The Second Vatican Council

John XXIII summoned the council on Christmas Day 1961, to meet in St Peter’s in Rome the following year (John XXIII, Humanae Salutis 18 and dating clause), and it opened on 11 October 1962 (Paul VI, In Spiritu Sancto (8 December 1965)). It was, he said in his opening address, to hand on Catholic doctrine whole and undistorted, in the way the times required: the deposit of faith is one thing, the manner of stating it another, the meaning staying the same (John XXIII, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia 6).

John died on 3 June 1963 (Holy See, biographical profile of John XXIII). Paul VI, elected on 21 June (Holy See, biographical profile of Paul VI), carried the council through four sessions in all and closed it on 8 December 1965 (Paul VI, In Spiritu Sancto (8 December 1965)).

On worship, Sacrosanctum Concilium wants all the faithful led to conscious and active participation in the liturgy (Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium 14) and undertakes a general restoration of it (Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium 21). Latin is kept in the Latin rites, and the mother tongue may be used more widely, as the bishops of each territory decide with Rome’s confirmation (Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium 36). On the church, Lumen Gentium says that the one church of Christ “subsists in” the Catholic Church, though many elements of sanctification and truth are found outside its visible structure (Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 8). The bishops form a college which, together with the pope and never without him, holds supreme power over the whole church, while the pope’s primacy stays intact (Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 22). All the faithful are called to holiness (Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 40). On revelation, Dei Verbum says that tradition and Scripture form one deposit of the word of God, and that the church does not draw its certainty about all that is revealed from Scripture alone (Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum 9–10). It urges all the faithful to read Scripture often (Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum 25).

Dignitatis Humanae declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom, meaning immunity from coercion, founded on the dignity of the person (Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis Humanae 2). It adds that this leaves untouched the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one church of Christ (Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis Humanae 1). Unitatis Redintegratio names the restoration of unity among all Christians as a principal concern of the council (Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio 1). It says that people on both sides were often to blame for the divisions, and that those in other communities who believe in Christ and are truly baptized are in communion with the Catholic Church, though imperfectly (Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio 3). Nostra Aetate says that, although the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all Jews then living, without distinction, nor against the Jews of today. Although the church is the new people of God, the Jews are not to be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from Scripture, and the church decries hatred, persecution and displays of antisemitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone (Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate 4).

Catholics have disputed how to receive the council. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre declared in 1974 that he refused to follow the “neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies” he saw in the council and in the reforms that issued from it (Lefebvre, Declaration of 21 November 1974, paragraphs 1–2). In 2005 Benedict XVI said that its implementation had been difficult in large parts of the church because two readings had quarrelled, one taking the council as a break with the earlier church, the other as reform in continuity, and he argued for the second (Benedict XVI, Address to the Roman Curia (22 December 2005), on the council). Among other Christians, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, joined Paul VI in March 1966 in announcing a serious dialogue between their communions, in a declaration that does not name the council (Paul VI and Michael Ramsey, Common Declaration (1966), paragraph 5 and the whole text). The international Lutheran–Catholic dialogue commission said in a report of 2013 that the council made it possible for the Catholic Church to enter the ecumenical movement (From Conflict to Communion (2013) 90). The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I said in Rome in 2012 that its openness to ecumenical encounter had led to the lifting of the excommunications of 1054, and that the door must stay open for its deeper reception (Bartholomew I, Greeting at St Peter’s (11 October 2012), paragraphs beginning ‘Over the last five decades’ and ‘Our journey’).