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General Information
The Second Vatican Council, the 21st ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic church, was announced by Pope John XXIII on Jan. 25, 1959. On Oct. 11, 1962, after four years of preparation, the council formally opened. Four sessions convened; the last three (1963-65) were presided over by Pope Paul VI, who succeeded John as pontiff in June 1963. The council ended on Dec. 8, 1965.
The participants with full voting rights were all the bishops of the Roman Catholic church, of both the Western and Eastern rites, superiors-general of exempt religious orders, and prelates with their own special spheres of jurisdiction. Non-Catholic Christian churches and alliances and Catholic lay organizations were invited to send observers. These observers, however, had neither voice nor vote in the council deliberations.
The council produced 16 documents--all of which had to be approved by the pope before they became official--on such subjects as divine revelation, the sacred liturgy, the church in the modern world, the instruments of social communication, ecumenism, Eastern Catholic churches, renewal of religious life, the laity, the ministry and life of priests, missionary activity, Christian education, the relationship of the church to non-Christian religions, and religious freedom. Of these, the most important and influential for the subsequent life of the Roman Catholic church have been the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which gave renewed importance to the role of the bishops; the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which authorized vernacularization of the liturgy and greater lay participation; the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, which acknowledged the need for the church to adapt itself to the contemporary world; the Decree on Ecumenism; and the Declaration on Religious Freedom. Together these documents present a church that is primarily a worshiping and serving community open to various points of view and religious traditions.
Although the Second Vatican Council had enormous impact, it cannot be isolated from prior and parallel liturgical, theological, biblical, and social developments. In few instances did the council initiate a new way of thinking for the church. It endorsed specific approaches, tentatively in some cases, and planted seeds for other, possibly more radical, changes in the future.
Richard P. Mcbrien
Bibliography
Abbott, W. A., ed., The Documents of Vatican
II (1966); Deretz, Jacques, and Nocent, Adrien, eds.,
Dictionary of the Council (1968); Miller, J. H., ed.,
Vatican II: An Interfaith Appraisal (1966); Vorgrimler,
Herbert, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, 5
vols. (1967-69).
The Second Vatican Council was the 21st ecumenical council recognized by the Roman Catholic church, which became the symbol of the church's openness to the modern world. The council was announced by Pope John XXIII on January 25, 1959, and held 178 meetings in the autumn of each of four successive years. The first gathering was on October 11, 1962, and the last on December 8, 1965.
Of 2908 bishops and others eligible to attend, 2540 from all parts of the world participated in the opening meeting. The U.S. delegation of 241 members was second in size only to that of Italy. Asian and African bishops played a prominent role in the council's deliberations.
Only Communist nations were sparsely represented, the result of government pressures. The average attendance at the meetings was 2200.
Preparations for the council began in May 1959, when the world's Roman Catholic bishops, theological faculties, and universities were asked to make recommendations for the agenda. Thirteen preparatory commissions with more than 1000 members were appointed to write draft proposals on a wide range of topics. They prepared 67 documents called schemata, a number reduced to 17 by a special commission convoked between the council's 1962 and 1963 sessions. Voting members of the council were Roman Catholic bishops and heads of male religious orders, but, in a radical departure from past practice, Orthodox and Protestant churches were invited to send official delegate-observers. Male lay Roman Catholic auditors were invited to the 1963 session, during which two of them addressed the council. Women auditors were added in 1964. The agenda was extensive, and topics discussed included modern communications media, relations between Christians and Jews, religious freedom, the role of laity in the church, liturgical worship, contacts with other Christians and with non-Christians, both theists and atheists, and the role and education of priests and bishops.
The constitution on the church stressed a biblical understanding of the Christian community's organization, rather than the juridical model that had more recently been dominant. Terming the church the "people of God," it emphasized the servant nature of offices such as those of priest and bishop, the collegial, or shared, responsibility of all bishops for the entire church, and the call of all church members to holiness and to participation in the church's mission of spreading the gospel of Christ. The tone of the pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world was set in its opening words, which declared that the church shared the "joy and hope, the grief and anguish of contemporary humanity, particularly of the poor and afflicted." It began with a theological analysis of humanity and the world, then turned to specific areas such as marriage and family, cultural, social, and economic life, the political community, war and peace, and international relations.
A constitution on liturgy promoted more active communal participation in the Mass as the central act of Roman Catholic public worship and was the initial step in changes that by 1971 included the replacement of Latin, the ancient language of the service, by vernacular languages. Other documents sought common ground in dealings with Orthodox and Protestant Christians and with those who are not Christians. In a rare departure from its deliberate policy of avoiding condemnations, the council deplored "all hatreds, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews." American delegates played a significant role in shaping the council's declaration upholding the universal right of religious freedom, a document in which the thought of the American theologian John Courtney Murray figured prominently.
Pope John had launched the Second Vatican Council on a positive note, setting as its purposes the updating and renewal (aggiornamento) of the Roman Catholic church and achievement of Christian and human unity. Pope Paul VI, who continued the council after John's death in 1963, endorsed those purposes and added that of dialogue with the modern world.
The most prominent leader of the "Catholic traditionalists" who rejected the doctrinal and disciplinary reforms instituted by Vatican Council II was a retired French archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre, who in 1970 founded an international group known as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X. He declared that the council's reforms "spring from heresy and end in heresy." Efforts at reconciliation between Rome and Archbishop Lefebvre were unsuccessful. Pope Paul VI suspended him from the exercise of his functions as priest and bishop in 1976, but he continued his activities, including ordination of priests to serve traditionalist churches. Lefebvre was excommunicated in 1988.
James Hennesey
Regarded by Roman Catholics as the twenty-first ecumenical church council, Vatican II was a deliberate attempt to renew and bring up to date (aggiornamento) all facets of church faith and life. It was convened in October of 1962 by Pope John XXIII, and reconvened in September 1963 by his successor, Pope Paul VI. Altogether the council held four annual fall sessions, finally adjourning after approving sixteen major texts that were promulgated by the pope. At the opening session 2,540 bishops and other clerical members of council attended, and an average of 2,300 members were present for most major votes. The council took on a profound and electrifying life of its own. Before the eyes of the world it succeeded in initiating an extraordinary transformation of the Roman Catholic Church.
In various communications, including his opening speech, Pope John indicated the needs of the hour. The Western world had experienced during the 1950s stupefying technical, scientific, and economic expansion that had given countless people occasion to put their trust in material goods even while other millions of people lived in devastating poverty and suffering. Militant atheism abounded, and the world was undergoing grave spiritual crisis. But, proclaimed Pope John, and herewith he set the character of the entire council, the world needs not the condemnation of its errors but the full supply of "the medicine of mercy." The church, via the council, aimed to help the world by rejuvenating its own faith and life in Christ, by updating itself, by promoting the unity of all Christians, and by directing Christian presence in the world to the works of peace, justice, and well-being.
Chief among the council's characteristics was a pastoral spirit which dominated throughout. There was also a biblical spirit. From the very beginning the bishops indicated that they would not accept the rather abstract and theologically exact drafts prepared for them. Instead, they desired to express themselves in direct biblical language. Moreover, there was an evident awareness of history, the history of salvation, the pilgrim church, the ongoing tradition, the development of doctrine, the openness to the future. The council was ecumenical in its outreach to non-Catholic Christians (represented by observers from twenty-eight denominations) and humble in relation to non-Christian religions. It was remarkably open to the whole world, especially through massive global press coverage and by directly addressing the world in an opening "Message to Humanity," and in a series of closing messages to political rulers, intellectuals and scientists, artists, women, the poor, workers, and youth. Yet the council kept the church thoroughly consistent with its Roman Catholic identity and tradition.
The constitution "On the Church," in eight chapters (also called Lumen gentium), was the first ever issued on the subject by a council. In a direct way it explicitly continued and completed the work of Vatican I. In particular it incorporated (ch. 3) almost verbatim the controversial statement on papal infallibility, with the addition that infallibility also resided in the body of bishops when exercising the magisterium (doctrinal authority) in conjunction with the pope. The primacy of the Roman pontiff was again affirmed, but, significantly, the centrality of the bishops was also affirmed. This was the principle of collegiality, that the bishops as a whole were the continuation of the body of the apostles of which Peter was head. By placing episcopal collegiality in union with papal primacy and by shared infallibility the council resolved the ancient tension of pope versus councils.
The same document (ch. 4) introduced the biblical teaching that the church as a whole was the people of God, including both clergy and laity. This reversed centuries of virtually explicit assertion that the clergy alone were the church. Both laity and clergy, the document affirmed, shared in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly functions of Christ. The decree "On the Laity" and the constitution "On the Church in the Modern World" (also called Gaudium et spes) charged lay people to undertake their work in the world in all walks of life as Christian vocations, as a lay apostolate which shared directly in the continuation of the work of the apostles of Christ. This too undid centuries of emphasis on the clergy, monks, and nuns as virtually the sole possessors of Christian calling.
C T McIntire
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)
Bibliography
Walter M. Abbott, ed., The Documents of Vatican II; J.
H. Miller, ed., Vatican II: An Interfaith Appraisal; B. Pawley, ed.,
The Second Vatican Council; G. C. Berkouwer, Reflections on the Vatican
Council; A.C. Outler, Methodist Observer at Vatican II; E.
Schillebeeckx, The Real Achievement of Vatican II.
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