Interpreting the Documents of Vatican II Integrally
Interpreting the Documents of Vatican II Integrally

Summary/Abstract: Commentators on the sixteen documents from the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) regularly understand the meaning of those texts to derive merely from the intentions of their authors., those bishops and experts who drafted and revised the documents for the council fathers (intentio auctoris). The texts mean what the authors meant. This is to ignore the meaning that derives from readers (intentio legentis) and the ongoing history of the text itself (intentio textus ipsius). Literary, philosophical, biblical, and legal studies illustrate how the quest for meaning takes us beyond the author of a text to recognize that the integral meaning of any text is also shaped by the history of its interpretation and readers.

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