Il comunismo al Vaticano II: una battaglia della minoranza conciliare, Annales Historiae Conciliorum, 50 (2020), 129-146 Ebook PDF

This contribution explores an issue that the II Vatican Council discussed in the decree’s
draft (schema) approved as the pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes. The Author’s aim is
to offer a sort of status quaestionis of the events that sometimes raised biting controversies
about the «second silence of Church», thus defined from Alain Besançon in comparison
with Pio XII’s «silences» on Nazism. Back in 1983 Besançon, the well-known ex-Marxist
historian, found that the word «communism» oddly disappeared from the Church teachings
twenty years since then. This topic, that still deserves discussion, characterized many
nuances of council’s minority. Every now and again we still wonder the reasons, the contribution
wants to clarify, behind the unexpressed disapproval of communism from Vatican
II.