These days we are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council. It was meeting of the Pope with the bishops of the whole world, which has marked the Church of our time, and not only the Church, but also the Christian culture of the East and the West, of the North and the South. It was an important event that was widely reported in the international press, as well as on the radio and on the incipient television.

The Council, as is well known, approved some very rich documents, which I am not going to summarize here. Suffice it to say that the Council's constitutions implied a change in the Church's understanding of herself and a different way of looking at the world. Everything pointed to a quick and easy reception of the Council (in view of the interest shown by the media and the enthusiasm of the bishops and experts who took part in it); however, the facts have shown the opposite. As soon as the Council was closed, the perplexities and theological diatribes began. Why?

I have heard many explanations, some of them suggestive and interesting; however, the most profound and intelligent clarification that I have read so far comes from Pope Benedict XVI, presented in December 2005, in a Christmas speech . As everyone knows, his authority in this topic comes from having been one of the most influential experts in the ecumenical assembly, especially in two documents: the one dealing with divine revelation and the one dedicated to the Church, two capital pieces of the conciliar theological construction.

How does the pope clarify the slow and tricky reception of the council? To refer to this complex question, he has coined some syntagms, used for the first time in the aforementioned speech, and now in common use by theologians. The pontiff speaks of two hermeneutics, to which we should add a third, also alluded to by him. On the one hand, the "hermeneutic or interpretation of discontinuity" (which affirms a total hiatus between before and after the Council); on the other hand, the "hermeneutic of immobility" (which thinks that the Council was pure make-up, because there was nothing to change); and finally, the approach he considers correct, which he calls the "hermeneutic of reform", that is, of renewal in continuity, because the Council modified some things, to resolve the difficult relations of the Church with the modern age.

Here, then, are the three great issues that the council faced and resolved, which involve real novelty: the relationship of the Church with the modern State; the relationship with the natural sciences and historical criticism; and the relationship with Judaism.