Any attempt to write about the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council (1962-65) must begin with a confession of inadequacy. This is so for two reasons. First, no international gathering involving thousands of participants and impacting hundreds of millions of believers will entirely conform to ready-made narratives, whether they be triumphalist or catastrophizing. The French Catholic phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion reminds us that even a gathering as mundane as an academic lecture is irreducibly “saturated.” Achieving an exhaustive understanding of it would require us to both trace its emergence from a historical past “exceeding memory” and to chart its “consequences in the individual and collective evolution of all participants” (Marion 2002, 32-33). This tendency for historical occurrences to outstrip our ability to narrate them is even truer of ecumenical councils. For such an event is thought to be specially assisted by the Holy Spirit and to represent a society that—as Augustine conjectured in Book XV of City of God—can trace its origins back to Abel the Just.

Second, Vatican II is also the most recent ecumenical council. As it lacks a successor council to provide official retrospective commentary and corrective, it can hardly even be said to be past. Indeed, the very “presentness” of Vatican II poses special difficulties for interpreters. As Simone Weil once observed, “Our attachments and our passions do not so thickly obscure our discrimination of the eternal in the past as in the present” (Weil 1962, 45). St. John Henry Newman was no doubt making a similar point when he likened the history of Christian belief to a spring of water: “It necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary” (Newman 1843, 40). The waters issuing from Vatican II are likewise still turbid.

But the difficulty of gaining perspective on epoch-making ecclesial events does not excuse theologians from making partial and provisional attempts. This is especially so now that the Council is sixty years past and more easily approached with the kind of sympathetic distance conducive to balanced judgment. Mindful of its limitations, then, this entry will consider Vatican II under four aspects. First, it will set Vatican II within the bimillennial tradition of the ecumenical councils, drawing attention to both its common and distinctive features. Second, it will recount the Council’s historical unfolding: its background, its convocation and preparation, and its four sessions. Third, it will review the teaching of the documents of the Vatican II, focusing on its four constitutions. Finally, it will study its ecclesial impact, theological interpretation, and magisterial reception.

I. Vatican II Among the Ecumenical Councils

When Pope John XXIII (r. 1958-1963) opened Vatican II, he introduced it to the world as the twenty-first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church (Gaudet 25). A great deal of historical and theological complexity, however, lies just below the surface of this deceptively simple affirmation. An exact list of ecumenical councils has never been doctrinally defined. It was the Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1631) who, responding to Protestant polemics, substantially formulated the list that has become standard today (Washburn 2021, 259-60). It behooves us, therefore, to examine briefly how theologians arrive at this number, and what Vatican II’s terminal place in this series implies.

To speak of a council as “ecumenical” is implicitly to distinguish it from two other kinds: “particular” and “false.” Particular councils differ from ecumenical councils principally in their scope. Unlike ecumenical councils, particular councils do not gather bishops from the “whole inhabited world” (οἰκουμένη) to decide matters relevant to the whole Church. They instead gather bishops of a region. Though only ecumenical councils enjoy the Church’s supreme teaching authority, particular councils nevertheless enjoy a legitimate authority. Pseudo-councils, by contrast, represent illegitimate gatherings of bishops. Their decrees not only lack authority but are sometimes downright erroneous, as was the case for the so-called “robber council” of Ephesus (449 AD).

Though this threefold classification of councils seems obvious in retrospect, it was anything but obvious in prospect. Scripture has even less to say about councils than about the Petrine office. The New Testament does, to be sure, record the so-called “apostolic council” of Acts 15, where Paul and Barnabas put before the “apostles and presbyters” (Acts 15:2, 4, 6, 22, 23) of the Jerusalem community the question of whether Gentile Christians must observe the Mosaic law to be saved. The assembly, guided especially by Peter and James, opted to forbid Gentile Christians only meat used in pagan sacrifice, the consumption of blood, and unlawful marriage (15:20, 29), describing this resolution as the “decision of the Holy Spirit and of us” (15:28). Acts thus suggested that decisions taken in apostolic council share in the Spirit’s authority but do not delineate the marks of a truly “ecumenical” council. These refinements would come into focus only over the course of Church history.

In the second and third centuries, the Catholic Church held numerous regional assemblies addressing doctrinal and disciplinary questions. These included the synods of Asia Minor against Montanism (ca. 175 AD), the Roman synods concerning the date of Easter (ca. 190), and the North African synods rejecting the validity of heretical baptism (255-56) (a teaching never accepted by Rome). Perhaps the closest precedent for future ecumenical councils was the Synod of Antioch (268), which condemned the Christology of Paul of Samosata (264-268 AD). Though it assembled only Eastern bishops, it subsequently sent its decrees to Rome and Alexandria, addressing the bishops “throughout the world” (κατὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην) (Marot 1960, 25-37).

The Church first realized the possibility of an “ecumenical” assembly at the Council of Nicaea (325), which condemned the Christology of Arius and decreed the Son “consubstantial” (homoousion) with the Father. Though a sense of the unity of the episcopate “throughout the world” was already well developed, Emperor Constantine’s convocation of the entire episcopate in Nicaea first permitted this unity to manifest itself concretely (Camelot 1960, 55). Even so, the qualitative difference between Nicaea and its precursors dawned only retrospectively. The adjective “ecumenical” was not applied to any council before the Council of Constantinople (381) (Congar 1960a, 315). The great Jesuit patrologist Hermann-Josef Sieben once charted how Nicaea’s stature grew in the mind of Athanasius over the course of his struggle with Arian opponents. The embattled Alexandrian bishop initially understood Nicaea to be merely an “ecumenical condemnation” of Arius, but he later came to esteem it as a touchstone of orthodoxy and, finally, as a council sufficient for all time (Sieben 1979, 513).

Though Nicaea first actualized the latent possibility of an “ecumenical” council, the conciliar form and “ideal” continued to evolve. Theologians usually place seven ecumenical councils of the first millennium in a class apart: Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680-81), and Nicaea II (787). These have in common imperial convocation, broad episcopal representation, Roman approval (at least retroactive) (Sieben 2010, 70–84), the exclusion of Trinitarian and Christological heresies, and dogmatic authority for Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Roman Catholics alone, however, came to recognize an eighth ecumenical council of the first millennium. This was Constantinople IV (869-70), convened to depose Photius, then Patriarch of Constantinople (Dvornik 1948, 328-330). Even among the first seven councils of the first millennium, however, there are internal distinctions. The first four ecumenical councils enjoy a certain preeminence. From the sixth century onward bishops like Gregory the Great begin to liken their authority to that of the four Gospels, using fidelity to them as a criterion for authenticating subsequent councils. Magisterial reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin also acknowledged the first four councils to be faithful interpretations of Scripture (Congar 1960b, 76-80, 96-97).

After the gradual parting of ways between Latin and Byzantine Churches—due partly to the interference of Islam, partly to the dissolution of the Roman Empire, and partly to their divergent theological cultures—only the Latin Church continued to hold what it considered “ecumenical” (generalia or universalia) councils. This reflected its belief that the Pope, summing up the faith of the universal Church in his person, could supply for defects of geographical universality (Congar 1960a, 316-318). These concilia universalia included the four Lateran Councils (1123, 1139, 1179, 1215), the two Councils of Lyons (1245, 1274), Vienne (1311-12), parts of Constance (1414-18), and Florence (1438-43). After that came two sixteenth-century reform councils: Lateran V (1512-17), often considered a failure; and Trent (1545-63), often considered a success. After a hiatus of more than three centuries, the Western Church resumed its conciliar tradition, calling two councils intent on defining the Church’s place in the modern world: Vatican I (1869-70), interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War; and Vatican II (1962-65), the subject of this entry (Christophe and Frost 1988).

So what light does this bimillennial tradition of ecumenical councils shed on Vatican II? The fact that Vatican II is co-numbered with twenty preceding ecumenical councils implies, of course, certain commonalities. Vatican II is, like its forerunners, an extraordinary meeting of the universal college of bishops united to the Pope. Catholics thus believe that it was endowed with the Church’s supreme teaching authority, having the root capacity to determine the faith dogmatically (LG §22; cf. CCC 891). They believe this true even if, like the other councils of the second millennium, it did not include voting representation from the traditional patriarchates of the East.

But beyond these basic commonalities, there were novel aspects to Vatican II. Perhaps the most salient was the lack of obvious doctrinal or disciplinary emergency. The first seven councils of the first millennium responded largely to the diffusion of Trinitarian and Christological heresies that threatened the core conviction of the Christian faith: that true God became true man. The ecumenical councils of the second millennium addressed a mixture of doctrinal and civilizational crises: the Investiture Controversy (Lateran I), papal schisms (Lateran III and Constance), the estrangement of the Byzantine Church (Lyons II and Florence), the organization of crusades (Lateran I, Lateran IV, Lyons I-II, Vienne) the Protestant Reformation (Trent), the rise of militant secularism and atheist humanism in the wake of the French Revolution (Vatican I) (Christophe and Frost 1988). In the immediate run-up to Vatican II, however, there seemed to be no comparable threat to the Church’s understanding of herself and her role in the world. There were, to be sure, deep theological tensions below the Church’s apparently placid surface. But there is some truth to observation that Vatican II, unlike previous councils, wanted to be “proactive rather than reactive” (Bullivant and Blanchard 2023, 8).

The proactive intent found expression in Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, the address with which Pope John XXIII opened Vatican II on October 11, 1962. The address affirmed that the council’s “greatest concern” was that the “sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously” (John XXIII 1966, 26). As the chief obstacle to defending and propagating the Gospel, however, Pope John identified no prevalent error infecting “one article or another of the fundamental doctrine of the Church.” He instead implied that an unattractive mode of communication was obscuring the splendor of the whole: “The substance of the ancient doctrine of the Deposit of Faith is one thing, the way it is presented is another.” The effective spread of the Gospel called for a new kind of magisterium, one “predominantly pastoral in character,” exposited “through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought,” and meeting the “needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of [the Church’s] teaching rather than by condemnations” (John XXIII 1966, 27). It was this general, positive, and contemporary reformulation of Christian doctrine that justified the calling of an ecumenical council.

This new motivation for convening a council had knock-on effects at the literary level. Charged with recasting the apostolic deposit, Vatican II generated more documentation than any previous council—nearly one-third of the total output of all the councils combined (O’Malley 2003, 13). Charged with articulating the deposit positively and winsomely, Vatican II dropped the use of condemnatory and agonistic language. Ecumenical councils from Nicaea to Vatican I had issued their solemn definitions at least partly in the form of “anathemas,” or condemned propositions. In this they understood themselves to be echoing St. Paul, who wrote, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach [to you] a gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let that one be accursed (ἀνάθεμα ἔστω)!” (Gal 1:8; cf. 1 Cor 16:22). Vatican II likewise ceased to speak of a “militant” Church, despite the adjective’s biblical pedigree (see 2 Tim 2:4), thereby signaling a less embattled posture toward the world (De Mattei 2010, 312-14). The difference in genre and tone between the documents of Vatican II and those of previous councils strikes even casual readers.

II. History of the Council

But this new tone was not effortlessly achieved. It was inaugurated by a lengthy preparatory phase, debated over four general sessions, and hammered out in countless committees and subcommittees of theological experts. As with other councils in the history of the Church, Vatican II, once convened, took on a life of its own, often described as the struggle between a progressive majority and a conservative minority. It is worth briefly reviewing, therefore, the major phases of the drama, beginning with its background and convocation, then passing to its preparatory phase and four conciliar sessions.

Background: Between Vatican I and Vatican II

Though the introductory observations about Vatican II as a “saturated” phenomenon “exceeding memory” are valid for all phases of the council, they apply especially well to its remote background—that is, to the ecclesial tensions leading John XXIII to summon the council on January 25, 1959. This period was full of both tragic events that shook European Christianity to its core and intellectual tensions that roiled below the surface of a closely monitored theological culture.

In terms of world events, special attention is due to the two World Wars (1914-18, 1939-45) which successively decimated great parts of Europe, leaving the traditional heartland of Christianity divided into Soviet and Western blocs. Scholars of Vatican II have noted the inevitable “generational” effect that these events had on the intelligentsia of Europe, including the theological intelligentsia. The civilizational collapse of World War I bred a mistrust in philosophical abstraction and sparked an interest in vitalist, historicist thinking (Kirwan 2018, 101-102). The bonding experience of shared hardship in the trenches during World Wars I and II, as well as the reorganization of parishes and neighborhoods after World War II, broke down the “densely-clustered social networks” previously organized along confessional lines—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish (Bullivant 2019, 95). A conviction emerged among those most affected by these wars—French, Germans, Belgians—that these new sensibilities called for a new way of presenting the Gospel.

Those who held this conviction sometimes found themselves at odds with the magisterium. Long before the two World Wars, Pope Leo XIII (r. 1878-1903), with his encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879), made philosophy and theology ad mentem divi Thomae the standard for seminary instruction (Leo XIII 1879). But this would prove insufficient to eradicate what his successor Pius X (r. 1903-1914) called “Modernism”—a tendency to reduce Christianity to an inner experience of “vital immanence,” whose outward doctrinal and ritual expressions must evolve to keep up with changing historical conditions (Pius X 1907, §7-8). Stronger doses of Thomism were prescribed. Resisting this pressure toward a Thomist monoculture, however, were various intellectual enthusiasms more oriented to the “concrete,” historical, and inclusive sensibilities of Europe’s veterans. This so-called “new theology” (nouvelle théologie) sought to go “back to the sources” (ressourcement) of Christianity—Scripture, Liturgy, Mysticism—studying them directly and for their own sake rather than as excerpted premises in scholastic demonstrations (Daniélou 2021). This reaction naturally provoked an ecclesial counterreaction, which detected a resurgent “Modernism” in the nouvelle théologie’s desire to make theology a medium of spiritual experience (Kirwan and Minerd, 2023). Many of the more prominent advocates of this nouvelle théologie fell at some point or another under Roman censure (Shortall 2021, 221-246).

It is for this reason that some only partly agree that Vatican II was proactive rather than reactive. The Jesuit theologian Erich Przywara, for instance, foresaw, even before Vatican II officially opened, that the council was destined to adjudicate a “contest” between rival ecclesial and theological styles (Przywara 1962, 5-6).

Convocation and Preparation

On January 25, 1959, only three months after his election, John XIII, né Angelo Roncalli, surprised a small group of cardinals by announcing his intention to summon an ecumenical council (John XXIII 1959). On July 14 of the same year, he informed Secretary of State Domenico Tardini that this council would be called Vatican II, thereby signaling his intention to do more than merely resume the interrupted agenda of Vatican I. Other surprises followed.

The Ante-preparatory Phase of the council (1959-60) opened when Pope John established a commission headed by the same Cardinal Tardini. This commission’s task was to canvass the worldwide episcopate with an open-ended questionnaire and synthesize their proposals about what business the council should prioritize. The responses showed little global consensus on the council’s agenda priorities and even less expectation of an epochal event (Alberigo 2006, 10-13).

This made for hard work in the Preparatory Phase, which began on Pentecost 1960 with the promulgation of John XXIII’s Superno Dei nutu. The motu proprio established the composition and tasks of a Central Preparatory Commission (CPC), dividing the responsibilities according to the respective competencies of the various curial dicasteries, including the recently created Secretariat for Christian Unity. The CPC took fifty-four topics culled from the bishops’ questionnaires (Quaestiones commissionibus praeparatoriis Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II positae) and addressed them in twenty-two schemata (“drafts” or “outlines”). These now fill four volumes of the Acta of the Second Vatican Council (Schemata Constitutionum et Decretorum, Series I-IV, 1962-63). Many of these schemata, such as the treatments of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the apostolate of the laity, the missions, seminary studies, bishops, and religious life, would provide material for later conciliar decrees. However, lest it overwhelm, the CPC opted to send only seven documents to the world episcopate the summer before the first session. These advance drafts treated revelation, the deposit of faith, the moral order, the liturgy, chastity and the family, social communications, and Church unity (Komonchak 1995, 339-350). According to Giuseppe Alberigo, when the bishops received these documents, only the schema on liturgy met with broad approval (Alberigo 2006, 15). This dissatisfaction would soon make itself felt at the Council’s sessions.

The Sessions

The Council was solemnly opened on October 11, 1962 with Pope John XXIII’s aforementioned address Gaudet Mater Ecclesia. The work of the council, once begun, would swell to fill 168 general assemblies, four major sessions, and more than three calendar years. There can be no aspiration here to adequately synthesize the happenings of the Council, since this would mean following, in Marion’s words, its “consequences in the individual and collective evolution of all participants.” What follows will instead attempt to highlight a few inflection points in the rhythm of the council’s work rather than details in the drafting history of particular texts.

The First Session (11 Oct – 8 Dec 1962) quickly revealed the worldwide episcopacy’s dissatisfaction with the schemata prepared by the Preparatory Commission and dashed any hopes that the Council’s work would be brief. An initial vote was required to admit the pre-circulated schemata as a working basis for conciliar discussion, but none received immediate approval. Even the schema on the liturgy, the one that enjoyed the widest approval, received so many proposed amendments that the Council opted to put off definitive voting until the next session. When the schema on revelation went up for vote on November 20, it received 1368 votes against and only 822 for. Since this fell short of the two-thirds majority required either to approve the document or reject it outright, John XXIII intervened to declare the document rejected. He then entrusted its replacement to a “mixed” commission comprising members of the Doctrinal Commission and the Secretariat for Christian Unity. The schemata on the Church and on Christian unity likewise met with little enthusiasm. The latter was only one of three preparatory documents touching on ecumenism and, having been prepared by the Commission for the Oriental Churches, considered only Catholic-Orthodox relations (Komonchak 1995, 346). By the end of the session, though no definitive voting had been achieved, a fault line had emerged between a minority sensibility, dedicated to maintaining the vigilance of the anti-modernist magisterium, and a majority sensibility dedicated to recasting this doctrinal patrimony (Alberigo 2006, 21-36).

John XXIII died on Pentecost (June 3) 1963. His successor Paul VI (r. 1963-78), né Giovanni Battista Montini, opted to continue the council, fixing the start of its Second Session (29 September – 4 December 1963) (Alberigo 2006, 35-36). In the meantime, he sought to concentrate the energy of the second session by entrusting much day-to-day direction to a smaller group of moderatori and by giving the work of the second session a sharper ecclesial focus in his opening address (Alberigo 2006, 43). Though the participants overwhelmingly (2,231 to 43) admitted the new working schema on the Church written by the Belgian theologian Gérard Philips, the same majority-minority differences resurfaced around particular issues: the sacramentality and competencies of the episcopate (Oct 30), whether Mary should be treated independently of the Church (Oct 29), and the correct Catholic attitude toward separated Christians (Alberigo 2006, 48-49, 54). Despite these perduring tensions, the Council did manage to approve on December 4, 1963, the Second Session’s closing date, its first Constitution: the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium).

The business of the Third Session (14 September – 21 November 1964) resembled in many ways that of the Second, with the notable exception of a series of interventions made by Paul VI in the final week of drafting, also known as “Black Week” (settimana nera) to the members of the majority. Just as John XXIII had suspended conciliar procedure in the first session to table the preparatory schema on revelation, Paul VI requested amendments on his own initiative in third session, now with a view to satisfying minority theological sensibilities and securing moral unanimity. As a result of these extra-procedural initiatives, the fathers put off voting on a schema on religious freedom (ultimately, Dignitatis humanae), inserted more than twenty changes into a schema on ecumenism (ultimately, Unitatis redintegratio), and added a “preliminary explanatory note” (Nota explicativa praevia) to the schema on the Church. In the eyes of many, this note, which spoke of the Church as a “hierarchical communion,” savored—both in origin and in emphasis—more of the monarchical papacy of Vatican I than of the episcopal collegiality praised in the schema itself. The last day of the third session, 21 November 1964, when the council voted to approve the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium), held a final surprise. Paul VI declared Mary to be Mother of the Church, a title that some fathers had kept out of Lumen gentium, citing its ecumenical inopportuneness and questionable theological pedigree (Alberigo 2006, 71-91).

The Fourth Session (14 September - 8 December 1965) brought the work of the previous sessions to a conclusion marked by friable unanimity. The majority continued to recast the Church’s theological heritage in the positive and kerygmatic tone desired by John XXIII, while Paul VI continued to act as brakeman, moderating the tone of the council to ensure its broad acceptance. On October 17, for instance, Paul VI commissioned the Jesuit Cardinal Bea, normally numbered among the progressive majority, to bring the schema on revelation’s formulation of biblical inerrancy into closer alignment with previous magisterial statements (Caprile 1969, 335). The same pontiff reserved to himself the divisive question concerning artificial contraception, broached in Schema XIII (ultimately, Gaudium et spes) (Alberigo 2006, 101). To divert a movement to canonize John XXIII in a conciliar act, he opened the causes of John XXIII and Pius XII simultaneously, entrusting them to the normal curial channels. This, along with his decision to create a merely periodic synod of bishops (see Paul VI 1965) dashed many hopes that Paul VI would profoundly reshape the Roman curia and subordinate it to a “permanent” synod (Alberigo 2006, 101-102, 107, 115). Still, the more positive tonality was unmistakable. December 7, the last day of voting, saw two key events: the morally unanimous approval of the most optimistic document of Vatican II, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes) (2,309 for, 75 against, 7 abstentions); and the mutual lifting of the excommunications exchanged between Constantinople and Rome in 1054 (Alberigo 2006, 109-110).

December 8, 1965, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, saw the celebration of the end of the Council in St. Peter’s Square, accompanied by the publication of a number of conciliar messages addressed to diverse sectors of humanity: politicians, thinkers, scientists, artists, workers, the poor, the sick, the suffering, and young people (Alberigo 2006, 116). The phase of conciliar enactment closed, and the phase of conciliar reception opened.

III. The Documents

Before delving into Vatican II’s complex reception, it behooves us to look a little more closely at the documents it produced. These include sixteen documents, which can be viewed synoptically, according to the date of approval, in the following table:

Since no brief entry can do justice to the content of these texts, some selection must be made. As we will see below, the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in 1985 identified the four Constitutions as the hermeneutical key to the decrees and declarations. This entry will discuss, accordingly, the four constitutions, treating them in their order of publication: Liturgy, Church, Revelation, and the Church in the Modern World.

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium

No other Constitution had such an immediate impact on the faithful in the pews as Sacrosanctum concilium, The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Its brief drafting history in no way foreshadowed the “liturgy wars” that would emerge after the Council. It was, after all, the only Constitution whose schema was already widely accepted before the council and was, consequently, ready for approval by the end of the Second Session. But the document arguably mustered its broad support by confining itself (SC §3) to general principles of liturgical renewal (SC §§5-46) and mid-level practical norms concerning the Latin Rite alone (§§47-130). The council had been dispersed for about four years when the papally appointed commission, at work since March 1964, delivered the revised Roman missal into the hands of Paul VI (Nichols 2018, 36).

Sacrosanctum concilium sought to give balanced recognition to two dimensions of liturgical participation: metaphysical and dispositional. The Constitution affirmed the importance of “metaphysical” participation when it spoke about the liturgy as a “font” of grace (SC §10) and a means by which the “work of redemption is accomplished” (SC §2). It affirmed the importance of disposition when it identified the faithful’s “fully conscious and active (actuosa) participation” in the liturgy as the “aim to be considered before all else” (SC §14). In giving active participation such a prominent place, the Council made its own the values of the Benedictine-led Liturgical Movement (Pecklers 2015). There were, of course, good reasons for recognizing both these registers. Traditional theology had often spoken of the Eucharist as having infinite value in itself (in actu primo)(by virtue of the value of Christ’s sacrificial death) but only finite value in its application (in actu secundo), the latter being measured by the faith, charity, and devotion of the pilgrim Church (Michel 1928, 1294). By expanding the Church’s dispositional “measure,” the council hoped to increase the liturgy’s supernatural efficacy.

But the dispositional register, being more responsive to human cultivation, inevitably received the lion’s share of attention after the Council. The conciliar text often only dimly foreshadowed the means used to promote it. Catholics familiar with the Roman Rite after Vatican II are often surprised to discover what Sacrosanctum concilium prescribed (e.g., the continuation of Latin [§36] and Gregorian chant [§§116-17]) and did not prescribe (e.g., the multiplication of eucharistic prayers or the reorientation of altars).

Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium

The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Lumen gentium, was the only Constitution approved in the Third Session (21 November 1964). It is also one of only two documents to bear the qualification “dogmatic.” Its attention to the Church’s constitutive properties and internal order give the document a more timeless quality. It is notable for its mysteric tonality, endorsement of “scalar”—or graded—ecclesiality, and accentuation of episcopal collegiality.

The mysteric tonality refers to the decision to privilege biblical symbols for the Church over categories drawn Aristotelian politics or metaphysics, such as a “perfect society” distinguished by a supernatural final cause. The document opens with global descriptions of the Church as both mystery and People of God (LG §§1-17). Only after contemplating the entire Church through these biblical lenses does Lumen gentium consider the respective roles of ordained and lay Christians (LG §§18-38). Though many have seen a democratizing impulse in the decision to place the treatment of the Church as the People of God ahead of the treatment of the Church’s hierarchy, the governing logic is rather the precedence of the whole over its parts (Dulles 2008, 31-32). The Constitution affirms that the People of God has comprised “various ranks” from the beginning (LG §13), with ministerial priesthood differing from the baptismal priesthood “in essence and not only in degree” (LG §10). The fifth and sixth chapters affirm that all ranks have nevertheless received a universal call to holiness, of which religious vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience constitute a special sign (LG §§39-51). The last two chapters recall the Church’s eschatological destiny and point to Mary as an archetype of the Church (LG §§52-69).

The Constitution’s endorsement of “scalar” ecclesiality is evident in its official recognition of the idea, rooted in scholastic thought, that “being Church” admits of degrees (DeMeuse 2022, 77-81). Though Vatican II was not convoked primarily to settle disputed theological questions, it nevertheless does so when it affirms that all validly baptized persons belong to the Church at some level (Schauf 2022, 122). Balancing this is the affirmation that only those triply bonded by “profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government” are “fully incorporated” (LG §14). In addition to the possibility of scalar belonging, Lumen gentium recognizes the possibility of the Church’s scalar realization. To this end, it affirms two truths: on the one hand, the Church of Christ “subsists (subsistit in) in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him”; on the other, “many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure” (LG §8). The term subsistit in was chosen to convey the idea that the Catholic Church, though not the only ecclesial communion where means of sanctification are found, remains the only place where Christ’s one Church is fully realized. These affirmations constitute the basis for contemporary Catholic ecumenical engagement.

Another domain where Lumen gentium settled disputed questions was in the doctrine of the episcopal office. The Dogmatic Constitution teaches in three successive paragraphs that bishops succeed to the place of the apostles “by divine institution” (LG §20), that they alone enjoy the “fullness of the sacrament of Orders” (LG §21), and that they, when acting as a college in union with the pope, constitute a “subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church” (LG §22). Theologians and council fathers wanted to asseverate the fact that bishops receive their authority from Christ by virtue of their entrance into the episcopal college, not solely by papal delegation. In this way they hoped to awaken an enterprising episcopate who would exercise pastoral solicitude for the whole Church rather than passively await Roman directives. Though some council fathers opposed the emphasis on episcopal collegiality, fearing that it might imply, contrary to Vatican I, the pope’s juridical obligation to act collegially, the appended Nota explicativa praevia allayed fears and secured moral unanimity (Dulles 2008, 33-34) by distinguishing between episcopal munera and potestates (powers fully ready to act in virtue of a further juridical determination) (LG, Nota §2).

Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum

Dei Verbum is broadly considered one of the most theologically successful and incisive documents of Vatican II. It avoided giving the impression that revelation consisted merely of discrete propositions by identifying a person, Jesus Christ, as the “mediator and fullness of revelation” (DV §2). Though the council fathers by and large welcomed this Christocentrism, they did not forget the importance of propositions. Hence, they also found themselves vigorously debating the correct formulation of a number of questions in the field of revelation. Three of the most noteworthy were the Scripture-Tradition relationship, the truth of Scripture, and the norms of sound biblical interpretation.

The Council fathers generally agreed that the Catholic Church should renew its opposition to the Protestant principle of sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”), identifying both Scripture and Tradition as components of the word of God. They nevertheless disagreed on how to conceive the respective contributions of Scripture and Tradition to the revealed deposit. Even someone granting that Scripture and Tradition were mutually dependent might still ask just how they depend on each other. Is Scripture materially insufficient, needing Tradition to supply unwritten content, like a memorized list of inspired books or a whispered report of the Immaculate Conception? Or was Scripture only formally insufficient, needing Tradition to supply only the correct pattern of interpretation? The preparatory draft schema appeared to imply Scripture’s material insufficiency, whereas theologians of the majority perspective favored formal insufficiency alone. In the end, the council reached a compromise formula: “It is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed” (DV §9). This affirmed Scripture’s formal insufficiency without excluding the possibility of its material insufficiency as well.

Another controversy arose over how best to express the ancient Christian conviction that the Bible is inerrant. New historical and scientific discoveries had called into question the accuracy of the biblical narrative and its account of human origins. At the close of the nineteenth century, Leo XIII’s encyclical Providentissimus Deus censured those who “concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond” (Leo XIII 1893, §20). At the same time, it became increasingly hard to deny that the Bible contained—even if it did not formally teach—ideas deficient from a historical and scientific point of view. After some back and forth, the council fathers found they could agree on the following proposition: “The books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation” (DV §11). An intermediate formula, “saving truths” (veritates salutares), was dropped in favor of “truth . . . for the sake of our salvation” (veritatem . . . nostrae causā salutis), precisely to avoid the impression that inerrancy extended only to matters of faith and morals (Dulles 1982, 26-27, 36-37). At the same time, the surviving adverbial phrase “for the sake of our salvation” suggested that Scripture vouches for historical and scientific data not as objects of independent interest but to the extent that such data bear upon salvation. This explains how Scripture may materially contain historical and scientific inaccuracies without formally proposing them for our belief.

A third notable point in Dei Verbum is its multifaceted teaching on biblical interpretation. Bringing its Christocentrism to bear on the particular question of biblical hermeneutics, the Constitution likened God’s communication in human words to the “marvelous ‘condescension’” by which the Word “took to Himself the flesh of human weakness” (DV §13). In keeping with this incarnational analogy, the Constitution emphasized the simultaneously human and divine character of Scripture (DV §12a), as well as the interpretive criteria proper to each dimension. The human criteria included the “literary forms” and cultural contexts in which the sacred authors wrote (DV §12b). The divine criteria, which supposed a divine design superintending salvation history, included “the content and unity of the whole of Scripture,” the “living tradition of the whole Church,” and the “analogy of faith” (analogia fidei)—often rendered as the “harmony which exists between the elements of the faith” (DV §12c). Dei Verbum does not recommend a strict division of labor between historical-critical and theological exegesis. It rather enjoins specialized exegetes to recalibrate their historical judgment from the outset according to the unique nature of salvation history (Pidel 2025a). They are thereby to embrace a “depth dimension of technical exegetical work” (Bieringer 2002, 20n43).

The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes

Gaudium et spes may be the most innovative document of Vatican II. Since the literary genre of “Pastoral Constitution” had no precedent, the drafters felt obliged to add a prefatory note providing interpretive guidance. The Constitution is called “pastoral,” the note explains, “because, while resting on doctrinal principles, it seeks to express the relation of the Church to the world and modern mankind.” The first part, where the Church develops her vision of the human person, has a more “pastoral slant.” The second part, where the Church addresses urgent contemporary problems, has a more “doctrinal slant.” But even these doctrinally slanted pronouncements comprise diverse elements—some “permanent,” some “transitory”—whose authority must be distinguished according to the “general norms of theological interpretation” (GS §1n1). These distinctions should be kept in mind throughout.

The teaching of Gaudium et spes unfolds over three major phases. A brief introductory statement on “The Situation of Men in the Modern World” contains an Augustinian anthropology of the human person as the subject of both noble aspirations and besetting miseries (GS §§4-10). The first major part, “The Church and Man’s Calling” (GS §§11-45), has an apologetic structure. It begins by describing the human person as an image of God who possesses intrinsic dignity (GS §§11-22), is inherently social in nature (GS §§23-32), and undertakes activities that are good and meaningful (GS §33-45). Along the way it presents both Christ (GS §§21-22,) and the Church (GS §§34-45) as indispensable means to achieving true dignity, fraternity, and progress. The section’s final paragraph sums up its teaching well: “God's Word, by whom all things were made, was Himself made flesh so that as perfect man He might save all men and sum up all things in Himself. The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart and the answer to all its yearnings” (GS §45). The second major part (GS §§46-93) addresses questions of “special urgency,” doctrinally assessing the current state of “marriage and the family, human progress, life in its economic, social and political dimensions, the bonds between the family of nations, and peace” (GS §46). It thus reworked and incorporated a good deal of material from the preparatory schemata on chastity and the family, on the moral order, and on the social order. The scope of Gaudium et spes was nothing if not ambitious.

Though the Constitution noted shadows as well as lights on the contemporary world scene, it was criticized, both during and after the council, for an allegedly naive optimism. This criticism took various forms: that the council identified social progress too closely with the coming of the Kingdom (Alberigo 2006, 100); that it construed the Church’s relation to contemporary culture too benignly, as one of “helping the world and receiving benefits from it” (GS §45); and that it failed to foresee either the conflictual Church-State relations that would later develop or the routinized violation of human dignity that John Paul II (r. 1978-2005) would call the “culture of death” (White 2017, 124). When considering the charge of immoderate optimism, however, one does well to recall the document’s own distinction between its permanent and transitory assessments. As Thomas Joseph White observes, the Pastoral Constitution is really a “tale of two optimisms.” One “optimism” regards the capacity of grace, descending from Christ through the Church, to heal and elevate culture—a “transformationist” perspective rooted in Catholic doctrine and enjoying permanent validity. A second “optimism” regards the Church’s likelihood of forming a frictionless working alliance with broader secular culture—a “transitory” judgment. The latter no doubt reflects the circumstances of its origin, a fleeting moment when Christian social democracies flourished in countries theologically influential at the Council, such as Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium (White 2017, 123-25). Those who call for the Church to be more vigilant, or even oppositional, vis-à-vis the contemporary culture, are not therefore betraying the Constitution’s permanent principles.

IV. Impact and Interpretations

The period after the Council saw intense debate about what the Council really meant and how it ought to be interpreted. This debate was complicated by a growing gap between the “New Pentecost” expected from the Council and the rampant disaffiliation that followed it, at least in the North Atlantic. The ensuing cognitive dissonance required Catholics of every stripe to distinguish between the “false” Council and the “real” Council, which would bear fruit if only permitted. Since Catholics at every level disagreed about where to draw the dividing line, the period after the Council saw a great deal of polarization. To understand this polarization, we would do well to start with the disruptive impact and move to the rival interpretations thereof.

Impact: Expectations and Realities

To appreciate the cognitive dissonance that arose for many ordained ministers and lay faithful after Vatican II, it is important to compare the rapturous tones with which it was inaugurated with the diminishment in Catholic practice that followed.

John XXIII’s language concerning Vatican II sometimes verged on the ecstatic. He routinely likened the Council to a new Pentecost (Alberigo 2006, 10). Gaudet Mater Ecclesia heralded Vatican II as the dawn of a brighter tomorrow:

Behold we are gathered together . . . near the tomb of Peter and near so many of the tombs of our holy predecessors, whose ashes in this solemn hour seem to thrill in mystic exultation. The council now beginning rises in the Church like daybreak, a forerunner of the most splendid light. It is now only dawn. And already, at this first announcement of the rising day, how much sweetness fills our heart. Everything here breathes sanctity and arouses great joy. (John XIII, 28)

Euphoric citations could be multiplied.

However, what followed fell short of those expectations by almost any quantitative measure. Post-conciliar disorientation made itself felt strongly among priests and religious, whose commitment to celibacy “for the sake of the Kingdom” (Mt 19:12) was often motivated by a sense of its higher and irreplaceable value. During the Third Session, Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York warned that the Council’s tendency to soften the distinction between religious witness and the lay apostolate would destabilize the religious communities of his diocese (Yzermans 1967, 435-37). His words would prove prophetic. In the United States, whose trends closely mapped Europe’s, the number of sisters, brothers, and priests peaked in 1965, the year of the Council’s promulgation, and declined every year thereafter (Becker 1977, 81). Between 1958 and 1975 the American Jesuits, then the country’s largest male religious order, experienced a 63% drop in admissions and 3,700% increase in priestly departures, with “noticeable decline” setting in during the years of the Council (Becker 1977, 9). Considering whether the decline of Society of Jesus was gradual or abrupt, the Jesuit sociologist Joseph Becker concludes, “The experience of the American [Jesuits] . . . affords little support for the hypothesis that the collapse of the 1960s had a discernible earlier beginning” (Becker 1977, 23).

A similar pattern holds for lay participation in Sunday Mass, one of the features of the Catholic life Sacrosanctum concilium hoped to incentivize and enrich. Since attending Mass requires repeated efforts over the whole course of life, it is a better index of commitment to the Catholic faith than the number of annual baptisms. In this regard, 1965, the year of the Council’s promulgation, marked the onset of significant decline for North Atlantic Catholicism. Recent studies have shown this to hold true for France, whose data permits an unusually granular analysis (Cuchet 2018, 267). A similar picture emerges in Anglophone Catholicism, as attested by aggregate statistics for the dioceses of England and Wales, as well as the representative American Diocese of Columbus, Ohio. In all these places, Mass attendance increased every year up to 1965 and declined ever year thereafter (Bullivant 2019, 267). This stands in contrast to American Protestant attendance at Sunday services, which was significantly lower than Catholic attendance before Vatican II (42% in comparison to 75%) but held steadier after (Bullivant 2019, 260). It should be kept in mind, of course, that Catholic Mass attendance over the period has increased elsewhere (e.g., in Africa). Comparable data is not available, however, to determine whether the years of the Council mark a notable positive inflection point in this trend. As the eminent historian of African Catholicism Adrian Hastings observes, “The Catholic Church in black Africa in the 1950s was [already] advancing rapidly in numbers, in the range of its institutions, in the competence of its ministry” (Hastings 1988, 122).

The discrepancy between the Council’s intended and actual results polarized its interpretation. The reasoning of nearly all Catholics seemed to unfold along the following lines. If the “real” Council is a work of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit gives vitality and increase, then a “false” council must have quickly eclipsed the “real” Council. This broadly shared syllogism did not, however, lead to the same pastoral conclusions. Catholics would contest the lineaments of the “real” Council, generating two different schools of conciliar interpretation.

Eventists vs. Substantivists

The two rival schools of interpretation can trace their origins to the distinction made by John XXIII in his opening address: “The substance of the ancient doctrine of the Deposit of Faith is one thing, the way it is presented is another.” This implied a mandate to maintain Catholicism’s doctrinal substance while refurbishing its rhetorical style. The two sides of the papal mandate spawned two schools of interpretation, whom we can call for convenience “substantivists” and “eventists.”

Substantivists privilege the substantial content of the Vatican II documents, largely prescinding from the idiom in which they are expressed. Considering the Council’s teachings from this angle, they find a high degree of continuity with prior teaching. Those who favor this hermeneutic, therefore, tend to underscore the Christ who is the same “yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8), as well as the perennial “stability” of the Church’s teaching. The disaffiliation following the Council tends to be explained as a failure to transmit the Church’s ancient doctrinal substance. This “substantivist” school of interpretation was promoted by the international academic journal Communio, founded soon after the council by luminaries such as Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Joseph Ratzinger (Pidel 2025b).

Eventists, by contrast, privilege those dimensions of the conciliar documents that remain inaccessible to piecemeal analysis—their celebratory rhetoric, for instance, or their origin in an ineffable “experience.” These stylistic innovations mark Vatican II as a “language-event” (O’Malley 2004, 176), an epoch-making departure from the Church’s way of proceeding over the longue durée (Komonchak 1999, 338-342). If disaffiliation followed the Council, it was because it failed to embrace the new style wholeheartedly, attempting to reestablish an intransigent ecclesial culture. The “eventist” school was promoted after the Council by historians at the Institute for the Study of Religion at Bologna, among whom Giuseppe Alberigo was preeminent, as well as by the Dutch-based journal Concilium, from which de Lubac and Balthasar later resigned, citing incompatible theological visions.

To compare the two approaches efficiently, one can hardly do better than consult two lead articles published in the Jesuit-run journal America in 2003. The Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles, taking a typically “substantivist” approach, enumerates ten teachings that, contrary to popular belief, Vatican II excluded—for example, that there are many true religions, that God gives ongoing revelation through the “signs of the times,” that the Catholic Church is no longer necessary for salvation, that theologians now have a right to dissent from magisterial teaching, that the state of virginity is no longer more excellent than that of marriage, and so on (Dulles 2003, 9-11). Taking a contrasting, “eventist” perspective, the Jesuit historian John O’Malley observes, “Style—no other aspect of Vatican II sets it off so impressively from all previous councils and thereby suggests its break with ‘business as usual.’” The Council’s new rhetoric and imagery signaled the Church’s adoption of a new set of priorities, a preference for the “invitational” over the “punitive,” for the “horizontal” over the “authoritarian,” and so on (O’Malley 2003, 14-15). Both perspectives have a strong basis in the conciliar documents and in the agenda set by John XXIII.

There is, however, an asymmetry between the two schools’ respective foci. According to Catholic doctrine, the bishops gathered in ecumenical council enjoy a special protection against error in doctrinal substance (CCC 891). The Church has never claimed the same divine assistance for her doctrinal “style.” Central to the narrative of the “eventist” school, in fact, is the idea that the Church had assumed an imbalanced, reactionary style between Trent and Vatican II. Whereas the conviction that the Church has preserved her doctrinal substance intact is a matter of faith, the conviction that today’s doctrinal style is better than yesterday’s is a matter of human prudential judgment.

Magisterial Principles of Interpretation

Perhaps because the promise of divine assistance applies more to the substantive than to the stylistic elements of Vatican II, the magisterium after the Council focused on its doctrinal aspects, laying a special emphasis on substantial continuity. We can usefully consider the magisterial hermeneutics under the headings of authority and principles of interpretation.

Paul VI clarified the issue of the council’s authority in a Wednesday Audience of 12 January 1966, barely a month after the closing of Vatican II:

Given the pastoral nature of the Council, it avoided pronouncing dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility in an extraordinary way; but it nevertheless endowed its teachings with the authority of the supreme ordinary magisterium, which is so clearly authentic that it must be accepted docilely and sincerely by all the faithful, according to the mind of the Council concerning the nature and purpose of the individual documents. (Paul VI 1966)

Here Paul VI notes that Vatican II, though endowed with the authority to teach infallibly, did not engage that authority to its fullest extent. In some cases, however, it engaged almost its full authority, speaking with the “authority of the supreme ordinary magisterium.” The “nature and purpose” of the document would indicate the degree of authority at play, with some documents reiterating doctrines infallibly taught elsewhere and other documents making “transitory” applications of timeless principles.

Persistent disagreement about how to interpret and implement Vatican II led Pope John Paul II to convene an Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in 1985, the twentieth anniversary of the close of Vatican II. With a view to fostering consensus, the synod’s Final Report identified six principles of sound conciliar interpretation (“Relazione” 1986, 69):

• The theological interpretation of the conciliar doctrine must show attention to all the documents, in themselves and in their close inter-relationship, in such a way that the integral meaning of the Council's affirmations—often very complex—might be understood and expressed.

• Special attention must be paid to the four major Constitutions of the council, which contain the interpretative key for the other Decrees and Declarations. 

• It is not licit to separate the pastoral character from the doctrinal force of the documents. 

• In the same way, it is not legitimate to separate the spirit and the letter of the Council. 

• Moreover, the Council must be understood in continuity with the great tradition of the Church, and at the same time we must receive light from the Council's own doctrine for today's Church and the men of our time. 

• The Church is one and the same throughout all the councils. 

Without denying an element of novelty to Vatican II, the Final Report accentuates continuity and holism. The documents must be affirmed in their entirety, even those parts originating from the concerns of the traditional minority. The entirety of the Council must be read in continuity with the entirety of the Church’s conciliar and doctrinal tradition, even those councils that expressed themselves in a more intransigent “style.”

Besides laying down these criteria for interpretation, the bishops of the 1985 Synod recommended that a Universal Catechism be composed in accordance with them. Honoring this request, John Paul II commissioned a team coordinated by Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to produce a catechism summarizing the teaching of Vatican II. The resultant Catechism of the Catholic Church embodies the conciliar hermeneutics of the Extraordinary Synod. Underscoring Vatican II’s continuity with the Church’s great tradition, the Catechism followed Pius V’s post-Tridentine Catechism in adopting a fourfold division of material: the Creed, the Liturgy and Sacraments, the Commandments, and Christian Prayer. At the same time, the Catechism filled this Tridentine frame with a wealth of biblical, patristic, and liturgical references, citing, where applicable, the newer phrasings of Vatican II. One can think of the Catechism as the embodiment of the 1985 Synod’s holistic hermeneutics (John Paul II 1992).

John Paul II’s accent on substantive continuity left a lasting impression on the post-conciliar Church but did not altogether discount or suppress stylistic considerations. When Joseph Ratzinger was elected Benedict XVI (r. 2005-2013), he largely continued in his predecessor’s line. He described Vatican II not as an event of pure continuity with the past but as a “combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels.” However, his endorsement of a hermeneutic of “reform within continuity” implied that the dimension of continuity, especially doctrinal continuity, was more encompassing (Benedict XVI 2005). The magisterium of Pope Francis (r. 2013-25), however, revived the more “stylistic” hermeneutics of Vatican II when it identified “synodality” as an element of the council’s “reception and further development” (Francis 2019, §9). According to Francis, synodality is neither the search for parliamentary “majority,” nor a “plan,” nor a “programme;” it is rather a “a style to be assumed, in which the main protagonist is the Holy Spirit, who is expressed first and foremost in the Word of God, read, meditated upon and shared together” (Francis 2022). With its emphasis on a “style” of “togetherness,” synodality harks back to dimensions of Vatican II underscored by “eventists” (see Weiten 2023, 24-70). Thus, reception of Vatican II goes on.

V. Conclusion

It is sometimes said that it takes centuries for the Church to receive a council; or, to return to Newman’s image, that a conciliar stream must travel some distance from the source before its waters become limpid enough to permit a penetrating gaze. If that is the case, then Vatican II is still coming into focus. The passage of time will continue to reveal what is of perennial value and what savors of the soil of the age. Naturally, the Magisterium will continue to play a key role in the reception of Vatican II, as it did at the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops. But as Pope Francis reminded the Church in the context of promoting “synodality,” the supernatural sense of the faithful greatly aids magisterial discernment. The interpretation of Vatican II that will ultimately prevail will be the one that renders the faith more resilient and transmissible the world over, especially in contemporary zones of rapid disaffiliation.