New Pope Takes Over

Second Session - 29 September – 4 December 1963

Gentle Pope John XXIII, having summoned the Council, was called home to the Lord after the First Session without having the chance to formally promulgate a single decree of the Council. However he will live on as the Pope, who responded to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and launched the most famous ecumenical council in the life of the Church to date.

As part of his plan for the continuation of the Council, Pope Paul VI issued a revised version of the way of proceeding of the Council in order to correct some defects in the organisation observed during the First Session.

He also enlarged the Board of Presidents to 12 members, whose duty was to see that the rules were observed and to deal with any difficulties which might arise. He also appointed 4 Cardinal Moderators, whose task was to take turns in moderating the discussions in the General Congregations. He also changed the rule governing voting to 50% plus one as the majority needed for the rejection or deferment of a schema or part thereof. He further appointed a Press Committee to improve and expand the world-wide press service.

His Holiness also increased the number of non-catholic Christian observers such that there were 31 more present at the Second Session than at the First Session. Also the number of lay Catholics attending the Second Session increased by 10, drawn from various countries. The unfortunate thing about this increase of 10 is that they were all men!

The Public Opening of the Second Session

This opening session occurred on 29 September 1963, and Pope Paul VI delivered a clear address in which he underscored the pastoral nature of the Council, listing the following four purposes:-

a. To define more clearly the Church, especially in regard to the position of the bishops;

b. The renewal of the Church;

c. To promote the restoration of unity among all Christians;

d. To initiate a dialogue with the contemporary world.

After the Pope’s presentation, the assembled Fathers began the discussion on the revised Schema on the Church. As expected there was a heated debate on the handling of the relationship in the Schema between the Collegiality of the bishops and its relationship to the Primacy of the Pope as defined at Vatican I. A further division arose among the Fathers over the question whether the Schema on the Blessed Virgin Mary should be a separate text or should it be part of the Schema on the Church. After a lively debate, the question was put to the vote on 29 October, and by a very narrow margin (1,114 to 1,074) the assembly decided to incorporate it into the Schema on the Church.

Cardinal Frings v Cardinal Ottaviani

Over the period 5 – 15 November, the Schema on the Bishops and the governance of Dioceses was discussed, and there occurred a crossing of swords between Cardinal Josef Frings (pic), who criticised the methods of the Holy Office, and Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the Secretary of the Holy Office. This has been recorded as a rare and dramatic confrontation.

After the Frings-Ottaviani dust had settled, the Council Fathers went on to discuss the first three chapters of the Schema on Ecumenism and these were approved on condition that they would be revised. The rest of this Schema was deferred to the Third Session.

Enlarging the Commissions

On 21 November, the Holy Father announced that the number of members of each Commission was to be increased from 24 to 30. As expected the Episcopal Conferences nominated candidates and the Council Fathers elected most of the new members on 28 November, with the Holy Father appointing the rest. At one level, the purpose of this change was to expedite the work of the Commissions, but at another level, it seems to have been aimed at helping to bring some recalcitrant Commissions into step with the wishes of the Council’s majority.

In his Motu Proprio, Pastorale Munus, dated 30 November, the Pope either granted or declared to be restored to bishops, certain faculties and privileges, whose character was so insignificant as to highlight in the minds of many Fathers and observers, the degree to which the Episcopate had in the past become dependent on the Papacy.

Concluding the Second Session - 4 December 1963

During this Session, the Council Fathers passed the Constitution on the Liturgy by a vote of 2,147 to 4; this vote reflects the years of study and research on the Liturgy across the globe, and the intensity of the debate at the first and second Sessions of the Council on this Schema.

The Decree on the Communications Media was also passed by a vote of 1,980 to 164. These two texts were the first of the final documents of the Council to be approved and promulgated by the Holy Father. As was the custom, the Council Fathers were encouraged to submit comments during the interval between the Second and the Third Sessions of the Council, which comments would help the Commissions in their revisions of the texts of the outstanding Schema.

Furthermore the Coordinating Commission, acting in accordance with the Pope’s wishes, reduced the number of topics for discussion; thus those on priests, religious, education of the clergy, missionary activity, marriage and Catholic education were reduced to a series of basic principles on which the Fathers were expected to agree easily and without public discussion in the Third Session.

The fleshing out of these principles was to be left to the post-conciliar bodies. All of this was aimed at ensuring that the Council would end its work during the Third Session! 

To bring the curtain down on the Second Session, the Holy Father announced that WOMEN, the neglected species, were to join the lay men as Auditors of the Council, and that for the first time there were among the observer-delegates, representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Thus the Second Session was both hectic and constructive with the passing of the Constitution on the Liturgy and the Decree on Communications Media, as a result of the changes which we noted at the beginning of the Session and those also implemented during the months of working.

The Third Session would also prove hectic, but not the final session of the Council, as some of the Fathers were anticipating.

Interesting Fact:

Despite having been one of the most famous defenders of the traditional Magisterium of the Church, at the end of Vatican Council II, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani gave up his ideals and aligned himself with Paul VI and the progressivist current.

Indeed, on October 28, 1965, he granted an interview to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in which he affirmed that thenceforth he would defend the new principles of Vatican II.

Responding to a question of the journalist, Cardinal Ottaviani declared:

"I am a soldier who watches over the gold reserve. Do you think I would fulfill my duty by arguing, abandoning my post, turning a blind eye? My son, 75 years are 75 years! I lived them defending certain principles and certain laws. If you tell the old soldier that the laws are going to change, it is obvious that as an old soldier he will do everything to keep them from changing.

"But if, nonetheless, they change, God will certainly give him the strength to place himself in the defense of the new treasure in which he believes. Once the new laws become the treasure of the Church, an enrichment of the gold reserve, then only one principle counts: to serve the Church. And this service means to be faithful to her laws." 

Vatican Documents and the First Session

The four years of the Second Vatican Council saw the emergence of various Constitutions, Decrees and Declarations as follows:

FOUR CONSTITUTIONS: 

1. Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy

2. Constitution on Divine Revelation

3. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium)

4. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes)

These four constitutions make up the substantial core of the Council’s teaching. As you would no doubt gather the other documents are related components of these constitutions, but are treated separately precisely to highlight one or several aspects of the particular constitution.

NINE DECREES:  

1. Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity.

2. Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity.

3. Decree on Ecumenism

4. Decree on the Life and Ministry of Priests

5. Decree on the Renewal of Religious Life

6. Decree on the Catholic Oriental Churches

7. Decree on the Pastoral Office of the Bishops in the Church.

8. Decree on the Training of Priests

9. Decree on the Means of Social Communication

A brief examination of the titles of the Decrees will reveal that they refer to particular aspects of one or more of the Constitutions listed above.

THREE DECLARATIONS:  

1. Declaration on Religious Liberty

2. Declaration on Christian Education

3. Declaration on the Church’s Relations with Non-Christian Religions

Once more, a brief examination of the titles of these Declarations places them within one or more of the four Constitutions. Earlier on we had mentioned that the Council met over Four Periods or Sessions, each covering approximately from September to December over the four years, 1962 to 1965.

We shall proceed to consider the First Session, which followed the official opening of the Council on 11th October 1962.

FIRST SESSION – 13th October 1962

This Session, the first working session of the Council, had a clear agenda, which included the election of members for the ten commissions proposed for the Council. Each of these commissions was to have sixteen elected members (2/3) and eight (1/3) appointed by the Holy Father.

There seemed to have been an expectation that the members of the Preparatory Commissions, mentioned earlier on, and where members of the Roman Curia were prominently represented, would have been confirmed as the majority members of the Commissions of the Council. This was not to be, as a motion proposed by Cardinal Achille Lienart (France) and seconded by Cardinal Joseph Frings (Germany) brought to the attention of the Council that the bishops needed time to get to know each other and so make the vote an intelligent one, sought the postponement of the vote. The motion was carried by a majority and the First Working Session of the Council was brought to a close just after only fifteen minutes.

This adjournment created the opportunity for consultations between the various conferences of bishops, and before long, it was decided that the national or regional Episcopal Conferences would recommend one or two candidates of their own for each Commission.

These actions, the consultations and the nomination of candidates to the commissions, were indicative that the Fathers of the Council intended to take their responsibility for the Council seriously. Thus when they reassembled on 16th October, a composite list of all the nominations was circulated and later voted on, and winning a majority. In this way, the Commissions became much more representative of the assembled fathers of the Council, rather than hand-picked representatives of the Curia.

However we must remember that the Presidents of the Commissions were appointed by the Pope, and so therein resulted a vital curial input.  The rest of the First Session was dedicated to discussions of the Schemata on the Liturgy, on the sources of revelation, on mass media, on the Church and on the unity of the Church.

Of these, there were lively discussions on the liturgical proposed changes: namely, greater use of vernacular languages, frequent communion under both kinds, and concelebration.

Liturgy and Revelation

One aspect of the debate which emerged during the discussion on the Schema of the Liturgy was the need for greater authority in matters of the liturgy to be given to Episcopal Conferences. 

This long and lively debate was not surprising as much research and publications around the world on matters of the liturgy in the church had been taking place for years before the council. So the long debate on the Schema of the Liturgy at this First Session was brought to an acceptable closure with a vote on the general principles set out in the draft, with a vast majority of the Fathers, (2,162 to 46) showing that they were ready to embark on significant liturgical reform. 

A further prominent debate focused on a Schema on the sources of revelation and in particular the relationship between Scripture and Tradition, and the value of modern historical critical methods in the interpretation of the Bible. The text of this schema was ruthlessly criticized for its negative tone and a lack of ecumenical and pastoral sensitivity and for   prematurely settling the legitimately debated issue as to whether all revealed truths are to be found in Scripture. Those who defended the text argued that the dogmatic issue was settled at the Council of Trent and by subsequent teachings of the Church. 

A vote was taken as to whether to discontinue the debate or to continue it dealing with the individual chapters. This vote just fell short of the prescribed two-thirds majority (1,368 to 822) required, but the Holy Father intervened and sent the text to a special commission under the joint chairmanship of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bea to rewrite the text. 

After this, coming to the end of the First Session, a preliminary discussion of the Schema on the Church was held. The official text of this schema was also subjected to much criticism and it was accepted that it would have to be revised. 

In fact, on 6th December 1962, it was announced that the Holy Father had appointed a Coordinating Commission, whose task was to review all the draft texts prepared for the Council, and in the light of the goals of the Council as stated by the Pope and ratified by the votes of the Fathers of the Council, to decide which were to be retained on the Council’s agenda and which could be left for post-conciliar decisions; the Commission was also tasked with what changes in content, method or tone needed to be made. 

This Commission swiftly reduced the texts to be retained on the Council’s agenda to 17, the last of these being a new Schema championed by Cardinal Suenens, to address the presence of the Church in the Modern World. 

Throughout the period between the First Session and the Second Session, the commissions of the Council undertook what has been called “a second preparation” of Vatican II. This preparation was however halted upon the death of Pope John XXIII on 3rd June 1963, since an ecumenical council is automatically dissolved upon the death of the Pope who convened it. 

As you may recall, Pope Paul V1 was elected on 21st June 1963 and immediately announced that the Council would continue. Thus the Second Session, under Pope Paul V1 was to open on 29th September 1963. 

We close our presentation of this First Session of Vatican II by noting that, while there were much debate and discussions on matters presented to the Council, this First Session ended without the approval of a single Schema. Its achievement however rests with the decisions, which the Fathers of the Council made, and which determined the future course of the Second Vatican Council. Tomorrow, we shall consider the Second Session of Vatican II.

Mother Church Rejoices

The opening of the Second Vatican Council on Thursday, 11th October 1962 by Pope John XXIII was a spectacular event with a glorious procession of the Cardinals, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Theologians, and 129 Superiors General of   clerical religious orders. Also in attendance for the opening were 86 representatives of governments and international bodies, observers of other Christian churches and special invitees of bishops, who were their advisors on theological matters.

As the seemingly endless procession filed into St. Peter’s on that historic day, an audience of global dimensions caught its first glimpse, by television, of the Second Vatican Council. It also received a forecast of what the Council’s course will be.

Cardinal Paul-Emile Léger, a leading liberal force at the Second Vatican Council had summed it up in a statement made for newspapermen in Montreal before he left for Rome: “To grasp fully what will happen at the next Council, it is necessary to consider it in terms of the modern world.” In the face of a changing world, the Canadian prelate predicted, “the Council will affirm that it is the will of the Church to meet new needs so that it may fulfill its mission of salvation.” What this spectacle of bishops drawn from a hundred lands and every race and color furnished was a graphic index of the problems posed by the very complexity and diversity, yet growing movement toward unity in today’s world.

Gathering within the Vatican’s precincts, these “fathers” of the Council were a living cross section of contemporary history. As one gazed about he might read, for instance, the troubled story of communism’s threat in the strong countenance of Poland’s Cardinal Wyszynski, the slow pace of exiled Chinese Cardinal Tien or the bowed head of Bishop Hamvas — the first member of the Hungarian hierarchy to reach Rome in 14 years. The emerging nations also had their story told, in the persons of towering Cardinal Rugambwa, Bishop Kiwanuka and other representatives of the relatively new Churches in Africa. And on every side, one saw the impress of the Americas, with more than 300 bishops on hand from Canada and the United States, and almost twice that number from the heavily Catholic nations of Latin America.

But the personnel of the Council at its opening session mirrored more than the diversity of the family of man. The number alone, compared with that assembled at any previous Council, pointed to another highly significant fact about our changing world. For just as there were almost three times as many bishops present as assisted at the start of the First Vatican Council, so the world’s population today far exceeds that of 1869.

More importantly, much of this growth has taken place in recent decades. Indeed, an estimated 600 million out of the present total of 3.1 billion men on earth were born in the past dozen years. And, with the exception of Latin America, the greatest rate of increase has been in lands where Catholics are proportionately few. One man in every three, at the present moment, dwells somewhere behind the Iron Curtain. Yet Catholics account for less than six per cent of that vast mass, and the chances for widespread conversions are slim indeed. More striking still is the estimate that the countries of Asia, in which only four out of a hundred persons are now Catholics, will number one out of every two human beings alive in the year 2000.

This, then, is surely a Council which cannot content itself with looking to the past. Written across the brow of the composite image of the Council projected by those rows of prelates seated in the central church of Christendom was an awareness that it must embrace, in Cardinal Léger’s words, “the interests of all men who believe in man and the moral values that make men great.” Hence, too, as a Council for our times it can be expected to take up mankind’s overarching concerns: “world peace; co-operation among unequally developed peoples; the growth of population; the liberty of man in today’s political, economic and social context.”

In his opening speech, “Mother Church Rejoices” (Gaudet Mater Ecclesia), Pope John took a firm stand on the appropriateness of the Council, and chastised “those prophets of doom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.”

It is important at this point, as we move towards examining the various documents that emerged during the four years of the Council’s life, to consider the prayer of Pope John XXIII to the Holy Spirit for the success of the ecumenical council. The last three paragraphs of the prayer are cited here:

“O sweet Guest of the soul, strengthen our minds in the truth and dispose of our hearts to pay reverential heed, that we may accept with sincere submission those things which have been decided in the Council and fulfil them with ready will.

We pray for those sheep, who are not now of the one fold of Jesus Christ, that even as they glory in the name of Christian, they may come at last to unity under the governance of the one Shepherd.

Renew your wonders in this our day, as by a new Pentecost. Grant to your Church that, being of one mind and steadfast in prayer with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and following the lead of blessed Peter, it may advance the reign of our Divine Saviour, the reign of truth and justice, the reign of love and peace. Amen”