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International Theological Commission
Memory and reconciliation

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  • 4. Historical Judgement and Theological Judgement
    • 4.2. Historical Investigation and Theological Evaluation
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4.2. Historical Investigation and Theological Evaluation

If these operations are present in every hermeneutic act, they must also be part of the interpretative process within which historical judgement and theological judgement come to be integrated. This requires, in the first place, that in this type of interpretation, maximum attention be given to the elements of differentiation and extraneousness between past and present. In particular, when one intends to judge the possible wrongs of the past, it must be kept in mind that the historical periods are different, that the sociological and cultural times within which the Church acts are different, and so, the paradigms and judgements proper to one society and to one era might be applied erroneously in the evaluation of other periods of history, producing many misunderstandings. Persons, institutions, and their respective competencies are different; ways of thinking and conditioning are different. Therefore, responsibility for what was said and done has to be precisely identified, taking into account the fact that the Church’s request for forgiveness commits the single theological subject of the Church in the variety of ways and levels in which she is represented by individual persons and in the enormous diversity of historical and geographical situations. Generalization must be avoided. Any possible statement today must be situated in the contemporary context and undertaken by the appropriate subject (universal Church, Bishops of a country, particular Churches, etc.).

Second, the correlation of historical judgement and theological judgement must take into account the fact that, for the interpretation of the faith, the bond between past and present is not motivated only by the current interest and by the common belonging of every human being to history and its expressive mediations, but is based also on the unifying action of the Spirit of God and on the permanent identity of the constitutive principle of the communion of the faithful, which is revelation. The Church - by virtue of the communion produced in her by the Spirit of Christ in time and space – cannot fail to recognize herself in her supernatural aspect, present and operative in all times, as a subject in a certain way unique, called to correspond to the gift of God in different forms and situations through the choices of her children, despite all of the deficiencies that may have characterized them. Communion in the one Holy Spirit also establishes a communion of “saints” in a diachronic sense, by virtue of which the baptized of today feel connected to the baptized of yesterday and - as they benefit from their merits and are nourished by their witness of holiness - so likewise they feel the obligation to assume any current burden from their faults, after having discerned these by attentive historical and theological study.

Thanks to this objective and transcendent foundation of the communion of the People of God in its various historical situations, interpretation done by believers recognizes in the Church’s past a very particular significance for the present day. The encounter with the past, produced in the act of interpretation, can have particular value for the present, and be rich in a “performativeefficaciousness that cannot always be calculated beforehand. Of course, the powerful unity between the hermeneutic horizon and the Church as interpreting agent exposes the theological vision to the risk of yielding to apologetic or tendentious readings. It is here that the hermeneutic exercise aimed at understanding past events and statements and at evaluating the correctness of their interpretation for today is more necessary than ever. For this reason, the reading undertaken by believers will avail itself of all possible contributions by the historical sciences and interpretative methods. The exercise of historical hermeneutics should not, however, prevent the evaluation of faith from questioning the texts according to its own distinctive vision, thus making past and present interact in the conscience of the one fundamental subject involved in these texts, the Church. This guards against all historicism that would relativize the weight of past wrongs and make history justify everything. As John Paul II observes, “an accurate historical judgement cannot prescind from careful study of the cultural conditioning of the times... Yet the consideration of mitigating factors does not exonerate the Church from the obligation to express profound regret for the weaknesses of so many of her sons and daughters...”67 The Church is “not afraid of the truth that emerges from history and is ready to acknowledge mistakes wherever they have been identified, especially when they involve the respect that is owed to individuals and communities. She is inclined to mistrust generalizations that excuse or condemn various historical periods. She entrusts the investigation of the past to patient, honest, scholarly reconstruction, free from confessional or ideological prejudices, regarding both the accusations brought against her and the wrongs she has suffered.”68 The examples offered in the following chapter may furnish a concrete demonstration.




67 TMA, 35.



68 John Paul II, General Audience Discourse of September 1, 1999; in LOsservatore Romano, Eng. ed., September 8, 1999, 7.






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