Why the Second Vatican Council is So Important

1. Background Info:
   1. Considered the most important religious event of the 20th century; some would say since the Reformation; it was also the most attended Council in history: over 2500 Cardinals, Bishops, theological experts, and other officials and observers participated; at Vatican I, some 800 attended; at Council of Trent, only 400; it was the first non-European only Council since the 5th century; the first 8 of the Councils were held in Greek cities in Asia Minor, the last 13 were all held in Italy, France or Switzerland
   2. Council met in four distinct periods in the fall of every year from 1962 through 1965
   3. The first met under the pontificate of Pope John XXIII; the last three under his successor, Paul VI
   4. By the time the Council concluded, Pope Paul VI had promulgated 16 documents
   5. The highest in rank of these documents were the constitutions, of which there were only four: On the Sacred Liturgy; On the Church; On Divine Revelation; and On the Church in the Modern World. These were considered to be the orientations according to which the other documents were to be interpreted
   6. Next in rank came nine decrees: On the Mass Media, On the Catholic Eastern Churches; On Ecumenism; On Bishops; On the Renewal of Religious Life; On the Training of Priests; On the Apostolate of the Laity; On Missionary Activity; and On the Ministry and Life of Priests
   7. Finally, there were three declarations: On Christian Education; On Non-Christian Religions; and On Religious Liberty
   8. Of the 20 councils that the Catholic Church recognized as Ecumenical previous to Vatican II, all had been called to respond to a crisis; the best known of these is Trent which responded to the Reformation
   9. Vatican II was called during a time when no obvious crisis was present
   10. The rationale for Vatican II was, in the words of John XXIII, twofold: 1. “to promote the enlightenment, edification, and joy of the entire Christian people”(conversation with the world); 2. “to extend a renewed cordial invitation to the faithful of the separated communities to participate with us in this quest for unity and peace.”(conversation with separated churches)
   11. His words were remarkable in two ways: 1. They were couched in positive terms instead of the negative terms of warning and condemnation so typical of the church for centuries; 2. For the first time ever, a hand of friendship was extended to the other Christian churches. From the very beginning, the council reached out to persons outside the parameters of the Roman Catholic Church.
2. The Historical Context
   1. Two World Wars, the Korean War, the Cold War, the threat of nuclear warfare, the Cuban missile crisis, Vatican I’s declaration of papal primacy
   2. “The long 19th century”: “the long span during which the church at its grass roots … largely rebounded from the devastations of the French Revolution” (O’Malley, p. 53); the French Revolution essentially abolished the monarchies in Europe and in so doing it ended the centuries long marriage between “throne and altar”, that is, state support of the Catholic Church to the exclusion of all other churches
   3. The Enlightenment which was rabidly anti-clerical, anti-Christian, and especially anti-Catholic. Freedom of expression, of the press became fundamental rights. Privilege by reason of birth ended
   4. Church response was highly defensive, negative, and condemning. Saw all reforms as part of the “heresy of Modernism.” As a consequence, Catholics looked to Rome for answers to all questions. And Rome took advantage of this by allowing the term “Magisterium” (teaching of the whole church body) to mean only the teaching authority of the popes and their Congregations.
   5. “For Catholics the greatest ecclesiastical happening of the long nineteenth century was the almost unmitigated triumph of Ultramontanism, the concentration of authority in the papacy and the unquestioned recognition of other papal prerogatives.” (O’Malley, p. 57)
3. Development of A New Sense of History
   1. During the end of the 19th and the early part of the 20th centuries, a new impulse to review the areas of Scripture, the Patristics (the church fathers), and Liturgy began making an important impact on the life of the church. As a result, every aspect of church life and doctrine came to be studied with a new approach.
   2. This new sense of history became operative in at least 3 important ways at the Council, which can best be summarized in three words: aggiornamento (Italian for updating), development (evolution), and ressourcement (French for return to the sources). They are all concerned with change and reform.
   3. Aggiornamento: most often invoked word to describe what Vatican II was all about. Four characteristics of it: 1.changes made often touched on things ordinary Catholics considered normative, and hence sometimes had a startling effect (Latin mass, meat on Friday, etc.); 2. No previous council had ever embraced such a positive principle; 3. Word made clear that Catholicism was adaptive even to the “modern world” by appropriating certain “new” cultural values; 4. It represented a more dynamic approach to church life and teaching than had been evident since the very early church.
   4. Development: The “development of doctrine was the issue under all issues at Vatican II.” (O’Malley, p. 39 quoting John Courtney Murray, SJ). By the time of Vatican II, almost all theologians admitted that some form of “development” had taken place in the teaching of the church through the centuries.
   5. Ressourcement: “It entails a return to the sources with a view not to confirming the present but to making changes in it to conform it to a more authentic or more appropriate past, to what advocates of ressourcement considered a more profound tradition… Some form of ressourcement lay behind every reform movement in Western Christianity – and behind every reform movement in Western culture.” (O’Malley, p 40-41).
4. “The Spirit of the Council”
   1. Through the centuries the language used in councils was largely borrowed from the discourse of Roman antiquity. The words were based on laws and judicial sentences.
   2. Councils in the past were based on two assumptions: 1. They were juridical bodies that heard cases and rendered judgments. The guilty were then sentenced to punishment. 2. They were legislative bodies that issued ordinances complete with penalties for failure to comply. Further, the procedural models the councils began to adopt early on were those followed throughout the empire by secular assemblies and councils. “What would remain fundamentally unchanged until Vatican II was that the Council was, like the Roman Senate, a legislative-judicial body.” (O’Malley, p. 44) It was this model that Vatican II rejected and, in so doing, redefined what a Council was.
   3. It also changed the language that Councils could use. In previous Councils, the language involved either creedal statements as in Nicea (the Creed we speak at Mass), or canons, a short prescriptive statement that often carried with it a punishment for failure to comply (such as in Canon Law). “Canons are not concerned with interiority as such. Like any good law, canons…were formulated to be as unambiguous as possible, drawing clear lines between “who’s in” and “who’s out.” (O’Malley, p. 45) It was essentially language that was concerned with public order.
   4. “But Vatican II eschewed such language. It issued no canons, no anathemas, no verdicts of ‘guilty as charged.’ In so speaking it marked a significant break with past councils.”(O’Malley, p. 45)
   5. Vatican II instead “employed a rhetoric of invitation….They hold up ideals, then draw conclusions from them and often spell out practical consequences. This is a soft style compared with the hard-hitting style of canons….It is rightly described as ‘pastoral’ because it was meant to make Christian ideals appealing….As expressions of a rhetoric of invitation and dialogue, the documents encourage conversion, an interior change that is induced by and then expressed by a new way of speaking and behaving. The shift in style entails a shift in value-system.” (O’Malley, p 47-48, underlining mine)
   6. The words Vatican II uses are also untypical of any other Council. They are: words of reciprocity such as “cooperation”, “dialogue”, “collaboration.” They are words of “humility” like describing the church as a “pilgrim” and “servant”. They are words of interiority, like “joy and hope, grief and anguish.” And the phrase “call to holiness” becomes one of the great themes running through the council. “The documents of Vatican II are thus religious documents in a way notably different from those of previous councils.” (O’Malley, p.51, underlining mine)
5. Conclusion

“For the first time in history, a council would take care self-consciously to infuse its documents with vocabulary and themes that cut across them all. In that sense Vatican II conveyed a ‘spirit’…Among the themes of the council expressive of its spirit, the call to holiness is particularly pervasive and particularly important…It is the theme that to a large extent imbued the council with its finality…(T)he council devised a profile of the ideal Christian. That ideal…is more inclined to reconciliation to human culture than to alienation from it, more inclined to see goodness than sin, more inclined to speaking words of friendship and encouragement than of indictment. The result was a message that was traditional while at the same time radical, prophetic while at the same time soft-spoken. In a world increasingly wracked with discord, hatred, war, and threats of war, the result was a message that was counter-cultural while at the same time responsive to the deepest human yearnings.” (O’Malley, p. 320-321)

The obvious primary source for the above information was the book, What Happened At Vatican II, by John W. O’Malley, SJ. Generally regarded to be the best one volume book on the subject. Also highly regarded is: Vatican Council II, by Xavier Rynne. For the best book on the documents of Vatican II, I recommend A Concise Guide To The Documents of Vatican II, by Edward Hahnenberg.