Angelo Cardinal Roncalli, the Patriarch of Venice, was elected pope on October 28, 1958, after the long reign of Pius XII, taking the name John XXIII.
Considered elderly at the time and seen as a transitional figure, Pope John surprised everyone by announcing his intention to hold an ecumenical council, after celebrating a Mass at St. Paul Outside the Walls Basilica on January 25, 1959.
His desire was to renew the Church internally in order to better engage and evangelize the modern world.
Opening the windows
The Second Vatican Council opened in October 1962, concurrent with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and finished its work in 1965, two years after St. John XXIII had died of cancer.
Bishop Robert Barron uses the image of Noah’s Ark to express Pope John’s desired outcome for the council he had unexpectedly called.
When Noah’s Ark touched land for the first time after months on the water, he opened up the ship and let the life out, giving the animals free rein to go forth, be fruitful, and to fill the world as God had originally intended.
Just so, Pope John wanted to summon the vast energies of global Catholicism to proclaim the power of the Gospel with fresh energy in the mid-20th century, a frightening time of nuclear peril, an epoch in which an exhausted Europe was rebuilding after World War II, a time when the Cold War seemed most dangerous.
He wanted to renew the structures of the Church in order to form the hearts and minds of Catholics around the world to go forth and evangelize, to make disciples, to bring the modern world to Christ.
Thus, the pontiff planted the seeds of the new evangelization, the inspiration for our own Go Make Disciples initiative.
The fact that Vatican II unfolded in the 1960s, at the precise moment of a profound cultural revolution in the West, certainly impacted how its teachings were understood and implemented.
Think of everything that happened in the 1960s here in the United States.
The Kennedy and King assassinations, the Vietnam War and the widespread protests against it, the rise of the hippie and drug culture, the long and violent struggle for civil rights, the widespread use and acceptance of the contraceptive pill, the sexual revolution, the rebellion against all forms of authority, all combined to create an unprecedented time of social upheaval and a new cultural landscape in which the enduring teachings of the Church, especially in the area of morality, found less acceptance.
It seemed that Pope John had opened the windows of the Church to the modern world at the precise moment when that world was exploding.
Responses to Vatican II
Three fundamental responses to the changes which Vatican II wrought have characterized Catholic life, at least in America, since 1965: Those who accepted the changes sincerely and sought to live their Catholic faith in this new context, but in continuity with the past; those who welcomed Vatican II as a fundamental rupture with the past, wanted more radical change than the conciliar documents ever warranted, and have advocated for their agenda ever since; those who criticized Vatican II as a fundamental rupture with the past, and have never accepted its changes and teachings.
Profound disagreements about what the Second Vatican Council intended, taught, and promulgated have marked Catholic life in America ever since the council ended 60 years ago.
While such conflicts in the Church are to be expected in the wake of any ecumenical council, the ongoing debate about Vatican II and its implications has diminished the unity, fruitfulness, and fervor of the Catholic Church in the United States in many ways.
We have spent so much time and energy in internal struggle that the whole point of interior renewal for the sake of the external mission of proclaiming the Gospel to a post-modern world, which desperately needs it, has sometimes been lost.
The conciliar documents
In the many conversations about Vatican II which I have heard and shared in, the most strikingly common element is the fact that most Catholics have never actually read the conciliar documents themselves.
This ignorance allows some ecclesial voices to authoritatively but erroneously claim that their opinions on the council are the definitive ones.
Having read much discussion recently about what the council intended and the subsequent spirited debate about what it means to embrace its teachings, I invite the faithful of the diocese to read and study the four major texts of the Second Vatican Council: Lumen Gentium — the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church; Dei Verbum — the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation; Sacrosanctum Concilium — the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy; and Gaudium et Spes — the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.
In ensuing columns, I will discuss each of these and their importance for us in living out our Catholic faith with vigor and authenticity.