As you are aware, Pope Benedict XVI has declared October 11th as the beginning of The Year of Faith. October 11th was chosen because on this day, fifty years ago, the Second Vatican Council officially began under the leadership of Pope John XXIII.
The announcement to convene the Second Vatican Council shocked the Roman Catholic world to its core. On January 25, 1959, within three months of his election to the pontificate, Pope John XXIII announced his intention to call an ecumenical council to bring about the renewal and reform of all aspects of church life. Not all members of the church approved of this decision. It was a radical one: for a church steeped in tradition, this meant change, and for many, the church was perfect the way it was. Why change it?
Vatican II forced Roman Catholics to think differently about their church, themselves, how they live their faith, and how they witness to this faith to the world. All of the documents of Vatican II deal in one way or another with the church itself. Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, focuses on how the church understands its inner structure. The document begins by putting the church in its place: "Christ if the Light of all nations": the church's beginnings are in Jesus Christ, not in itself.
The relationship of the church to the world is discussed in Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World - the council surveys the "signs of the times" and the challenges that the modern world faces. The church knew it could no longer ignore what was going on in the world around it and what was happening to the world's citizens, especially in the wake of two world wars, the horrors of the Holocaust, and the fears of the Cold War. Thus, the church accepted the challenge of addressing the needs of all of humanity and not just the Catholic faithful.
One major aspect of the church's engagement with the world was the council's resolve to enter into dialogue with other Christians and with the world's other major religions with Unitatis Redintegratio, Decree on Ecumenism, and Nostra Aetate, Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, especially Judaism.
In being church for the world and in nourishing the lives of its believers, the council declared that the liturgy is the "summit and source" of the Christian life. Liturgy and the Christian life are inseparable, and nothing is more central to the church than its liturgy. Sacrosanctum Concilium, Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy deals with the renewal and reform of the mass, and how it was celebrated, especially the introduction of the vernacular from the Latin, immediately affected the lives of believers in parishes.
While the reform of the liturgy certainly had a profound effect on the lives of Catholics, perhaps the most profound reform was the change in attitude toward the place of the laity in the structure of the church. In Apotolicam Actuositatem, Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People, we see that the journey of the laity in the Roman Catholic church can be summarized in three words: inclusion, exclusion, revolution. It is the story of a journey!
When we recall some of these major themes from the Second Vatican Council - the church in the world, its ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, its liturgy, and the role of the laity - we must ask: Is there a foundation that unites them? There is no doubt whatsoever about what the council declares this foundation to be: it is the word of God as revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Christian life, as summarized in Dei Verbum, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation is the Second Vatican Council's pronouncement on the Bible. It examines the use of the Bible in the Roman Catholic tradition from the time when Catholics were not encouraged to read the Bible, up to the present time, when the laity are not only encouraged to read it and make it the foundation of their Christian lives, but to proclaim the word of God to the world.
Tomorrow begins The Year of Faith! In the words of Pope John XXIII, may we ever be "stirring ourselves out of established routines and looking for new approaches, ever open to the rightful claims of the age in which we live, so that in every way Christ can be proclaimed and made known.
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