Pure and Integral

 The core question at hand between the three types of Catholic hermeneutics mentioned by Eduardo Echeverria seems to be at the level of balancing doctrinal continuity with historical contingency and with its effect on language.

This question was probably the one that most deeply affected the Council's proceedings, perhaps was even the main reason for it to be proposed by Pope John XXIII.  

What instead is necessary today is that the whole of Christian doctrine, with no part of it lost, be received in our times by all with a new fervor, in serenity and peace, in that traditional and precise conceptuality and expression which is especially displayed in the acts of the Councils of Trent and Vatican I. As all sincere promoters of Christian, Catholic, and apostolic faith strongly desire, what is needed is that this doctrine be more fully and more profoundly known and that minds be more fully imbued and formed by it. What is needed is that this certain and unchangeable doctrine, to which loyal submission is due, be investigated and presented in the way demanded by our times.

For the deposit of faith, the truths contained in our venerable doctrine, are one thing; the fashion in which they are expressed, but with the same meaning and the same judgement, is another thing. This way of speaking will require a great deal of work and, it may be, much patience: types of presentation must be introduced which are more in accord with a teaching authority which is primarily pastoral in character.

The operative premise (emphasis above is mine) is that substance can be distinguished from presentation.   This is obviously somewhat true on the face of it -- but becomes a very vexed question in the details.    This seems to be at the core of the Catholic disputations today.   

 Since the confusion mainly comes from academic circles--- most people, even scholars, speak as if they acknowledge a truth that can, however, be conveyed in different ways and with varying degrees of success -- the new theories often trickle down to ordinary talk and behavior in a disorienting and destructive way.  You see this on the internet, which often appears like the child's game of Telephone, but not solely on the internet.  It's a human thing.  

The question of hermeneutics -- of interpretation of meaning, of definition of meaning -- is not just an ecclesial question.    And it is not new; but no doubt our plurality of viewpoints and their relative irreconciliability have made it into an inescapable part of modern civic life.  

The Magisterium has not really spoken definitely about the specifics as yet.    Josef Ratzinger was probably the magisterial figure who spoke most about it in post-conciliar days-- first as Prefect of the CDF and then as Pope Benedict XVI.   Most of his words were intended as correctives to obvious logical and doctrinal errors and overreaches.   Pope Francis alluded to the divisions several times but did not seem to treat them systematically as far as I've yet seen.   

Pope John XXIII brought the question to the foreground, even before the Council, but probably more prophetically than intentionally.  His intention was evangelical. ... that is clear from his opening address linked above.  He had a robust (and essentially justified) faith in the Holy Spirit's gifts as they worked in the Church as a whole.   He thought that language was partially obscuring the truth written in all hearts and that it was the Church's mission to work past that.   In many ways this is nothing other than the kerygma.    But in intellectual circles the very notion of unchanging truth let alone proper means of expressing it had come radically into question.   The Church became participant in the confusion and so far is still embroiled.  

So far as the Magisterium has expressed a direction in hermeneutics, it has been Pope John XXIII's.  He in his turn was paraphrasing Vincent de Lerins.   Here is what Echeverria says:

This distinction is concisely expressed in John XXIII’s distinction between “substance and expression.”  The Lérinian legacy is, arguably, based on the distinction between truth and its historically conditioned formulations, between form and content, between truth content and context—in sum, between propositions and sentences—...

 Focusing on the distinction between propositions and sentences, which implies that the truths of faith are distinct from their linguistic expression, we may say that different sentences used to make assertions may express the same proposition, but when someone uses the proposition to assert something he takes to be true, he is judging that proposition to be true. 

.....The subordinate clause in this passage is part of a larger passage from the First Vatican Council’s Dei Filius, which passage is itself taken from the Commonitórium primum 23.3, of Vincent of Lérins: “Therefore, let there be growth and abundant progress in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, in each and all, in individuals and in the whole Church, at all times and in the progress of ages, but only with the proper limits, i.e., within the same dogma, the same meaning, the same judgment.”

Vincent’s crucial point here is about invariance of meaning and, hence, about unchanging truth; it is about, as John XXIII put it, the Church’s being able “to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion, which throughout twenty centuries, notwithstanding difficulties and contrasts, has become the common patrimony of men.” 

How much of meaning depends on reception?  How does understanding change according to context?   How much is lost when language is changed or made more accessible?  What is gained?   

In what ways is truth constrained by language?  How do you preserve the essential part of the truth so that it is comprehensible to humans divided by time and place and culture?   

This again is a bit of a mess, and I may change the order of some of the paragraphs.