What the Council Did

General Congregation meeting at the Second Vatican Council. File photo courtesy Catholic News Service.

In Christian theology, the action of the Holy Spirit is considered to be disruptive and unpredictable. It is the Holy Spirit who is the source of all creativity, all innovation, all wisdom, all knowledge and any kind of inspiration (“inspiration” coming from the Latin, meaning literally to have the Spirit enter you).The Council was guided by two main principles: aggiornamento (Italian for “updating”) and ressourcement(French for “going back to the sources”). So the reforms either returned to more ancient practices or took on modern practices and approaches.A Council of the Church is considered an occasion where the Holy Spirit is at work, and if the hallmarks of the Spirit are disruption and unpredictability, then the Spirit was most assuredly at work during the Second Vatican Council. The following are only some of the areas in which the Council changed the everyday lived experience of the world’s largest religion.

Engagement with the World

Before the Council, the Church hierarchy had considered itself a fortress set up against all aspects of the modern world. The papacy had been still embittered over losing its secular power when the Papal States were annexed to the new nation of Italy in 1870. In protest, the popes since then had refused to leave the confines of Vatican City. The Vatican had considered the idea that religious liberty was a human right and that Church and state should be separate as an actual heresy, called “Americanism.” Church leaders made no apology for their opinion that the modern world was a horrible place, and that everything was much better in the 13th Century.

With the Council, the hierarchy abandoned the idea of the Church as a fortress against the modern world. Pope John XXIII famously said that we are not here ot guard a museum, but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life. The Council fathers shared his optimism and sense of engagement with the world. They spontaneously decided to create a new document, Gaudium et Spes, which outlined a new working relationship between the Church and the modern world, saying “The joy and hope, the grief and anxiety of all the people of this time, especially those who are poor or in any way oppressed, this is the joy and hope, the grief and anxiety, of all the followers of Christ, for nothing genuinely human fails to find an echo in our hearts.”

A New Relationship with Other Believers

Less than 100 years before the opening of the Council, Pius IX had issued a furious condemnation of a number of ideas, which as a loose, somewhat unrelated group he called “Modernism.” Among the ideas he condemned was religious liberty, freedom of conscience, bible societies, secular governments nd many other elements of modern civilization. He also condemned the idea that God could be pleased with the lives of Protestants. As temporal monarch of the Papal States he had confined Jews to the ghetto and Protestant worship services were outlawed.From vigorous denial of the right of other Christians to practice their faith and brazen oppression of Jews, the Council brought the Church into a new era, where Jews are to be respected as “elder brothers and sisters in faith,” respected and not to be proselytized. Non-Catholic Christians became separated brothers and sisters, for whom we must be willing to give up external, insignificant practices to be more open to reunion with them.

Hundreds of years of anti-Semitism and a 400-year-old period of Counter-Reformation, in which the Church hierarchy defined itself according to what it was not (Protestant), came to a dramatic end. Muslims, against whom popes had led numerous wars, were now to be considered as sons and daughters of our common father Abraham, brothers and sisters with whom we must work together to solve the world’s problems.

A Different Approach to Ministry

For hundreds of years Church governance had revolved largely around the priesthood. Bishops were considered merely priests who had been given additional juridical authority, and the diaconate had long ago been subsumed into the priesthood, becoming merely a ceremonial step along a cursus honorumas a candidate progressed toward priestly ordination. The laity were considered subservient to priests. This was the era of “pay, pray and obey” for the laity. Recently, the role of the papacy had expanded, especially since the First Vatican Council, and the popular conception of the Church was made up of priests and pope, with bishops in between as “branch managers” subject to Curial officials.The Council definitively reinstated the three levels of holy orders: bishop, priest and deacon. The order of deacon, after a nearly 1,000-year hiatus, was restored as a life-long vocation, and the rights and authority of each bishop as a bishop was strongly stated. The bishop was not just a more powerful priest; instead the priest received his authority from the bishop; the bishop was not subject the Curia, but a teacher of the faith in his own right. The laity had the right and responsibility to transform the world by their baptism, not merely as assistants to priests.

Back to the Sources on Worship

The Council of Trent had undertaken some reforms of the liturgy, but their efforts were moderated lest they seem to be “giving in” to the Reformers. As a result, the liturgy had become calcified. As the Second Vatican Council opened, it had only been 60 years since Catholics had even been permitted to read the text of the Mass privately in their own language; translating the Mass had previously been forbidden under pain of excommunication. It was popularly believed that the Mass was the sole reserve of the priest, and the laity could only watch as passive spectators. In fact, many considered the presence of the laity as optional. The missal (book with Mass texts and instructions) never even mentioned the laity, and many, if not most, most Masses were “private Masses.” Sunday liturgical celebrations were silent and somber affairs, in which the priest generally rushed through the Latin the people could neither hear nor understand. During Mass th epeople would engage in private devotions or read books.The Council decreed that the liturgy was celebrated for all the People of God, who were encouraged to adopt “full, conscious and active participation.” Private Masses were discouraged, and priests were encouraged to adopt the ancient practice of “concelebration,” where more than one priest celebrated the same liturgy. The old language of Father “saying” Mass and the people “hearing”" Mass was dropped. The people of the world could now join in celebrating Mass in their own language, and pious Medieval accretions were dropped from the missal. Modern music was encouraged over the pious 19th century music then common. Lay people were given prominent responsibilities in the celebration of the liturgy, such as public proclamation of the scripture.

Hearing Scripture Differently

Since the time of the Reformation, the hierarchy had been wary of encouraging the faithful to read Scripture because there was a fear they would misinterpret it. Since Trent there had been growing comfort with the reading of Scripture; the first American Catholic bishop, John Carroll, was a great proponent of scripture and worked tirelessly to ensue that every American Catholic household could obtain a Bible. And for decades Catholic Scripture scholars had been advocating a move away from a literalistic interpretation of Scripture toward a more historical critical method. Pius XII had embraced this new approach.

So the Council’s clear rejection of biblical fundamentalism and literalism made sense; the Council Fathers also encouraged greater familiarity with Scripture and ensured that the riches of Scripture would be more lavishly shared in the liturgy. The Fathers also rejected a then-common idea of revelation as having two sources, scripture and tradition; instead they stated that scripture and tradition were two complementary forms of a single revelation.

Re-envisioning Religious Life

Those who live a consecrated life—priests, deacons, brothers and sisters of the various orders—were also encouraged to institute reforms. Thousands of religious orders and institutes made up the Catholic religious landscape. Some of them had lost the original vision of their founders as they took on ministries that were available, such as schools and hospitals. Communities wer encouraged to return to their roots and discern what their founders’ visions meant today, and to engage in a period of experimentation.

Respect for the Traditions of the East

Over the past centuries, some Eastern and Oriental churches had entered into full communion with the Catholic Church for various reasons. These 22 Eastern and Oriental Churches, disparaged by their Orthodox counterparts as “uniates,” also faced a certain level of ignorance and distrust on the part of the Roman Curia and even Western bishops in various places, who often tried to “Romanize” them.Chief among the advocates of the Eastern Churches at the Council was the great Maximos IV Saigh, Melkite Patriarch of Antioch, who refused to speak in the required Latin and insisted that the Vatican recognize the historic role of patriarchs over cardinals. The Council recognized Eastern Christians in union with Rome as true Churches, rather than the previous terminology of “rites,” which seemed to indicate that they differed from Romans only in liturgy, while in fact they are also entitled to their own proper spirituality, theology, church governance and traditions.

A Simpler Church

When John XXIII became pope, he was crowned as a monarch. Popes were carried through the crowds on the sedia gestatoria, a portable gilded throne, bedecked in gold and costly silks. A gold-embroidered velvet canopy was carried over them, and two ostrich feather fans derived from the imperial Byzantine court were carried on either side. A retinue of dozens of elaborately costumed papal nobility and various grandees, dressed in elaborate military uniforms, accompanied him.

Paul VI sold the papal crown and gave the money to the poor. By the end of the Council, all the accumulated frou-frou of the past had been banned, and he walked himself down the central aisle of St. Peter’s Basilica vested in the dramatically simplified attire now common to bishops; gloves, lace, special boots and such having been abandoned. Bishops were forbidden from wearing the cappa magna, a 30-foot train of silk, in Rome. Around the world vesture was to follow the principle of “noble simplicity.” Bishops sold their mansions and gave up their limousines. Flowery language and elaborate gestures of respect were curtailed. Pius IX had required people to kneel even when they spoke to him on the telephone; now one could shake the hand of a smiling pope.

The Conciliar Documents

During the four years of the Council, much of the deliberation was centered on producing documents as records of what the Council chose to teach. These documents codify the teachings of the Council. They departed from past Church documents in that they rejected a tradition of confrontational, damning language. The Council fathers instead chose to frame their messages in the style of the Fathers of the Church of the great patristic era, and to make liberal use of Scripture — not as justifying proof texts as Church documents did before, but as starting points for teachings.

Four Constitutions

• Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation)
• Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church)
• Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World)
• Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy)

Nine Decrees

• Ad Gentes (Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity)
• Apostolicam Actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity)
• Christus Dominus (Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church)
• Inter Mirifica (Decree on the Means of Social Communication)
• Optatam Totius (Decree on the Training of Priests)
• Orientalium Ecclesiarum (Decree on the Catholic Oriental Churches)
• Perfectae Caritatis (Decree on the Up-to-date Renewal of Religious Life)
• Presbyterorum Ordinis (Decree on the Life and Ministry of Priests)
• Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism)

Three Declarations

• Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Liberty)
• Gravissimum Educationis (Declaration on Christian Education)
• Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Church’s Relations with Non-Christian Religions)

Drop caps by Jessica Hische, Daily Drop Cap

Contemporary engraving of the First Vatican Council