The Bologna School is a historical school of ecclesiastical history, specializing in the history of the Second Vatican Council, and largely supportive of the so-called hermeneutic of rupture, creating a pre-Conciliar and post-Conciliar period. The leading minds of this historical school have been Alberto Melloni and Giuseppe Alberigo.
Among the critics of the School have been Vatican chief historian Walter Brandmüller, Italian historian Roberto de Mattei, and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI). In contrast, they assert that the Second Vatican Council was a hermeneutic of continuity with the past.
The Catholic commentator, Dr. Jeff Mirus, sums up the official church position explaining that the hermeneutic of continuity means "...that any new development in Catholic teaching, Catholic devotion, Catholic discipline, and Catholic worship must be understood as a development which corroborates and confirms what has come before, even as it proposes a new and deeper insight, a more precise formulation, or an important emphasis that has either been overlooked or has special relevance to our current situation."