This chronology of the Second Vatican Council covers the Second Vatican Council during the period from 11 October 1962 to 8 December 1965.
First period: 11 October – 8 December 1962 Opening day
John XXIII opened the council on 11 October 1962 in a public session at St. Peter's Basilica and delivered his opening address Gaudet Mater Ecclesia ("Mother Church Rejoices") before the Council Fathers and representatives of 86 governments or international groups. He criticized the "prophets of doom who are always forecasting disaster" for the church or world. He spoke of the advantage of separation of Church and state but also the challenge to integrate faith with public life.
Commissions The first working session of the council was on 13 October 1962. That day's agenda included the election of members of the 10 conciliar commissions. Each was to have 16 members elected by the Council Fathers and 8 – later 9 – members appointed by the Pope. Most bishops knew very few bishops other than those from their own country, and so did not know whom to vote for. They had been provided with a list of the bishops who had served on the preparatory commissions, as if to suggest that they elect the same people to the conciliar commissions, with the result that Curial forces would dominate the conciliar commissions as they had dominated the preparatory commissions. As the voting was about to begin, Cardinal Liénart, the senior French bishop, rose and proposed that the election be delayed for a few days to allow each national group of bishops to meet and draw up a list of its own members who might be suitable candidates. Cardinal Frings, the senior German bishop, rose to second the motion. There was loud applause and the motion was declared carried. That day's sitting was adjourned after only 15 minutes.
For the next few days, Council Fathers met in national groups and drew up lists of candidates. The bishops from the 5 European countries (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria) that spearheaded the renewal movement decided to create a single list, to which a number of renewal-minded bishops from other countries were added, for a total of 109 names. The election took place on 16 October. It brought in new blood: 79 of these 109 were elected to a commission seat and 50% of the members of the very important doctrinal commission were among these 79. In addition 43% of the newly elected commission members had not been on any preparatory commission. This was a first success for renewal.
Liturgy schema On 22 October, the first schema to be discussed was the one from the very reform-minded preparatory commission for liturgy. It had 8 chapters: General Principles The Eucharistic Mystery [i.e. the Mass] Sacraments and sacramentals The Divine Office [i.e. the Liturgy of the Hours] The Liturgical Year Liturgical Furnishings Sacred Music Sacred Art It proposed many reforms, including active participation of the congregation, communal singing, a partial replacement of Latin by vernacular languages, communion under both kinds, concelebration, adaptation of liturgy to local cultures and a modest decentralization of liturgical authority to national episcopal conferences. The conservatives objected to all these proposals, especially to the downgrading of Latin. Debate dragged on for 15 days, before the vote was taken on whether the schema was acceptable in principle. To everyone's surprise, only 46 (out of 2,215) voted against. A second win for renewal. The schema was now returned to the liturgy commission to deal with many proposed amendments.
Schema on revelation This schema from the preparatory theological commission took the conservative position on all questions currently being discussed by theologians. Reformers were particularly opposed to two claims: that there were revealed truths in Tradition that were not contained in Scripture and that every assertion in the Bible was free of error. The debate lasted six days. The dramatic vote on acceptance in principle came on 20 November. The question was phrased in terms of rejection: Should the schema be rejected? Yes: 1,360. No: 822. This was 102 votes short of the two-thirds majority required by Council regulations, and so the council would have to continue discussing a schema that 62% of the participants rejected. Resolution of the impasse came the next day (21 November): Pope John announced the schema would be revised by a special joint commission made up of members of the Doctrinal Commission (representing the conservative tendency) and the Secretariat for Christian Unity (representing the renewal tendency). A third victory for renewal and a crucial turning point at the council.
Schema on the modern means of communication This innocuous schema could be boiled down to two propositions that had been said many times before: the Church must use the media to further its mission, and people must be protected against immorality and other dangers presented by the media. There was little interest in pursuing the discussion. On 27 November, the council decided the schema should contain only essential principles, leaving detailed practical matters to be dealt with after the council. The schema was accepted in principle and returned to its commission to be abridged.
Schema on Unity with the Eastern Orthodox This schema, drafted by the preparatory commission on the Eastern Churches, was one of three texts that had been prepared on ecumenism. Conservatives thought the schema downplayed the differences between Catholics and Orthodox, while reformers complained it conceived of unity as a return of the Orthodox to the Catholic Church. The Council Fathers avoided voting on the schema at this point, and simply ordered that the schema be merged with the other two documents on Christian unity.
Schema on the Church On 1 December, discussion began on the schema everyone was waiting for, that on the Church. There was only one week left before the scheduled end of the First Session. The schema embodied the legalistic view of the Church to be found in current theology manuals. Some important claims: the Church of Christ is identical with the Roman Catholic Church; bishops have no authority over the universal Church except by participation in the universal authority of the pope; talk of a priesthood of the faithful is metaphorical since only clerics are priests "properly so called". The criticism of the reformers was unrelenting. Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx wrote detailed criticisms that were circulated among the Council Fathers. Given the renewal tendency manifested in the votes on earlier schemas, the schema on the Church was quite possibly headed for defeat. The day before the scheduled vote on acceptance in principle, Pope John intervened to say there were 2 problems with the schemas so far: too much material and not enough aggiornamento. So he was appointing a special commission to supervise the rewriting of all the schemas in order to reduce the amount of material and to better reflect the vision he had outlined in his opening address.
End of the first period
Thus the first period ended on 8 December, having made little progress with the schemas: only 5 of the 22 had been examined and none had received final approval. Although the Council's "procedural slowness" was recognised,O'Riordan, S, The Third Session, The Furrow, Volume 15, No. 10 (October 1964), p. 621, accessed on 5 October 2024 it also became clear, to most people's surprise, that a majority of participants were in favour of some degree of renewal. The prediction of curialists that the bishops would readily approve all of the schemas and that the council would be over in a matter of weeks was quite mistaken. And as a result, the work of the preparatory commissions would have to be redone in order to better reflect the spirit of renewal the pope had been expecting.
Interval between first and second periods Coordinating Commission and revision of the schemas At the end of the first session, Pope John created a Coordinating Commission to supervise the conciliar commissions in the task of revising all the schemas in order to make them more open to aggiornamento and to reduce the amount of material. The commission's 7 members included 2 curial cardinals (Cicognani, the secretary of state, and Confalonieri of the Consistorial congregation) and 5 diocesan bishops (cardinals Suenens of Mechelen-Brussels, Döpfner of Munich, Liénart of Lille, Spellman of New York and Urbani of Venice). In the course of the next few months, all of the schemas would be rewritten under the Coordinating Commission's supervision. As a result, the number of schemas was reduced from 22 to 15, and they became more renewal-friendly.
Death of John XXIII and election of Paul VI
Pope John XXIII died of stomach cancer on 3 June 1963, and the council was suspended in accordance with Canon Law until the next pope decided whether or not it would continue. Two weeks later, 82 cardinals met in Rome for the conclave, and elected Cardinal Giovanni Montini of Milan, a moderate reformer, as pope on 21 June, taking the name Paul VI. The day after his election, Paul VI announced that the council would continue and that it would be his "chief work"..
Reorganization Before the end of the summer, Paul VI decided to reorganize some of the structures of the council. The Coordinating Commission, originally intended to be temporary, was enlarged and made a permanent feature with oversight over the conciliar commissions. Four of its membersrenewal-minded Cardinals Suenens, Döpfner and Lercaro (of Bologna), and moderate curialist Cardinal Agagianianwere given the additional task of chairing the daily General Congregations (instead of the 10-member Council of Presidents) with the title of "Moderators". Because they were members of the Coordinating Commission that supervised the other commissions and they also chaired the daily General Congregations, these four cardinals, three of whom were enthusiastic reformers, became the organizational linchpins of the council.
Before the beginning of the Second Period of the council, Pope Paul created a new category of Council participants: lay auditors, who sat in on General Congregations, though without the right to speak or vote. He also allowed more information about daily General Congregations to be provided to the press.
Second period: 29 September – 4 December 1963 Opening In his hour-long Opening Address, Pope Paul reiterated the importance of the council, of Pope John's vision, of aggiornamento, and outlined what he considered to be the council's four tasks: The Church must present the world with a statement of its self-understanding. Aggiornamento must continue, not by breaking with tradition, but by removing what is defective. The Church must work towards unity among all Christians. Saying this, he turned to the non-Catholic observers and apologized for any injury the Catholic Church might have caused other Christians. The Church must engage in dialogue with the world: "not to conquer but to serve, not to despise but to appreciate, not to condemn but to comfort and save".
Five schemas were on the agenda for the Second Period, as well as the two accepted in principle during the first period: liturgy and means of social communication.
Schema on the Church It was practically a new schema compared to the one discussed in the first period. It now contained much more Biblical imagery than legal language (believers were now called the "People of God" rather than the "subjects of the Church"), and there were 4 chapters instead of 11: The Mystery of the Church The Hierarchical Structure of the Church The People of God The Universal Call to Holiness (an expansion of the former "The States of Perfection") After 2 days of debate, it was accepted in principle by a vote of 2,231 to 43.
The Mystery of the Church