Church History:  The Second Vatican Council

We possess neither riches nor earthly power, but we place our trust in the power of the Spirit.

Acts of the Apostles, quoted by Pope John XXIII in his opening address to the Second Vatican Council, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia (Mother Church Rejoices)

There are those who would argue that the Second Vatican Council was the most significant event for the Church in the last 50 years, 500 years, maybe even the last 1500 years. Yet for most Catholics today it is already slipping into the comfortable haze of history, recognized perhaps at a distance but certainly not a subject of constant reflection or great concern.

This strangely ambiguous status, at once momentous and disregarded, can in some ways be seen even in its origins. The Pope who took the name John, following twenty-two who had gone before him, was clearly expected to act as a short-term transitional figure following Pius XII.  Pius had been Pope throughout the Second World War and until 1958. No-one imagined John would become one of the best known popes in history and cause more change in the Catholic Church than perhaps any individual before him.

There were however signs from the beginning that change was in the air. John XXIII was the first pope in 90 years to step outside the territory of the Vatican State (which is less than one fifth of a square mile in size). On Christmas Day a couple of months after his election, he visited a hospital and then a prison. The consternation caused by this innovation was nothing to that aroused by his announcement a month later that he was calling a Council of the Church. In some quarters the response was stunned silence and in others bemusement. Why did the Church need a Council? The previous Council (in 1870) was regarded by some as a triumph of Catholic self-assurance, and by others as perhaps closer to a disaster – but no one had any thought there would be another any time soon, and still less that John XXIII would insist on it. 

So there were two huge questions following the announcement:  what exactly was the purpose of the council, and how on earth was it to be organized. The latter issue ranged from the prosaic, who would be invited and where would they stay, to the profound, what materials needed to be prepared and who would do that. Some of John’s statements regarding the former were almost as baffling as his decision to call a Council in the first place. In his initial proclamation he stated:

Ideas of renewal (i.e. change) and involvement of non-Catholics in Church affairs, at any level, were considered by many as close to heresy.

The context for the Council

Such attitudes may seem quaint today, but that reflects the extent of the change since the 1960s. It has become commonplace to recognize the 60s as a decade of great transitions in society at large. It’s less widely noted that the Catholic Church has also changed dramatically since the 1950s.

From the Middle Ages until the mid twentieth century, the sense of the Church as idealized and unchanging was very strong. It was reflected also in an extreme view of hierarchal authority. A draft document for the First Vatican Council (1870) stated: “the Church is an unequal society in which God has ordained that some will command, and others obey. The latter are the laity, the former the clergy.” While that Council did not eventually express itself in quite these terms, such sentiments were not considered extreme at the time.

The Catholic Church of the 19th Century, which had grown from the roots of the counter-reformation and the Council of Trent (1545-1563), was often defined by opposition – with stances that seem literally incomprehensible today. High on the list of things it opposed were the separation of church and state, public schools, and freedom of the press. As the Church moved into the 20th Century it faced the onslaught of consumerism, materialism, scientific atheism, and the collapse of class as a organizing principle in society. By the 1950s the Church saw itself as a bulwark against all that was wrong in the “modern” world, and in the century of two horrendous World Wars there was clearly much that was wrong^[1]. But the primary characteristic of the Church in the first half of the 20^th Century was not its engagement with the world in opposition to what it saw as evil, but its isolation – in the image of a “perfect society”, a fortress set apart from the world around.

At an individual level the emphasis was very much on personal faith with a strong framework of ritual and rules. The family was considered of supreme importance (which was also a clear social reality given the lack of any other social support structure). Catholic lay societies were important and there was a sense of fellowship that we might regard as tribal in character – you identified with those on the inside and rejected those on the outside, regardless of other considerations. Such tribalism did not disappear quickly and has remained a scourge in places such as Northern Ireland even to today^[2].

God was seen as distant and for the most part disapproving. Much preaching seemed founded on a basis of fear and used the language of judgment. Such characteristics were in no way peculiar to the Catholic Church but persisted longer and more strongly here than in many other traditions.

Into this environment came a Pope who styled himself “the servant of the servants of God” and talked of “throwing open the windows of the Church so that we can see out and the people can see in”. 

Despite the static and hierarchical perspective of those at the Vatican center, the Pope’s initiative was not totally without foundation in the wider life of the Church. Catholic theologians had been heavily involved in the development of Biblical scholarship since the late 19th Century, with the cautious but clear approval of John’s predecessor, Pius XII.^[3] It is significant that this activity was highly ecumenical in nature, since that provided the basis for many personal relationships which came to play an important role in the Council. There was also a desire in many clerical circles, at least outside Rome, for an updating of the liturgy. If anything it was the conservatism of the laity that held liturgical renewal back. This was the first topic tackled by the Council when it eventually met and was greatly eased by much of the ground already having been prepared. 

In the social sphere the recognition of a need for involvement in the affairs of the world and in particular the true breadth of the Christian commitment to the poor, beyond a narrow view of missionary activity, was less generally accepted but by no means absent. The Catholic Worker Movement started in the 1930s in the US, the Worker Priest movement in France in the 1940s, and the strong orientation of many religious orders (notably the Franciscans and Dominicans, as befitted their founding principles) was towards issues that we would now describe as justice and peace. 

There were also theologians of enormous intellect, including Karl Rahner, John Courtney Murray, Yves Congar, Edward Schillebeeckx, and Gerard Phillips, who had been working for years to develop an understanding of Christian faith that was relevant and comprehensible in a modern world. They were frequently opposed, and sometimes silenced, by the authorities in the Vatican, but their work and influence had an overwhelming impact (sometimes literally) on the Council. One might say that the gift of so many great theologians at one time was the clearest sign of the Holy Spirit alive in the life of the Church at that moment.

An Ecumenical Pastoral Council

We should now return to the question of the purpose of the Council. That needs to be answered in two ways: what was the purpose of any Council (there were 20 previously that are recognized by the Catholic Church), and what specifically was John’s purpose for this Council (and how might it differ from previous ones).

Councils were very important and relatively frequent in the early history of the church. These included the Councils^[4] of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), and Chalcedon (451) which between them defined the fundamentals of Christianity that are still accepted by the vast majority of Christian today. Councils continued through the Middle Ages to the Council of Trent in 1545 which was interrupted by war a number of times and eventually concluded in 1563.  There was then a gap until the Vatican Council held in 1870.

The term Ecumenical Council is a technical one and does not imply involving other Churches. In this context ecumenical means world-wide, or general, as distinct from regional. Given the difficulties of travel during the early ages of the Church there were many more local Councils than Ecumenical ones. However Ecumenical Councils were understood as having unique authority to pronounce on the teaching of the church. Unfortunately this tended to make them sources of division rather than unity and thus different traditions, particularly Orthodox (Eastern) and Roman Catholic (Western), acknowledge the legitimacy of different councils. Protestant Churches generally recognize the earliest ones but for the most part reject the whole idea of Councils as a basis for Church government.

Thus the meaning of an Ecumenical Council was well understood amongst those that cared about such things. Much less clear was John’s insistence that this was to be a “pastoral” Council. Councils by definition were concerned with doctrine – hence the description sometimes used of “Dogmatic Council”. Councils were called when there was a threat to dogma i.e. the church’s position in regard of a heresy needed to be defined or clarified. In the mind of the Catholic Church at large in the 1960’s there was no such threat. Protestantism was condemned, in every sense, and thus irrelevant, and Orthodoxy was simply irrelevant – after all no one was interested in resuscitating debates that had been resolved, or at least remained dormant, for a thousand years.

John was not interested in countering heresy or having a Council in a spirit of opposition, to anything: Nowadays however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations.^[5] He saw a need for renewal, aggiornamento as he called it in Italian – meaning “bringing up to date”. Thus the purpose of the Council was to support people in their faith as it related to their lives and experience in the world in which they lived, not targeting to exclude those who were held to have an incorrect understanding of the one true faith. This was a truly new idea, beyond the understanding of any previous Council.

The Proceedings of the Council

Before the Council started there was of course much jockeying for position and control. The Curia, the official offices and officers of the Church in the Vatican, expected, quite reasonably, that if there was to be a Council then they should make the arrangements, set the agenda, moderate the discussion, and prepare the decrees for approval – after all that was their responsibility. John was prepared to go part way with them but realized that it was essential to involve other parties in the process. So while the Curia were assigned responsibility as Prefects (heads) of the various preparatory Commissions with responsibility for each part of the agenda, the Secretaries were drawn from outside the Curia. The Pope also insisted that rather than have the Commissions predetermine the questions to be addressed, all the bishops who would be in attendance should be asked their opinions on the topics to be covered. This in itself was problematic, first because the sheer scale of the response and the task of organizing it was unprecedented – the index alone comprised 1500 pages, but more so because the bishops were not used to be asked for their opinion on anything. The model was that bishops were told and then followed orders. It took some while to adjust to the fact that the Pope, at least, was asking something more from them than blind obedience.

This independence of spirit came to the fore in the first session of the Council, in October 1962. Rather than simply accepting the proposals for the memberships of the ongoing Commissions that would guide the proceedings of the Council, the assembly decided they would elect the members. The tension between the Curia and the bishops was to remain throughout the Council, sometimes with the advantage one way and sometimes the other, sometimes breaking into considerable acrimony. Pope John, while often siding with the bishops, was also conscious that for the Council, and indeed the Church, to function it was essential that the Curia retain a significant role. When he died at the end of the first session, his successor Paul VI was considered somewhat more favorable to the Curia, but still maintained this balance, with considerable skill.

Those invited to the Council included all bishops, as well as many superiors of male religious orders. No women were present at the start but some had been admitted by the conclusion. 2,540 Council Fathers, as they were called, took part in the opening session, making it the largest gathering in any council in church history, and by far the most geographically diverse. One indicator of its enduring importance is that the attendees included Cardinal Montini (later Pope Paul VI), Bishop Albino Luciani (Pope John Paul I), Bishop Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II), and a 35-year-old Father Joseph Ratzinger, present as a theological consultant, who more than forty years after would become Pope Benedict XVI.

In his inaugural address Pope John set out again his singular vision for the Council: 

The rejection of a notion of unchanging perfection, maintained in isolation from the challenge of the world around, could not have been clearer.

Although the general expectation was that the Council would meet, conclude its business, and then disperse, in fact it held four sessions during the Fall of each year from 1962 to 1965. Through the rest of the year the Commissions met to review and collate the work of the bishops and to prepare for the next period. Formal sessions were held in the basilica of St. Peter. Speeches were limited to ten minutes, which was a relief for many Bishops since the requirement that they be in Latin was a challenge to their linguistic skills. Much of the work of the council was carried out in a variety of Commission meetings (which could be held in other languages), as well as many informal meetings and social contacts outside of the Council proper. In all of this, the influence of the theologians invited to act as advisors to the Council cannot be over-estimated. Although the Bishops were the formal participants, the work of the Council was very much a joint endeavor. In the final session there was involvement of laymen in preparation of the draft decrees – an indication of how far the Council had traveled from its secretive, clerical, start.

By the end, there was perhaps a certain weariness on the part of the bishops, theologians, and all the many others involved, from the participants from other Churches (who numbered nearly 100 by the closing session on December 8, 1965), to the members of the press corps who remained in an ambivalent relationship with a process which was still learning that secrecy was not necessarily to its advantage. 

The complexity of the proceedings and the ebb and flow of debate can be a topic of fascination for students of politics, government, human behavior, and more. However we will now focus on the outcomes of the Council rather than the process by which they were arrived at.

The results of the Council

The council produced 16 formal documents from its four years of work, traditionally known by the first words of their Latin text:

• Four Constitutions: 
  • Dei Verbum  (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation) 
  • Lumen Gentium  (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church) 
  • Gaudium et Spes  (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) 
  • Sacrosanctum Concilium  (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy) 
• Nine Decrees:
  • Ad Gentes  (Mission Activity) 
  • Apostolicam Actuositatem  (Lay People) 
  • Christus Dominus  (Bishops in the Church) 
  • Inter Mirifica  (Social Communication) 
  • Optatam Totius  (Priestly Training) 
  • Orientalium Ecclesiarum  (Eastern Churches) 
  • Perfectæ Caritatis  (Renewal of Religious Life) 
  • Presbyterorum Ordinis  (Life of Priests) 
  • Unitatis Redintegratio  (Ecumenism) 
• Three Declarations:
  • Dignitatis Humanæ  (Religious Freedom) 
  • Gravissimum Educationis  (Christian Education) 
  • Nostra Ætate  (Relations with Non-Christians) 

These documents remain central to an understanding of the Catholic Church as it has evolved into the 21st Century. However like most documents produced by committees on behalf of representative bodies, they are often not an easy read, even when translated from Latin. We can better perhaps summarize the achievements of the Council under certain major headings.

The renewal of the liturgy

While the most obvious feature was the transition from a Mass said in Latin to one in the vernacular, the deeper shift was towards active participation by all present and a recognition of the centrality of Scripture within the liturgy. That these characteristics are now taken for granted is an indication of how readily the Church as a whole moved on, or (as some would note) moved back, to an understanding that the Liturgy required the involvement of all present and could not be regarded as an event in which some were actors and others spectators. This realization was linked to a changing understanding of the nature of the Church itself – an even more profound shift which only gradually became apparent as the deliberations of the Council progressed.

A renewed understanding of the nature of the Church 

The Council introduced new language in discussing the Church, or again it might be said reintroduced old language. Either way, terms such “the People of God” and “Pilgrim Church” were not the currency of the Church as it had developed up to the Council. This shift in language reflected a move away from hierarchical models, but perhaps more importantly signaled a self-understanding that was humble and recognized the inadequacy and all too frequent failures of men and women in their attempt to know, love, and serve God – whether those people were viewed as individuals or as the community called the Church.

A renewed understanding of the relationship of the Church to the “world”

A changed understanding of self leads to a change in relationships with others, and of course these two feed from one another. The Church’s new self-understanding was reflected in the adoption of dialog rather than defensiveness; openness to modernity, to learn rather than oppose; of charity to others rather than condemnation; and of solidarity with the poor in their current existence, rather than simply preaching their reward in a life to come. This change has been played out in many ways since the Council, ranging from a willingness to engage in dialog with other faiths and other traditions within Christianity, to symbolic but still necessary recognition of past errors such as lifting the condemnation of the Jewish people and the condemnation of Galileo. 

Renewed understanding of the relationship to other Churches

The statement by St Cyprian of Carthage in 330 that “outside the church there is no salvation” had by the time of the Counter-Reformation become a foundational principle of a fortress church and the basis for a triumphalism on behalf of Catholics which was difficult to reconcile with the words and attitudes of Jesus. While the Council continued to insist that the Catholic Church was the one institution that remained in unbroken succession to the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, it adopted a markedly different tone in its description of other Churches. At the closing of the Council, Pope Paul and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras issued a joint expression of regret for the actions that had led to the division between the western and eastern churches one thousand years before. While resolving these and many other church divisions remains a complex theological endeavor, and proceeds more slowly than many committed to ecumenism would like, the change in tone and behavior was and is very clear.  It was strikingly illustrated by Pope John Paul II in a Lenten ceremony at St Peter’s in 2000 when he said “We forgive and we ask forgiveness. We are asking pardon for the divisions among Christians, for the use of violence that some have committed in the service of truth, and for attitudes of mistrust and hostility assumed towards followers of other religions.” This was a fruit of the Council.

Assessing the Council

It is clear now, as it was at the time, that the Council was not perfect. It demonstrated the very human character of the Church, while still reflecting its striving to live out the Gospel under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Neither was it complete, despite the scope of its deliberations. Some topics were not addressed at all, notably sexuality and human reproduction, and have remained as a challenge for the Church since. Some issues which were addressed have not been followed through as the Council Fathers perhaps hoped and intended.

While there are many who have argued the case for the Council as a force for continuity or as a force for change, a reflection of the conservatism of the Church or a shift to radicalism, this dispute is ultimately sterile. The renewal sought by Pope John was not a quick make-over as beloved by reality TV, but a call to reengage with the never-ending process of conversion, the attempt to love a God beyond our capability to love except as He enables us to do so.

In the end, the biggest change made by Vatican II was perhaps not in anything that it pronounced but in the way it was said. In this the Council lived up most fully to Pope John’s aspiration that it be pastoral. All previous Councils had expressed themselves in the language of law and commands, or more specifically the converse – anathemas which condemned those holding false opinions. This form of expression, known as legislative-judicial, was replaced by a very different way of speaking, a style that can be called poetic-rhetorical. These descriptions sound forbidding but the difference is very obvious in practice: classic examples of poetic-rhetorical style are Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and Churchill’s speeches during the Second World War. The parallel to the way the early Church Fathers and Jesus himself spoke is clear – and we may now also more readily acknowledge Jesus’ stern condemnation of legalistic approaches to our relationship with our Father. 

That change of style was perhaps the greatest renewal in the sense the Church had of itself, and should cause us to reflect that style and substance are not as easily divided as we often imagine. For the average Catholic, the renewal of Church life has been worked out week by week ever since, in style and substance, with the inevitable difficulties, failures, and triumphs that Jesus foretold for his followers.

Pope Benedict reflected on the 40th anniversary of Vatican II in his Christmas address to the Curia in December 2005. He noted that “in vast areas of the Church the implementation of the Council has been somewhat difficult” but the Council should be interpreted in terms of “reform”, not “discontinuity and rupture” – in line with Pope John’s opening statement (described above).  

Benedict continued:  “… the program that Pope John XXIII proposed was extremely demanding, indeed, just as the synthesis of fidelity and dynamic is demanding. However, wherever this interpretation guided the implementation of the Council, new life developed and new fruit ripened. … Today, we see that although the good seed developed slowly, it is nonetheless growing; and our deep gratitude for the work done by the Council is likewise growing.”

Questions for Consideration

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Footnotes (Click footnote number to return to text.)

[1] In facing fascism and communism the Church was an active force, opposing both from a conservative and reactionary position as promoting false religious ideas.

As early as 1937 Pope Pius XI wrote condemning Nazism (in German in ‘Mit brennender Sorge’ which was read secretly in German churches) and atheistic Communism in ‘Divini Redemptoris’:

[2] We should note that these forces are not unique to the Catholic or even Christian traditions. The bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia was based on the old schism between Eastern and Western Christianity, overlaid by the ancient feud between Christians and Muslims. Within the Muslin tradition there is current division at least as ferocious as that between Christians during the Reformation. We can point to poisonous relationships between Hindus and Muslims, or even Buddhists and Muslims in current events.

[3] in Divino Afflante Spiritu, published in 1943

[4] Councils are always referenced by the place in which they met.

[5] Gaudet Mater Ecclesia