Sacred tradition is alive and dynamic, not static

I just read this interview with Bernard Fellay, the head of the schismatic traditionalist group known as the SSPX.  Pope Benedict XVI is contemplating restoring communion between himself and the SSPX.  Fellay claims that the Holy Father will not require the complete acceptance of Vatican II as a precondition for the restoration of ecclesial communion. On a strictly-theoretical level, I have no theological problem with Rome abandoning that precondition, as there is no theological basis for demanding that any Catholic completely accept everything the Council taught. Practically speaking, however, Vatican II remains an indispensable touchstone for the Church in the modern world. Consequently, even if readmitted into the Church, the SSPX would remain far outside the mainstream, and few bishops would give them permission to minister in their dioceses (see can. 297).

Fellay also restates the SSPX's myopic vision of how to interpret Vatican II:

What agrees with Tradition, we accept; what is doubtful, we understand as Tradition has always taught it; what is opposed, we reject.

This approach is dead-on-arrival, as it precludes a priori any possibility of the development of the Church's living tradition. What a waste of time and energy the Council must have been! Indeed, I believe this is what Fellay thinks. His hermeneutic of sameness leaves no room for growth and learning. Why would one even bother to read its documents on such a view? Tradition is not just the static--dead, really--repetition of answers from the past; it is the Church's ongoing conversation with Christ in the Holy Spirit. The correct view is taught by Vatican II:

This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke 2:19,51), through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her. (Dei verbum 8)

In other words, the tradition of the Church is constantly developing and growing through [1] theology, [2] lived experience, and [3] the magisterium. Even a cursory study of church history will confirm that this is the case, for the theology of the New Testament is not the same as the theology of the Fathers, which is not the same as the theology of the medieval scholastics, which is not the same as the theology of the Council of Trent, which is not the same as the theology of the modern popes, and so on and so forth. There is no static "oral tradition" that judges all. In extreme cases, certain opinions have been rejected by the magisterium, but even then the magisterium makes a new theological judgment for a present controversy, informed by the past. Such judgments themselves become part of the living tradition and, in turn, inform future theological thinking. This growth is not strictly linear, for, as Fr. Joseph Ratzinger wrote in his commentary on this text, there are also found in the tradition some "distorting" traditions that need to be corrected by Scripture. (But that's a topic for another day.) It should come as no surprise, then, that Fellay's anemic view of tradition is at odds with the pope's, who accepts both the continuity and the discontinuity in Vatican II.

UPDATE: Incidentally, this reunion never came to pass, for it seems Benedict XVI did in fact still require the acceptance of Vatican II. When it seemed it would at last come to pass under the more flexible Pope Francis, it again fell apart. Given recent controversies, reunion now seems very far off.