The Second Vatican Council
Some 2,000 bishops from around the world meet in Rome and open the church to the modern world, bringing the Mass into local languages and transforming relations with other Christians, Jews and other faiths.
- What Happened at Vatican II — John W. O'Malley, Harvard University Press (2008)
- John XXIII: Pope of the Council — Peter Hebblethwaite, Geoffrey Chapman (1984)
- Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
- Gaudium et Spes: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World — Second Vatican Council, Holy See (1965)
- Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions — Second Vatican Council, Holy See (1965)
On 25 January 1959, barely three months after his election, the 77-year-old John XXIII surprised his cardinals by announcing an ecumenical council, the first in almost a century. He spoke of aggiornamento, “bringing up to date”, and of letting fresh air into the church. When the council opened on 11 October 1962, some 2,000 to 2,500 bishops attended its sessions, for the first time including many from Africa, Asia and Latin America, along with Protestant and Orthodox observers. John died in June 1963; his successor Paul VI carried the council through four autumn sessions to its close on 8 December 1965.
- What Happened at Vatican II — John W. O'Malley, Harvard University Press (2008)
- John XXIII: Pope of the Council — Peter Hebblethwaite, Geoffrey Chapman (1984)
The council produced sixteen documents. The most important reshaped Catholic life:
- What Happened at Vatican II — John W. O'Malley, Harvard University Press (2008)
- Gaudium et Spes: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World — Second Vatican Council, Holy See (1965)
- Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions — Second Vatican Council, Holy See (1965)
- The liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1963) called for the “full, conscious and active participation” of the people. Within a few years, the Mass was celebrated in local languages instead of Latin, usually with the priest facing the congregation, and lay people read the scriptures and distributed communion.
- The church (Lumen Gentium) described the church as the whole “people of God”, stressed the shared authority of bishops with the pope, and called all Catholics, not just priests and nuns, to holiness.
- The modern world (Gaudium et Spes) opened with the words “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age… these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ”, embracing dialogue with modern culture, science and politics.
- Religious freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) affirmed every person’s right to freedom of conscience in religion, a reversal of the church’s nineteenth-century stance.
- Other Christians (Unitatis Redintegratio) recognised Protestants and Orthodox as brothers and sisters in Christ, and on the council’s last day Paul VI and the Patriarch of Constantinople lifted the excommunications of 1054.
- Other religions (Nostra Aetate) said the church “rejects nothing that is true and holy” in other faiths, expressed esteem for Muslims, and declared that Jesus’ death “cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today”, deploring antisemitism. It transformed Catholic–Jewish relations.
The years after the council were turbulent. Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which upheld the ban on artificial contraception against the advice of his own commission, was widely ignored by Catholics in the West. Tens of thousands of priests and nuns left their vocations, and Mass attendance began a long decline in Europe and North America, though historians disagree about how much the council caused, rather than coincided with, the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
- Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
- What Happened at Vatican II — John W. O'Malley, Harvard University Press (2008)
- Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
Since then, popes have argued about how to read the council. Benedict XVI spoke of a “hermeneutic of reform” in continuity with tradition and widened permission for the old Latin Mass in 2007; Francis restricted it again in 2021, saying the reformed liturgy was the true expression of the council. For most Catholics in the pews, though, Vatican II simply made the church they know.
- Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
- What Happened at Vatican II — John W. O'Malley, Harvard University Press (2008)
A new Pentecost that opened the windows of the church: the people of God, not just the clergy, are the church; Catholics should engage the modern world in dialogue. Its promise of collegiality and lay participation was only half fulfilled and should be carried further.
- What Happened at Vatican II — John W. O'Malley, Harvard University Press (2008)
The council's documents can be read in continuity with tradition, but the reforms that followed, above all the new Mass, broke with centuries of liturgy and contributed to collapsing Mass attendance and vocations in the West. A minority rejects parts of the council itself.
- Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
- What Happened at Vatican II — John W. O'Malley, Harvard University Press (2008)
Why it matters today
Vatican II is the dividing line in modern Catholic memory. Almost every Catholic alive today worships in the church it shaped, with Mass in their own language and the priest facing the people. How to interpret it, as a renewal in continuity with tradition or as a break, still divides progressive and traditionalist Catholics, from parish arguments about liturgy to debates at the Vatican.