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Q. What was the Second Vatican Council?
A. It was a General Council summoned by Pope John XXIII on January 25th, 1959. It met between 1962 and 1965 in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Q. What is a General Council?
A. A General Council is a meeting of all the bishops of the Church to discuss matters of doctrine, worship and discipline. The decisions of a General Council have been considered binding on the whole Church.
Q. Have there been other general Councils?
A. It is generally considered that the first such Council was that recounted in Acts, chapter 15 but there have been, subsequently a great many such councils. The first of these is that of Nicaea in 325 which was called by the Emperor Constantine to deal with the Arian controversy.
The first seven Councils of Constantinople in 381, Ephesus in 431, Chalcedon in 451, Constantinople II in 553, Constantinople III in 68-1 and Nicaea II in 787 are all recognised by both the Roman church and the great churches of the East. However, after the break between the Roman church and the Eastern churches, those Councils called by the Pope, which gathered bishops from only the Western church have not been recognised by the Eastern churches since they are seen to be not truly Ecumenical, that is gathering all the bishops of the Church.
The Western church recognises a further fourteen Councils, the most famous of which is the Council of Trent from 1545 to 1563, which undertook a thoroughgoing reform of the Western Church though it failed to meet with and dialogue with the Protestant reformers which had been one of its original intentions. In fact, it established the Western Church in the form which many of us remember and fixed the great gulf that would exist between the churches of the Reformation and the Catholic Church until the twentieth century.
After Trent, there was no further Council until the first Vatican Council from 1869 to 1870. If Trent was the Council of the Counter-Reformation, Vatican I was the Council of the Counter-Revolution taking up a position against the tide of atheism and irreligion which it perceived as having been unleashed by the French Revolution. The best known of its decisions is the definition of Papal Infallibility which was not something to which all the bishops subscribed, many in fact, going home before voting on the dogma took place. However, once promulgated, this doctrine affected the whole of the Roman Catholic Church in a way which has been called 'creeping infallibility. The whole of our church became obsessed with authority and not only the pope, but bishops, priests and even teachers all became invested with this mysterious quality that meant one should never question or criticise. The infallible truth trickled down from above and left no room for questioning or discussion. Many of us will recognise this as the church we knew in our youth.
Q. How did the Second Vatican Council come about?
A. It seemed, after the First Vatican council, that further Councils would not be needed since in the very centralised Church that the Council had created, all decisions would come from the Pope through his ambassadors as the bishops tended to be.
At the death of Pope Pius XII an era came to an end and since Pius had been on the papal throne for so long it was very difficult to envisage who might succeed him in the awesome position in which Vatican I had placed him. The Cardinals, meeting to elect a successor, decided, very obviously, to appoint a 'stopgap' pope who would not rock the boat. Accordingly, Giuseppe Roncalli was elected, already elderly and not seen as a progressive pope by those who didn't know the real man behind the ecclesiastical front.
However, Roncalli, who became John XXIII. was a man of great depth and on January 25th., 1959, he called a General Council of the Roman Church to the surprise and shock of all the Vatican establishment who could see no reason for such a Council since the Pope could decide everything himself. John said that he was inspired to call this Council and attributed this inspiration to the working of the Holy Spirit.
Q. What was special about the Second Vatican Council?
A. The Council was called by Pope John, not because of particular heresies or to define particular doctrines, like many previous Councils to present the Gospel in a way that people of the Twentieth Century could understand. The basic teachings of the Church were to undergo an 'aggiornamento' which means, roughly, 'a bringing up to date'.
Because the calling of the Council came as a complete surprise to the various branches of the Vatican Curia, they found themselves unprepared and so there was some delay while a plan for the Council was devised and documents prepared for the assembled bishops to discuss and to vote upon. It took best part of four years for all to be ready but during that time, Pope John had set up the Secretariat for Unity under Cardinal Bea and invitations were sent for observers from all the main churches to come to the Council. For the first time Roman Catholics attended the World Council of churches as observers. Furthermore, because of various statements from the Pope expectations were running high in the Christian world.
Besides the bishops, some two hundred experts were also invited to the Council. Though, at first, the majority of these theologians were conservative, by the end of the Council the influence of the non-Italian experts or 'periti' as they were called had grown to over four hundred. Similarly the Council was also attended by observers from all the main churches except the Baptists and Pentecostals whose numbers grew from some forty at the start to over one hundred at the conclusion.
Q. What happened when the Council eventually met?
A. When the Council eventually met in October 1962, the bishops were presented with a series of draft documents to discuss and to vote upon, it was seen very rapidly that these were not what the Bishops needed or wanted. These drafts represented a conservative view of Catholic teaching and had been prepared by conservative theologians in the Vatican. However, led by the bishops of Northern Europe, Suenens of Malines, Frings of Cologne, Konig of Vienna and Lienart of Lille, the drafts were condemned as scholastic, juridical, unbiblical and not sufficiently ecumenical offering the Church, the world and other Christians condemnation rather than encouragement.
On November 20th 1962 the Council reached what was an historic moment when the draft on the sources of revelation was rejected by a large majority. As a result no draft was approved in the first session and everything of importance (except that on liturgy) had to be rewritten, sometimes several times. This work was done largely by the periti, the theological experts who numbered four hundred by the end of the council.
Although Pope John had hoped that the Council would complete its work in one session lasting several months, it soon became evident that this could not happen and Pope John died , with almost universal mourning, before the Council could be re-convened.
Pope Paul VI., however, reconvened the Council and it met for a further three sessions. The periti, inevitably affected the thinking of the bishops, particularly de Lubac, Rahner and Congar who had been among the foremost theologians in Europe before the Council. The other major influence in the Council was the presence of non-European bishops who had their dioceses very often in non Christian countries and so were very aware of the other great world faiths and had to seek to find what the Catholic Church and they had in common. The problems faced by these bishops were very different from those faced by the European and North American bishops and their thinking affected that of the whole Council. This was evident, not least, in the very first statement to come from the Council, that on the worship of the Church or the Liturgy. Here, apart from a desire to free the Liturgy from a great many accretions which had crept in over the centuries and which prevented it from
revealing to ordinary worshippers what was its main purpose, there was also the desire to make the Liturgy something which was more accessible to people of the twentieth century. This, of course, led to the introduction of the use of modern languages which was probably the most revolutionary change for ordinary people in the pew.
During the remaining sessions of the Council, the theological evolution of the bishops became very clear and the original purpose of Pope John that of unity, was clearly at the forefront of the various decrees issued by the Council.
The most important developments of the Council were in those areas which might make the recovery of that unity possible. The way in which revelation itself is seen by the Council and the insistence on the place of the Scriptures, meant a drawing closer to the Reformed churches and gave rise to the renewal of interest in the Scriptures in the Catholic Church and the greater place given to them in its worship.
The way in which the Church is governed, not by a universal bishop in Rome with the others seen as his subsidiaries but by the bishops together in communion with Rome, the idea known as collegiality, should have meant a revolution in the governance of the Catholic Church. Sadly, this has not been realised because in this, as in many other instances, the working out of the ideas was left to the Roman Curia who gradually stifled the new insights of the bishops and the Catholic church still remains monarchical with the bishops having only an advisory role to the Pope rather than the collegial role the Council envisaged.
Further statements on religious liberty and various reforms in the liturgy also brought the Catholic Church closer to other churches. The statement on the Eastern churches states with great clarity that these churches have the right and obligation to rule themselves and should not be under papal jurisdiction. The statement on the place of other churches was also a departure from previous Roman attitudes in that, while the Council stated that the fullness of the Church 'subsists in' the Roman Communion, it did not exclude other churches.
However, apart from all these issues which are particularly to do with the Church, perhaps one of the most important documents to come out of the Council was that which is known by its first words 'Gaudium et spes' This addresses matters of family, culture, politics and economics and is important in that it re-orientates the Church towards the world. It is this document which makes it so clear that the Church is not the Kingdom of God. The Church is meant to be the sign and sacrament of that coming Kingdom which is being built in the world and the Church must be involved in that building. It is from this document that new expressions of faith such as 'liberation theology' have sprung.
Q. Why do we need to stand up for Vatican II now?
A. Because, over the forty five years since the Council met a great deal has changed in the Catholic Church. The liturgy, which is the centre of the faith for most Catholics has been radically changed, much for the better but recently there has been a resurgence of pre-Conciliar thinking which would have the Church return to older models of worship and, because the revised Liturgy has not been used to its full potential and allowed to further change and develop, many find it routine and lacking in inspiration. Many of the decrees emanating from the Vatican in recent times seek to put a brake on the developments that have happened since the Council.
Ecumenical relationships developed enormously between the Catholic Church and the other churches during and after the Council but again, much of this has been slowed down by pedestrian Roman attitudes so that at this time ecumenical relations seem to be at a standstill.
The intense discussion of so many theologians during the Council meant that from being a Church in which everyone felt obliged to toe the party line, we had become a Church where being open about both Catholic teaching and behaviour had become the norm and there could be no return to the way the Catholic church had been. It was changed for ever.
It is because of this that many Catholics want to reassert the insights of the Second Vatican Council and to oppose the direction in which the Catholic Church seems once again to be moving. In fact Stand up for Vatican II was started to persuade the Church to commit more fully to the teaching of the Council.
The Council opened up new ways of thinking about the Church. Not an organisation with the hierarchy at its head but the community of the ''People of God' from among whom certain people were called to serve it. The people of the Church saw themselves as those who have the right to be involved in its decisions, in its organisation and in its discipline. They expect that those who are called to serve them will take into account their insights and their experience rather than dictating from on high. They feel that their Church is truly theirs and, as such, they want their children to inherit a Church which is open, welcoming and alert to the needs of the present time and for this to happen they have to make their voices heard.
Those Roman Catholics who lived through the Second Vatican Council know that it was, for them, a time of inspiration and hope for the future. They want to share that with today's Roman Catholics who may not have had that experience but who, nevertheless, are unhappy with the way their Church is and, in many cases, have become disaffected because they see no little for the future. The further understanding of the insights of the Second Vatican Council and the continued renewal of the Catholic Church in the direction taken by the Council, they believe, is the way forward and, they believe, is a movement begun by the Holy Spirit and which must not be allowed to be stifled.
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