Focus: Vatican II – 60 years on

Leadership and Ministry

Vatican II – looking back on its diamond jubilee

We journey in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, and the journey itself draws us deeper into the life of the Church. Thomas O’Loughlin takes stock of the Council’s legacy, 60 years on.

On 11 October 1962, the Second Vatican Council opened. It was expected by most of the bishops that it would ratify a series of documents prepared by the curia covering a raft of issues – but in essence this was seen as an exercise in tidying up a few loose ends that had been debated since 1870 – and the whole affair would be over by Christmas. The expectation of many bishops as they arrived in Rome in early October was that the Council would involve just that single trip. Some suspected that the feast of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December would be a most appropriate day on which such an event could end, and so the bishops (allowing some time to visit Gammarelli’s, the papal tailors, for some new kit) would be home well before Christmas.1

Those bishops expecting a short, rather technical council were right about one thing: it did end on the feast of the Immaculate Conception – except that they got the year wrong. It ended on 8 December 1965 – three years and four ‘sessions’ later – making it the second longest council in the history of the western Church. Moreover, what we would now call its ‘outputs’ – formal documents ranging from binding constitutions to messages of goodwill – dwarf in volume, range, and complexity the productions of any previous council. Is there a reader of the Pastoral Review who does not have The Documents of Vatican II somewhere near to hand? And it is a hefty paperback!

Now, 60 years on, we have enough distance to try to see it as a whole and take stock of where we are in relation to it. So this article is a ‘taking stock’, rather than an attempt to commemorate, by placing the Council in context, much less an attempt to sketch the history of its reception.

Mixed messages

Some months ago, Pope Francis annoyed many who express their great regard for pre-1969 liturgical practices by stating that they might be using those liturgical claims as an excuse for much wider rejection of the teaching of Vatican II. Such a rejection, the Pope has made clear now in several documents, is simply not an option for Catholics. This position is clear and consistent: an ecumenical council with the approbation of the Bishop of Rome is the highest teaching authority.

But, of course, while one can find any number of individuals – and their websites – who disagree with the Pope on this and who view Vatican II with a range of attitudes from being ‘a rant by trendy liberals in the ‘60s’ to it being the demonic invasion ‘foretold in Revelation 12’, the situation is otherwise when it comes to bishops! However, to a man, they are staunch supporters of Vatican II and add a few footnotes to it in everything they write; one suspects that this might – for some of them – be simply ‘the party line’. In fact, we all know that for some bishops – and quite a number of presbyters and deacons – this acceptance of Vatican II is little more than ticking the obligatory box and expressing the right sentiments. There are many who would like to skip the Council as a blip, and, since that is impossible, give it as minimal an interpretation as they can. Would it be good to face this?

The idea that all the bishops appointed in the last 60 years would be equally enthusiastic about the vision of Vatican II is, of course, an illusion, albeit a pious one. Even the credal text of Nicaea in 325 – which was, after all, what we today would refer

6 | Pastoral Review Vol. 18 Issue 4 | October/November/December 2022