Pope Benedict XVI has just made a dramatic choice, one which will certainly be numbered among the major decisions of his pontificate.

He has decided, in effect, to reopen formal debate on the Second Vatican Council and its teaching.

The new dialogue, which will take place in Rome between the leaders of the Fraternity of St. Pius X (the followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre) and Vatican experts will take place on Oct 26 at the Vatican, Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said.

For the Pope’s critics, the decision is unwise, as it seems likely to open a large can of worms.

These critics have argued that the lid on this can should be kept tightly closed. In essence, they have advised the Pope not to “dignify” the Society’s objections to certain conciliar teachings — or to the interpretations of those teachings — by granting such a formal dialogue. But Pope Benedict has decided to let the dialogue begin.

For the Pope’s supporters, the decision is an occasion for praise. Why?

Because the Pope, almost five years into his pontificate, has finally decided to face head on and “bring into the open” the doctrinal problems “smoldering” (to cite his own words of 45 years ago) just beneath the surface of Church life throughout the entire post-conciliar period (1965 to the present, or 44 years).

So, with this decision to engage in a dialogue about the Council, a very significant phase of Pope Benedict’s pontificate begins.

Because this dialogue will inevitably come to grips, more than a generation after the close of the Council, with profoundly important doctrinal issues — issues which seriously divided the Council Fathers at the time of the Council, and which eventually, and tragically, led:

(1) to a formal schism in the Church between those whom we may call “traditionalists” and “progressives” (though the two terms are woefully inadequate) when in 1988 the bishops of the Society of St Pius X (the Lefebvrists) were excommunicated, and

(2) to widespread confusion among the Catholic faithful, to many exaggerated and erroneous interpretations of Christian and Catholic identity, and even to the formal or de facto abandonment of the Catholic faith by many.

With Pope Benedict’s decision, the Second Vatican Council is, in a certain sense, as it were, being called in “for further questioning” — for an new examination and cross-examination, like a witness in a trial, to determine what the Council actually said, and intended.

And this means that theology, the strong point of this “theologian-Pope” (his career before he was consecrated a bishop was as a professor of theology in Germany), is about to take center stage in Pope Benedict’s pontificate.

And the goal in all this will be to arrive at clarity and a common understanding of the faith which will allow the reunion of the Lefbevrists with Rome, and so end of the only formal schism since Vatican II.

But we will not be able to observe this crucial theological debate.

It it will take place behind closed doors. — By Robert Moynihan, Inside the Vatican