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The Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, was an Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962 and closed under Pope Paul VI in 1965.
It is not accepted by all who call themselves Catholics. Some attribute to it a lesser binding authority than that of the other Ecumenical Councils, calling it non- dogmatic, and rejecting some of its teaching and its decrees. (See, for example, Traditional Catholicism and sedevacantism).
For Catholics, the most visible results were changes in how Church sacraments were practiced, the use of vernacular languages for the Mass, and a new attitude towards their relationship with non-Catholics.
1 Background
By the 1950s, liberal trends in Catholic theological and biblical studies had begun to move away from the neo-scholasticism and biblical literalism that the reaction to the Modernist heresyHeresy according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a "theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the ‘catholic’ or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church had enforced from the First Vatican Council well into the 20th century. This liberalism sprang from theologians such as Yves CongarYves Marie Joseph Cardinal Congar ( April 8, 1904- June 22, 1995) was a French Dominican priest and theologian. He is arguably the most influential theologian of the last century on the topic of the Church. Very active in the ecumenical movement and the f and Karl Rahner who looked to integrate modern human experience with Christian truth, as well as others such as Joseph Ratzinger and Henri de Lubac who looked to what they saw as a more accurate understanding of scripture and the early Church Fathers as a source of renewal -- in spite of Pope Gregory XVI's Mirari Vos which warned against those same ideas of renewal.
At the same time the world's bishops faced tremendous challenges driven by political, social, economic, and technical change. Many of these bishops sought changes in church structure and practice to address those challenges. The First Vatican Council had been held nearly a century before, but had been cut short by the effects of the Franco-Prussian War. As a result, only deliberations on the role of the Papacy were completed, with examination of pastoral and dogmatic issues concerning the whole church left undone. Pope Pius XII had considered convening a Council in order to address these issues and to confront Communism, but was advised not to do so because the presence of Modernists threatened to undermine his efforts and revolutionize the Church.
Pope John XXIII, however, gave notice of his intention to convene the Council less than three months after his election in 1959. While in many messages over the next three years he expressed his intentions in formal detail, one of the best known images is of Pope John, when asked why the Council was needed, opened a window and reportedly said "I want to throw open the windows of the Church so that we can see out and the people can see in." In order not to offend the Orthodox in Communist countries, he consented, through the Pact of Metz , to a policy that became known as Ostpolitik, which ensured that the Council would not confront the threat of Communism.
