Vatican II

A Roman Catholic Church Council, convened by John XXIII in 1962, interrupted by his death and re-convened by Paul VI. It ended in 1965, and was responsible for liturgical reforms and the introduction of modern and ecumenical terminologies. Most decrees of Vatican II are opposed by the Traditionalists. On the opening day of Vatican II, John XXIII said, "The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be more effectively guarded and taught" (AD LIMINA TALKS, p. 57,67,68). A Vatican II document, CONSTITUTION ON DIVINE REVELATION, Introduction, para. 1 said, "Therefore, the following in the footsteps of the Council of Trent and of Vatican I, this present Council wishes to set forth authentic doctrine of divine revelation." CATHOLIC JOURNALS From THE CATHOLIC ANSWER, January/February 1991, page 33ff, "There has been, in addition to the Council's 16 documents, something called `the spirit of Vatican II' that runs through the entire post-conciliar period. It is probably a safe bet that average members of the faithful have heard this particular `spirit' invoked more often than they have heard any actual quotation from the Council's own teaching documents, just as average Catholics have probably heard more things discussed and dismissed as simply being `pre-conciliar' than they have heard reasons for dismissing certain things. "For a significant number of Catholics...it was a kind of brand new `process' of democratizing the Church. Such Catholics are generally those who are tempted to consider the pre-Vatican II Church to have been rigid, static, legalistic, judgmental, hidebound and resistant to any change. "Some Catholics have tended to read more significance into the changes that were made than was actually warranted. If Latin could be dropped from the liturgy, for example, or fish on Friday from Catholic penitential practice - so this type of reasoning tended to run - then why could not the Church's prohibition of artificial birth control or her age-old practice of ordaining only males to the ministerial priesthood also be dropped? "Many who thus see the Council and its actual deeds merely as part of a larger `process' of the inevitable liberalization and democratization of the Church tend not to accept the 16 documents produced by Vatican II as the Council's final word. For them, the `process' has to continue until still other changes thought to be in `the spirit of Vatican II' have also been realized. There has been more than one call for a Vatican III. "We must keep in mind the reasons for which Pope John XXIII called for the Council in the first place. It was not, as many apparently persist in believing today, in order to being the Church into greater conformity with the modern world. Rather, in the words of this Pope's Constitution HUMANAE SALUTIS in 1961, it was to bring `the modern world into contact with the vivifying and perennial energies of the Gospel'"