ABSTRACT
The documents of Vatican II make it perfectly clear that a number of different styles of historical consciousness were operative in the Council, styles not always easily reconcilable with one another. Moreover, the Council failed to take adequate account of what is most characteristic of contemporary historical thinking, such as the emphasis on discontinuity with the past and the subjectivism resulting from an awareness of the historical conditioning of the historian himself. Thus the relationship of past to present was never resolved. In fact, it was
in this question of the idea of reform, the relationship of past to present is crucial. In the absence of a consistent understanding of it, the Council’s fundamental injunction to remain faithful to the authentic past while adjusting to contemporary needs was transformed from a practical norm for reform into an explosive problematic.
