Second Vatican Council

• 1. Introduction

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  The Second Vatican Council, the 21st ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, began as a surprise announced to a room of cardinals. On the 25th of January 1959, Pope John XXIII spoke in the chapter hall of the Benedictine monastery attached to the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. He said he would convene a diocesan synod for Rome and a council for the universal Church. The cardinals present had no warning. Less than three months had passed since his election in October 1958.

  The council that grew from that announcement met each autumn from 1962 to 1965 in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. Its sessions lasted 8 and 12 weeks. By the end it had produced 16 documents, and some of them changed how Mass is celebrated.

  Why would a newly elected pope risk a council? Which theologians had been waiting for one after years of silence, and who hoped it would confirm the old order instead? How do thousands of bishops, with experts and guests from other churches, agree on anything? And why are people still arguing over what the council meant?

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• 2. Theologians Under Suspicion

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  In the 1930s, a group of theologians decided that the dominant style of theology was dry and uninspiring. That style rested on neo-scholasticism and papal encyclicals. They called their answer ressourcement, meaning a return to the sources. They wanted theology built directly on the Bible and the Church Fathers, and they also opened new topics. These included the history of theology, the theology of work, ecumenism, the theology of the laity, and the theology of "earthly realities".

  Rome noticed. Their new style came to be called la nouvelle théologie, the new theology. In 1950, Pope Pius XII published the encyclical Humani generis, aimed at "some false opinions threatening to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine". He named no one. Even so, it was widely understood to target the new theology, along with developments in ecumenism and Bible studies.

  The consequences were personal. Some works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books, and some authors were forbidden to teach or publish. Henri de Lubac and Yves Congar suffered most. Neither could teach or publish until Pius XII died in 1958. By the early 1960s, Karl Rahner and the young Hans Küng were also under suspicion.

  A gentler current had begun earlier. Pius XII's 1943 encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu encouraged new Bible translations from the original languages. It also inspired an effort to get ordinary Catholics reading Scripture as a source of spiritual life. That effort reached only very limited circles, and by 1960 it was still progressing slowly.

  There was also business left over from the First Vatican Council of 1869-70. The Italian Army entered Rome at the end of Italian unification and cut that council short. Only the theology of the papacy and the relationship of faith and reason had been completed. Bishops and the laity were left unaddressed, and meanwhile the world's bishops faced political, social, economic, and technological change. Paul VI would later describe the new council as the continuation and completion of the first, in his 1964 encyclical letter Ecclesiam Suam.

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• 3. Rival Hopes, Seventy Schemas

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  Domenico Tardini, the Cardinal Secretary of State, was the first to hear the idea, only ten days before the announcement. He gave it enthusiastic support. John XXIII later said the idea had come to him in a flash during that conversation. Yet two of the most traditional cardinals, Ernesto Ruffini and Alfredo Ottaviani, had proposed a council to Pius XII back in 1948. They put the idea before John XXIII on the 27th of October 1958.

  Over the next three years, the pope described what he expected in something like three concentric circles. For the Catholic Church, he spoke of a "new Pentecost" and a "new Springtime", to be reached through aggiornamento, the updating of practices and a restatement of belief that would connect with modern people. For the wider Christian family, he hoped for progress toward reunion. For the whole human family, he hoped the council would help with war, hunger, and underdevelopment.

  Two lighter sayings are attributed to him. One speaks of opening the windows of the Church to let in fresh air, though it has been repeated so often that it is very hard to verify. The other speaks of shaking off the imperial dust gathered on the throne of St. Peter. Its source is Cardinal Léger of Montréal, as reported by Congar.

  Inside the Curia, the shock soon turned to opportunity. Officials saw a chance to crown the Church's long resistance to Protestantism, the Enlightenment, and the other perceived errors of the modern world. They also saw a chance to give the teachings of recent popes the stamp of conciliar infallibility, provided the pope could be talked out of aggiornamento. Theologians and bishops who had been silenced and humiliated in the 1940s and 1950s saw something else. For them it was a "divine surprise", a chance to turn the Church away from a fortress-like defensiveness. The council was formally summoned by the apostolic constitution Humanae Salutis on the 25th of December 1961.

  Preparation ran from the summer of 1959 to the autumn of 1962. On the 17th of May 1959, the pope appointed an Antepreparatory Commission to consult the Catholic world. It wrote to the bishops, the Catholic universities and faculties of theology, and the departments of the Curia. By the following summer, 2,049 individuals and institutions had replied with 9,438 individual vota, or wishes. Some asked for new dogmatic definitions or condemnations of errors. Others asked for reform.

  On the 5th of June 1960, ten Preparatory Commissions were created, with 871 bishops and experts appointed to them. Each matched a department of the Curia and was chaired by the cardinal who headed it. Together with two secretariats, they drafted 70 schemas, the texts the bishops would debate. Because most of these bodies were predominantly traditional, the drafts showed only modest signs of updating. The theology commission, dominated by officials of the Holy Office, showed none. The exceptions were the liturgy commission and the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity.

  The Central Preparatory Commission, a body of 108 members from 57 countries that included two thirds of the cardinals, had to approve everything. It eliminated 22 schemas, mainly because a planned revision of the 1917 Code of Canon Law could handle them. Others were merged. Seventy became 22, and those were the texts the bishops would carry into St. Peter's.

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• 4. The Hall and Its Cast

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  About 2,900 men were entitled to be Council Fathers, with the right to speak and vote. That group was all the bishops of the world plus the heads of the main religious orders of men. Some 500 could not attend, because of poor health, old age, or Communist authorities who would not let them travel. Those present represented 79 countries: 38% from Europe, 31% from the Americas, 20% from Asia and Oceania, and 10% from Africa. At the First Vatican Council a century earlier, there had been 737 Council Fathers, mostly European. About 250 bishops at Vatican II were native-born Asians and Africans. At Vatican I there were none.

  The daily sittings, called General Congregations, ran in St. Peter's every morning until 12:30, Monday to Saturday except Thursday. Tiered stands had been built on both sides of the central nave. Average attendance was about 2,200. In the first session a council of 10 cardinals took turns presiding. Later, four Moderators took over that task.

  Every vote required a two-thirds majority. Each schema first faced a vote on whether it was acceptable in principle. If so, debate moved on to chapters and paragraphs, and bishops could submit amendments. A final vote came next, and some days later the pope promulgated the document in a public session. An unwritten rule held that official teaching needed something near 90% approval. That produced many compromises and formulations broad enough for both sides of an issue.

  Secrecy was required in the General Congregations, and it broke down quickly. Much of the daily debate leaked to the press. The pope did not attend these sittings but followed them on closed-circuit television. He was present at the 10 public sessions, which were open to press and television. They marked the opening day of each of the four periods, five days of promulgation, and the final day.

  Much detailed work happened in 10 commissions, each shadowing a department of the Curia. Each had 25 Council Fathers, 16 elected by the council and 9 appointed by the pope. They met in afternoons or evenings, and the debate was spontaneous and sometimes heated. Latin was not the only language used. Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani presided over the Commission on the Doctrine of Faith and Morals. Cardinal Augustin Bea led the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, which had the powers of a commission.

  Official experts, called periti, advised the commissions and helped rewrite the documents. At first there were 224 of them, and eventually 480. They could attend the General Congregations but not speak. Congar and de Lubac, silenced for years, were appointed, along with Rahner and Küng. The appointments vindicated their ideas and gave them a platform.

  Each bishop could also bring a private theological adviser. Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger, and Küng first arrived this way and were later made official periti. Edward Schillebeeckx stayed a private peritus for the whole council.

  An important innovation was the invitation to Orthodox and Protestant Churches to send observers. In the end 21 denominations or bodies, such as the World Council of Churches, were represented. Observers sat in on the general assemblies and mingled with the bishops during breaks. Paul VI welcomed them "with gratitude and respect", and their presence helped break down centuries of mistrust.

  Lay people arrived as auditors from the Second Session. The first were all men. From the third session, 22 women were also appointed, including Pilar Bellosillo of Spain, Rosemary Goldie of Australia, and Marie-Louise Monnet of France.

  Within the first weeks, two tendencies were plain: supporters of aggiornamento and those who were not. Among the prominent traditional bishops were Ottaviani, secretary of the Holy Office, and Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, archbishop of Genoa. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre led the Coetus Internationalis Patrum, the bloc of traditional Council Fathers. The reformers included Patriarch Maximos IV Sayegh of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne, and Cardinal Leo Jozef Suenens of Mechelen-Brussels. Among their theologians was John Courtney Murray, an official peritus who would draft much of a declaration on religious freedom.

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• 5. A Rocky First Session

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  On the 11th of October 1962, John XXIII opened the council with his address Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, "Mother Church Rejoices". Three days later the bishops began electing the members of the 10 conciliar commissions, with candidates drawn from national groups. That election ran from the 13th to the 16th of October.

  The first schema discussed, on the 22nd of October, concerned the liturgy. Debate lasted 15 days. The schema was then accepted in principle and sent back to its commission.

  The schema on revelation went worse for its authors. After six days of debate, the vote on the 20th of November found 62% of participants voting to reject it. That fell short of the two-thirds majority needed. The next day, Pope John announced a special joint commission, drawn from the traditional and renewal tendencies, to revise it.

  On the 27th of November, the schema on modern means of communication was accepted in principle. It was returned to the commission to be cut down to essential principles. The Council Fathers also ordered the schema on unity with the Eastern Orthodox merged with two other documents on Christian unity.

  Discussion of the schema on the Church began on the 1st of December, with a week left in the session. On the day before the scheduled vote on acceptance in principle, John appointed a special commission to rewrite the schemas more closely in line with his opening address. Only 5 of the 22 schemas had been reviewed when the first period ended on the 8th of December.

  The liturgy schema, first on the floor, would be the first finished. Its final text won approval on the 22nd of November 1963 by 2,159 votes to 19.

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• 6. Liturgy and Scripture

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  Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, set out principles for the most extensive revision of the liturgy in the Church's history. It declared that liturgy is a communal celebration and not merely the priest's action. It also held that Christ is present not only under the appearance of bread and wine, but in the Word of God, the priest, and the gathered assembly. In its words, "full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else". It called the liturgy "the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed" and "the font from which all her power flows".

  Language was the most visible question. The constitution asked for simpler rites so they could be better understood. It permitted a limited use of the vernacular but said the use of Latin was to be preserved. It also asked for more varied readings from Scripture and allowed a degree of local adaptation.

  For the Mass, the document described the Eucharist as both the sacrifice of Christ's body and blood and a paschal banquet. Practices that had disappeared were to be restored under certain conditions: the prayer of the faithful, concelebration, and communion under both kinds for the laity. The homily was to be a commentary on the Scripture readings.

  The sacraments received similar treatment. The catechumenate was to be restored for adult baptism. The sacrament then called extreme unction became anointing of the sick, for those seriously ill and not only those on the point of death. Funerals were to focus on the hope of resurrection, not on mourning. Local cultural practices could enter some celebrations, such as weddings.

  The later chapters turned to prayer, calendar, and music. The divine office, now called the Liturgy of the Hours, was to be shortened for those in active ministry. Sunday and the mysteries of Christ would take priority over saints' days. Gregorian chant and organ music were to be preserved, congregational singing encouraged, and other instruments allowed.

  Dei Verbum, "The Word of God", carried the same return to sources into doctrine. It stated that "The study of the sacred page is, as it were, the soul of sacred theology". Joseph Ratzinger argued that earlier theology manuals confused propositions about revelation with the content of revelation itself. He said they reflected "the peculiar characteristics of post-Reformation polemic". The council, in his telling and others', ended the Counter-Reformation and reached back to biblical theology.

  Much of the theology on the development of doctrine drew on John Henry Newman. That influence led Paul VI to call Vatican II "Newman's Council". The liturgical reforms kept unfolding after the council closed. On the 15th of August 1972, Paul issued the motu proprio Ministeria Quaedam, which suppressed the minor orders and replaced them with the instituted ministries of lector and acolyte. These ministries could be assigned to lay Christians.

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• 7. The Church Facing the World

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  Lumen gentium, "Light of the Nations", shaped many of the documents that followed it. Paul VI called its universal call to holiness "the most characteristic and ultimate purpose of the teachings of the Council". Its fortieth paragraph says all the faithful, of whatever rank or status, are called to "the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity". Belgian Bishop Emil de Smedt contrasted a hierarchical model marked by "clericalism, legalism, and triumphalism" with the picture of a people of God filled with the Spirit's gifts. Pope Francis has since spoken of a turn away from clericalism toward a new age of the laity.

  A related idea was collegiality, the belief that bishops share governance of the universal Church with the pope. The decree Christus Dominus proposed a council of bishops from around the world to assist him, later called the Synod of Bishops. It also wanted the Roman Curia reorganized and made more international. It asked for national or regional episcopal conferences, an institution that did not exist in every country at the time.

  Gaudium et spes, "Joy and Hope", described the Church as the "pilgrim people of God", in touch with the "signs of the times". Its final vote on the 6th of December 1965 was 2,111 to 251, the largest opposition to any constitution. It condemned mass destruction in war and said parents should ultimately judge the size of their own family.

  Other decrees applied the same vision to particular groups. Presbyterorum ordinis called priests "brothers among brothers" with the laity. The decree on religious life asked orders to simplify the religious habit. Optatam totius allowed the bishops of each country to devise a program of priestly formation suited to local needs, subject to Rome's approval. Orientalium Ecclesiarum declared that Eastern Catholic Churches, with their own customs such as married priests, were particular Churches with the same rights as the much larger Latin Church.

  Unitatis redintegratio opened with a sentence that reversed earlier policy: "The restoration of unity among all Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council." The text said the ecumenical movement was fostered by the Holy Spirit. It said Catholics must accept their share of blame for disunity and ask forgiveness. Ecumenism required what it called a "change of heart". It passed by 2,054 votes to 64.

  Nostra aetate, "In our time", was the shortest of the sixteen documents. John XXIII wanted the council to condemn antisemitism. To avoid stirring up trouble in the Middle East, the passage on the Jews was placed inside a broader document on non-Christian religions. It said the Church "rejects nothing of what is holy and true in these religions". It also said neither all Jews then, nor any Jew today, can be blamed for the death of Jesus. The declaration passed 1,763 to 250.

  Dignitatis humanae, authored largely by Murray, was the most striking new position. Traditional teaching had held that "error has no rights", so only Catholics were entitled to freedom of belief. Pope John's Pacem in terris of April 1963, the first papal document to support freedom of religion, listed it among basic human rights. The declaration argued that belief cannot be coerced, because the Church wants beliefs to be genuine. Eleven percent of the Council Fathers rejected it, since it implied earlier teaching had been wrong. Scripture scholar John L. McKenzie remarked: "The Church can survive the disorder of development better than she can stand the living death of organized immobility."

  Not every document was strong. The decree on the media, Inter mirifica, is "generally considered to be one of the weakest of the Council", and 503 Fathers voted against its final text. Most simply preferred to approve it and move on to more important matters. The declaration on Christian education drew a similar verdict, with some observers calling it "probably the most inferior document produced by the Council".

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• 8. Letter, Spirit, and Legacy

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  Five weeks after the council closed, on the 12th of January 1966, Paul VI addressed a question many were asking. Vatican II had issued no dogmatic definitions or anathemas, so did its teaching bind anyone? He answered that the council had avoided proclaiming dogmas with the note of infallibility. Nevertheless, it had endowed its teachings with the authority of the supreme ordinary magisterium, which "must be accepted docilely and sincerely by all the faithful". The 1983 Code of Canon Law later asked for a religious submission of intellect and will to such teaching.

  The Society of Saint Pius X is the largest traditionalist group rejecting the council. It recognizes the pope's authority but denies the validity of Vatican II. In 1988 it came into conflict with John Paul II over the Écône consecrations of bishops, which brought canonical sanctions that the society itself rejected. Smaller groups went further. Sedevacantists hold that the Holy See has been vacant since the death of Pius XII. The Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen and the Institute Mater Boni Consilii are among the most notable.

  Nostra aetate, promulgated on the 28th of October 1965, draws particular fire. Traditionalists say its view that other faiths may lead to salvation contradicts the principle Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus and Leo XIII's encyclical Satis cognitum. The Society of Saint Pius X also says it undermines Matthew 28:19.

  The phrase "the spirit of Vatican II" names a different dispute. It means promoting the council's intentions beyond a literal reading of its documents. Journalist Michael Novak, who covered the council, felt that spirit sometimes soared far beyond the real decisions. In some minds, history was divided into "only two periods, pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II". Church historian John W. O'Malley took a more hopeful view of the council's provisions on local cultures. Of its openness to different peoples, he asked: "Where would they lead?"

  Pope Benedict XVI named the Paschal Mystery as the council's most essential message, the center of Christian life and the Christian year. The changes that followed include Mass facing the congregation as well as facing the East. Many faithful praised them, but they still divide traditionalist Catholics.

  Four men present at the opening session later became pope. Cardinal Giovanni Montini succeeded John XXIII as Paul VI. Bishop Albino Luciani became John Paul I, and Bishop Karol Wojtyła became John Paul II. Father Joseph Ratzinger, a theological consultant, became Benedict XVI.

  Several participants have also been recognized as saints or blesseds. John XXIII's feast day falls on the 11th of October, the day the council opened. Pope Francis canonized him and John Paul II in 2014, and Paul VI in 2018. John Paul I was beatified in 2022, Álvaro del Portillo in 2014, and Enrique Angelelli in 2019. Causes remain open for council fathers Fulton J. Sheen, Terence Cooke, and Gregorio Pietro Agagianian. One cause belongs to an observer instead of a bishop: Frank Duff.

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