While terminology such as “hermeneutics of rupture” vs. “hermeneutics of continuity” have captured much of the interpretive debate among ecclesiologists, among older moral theologians an analogue might be the over-used binomial of physicalism vs. personalism, with a turn to the person supposedly being one of the major achievements of Vatican II.  While a revisionist rendition of the old French bromide about the truth of generalizations might allow some veracity to this claim, ultimately I find it not entirely persuasive, as it leaves us with a tug-of-war that forces a taking of sides and then leads more to exhaustion and stalemate rather than any genuine progress.

Instead I would propose that what Vatican II continued (but did not initiate!) was the ongoing unfolding of the triple role of the parakletos (Paraclete) outlined by Jesus in the John’s Gospel, as Advocate and Spirit of Truth (John 14:16-17), Teacher and Reminder (John 14:26) and Progressive Revealer of those things the Community of Disciples could not yet bear (John 16: 7-15).  In short, of necessity both a hermeneutics of continuity as well as rupture.

In this line I propose borrowing a key methodological insight from the models typology first articulated by H. Richard Niebuhr in his 1951 seminal Christ and Culture and popularized in the Catholic world by Avery Dulles in his Models of the Church (1974) and Models of Revelation (1983).  What the combatants in the tug-of-war usually forget is that neither side has a total monopoly on the full splendor of the truth.  As I have discussed in greater length in my A Morally Complex World, both personalism and physicalism models—both useful to a point to be sure, but ultimately each is also incomplete, and in need of the other.

Only God can grasp the whole of reality at once, and so the rest of us made in God’s image must rely on models in our moral navigation.  Dominant models become paradigms (such as physicalism and personalism) if they are more successful than their competitors in aiding this navigation, though they still will have a number of uncharted aspects that can lead the Barque of Peter into troubling waters.

Models and paradigms are grounded in what cultural anthropologists have termed “fundamental values” and “root paradigms.”  Taken together, these express deeply-held cultural assumptions about the world as a whole, and in particular about human nature and concomitant appropriate moral behavior.  Differing views on these may help to explain not only any number of ethical debates, including the troubling, perennial issue of odium theologicum.  I believe these concepts essentially function in the same way as Karl Rahner’s term, “global pre-scientific convictions,” that easily get “hineingeschmuggelt” [literally “smuggled”]) into argumentation—and often largely unawares by those making the arguments themselves.

As Thomas Kuhn argued in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions published at the beginning of Vatican II, well-established paradigms do not shift easily or without considerable Sturm und Drang, and the ecclesial history of the last half-century gives ample evidence to this claim.  Paradigm theory then may furnish a helpful lens to view some of the principal theological tensions since the close of the Council.  For example, the ecclesial paradigms in play during the pontificates both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI saw the Church itself as the best bulwark of “truth” in a modern age severely disturbed, in their eyes, by the scourge of secularism with its infections of relativism, nihilism, gender ideologies, etc., and they proposed antidotes to these serious maladies documents such as Fides et Ratio, Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium vitae, Dominus Jesus to name but a few.

A different paradigm seems operative in the current pontificate, as it seems to me that Pope Francis is focusing less on the Church as an institution and more on its foundational document and mission statement, namely the Gospel itself.  This paradigm shift comes through in his metaphor of the Church as a missionary field hospital populated by many deeply wounded souls that stand in need the healing of the Gospel through the ministrations of health care workers not afraid to go out to them. 

Neither paradigm absolutely excludes the other, and both have clear need of each other.  However, the perceived differences between them accounts for both the strong support and considerable resistance the Pope himself has experienced, as well as acrimony in clear evidence surrounding both last year’s Extraordinary Synod and this October’s regular Synod on the Family.

Using the interpretive framework of cultural fundamental values and root paradigms may provide a more irenic methodology for a bridge-building analysis to overcome some of the conflicts that impede the spread of the Gospel.