologically justified and embedded in the magisterial teaching and practice of the church and how the teachings of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popes were not simply a reaction to the intellectual and political currents of those centuries. As Tanner and Thiel would be quick to point out, the historical record of the Roman Catholic tradition is more complex and ambiguous than Dignitatis Humanae and its supporters allow, and its place in that tradition is more complex and ambiguous than they claim. That is why it was, and is, so controversial.

This leads us to perhaps the most distinctive of MacIntyre's criteria for a successful resolution of an epistemological crisis, the one most likely to supplement Thiel's proposal of a retrospective narrative reconfiguration of the tradition's literal sense exhibiting its coherence with the proposed dramatic development. As we have seen, Dignitatis Humanae asserted continuity but declined to construct the historical narrative to support it. The question is, can the suggested conceptual innovations provide a hermeneutical key to construct a narrative that explains why the crisis arose and how elements in the traditional narrative, perhaps overlooked or undervalued, can be seen in a new light and connected differently, indicating how the proposed dramatic development fits with a reconfigured literal sense?

De Smedt, Murray, and other supporters of Dignitatis Humanae attempted to provide a counternarrative of magisterial teaching on this subject. Roughly sketched, this counternarrative appeals to (1) certain proposals of Leo XIII that retrieved earlier traditional insights concerning a proper separation of church and state guaranteeing the appropriate autonomy for each and insisting on the dignity and integrity proper to each human being, (2) remarks of Pius XI on freedom of conscience and religion, and (3) the more systematic reflections of Pius XII on human dignity and rights, freedom of religion, and the limited role of the state. The most thorough statement of these reflections can be found in John XXIII's Pacem in Terris. In their view, this line of development culminates in Dignitatis Humanae.

As both hostile and friendly critics pointed out, however, even if this counternarrative contains elements of truth, it is not the narrative that the nineteenth- and twentieth-century magisterium would have written.Footnote ¹⁴² Murray concedes this when he describes the logic and circumstances behind Leo XIII's ongoing commitment to the confessional state, a commitment in tension with his other insights,Footnote ¹⁴³ and Pius XII's failure to draw the counternarrative's conclusions explicitly from his own premises.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ To put it in Thiel's terms, the proposed counternarrative did not reflect the tradition's literal sense; it is a dramatic development, a category, contributed by Thiel, which Murray, De Smedt, and Dignitatis Humanae lack.

Suppose for the moment, though, that Murray and his colleagues have successfully constructed a plausible and coherent counternarrative to the tradition's literal sense and that the literal sense's traditional narrative retains something of its coherence and plausibility, even if troubled by the appearance of its current epistemological crisis. The achievement of a plausible counternarrative still does not warrant the acceptance of the proposed dramatic development. After all, the construction of multiple coherent and plausible narratives and counternarratives could as well be construed as support for Tanner's thesis concerning the thin and systematically porous character of the literal sense and its subsequent inability to warrant the acceptance of one interpretative narrative over another. To warrant the acceptance of the dramatic development, its supporters would not only have to establish the plausibility of its reconfigured reading of the tradition but also establish its superiority to the customary reading offered by the accepted literal sense. Although Dignitatis Humanae and its supporters were reluctant to adopt such a polemical tone, such a critique is necessary to establish that the proposed dramatic development marks a step of progress.

At this point, MacIntyre's tools prove valuable in setting a framework for the debate. In its terms, the superiority of a proposed dramatic development to the previously accepted literal sense can be established if it meets the following conditions.

1. It establishes that the traditional literal sense's teaching (on religious liberty in this case) has been, and in all likelihood will continue to be, frustrated by inconsistent beliefs and commitments and that the proposed conceptual innovations can resolve those inconsistencies and frustrations.

2. It appeals to the same normative standards—in this case natural law, Scripture, and the teachings of the authoritative magisterium—that have traditionally governed the literal sense, and can do so in a way superior to the appeals that have been traditionally made by that sense. Such superiority would, in part, be established by meeting the next condition.

3. Its preservation of the tradition's core values is superior to that of the traditionally accepted literal sense. For example, supporters of Dignitatis Humanae might argue that it preserves the values that its opponents consider essential to the tradition, such as the objectivity of divinely revealed truth, the moral duties that human beings and societies have toward it, and the need for the church and the state to act in harmony so that human beings can achieve their spiritual and temporal goals, but does so in such a way that its richer interpretation of human dignity and rights, the necessary freedom from coercion of any sort in the act of faith, and the place of the imitation of Christ in fashioning the witness of discipleship maintain values and beliefs that are crucial to the tradition in a way that the previously accepted literal sense cannot.

4. It incorporates within itself an explanation of the origin and persistence of the alleged difficulties of the traditional narrative by proceeding systematically in several ways. It might argue that the traditional literal sense's failure to draw the distinctions that Murray and others pointed out resulted in its embodying incompatible assumptions and forced it inevitably into the epistemological crisis that emerged in the years preceding the council. Or, it might relativize the traditional literal sense's position by describing the circumstances in which it originated or that contributed to its persistence, and showing that once these circumstances were rendered obsolete by new conditions to which the church believed itself obliged to adapt, the church was unable both to maintain that traditional position and to discharge its obligation to adapt itself to the new conditions in which it found itself. These systematic strategies are the ones that Murray and De Smedt adopt to explain the persistence of the commitment to the confessional state and why that commitment is no longer necessary or feasible.Footnote ¹⁴⁵

5. The final condition is in MacIntyre's spirit, though it differs in detail. Genuine continuity in development should provide a more adequate conception of the goal(s) of the tradition's practices and inquiries and the direction in which the tradition should proceed to achieve them. Assuming that one of the goals of any tradition is a coherent presentation of its beliefs and commitments that can avoid or mitigate future epistemological crises, the proposed counternarrative's credibility will be increased to the degree that it is more supportive of, or at least more consistent with, approved changes occurring elsewhere in the tradition's literal sense. In this case, supporters of Dignitatis Humanae might argue that its proposed dramatic development supports the developing theological understanding taking place as the interpretation of faith and revelation becomes less intellectualist and more personalist, as witnessed by the history and evolution of the crucial document Dei Verbum,Footnote ¹⁴⁶ and as the appreciation of the spiritual and saving power of non-Catholic and non-Christian religions increases, as seen in Nostra Aetate and Unitatis Redintegratio.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Thus an appreciation of religious freedom is both an indispensable condition and a fruit of a more adequate understanding of the personal character of the act of faith and an ecumenically sensitive appreciation of the spiritual value of non-Catholic religions for both Roman Catholics and non-Catholics.

The debate may well continue over whether Dignitatis Humanae is a genuine example of dramatic development or whether dramatic development is a legitimate category for Roman Catholic theology. However, these conditions help to specify the sort of continuity that Thiel requires for a genuine exercise of the sense of dramatic development and the sort of plausible fit or coherence that Tanner requires to prevent a reversal of a tradition from turning it into a “completely amorphous mush.” Enrichment on this score will also clarify the issues at stake in the larger argument between the advocates of discontinuity and the advocates of reform concerning the proper interpretation of the place of the Second Vatican Council in the Roman Catholic tradition.