I would say that for the most part, the problem with authentic reform or renewal today is not so much from the ultra-traditionalists, although they can be quite vocal and well organized, but from the progressives who have ruled and continue to rule the day.
So I would agree with the Holy Father and Cardinal Koch on this one:
ZENIT: In regard to Vatican Council II, the discussion is very timely today on the concept of the “hermeneutics of continuity.” Is it not the case that the two “political” extremes of the Church, that is traditionalists and progressives, are both committing the same error, in the sense that they consider the Council a “break”?
Cardinal Koch: Yes, but precisely for this reason the Pope calls his interpretation of the Council not “hermeneutics of continuity” but “hermeneutics of reform.” It is a question of renewal in continuity. This is the difference: the progressives profess a hermeneutics of discontinuity and break. The traditionalists profess a hermeneutics of pure continuity: only that which is already noticeable in the Tradition can be Catholic doctrine, therefore, practically, there cannot be a renewal. Both see the Council equally as a break, even if in a very different way. The Holy Father has questioned this understanding of the conciliar hermeneutics of the break and proposed the hermeneutics of reform, which unites continuity and renewal. The Holy Father presented this hermeneutics already in his first Christmas address in 2005 and thus gave precise indications on how to interpret the Council and make it fruitful for the future.
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The trouble we seem to have with the word "reform" is that it too easily calls to mind principals similar to those of the Reformation (reform-ation), principals that see only corruption in the doctrines and disciplines handed on from previous generations, but purity in the faith possessed by the first generations. For this reason, the '60's generation of Catholics understood the '60's Council to be a rejection of what the Church had become, rather than a mandate to engage the modern world in new and creative ways for the sake of spreading the Gospel.
The truth is that the Church did need reform, not because what she was and did up to then was bad, but because there was much in the modern world that was bad and in need of a fresh injection of the Gospel.
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