Reception and Implementation of Vatican II: Comparisons to Nicea

"The School of Bologna remained faithful to the Council-Pentecost archetype and sees in John XXIII the unheeded prophet of a new era in the history of the Church.  Benedict XVI today, in contrast, is the most renowned representative of those who, in view of the self-destructive reality of the post-conciliar period, changed their judgment on the council over the years, proposing that it be interpreted in the wake of tradition.After living through the council event and the long years of the post-conciliarpost-conciliar period as a protagonist, Joseph Ratzinger, having ascended to the papal throne with the name Benedict XVI, applied the image of the Council of Nicaea once again to Vatican II, but in a very different key.  In the above-cited address on December 22, 2005, the newly-elected pope confirmed that the reception of the council had undeniably been a difficult process, and then mentioned in this connection the image that St. Basil gives for the Church after the council in 325: he compares it to a naval battle being waged in the dark of night during a raging storm, describing "the cry of the combatants encountering one another in dispute;... the inarticulate screams, the unintelligible noises, rising from the ceaseless agitations."The metaphor that Benedict XVI applies to the post-conciliarpost-conciliar Church, forty years after the conclusion of the council, is therefore that of a naval battle, in the darkness, on a stormy sea.  But already twenty years after the close of the conciliar proceedings, in his book-length interview, The Ratzinger Report, then-Cardinal Ratzinger considered it "incontestable" that the last twenty years had been "decidedly unfavorable for the Catholic Church."[...]It should be noted that between the crisis situation following the Council of Nicaea and the one in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council there is a fundamental difference.  The crisis after Nicaea was not started as a result of a hermeneutical conflict over the canons of the council in 325, but in an open reaction against those decrees.  Faced with this reactionary movement, the Emperor Constantine modified his policy toward Arianism, which led to an expansion of the crisis.  The conflict was between the supporters of the Council of Nicaea and its radical and moderate opponents, whereas the meaning of the Nicene Creed was never called into question."-- Roberto de Mattei, The Second Vatican Council (an unwritten story), from the Introduction