Pope Benedict's Interesting Off the Cuff Remarks On Vatican II

This is pretty interesting. . Read the whole thing at Pope Benedict, Off the Cuff
Holy Father Discusses Movements and Vatican II

Here is a part:
There was a surprise in store for pilgrims, who saw the Pope set aside his prepared text several times and speak freely in Italian.....

Today as well, some think that the history of the Church during the second millennium was of constant decline. Others perceive a decline ever since right after the time of the New Testament.
“But in reality, Opera Christi non deficiunt, sed proficient — Christ’s work does not regress, but advances. What would the Church be without the new spirituality of the Cistercians, of the Franciscans and Dominicans or without the spirituality of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, and so on?
“Today, too, it remains true: Opera Christi non deficiunt, sed proficient. It advances.
“St. Bonaventure teaches us the need for discernment — sometimes rigorous discernment — for clear realism, and for openness to the new charisms given by Christ, in the Holy Spirit, to his Church.
“Besides decline, there is another idea which is often repeated nowadays: that of pseudo-spiritual utopianism. We know that after the Second Vatican Council, some people were convinced that everything was totally new, that another Church had been born, that the pre-conciliar Church was over and that we had a totally different one now. It was anarchic utopianism.
“Thanks be to God, there were wise helmsmen guiding Peter’s boat — Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II — who have on the one hand defended the newness of the Council and at the same time the oneness and the continuity of the Church, which is always both a Church of sinners and a place of grace.”