De la “esencia” de la Iglesia a su “identidad”. El cambio de paradigma eclesiológico en el Concilio Vaticano II

Abstract

The II Vatican Council can be understood, in its intention, in its process and its results, as the Church´s attempt to affirm itself under a new historical situation, as an effort to assert its identity against the background of radical social changes in Europe and the world. In his opening speech of the second session of the Council, Paul VI declared the first goal of the council as “the self-understanding of the Church.” John XXIII expressed the intuition that guided him with a view to reconcile the conciliar project with the programmatic expression of aggiornamento. According to what he felt, the Church was “yesterday” and could not reach out to the world of “today” as its contemporary, being at the same height. It could not be a useful interlocutor for the man of today.