Understanding Vatican II: The Impact of the Second Vatican Council on the Catholic Church

[Music] November 22nd 1963 in a shocking moment broadcast of

across us television President John F Kennedy is assassinated in a motorcade riding through daily Plaza in Dallas

Texas as the nation Mourns the world remembers another major figure to fall only 4 months earlier the Beloved

pontiff who had inaugurated the second Vatican Council Pope John the 23rd had passed away after a battle with stomach

cancer now Catholics across the world turn to his successor the newly elected Pope Paul v 6 for Hope and answers how

would the church reach out in a broken world a world wounded by War and divided by previous conflicts join us as we meet

with historians and theologians eyewitnesses and experts to investigate the meaning of Vatican 2 and uncover the

event which would become a definitive landmark in the history of the modern Catholic

[Music] Church as the second Vatican Council reconvened in the fall of 1963 a

tangible excitement passed through Rome bishops from around the world came to gather once more in the AA of St Peters

to discuss the most pressing matters concerning faith and the modern world the council had started just a year

before with the late Pope John offering an inspiring address godet mesia mother Church rejoices I think a

lot of the Bishops thought they were coming to Rome for some good pasta some great Italian wine

two months of time together and then they were going to go back to their dases and the the council would be over

the pope kind of opened up the horizons for what the Bishops could do that first address um did a great deal to change

the whole mindset of the council but during this earlier session of Vatican 2 the Bishops had first been

faced with the complicated task of voting on new commissions you got to do some bookkeeping you got to take care of

some some logistical stuff and the most important thing is that all of those Preparatory commissions that were

producing all those Preparatory draft documents they no longer exist because the council started now so what you now

need are 10 commissions that are going to take over the work of the Preparatory commissions on the opening day of the

first session each member had been given a ballot with 160 blank spaces in order to nominate 16 Bishops to 10 new

commissions these delegations would spearhead the compos position of what would become the council's final

Masterwork a series of dogmatic constitutions declarations and decrees addressing the life of the church in the

face of contemporary circumstances confronted with an excess of nominations and little knowledge of

Bishops outside of the Roman curia this proved a daunting task for the council fathers especially those who knew few

other candidates outside of their own countries but a group of Bishops came up with a plan no no sooner is the

announcement of an election given then Cardinal Leonard stands up and makes a motion for an immediate

recess now the president that day was cardinal tison cardinal tison is looking at him say how can we have a recess we

just started five minutes ago and before anything else can happen Cardinal frings stands up and he seconds the motion and

Cardinal Leonard then explains he would like to have an immediate recess so that the Bishops can gather in local Regional

language Ang groups so they can come up with their own slate of candidates of Bishops that they would like to see on

these commissions well no sooner is that motion announced and there's spontaneous Applause from the entire assembly and

there's no choice but to give a recess this recess would be crucial to the council as the Bishops met within their

own groups New nominees outside of the curia from far off countries were appointed to the commissions they're

able to bring the concerns of churches from the Philippines and India and Mexico and Brazil in the United States

as well as France and Germany and obviously Italy all of their voices were now going to be part of the council's

deliberation that happens the very first day the council meets and it changes again the mindset of the Bishops they

begin to sense that they have something they can contribute the excitement of the Bishops would reach New Heights as

they spent more time together discussing theology faith and their respective cultural challenges not all of the

Bishops were equally competent in Latin in fact some rather noteworthy Bishops you know their Latin was pretty poor and

people had a hard time in pronunciation understanding what they were saying and then just go on to the fact that you're

listening to One speech after another well fortunately Pope John had encouraged them to set up these coffee

shops behind the bleachers the the bleachers that lined each side of the Nave of of St Peter's Basilica the pope

had joked that you needed to give the Bishops a place where they could go light up a cigarette or they'd never

make it through the day that was his argument but they were nicknamed you know they were one was called bar Abus

and one was called bar Jonah and the Bishops when they'd had too much could go lead you know leave their seat while

a speech was going on they could go get a cappuccino smoke a cigarette entrenched in the atmosphere of 1960s

Rome the council Bishop soon realized that the coffee bars were where some real Lively theological conversations

were taking place add to that the fact that the Bishops are staying in Rome for 45 to 60 days they're going out to

dinner um it doesn't take them long before they realize that some of the world's leading theologians are actually

gathered here in Rome at that time and so they start asking some of these figures like Pete Franzen and Carl

ronner and Onre dubac and Barnabas aarn major figures right in various areas of of Catholic scholarship they start

saying look could you give an evening talk on this we're we're having a debate right now over our understanding of

tradition per kongar could you give a lecture on this we know you've written a great deal on it and Kar would give an

evening lecture at the at the North American college perhaps and maybe initially 10 Bishops would show up and

then 40 Bishops at the next lecture and then 120 Bishops right as fellow members in the body of Christ these perti or

theological experts would come to help guide the council fathers in their continuing education as teachers and

Shepherds of their people aside from being led by a new pontiff the second session of Vatican 2

opened with signs of major shifts from the beginning of his new pontificate Pope Paul v 6 had implemented a new set

of council guidelines he made it a point to simplify the organ organizational aspects of The Bishop's

discussions for the first time in the history of ecumenical councils guests observers comprised of both lay

Catholics and non-catholic religious from diverse Faith communities had been invited to take part as part of the late

Pope John's Initiative for Interfaith dialogue the second session of Vatican 2 opened with a revived hope for the

church and set out to continue on the path to reform and renewal under the leadership of Paul the six a very

intelligent Pope someone who had been a career uh Vatican official who knew the insides of the Vatican quite well but

who also who had great pastoral gifts one of Pope Paul's great tasks was to continue where his predecessor John the

23rd had left off with the council Bishops these Bishops had begun discussing a document on the church a

dogmatic Constitution which would come to be known as Lumen genium the title of the constitution on the church is uh the

Light of the Nations who is Christ sometimes people hear constitution on the church the Light of the Nations and

they say oh the church is the Light of the Nations and how can that be since it's a sinful church but the Light of

the Nations is not the church it is the Christ the uh first teaching that was important in lumens had to do with the

Dignity of the baptized all the baptized are called to U full participant a in the church uh that is to Holiness to

Mission that it's not just that that priests and religious somehow take care of the church and the and the baptized

are passive recipients of their activity but they are the agents they are the protagonists in the uh Church's mission

to the world and therefore to tr bring lay people into the the consciousness of their being the church in the world in

drafting this new document the Bishops described the church as both m and Sacrament by definition a Sacrament

is an outward sign of inner Grace the Bishops explain this in lumium by first pointing to the Trinity as the ultimate

foundation and source of the church's life God the Father offers his love and salvation Christ as true man and true

God redeems through his sacrifice on the cross and the Holy Spirit inspires mankind dwelling in the church and in

the hearts of the faithful the council also describes the church as the body of Christ the sacrifice of the

cross on the Altar and the celebration of the Eucharist both unify Believers not only to Christ but also together

with each other as the body of Christ all are called to the Pascal celebration for deeper Unity with

[Music] God it comes right out of St Paul First Corinthians Colossians uh the church is

the body of Christ each of us are members of the body um but some felt that you know if the church is the body

of Christ then how can the church ever make any mistakes so there were theologians that were also reaching for

some other images from scripture and one of them was people of God and hence the title of chapter 2 a very intelligent

very very smart Theologian writing in Germany in the 1950s is doctoral dissertation by the name of Joseph

rotzinger uh later to become of course Pope Benedict the 16th he made a very shrew point he said you know uh the

people of God is a powerful and important Old Testament image but it is insufficient by itself

as a a definition of the church because we are the people of God only to the extent that we are grafted onto the body

of Christ to the the extent that we are incorporated into the body of Christ through the Eucharist through the

celebration of the sacraments through reception of the word of God so you cannot really have the church as the

people of God without at the same time saying it is the body of Christ Vatican 2 would reaffirm Christ as the head of

the body who established for his people Shepherds who would lead them the Bishops of the church they succeed to

the college of the Apostles and thus become a college themselves Lumen genium would speak of the collegiality of the

Bishops so that together with the Pope the bishop of Rome and never without him they shepherd the people of God the

Episcopal ciity the idea that the Bishops are not just you know like local managers of the church but actually each

Bishop in himself is belongs to the Episcopal college and a successor of the Apostles and has his own right by virt

of the sacrament to govern and teach and sanctify in his local church so the Episcopal collegiality really completed

the teaching of Vatican 1 about the authority of the Pope by showing that it's shared with the Bishops around the

world prior to Vatican 2 this is something of a truism of course that if you had to use an image for the church

it was something of a pyramid well there was that traditional image before the Council of the church as a as a pyramid

what happened to that image well some would say that the uh pyramid got turned upside down but I think that's a little

bit simplistic um I I think the pyramid captured a a kind of um Theology of the church that was really focused on the

visible structures on offices um basically what are the powers of the Pope um in relation to the

Bishops what are the the faculties needed to celebrate the sacraments Vatican 2 would go on to redefine the

church's hierarchy in a way that preserved the authority of the Holy Father in his role as the successor to

Peter while acknowledging the Bishops in one unified Apostolic Mission while the council reiterated the teaching of

Vatican 1 on papal infallibility it reminded the church that all of the Bishops assembled with the Pope can also

teach infallibly thus when all of the Bishops around the world teach in Union with the Holy Father on divine

revelation they are exercising this charism for so long the idea is you've got the PO Pop's claims and you got the

Bishops and the idea is if you raise up the pope you have to diminish the Bishops if you celebrate the authority

of the Bishops you have to diminish the Pope Vatican 2 punctured that Zero Sum game and one of the ways it did it is to

remember that the pope is himself a bishop he's the bishop of the Church of Rome so it's not one or the other the

College of Bishops is only a college when it's in communion with its head the bishop of Rome and the bishop of Rome

never acts without in some way being in communion with all of the Bishops for me the image now is that of a circle and I

call it a circle of communion it's the whole church uh that forms this uh community that that is a circle of Comm

communion now usually when we hear the word communion we think of Holy Communion but actually uh the second

Vatican Council uh recovered a word from the first 10,000 years of the church as a community that to say a people that

has so much in common it was uh in the after math of Vatican 2 that one sees it more as a circle with distinct roles

within the circle uh one of the fundamental changes of Vatican 2 with regard to the preliminary documents was

that what had started the preliminary document the notion of the hierarchy has now been transported into Chapter 3 of

The Constitution on the church uh and so what I try to show is the structure of the Constitution on the Church of luming

genium how it builds organically chapter 2 the people of God is not the Le it's the whole people of

God chapter 3 is the hierarchy chapter four is the Ley but before there are those distinctions important as they are

chapter 2 speaks of what we hold in common our common baptism the second Vatican Council has given the church a

very beautiful vision of communion in a sense that we discover ourselves as a people of God

as a Community of Faith founded by Jesus Christ on the foundation of unity the new code of

canon law promulgated in 1983 built on luming genium principle of the church as the communion of all the baptized it

helps the people of God to exercise their roles their proper roles within the

communion uh based on a common baptism that we all have and our participation in the life

of the church as Christ Fidelis as members of the one body of Christ uh we now have functions each one of us has a

function has a role to play Within the ecclesial communion as highlighted in lumium the Holy Spirit guides the church

and the council renewed understanding of this Dynamic spirit in the very life of the church the spirit provides gifts to

all God's people and in Lumen jum article for it says the spirit bees to the church gifts that are both

hierarchic and by that it meant uh Church orders and charismatic and by that it meant of course the gifts that

are given to all the baptized Lumen genium details the role of the people of God God according to the traditional

description of Christ's Mission as Prophet priest and king or Shepherd as a prophetic people the faithful proclaim

the word of God particularly in their way of life as a Priestly people they join in Christ's sacrifice of himself at

the Eucharist and as a royal people they seek to bring others closer to Christ the true Shepherd all of the baptized

are equally members of the church and luming genium speaks to the Dignity of both men and women there was another

teaching in the uh constitution on the church lumium number 31 which said that there is no inequality in the church

there's no discrimination in the church on the basis same thing of U nationality or ethnic origin or uh sex or race and

again that was a based on a scripture text the Galatians 3:28 that says in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek

slave nor free man nor woman and so that was uh these texts were used to establish the fact that women had equal

rights and equal dignity on the basis both of being made in the image and likeness of God that's for everybody and

in the church on the basis of being baptized having a common baptismal vocation but Lumen genium also reminds

us that the church is essentially missionary really going out to the people uh engaging with the people um

not being afraid not being worried about anything but really knowing who we are as an identity and then sharing that

with those outside uh with the people of the church uh that has been very great for me men and women in consecrated Life

play a specific role in the mission of the church the council was very interested in addressing not only the

universal call to Holiness that was really the principal idea that lman jensi wanted to put across everyone's

called a Holiness not just religious but they said religious have a particular role to play they don't have a a place

in the structure of the church as such but they belong to the church to its life and Holiness and therefore they're

integrated into the church through the approval of their constitutions Lumen genium would finally be completed by the

Bishops and promulgated by Pope Paul v 6 at the end of the third session of the council the collegiality of the Bishops

conveyed by this dogmatic Constitution has taken a particular institutional form in what is known now as the Senate

of Bishops so for example the Senate we're having right now is an expression of Episcopal collegiality every four 3

or 4 years the pope will call bishops from around the world who will be able to give counsel to the Pope give advice

a report on what's Happening give suggestions about what how the church might address a particular issue and all

of that is an expression of Episcopal collegiality in in a broad sense lumium proclaims the church as the means of

bringing Jesus Christ as Light of the Nations to all of the world but how do sacred scripture and 2,000 years of

tradition enable the church to Proclaim Christ today tune in next time on Vatican 2 inside the council

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