Juan José Tamayo criticizes with acidity John Paul II and Benedict XVI, especially the latter, accusing them of having "hijacked" the Second Vatican Council. His article, published in El País, has been widely echoed and cannot be ignored. The essay is also supported by the manifesto of the association of Theologians John XXIII, published by the same newspaper. Both texts set themselves up as doomsayers of the truth, in the face of the Great Church, parangonizing an expression pleasing to the patologians, or in the face of the Great Tradition, as the historians of theology say, although they are not the same thing.

It is indisputable that we are in a time of upheavals, provoked by condemnable facts, profusely aired by the media. The picture of the Church, now more than ever, sample that it is made up of sinners, whose sins are, at times, more evident. Herein lies the mystery and the miracle: that for two thousand years this same Church, "dark but beautiful" (as the Canticle says), composed of sinners, has been the way of salvation for sinners (which we all are, because no one is a saint until after death, if at all).

The discussion is not so much about this or that behavior (measures must be taken so that the denounced crimes are not repeated and so that the law is applied with all its rigor), but about the interpretation of Vatican II, as Tamayo has well understood.

John Paul II said that the reception of the Council was his great pastoral goal for the 21st century. Benedict XVI has also stressed that everything depends on its correct understanding. For this very reason, no one can arrogate to himself the exclusivity of its exegesis: no association or anyone in particular. It must be admitted that the whole Church, in communion with the Pope, has much to say. And not out of respect for the majorities, but because the Spirit manifests himself in the sensus fidelium, that is, in that intuition of the truth that resides in the faithful people, when it agrees with the Pope.