Introduction

    What is the Second Vatican Council? We hear the phrase bandied about quite a bit. Sometimes it’s intended as a compliment: “the true spirit of Vatican II.” Sometimes it’s pejorative: “that is so Vatican II.” And while we definitely know what it’s not (“what a pre-Vatican II attitude”) we aren’t always quite sure what it is.

    Which is understandable, because the Second Vatican Council defies easy summary. The Council was a series of meetings of the bishops of the entire world which began at St. Peter’s on October 11, 1962 and concluded on December 8, 1965. The Council also produced a series of documents, sixteen major works, adding up to many hundreds of pages. But the Council was, and is, more than a meeting of bishops, more than a hefty tome of difficult reading. As Council commentator Xavier Rynne noted in 1963, “the Council was essentially a religious experience; it can only be understood as such.”

    And it was a religious experience shared not only by the bishops who attended the sessions in Rome, but by all the faithful scattered throughout the world. Not only the Catholic faithful: people of every Christian denomination and of every faith watched the proceedings of the Council with a powerful sense that what happened there could impact the entire world.

    Previous Councils may have had a greater impact on what the Church believed: the Council of Ephesus in 434 proclaimed Mary as Theotokos, Mother of God; the First Vatican Council of 1870 proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility. But no other Council had such a great impact on how the Church believed. The teachings that came out of the Council have shaped almost every aspect of our Catholic lives ever since, not only how we pray together in the liturgy, but how we approach the problems in our world, how we strive for unity with other Christians, and how we understand the Church itself.

Preparations for the Council

    Angelo Roncalli, the Patriarch of Venice, was 77 years old when he was elected successor to Pius XII in the fall of 1958. His warmth, his diplomatic skill, and his great personal holiness were generally known; and it was also known that he would probably not be around for long. But those who were counting on a short, quiet papacy could not have been more “spectacularly mistaken” (Duffy).

    A few short weeks after his election, Pope John was talking over the troubles of the world with Cardinal Tardini, his Secretary of State, when the idea of the Council came to him. Before the end of the year, he was reading up on Vatican I, paying particular attention to the logistical preparations his predecessor Pius IX had made. In January of 1959 the Pope announced his plan to a group of Cardinals gathered for the conclusion of Christian Unity week. Their lack of enthusiasm might have discouraged a lesser man; but not John XXIII. He immediately began preparations for a Synod of the diocese of Rome (the Pope is, of course, the Bishop of Rome), which would serve in some ways as a practice run for the Council itself.

    What would the Council be about? John himself did not dictate the agenda. Instead, when a tired Cardinal asked him what the purpose of the Council would be, the Pope simply walked to a window and flung it open. The purpose of the Council, in a word, was aggiornamento—bringing up-to-date. The Council would open the windows of the Church, and let in fresh air.

    In keeping with aggiornamento, the world press, at the direct request of the Holy Father, were to be given unprecedented access to the happenings in Rome. There were also to be observer-delegates, laymen (and, later, women) and representatives of various denominations, who would have access to all the proceedings of the Council. The Vatican even purchased a computer to tabulate the bishops’ responses during the various sessions!

    As for the specific agenda to be discussed at the Council, Pope John let the bishops determine that. He invited all of them to submit their own totally open-ended suggestions of the issues that needed to be addressed. Their responses—hundreds and hundreds of them—were tabulated by seven hundred or so theologians and periti, or experts, who had been summoned to Rome. And gradually, the agenda was narrowed down—sort of. On Christmas Day, 1961, “Pope John indicated that the council will consider problems relating to Holy Scripture, to tradition, the sacraments, prayer, ecclesiastical discipline, charitable and relief activities, the lay apostolate and the missions. He said that the council must also consider problems of the temporal order as well.” (Progress)

    Various committees were entrusted with the task of creating schemata, or draft documents, which would summarize the issues and provide a basis for discussion. In the summer of 1962, just a few months before the Council would open, only 7 of the 70 proposed schemata were ready to send to the world’s bishops for review. The Pope was understandably frustrated. When a guest asked him, “How many people work at the Vatican, your Holiness?” John swiftly replied, “about half.” (Cahill)

    Getting the Vatican bureaucracy moving was a major challenge; but John prepared the world for the Council in a much more significant way: by prayer. Again and again he urged the world to pray for the success of the Council. Early in 1962, he asked the priests of the world to dedicate their daily recitation of the breviary (the Liturgy of the Hours) to the success of the Council. And he asked Catholics everywhere to join in a solemn novena of prayer and penance, beginning October 2, “to invoke the blessings of divine grace on the Fathers of the council.” He gave the priests of the world special faculties to offer Masses during the night so that all over the world, at the moment of the Council’s opening in Rome, the faithful would be raising a “great crescendo of prayer” for its success (Progress).

    On October 4, one week before the Council opened, John himself made a pilgrimage of prayer (the first time a Pope had gone outside of Rome in living memory), visiting Loreto and Assisi. At these shrines, he entrusted the Council into the eminently capable hands of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the great St. Francis of Assisi. John already knew that he would not see the end of the great work he had begun. On September 23, 1962, less than three weeks before the Council opened, he had been diagnosed with inoperable stomach cancer. He had less than a year to live.

Preparing for the Council in Seattle

    The people of Seattle were very well aware of the preparations for the Council. Almost weekly reports appeared in the Progress during 1962: “Pope Asks Prayers for Council,” “Council Planning Is Now In Final Phase,” “Pope Says Press Is Indispensable to Council,” and so on. The seminarians at St. Edward and St. Thomas Seminaries prayed daily for the success of the Council, and the entire Archdiocese joined in the novena of prayer leading up to the Council’s opening.

    But Seattle had another, quite unique opportunity to experience aggiornamento in 1962. It was the year of the World’s Fair, Century 21, and the ubiquitous images of the Space Needle were a constant reminder of the future and what it might hold. The local Church joined wholeheartedly in the events of the exposition, and the Cathedral opened its doors to thousands of visitors. And in August, at the World’s Fair Arena, the Archdiocese of Seattle hosted a kind of liturgical Century 21: the 23rd annual “North American Liturgical Week,” a major instrument of liturgical renewal in the United States. The Liturgical Week—which consisted of “talks, discussions, and demonstrations related to the public worship of the Church”—was open not only to priests and religious, but to all the faithful, who were strongly urged by Archbishop Connolly to attend the various sessions and workshops.

    The theme for the week was Thy Kingdom Come: Christian Hope in the Modern World, and the link to the Council was not lost on the Holy Father, who sent his apostolic blessing to all the participants in the Liturgical Week. “It is appropriate at the present time,” he wrote, “as all Christians look forward to the sacred assembly of the Bishops in the Second Vatican Council. In fact, this meeting at Seattle can contribute towards what is Our ardent hope, namely, that the Church may appear before the modern world in its full light, inexhaustible in its vitality as it is able to adapt itself to every noble aspiration and need of its children.”

    During the Liturgical Week, the people of Seattle had an opportunity to experience what the liturgy could be like. The opening Mass, celebrated by Father McManus, President of the Liturgical Conference, “was the first Mass to be offered in Seattle with the priest facing the people” (Progress), as a huge assembly gathered on three sides of the temporary altar in the Arena. A lay commentator stood at a lectern in the sanctuary, offering succinct explanations—in English!—of the various parts of the Mass. The choir was placed close to the altar, not in a far off gallery; and the people joined in the spoken and sung responses and in the singing of hymns. It was a little taste of the future.

    In his concluding remarks, at the end of the Liturgical Week, Father McManus addressed himself to the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, soon to convene, calling on them to “undertake a liturgical renewal which will make the Church and her life more intelligible and attractive.” Archbishop Connolly confirmed his words: “We cannot be neutral and on the sidelines as we view the changes taking place in the world, or be concerned only with our own salvation. We must transform this modern world into the Kingdom of God.”

A very young Father Ryan helps out at Liturgical Week, 1962.

In our next issue: The Council opens, and liturgical renewal takes center stage.

For Further Reading
Thomas Cahill. Pope John XXIII. This excellent (and short!) biography includes a whirlwind account of the church history that sets the stage for the Second Vatican Council.
Xavier Rynne (Father Francis Murphy, CSSR). Vatican Council II. A gossipy, richly detailed, and unabashedly biased view of the Council by a priest who was in Rome throughout the Council. These essays were originally published serially in the New Yorker.
Eamon Duffy. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. Gives excellent portraits of the popes of the Council: John XXIII and Paul VI.
Thomas Bokenkotter. A Concise History of the Catholic Church. One of the best short histories of the church around.

Corinna Laughlin
Pastoral Assistant for Liturgy

Back to Vatican II Page
Back to the Prayer page
Visit the Liturgy Notes page