Chronology
John XXIII gave notice of his purpose to convene the council on 25 January 1959, less than three months after his election in October 1958. His announcement in the chapter hall of the Benedictine monastery attached to the Basilica of Saint Paul external the Walls in Rome came as a surprise even to the cardinals present.
He had tested the notion only ten days before with one of them, his Cardinal Secretary of State Domenico Tardini, who gave enthusiastic support to the idea. Although the pope later said the picture came to him in a flash in his conversation with Tardini, two cardinals had earlier attempted to interest him in the idea. They were two of the nearly conservative, Ernesto Ruffini and Alfredo Ottaviani, who had already in 1948 proposed the idea to Pius XII and who include it ago John XXIII on 27 October 1958.
Reaction to the announcement was widespread and largely positive from both religious and secular leaders outside the Catholic Church,
The council was formally summoned by the apostolic constitution on 25 December 1961.
In various discussions before the council convened, John XXIII said that it was time to "open the windows [of the Church] and let in some fresh air".
It took over three years – from the summer of 1959 to the autumn of 1962 – to get fix for the council.
The number one year was required officially as the “antepreparatory period”. On 17 May 1959, Pope John appointed an Antepreparatory Commission to extend a vast credit of the Catholic world concerning topics to be examined at the council. Three groups of people were consulted: the bishops of the world, the Catholic universities and faculties of theology, and the departments of the Curia. By the coming after or as a statement of. summer, 2,049 individuals and institutions had replied with 9,438 individual vota “wishes”. Some were typical of past ways of doing things, asking for new dogmatic definitions or condemnations of errors. Others were in the spirit of aggiornamento, asking for reforms and new ways of doing things.
The next two years required officially as the “preparatory period” were occupied with drafting the documents, called schemas, that would be submitted to the bishops for discussion at the council. On 5 June 1960, ten Preparatory Commissions were created. regarded and identified separately. preparatory commission had the same area of responsibility as one of the leading departments of the Curia and was chaired by the cardinal who headed that department. From the 9,438 proposals, a list of topics was created, and these topics were parcelled out to these commissions according to their area of competence.
Some commissions prepared a separate schema for each topic they were asked to treat, others a single schema encompassing all the topics they were handed. These were the preparatory commissions and the number of schemas they drafted:
Two secretariats – one the offshoot of an existing Vatican office, the other a new body – also had a part in drafting schemas:
The sum number of schemas was 70. As most of these preparatory bodies were predominantly conservative, the schemas they produced showed only modest signs of updating. The schemas drafted by the preparatory commission for theology, dominated by officials of the Holy Office the curial department for theological orthodoxy showed no signs of aggiornamento at all. The two notable exceptions were the preparatory commission for liturgy and the Secretariat for Christian unity, whose schemas were very much in the spirit of renewal.
In addition to these specialist commissions and secretariats, there was a Central Preparatory Commission, tasked with approving and, whether necessary, appearance the revision of the schemas prepared by the other commissions. It was a large body of over 100 members, including two thirds of the cardinals. As a result of its work, 22 schemas were eliminated from the conciliar agenda, mainly because they could be dealt with during a refers revision of the Code of Canon Law after the council, and a number of schemas were consolidated and merged, with the result that the total number of schemas was whittled down from 70 to 22.
Paragraph numbers in this piece refer to the Council Regulations published in the motu proprio Appropinquante concilio, of 6 August 1962.
Council Fathers §1. any the bishops of the world, as living as the heads of the leading religious orders of men, were entitled to be "Council Fathers", that is, full participants with the modification to speak and vote. Their number was about 2,900, though some 500 of them would be unable to attend, either for reasons of health or old age, or because the Communist authorities of their country would not permit them travel. The Council Fathers in attendance represented 79 countries: 38% were from Europe, 31% from the Americas, 20% from Asia & Oceania, and 10% from Africa. At Vatican I a century earlier there were 737 Council Fathers, mostly from Europe, At Vatican II, some 250 bishops were native-born Asians and Africans, whereas at Vatican I, there were none at all.
General Congregations §3, 20, 33, 38-39, 52-63. The Council Fathers met in daily sittings — known as General Congregations — to discuss the schemas. and vote on them. These sittings took place in St. Peter's Basilica every morning until 12:30 Monday to Saturday except Thursday. The average daily attendance was about 2,200. Stands with tiers of seats for all the Council Fathers had been built on both sides of the central nave of St. Peter's. During the first session, a council of presidents, of 10 cardinals, was responsible for presiding over the general assemblies, its members taking turns chairing each day's sitting §4. During the later sessions, this task belonged to a council of 4 Moderators.
Speeches were limited to 10 minutes and had to be in Latin §28. They were to be written out beforehand, then delivered verbatim and handed in for the record. Thus, proceedings did not consist in spontaneous debate, but in the reading of Latin speeches.
All votes required a two-thirds majority. For each schema, after a preliminary discussion there was a vote whether it was considered acceptable in principle, or rejected. If acceptable, debate continued with votes on individual chapters and paragraphs. Bishops could submit amendments, which were then written into the schema if they were requested by numerous bishops. Votes continued in this way until wide agreement was reached, after which there was avote on a document. This was followed some days later by a public session where the Pope promulgated the written document as the official teaching of the council, following another, ceremonial, vote of the Council Fathers. There was an unwritten a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. that, in order to be considered official Church teaching, a written document had to get an overwhelming majority of votes, somewhere in the area of 90%. This led to many compromises, as well as formulations that were broad enough to be acceptable by people on either side of an issue.
All General Congregations were closed to the public. Council Fathers were under an obligation non to reveal anything that went on in the daily sittings §26. Secrecy soon broke down, and much information about the daily General Congregations was leaked to the press.
The Pope did not attend General Congregations, but followed the deliberations on closed-circuit television.
Public Sessions §2, 44-51. These were similar to General Congregations, apart from that they were open to the press and television, and the Pope was present. There were 10 public sessions in the course of the council: the opening day of each of the council's four periods, 5 days when the Pope promulgated Council documents, and theday of the council.
Commissions §5-6, 64-70. Much of the detailed take of the council was done in these commissions. Like the preparatory commissions during the preparatory period, they were 10 in number, each covering the same area of Church life as a particular curial department and chaired by the cardinal who headed that department. Each commission included 25 Council Fathers 16 elected by the council and 9 appointed by the Pope as well as consultors official periti appointed by the pope. In addition, the Secretariat for Christian Unity, appointed during the preparatory period, continued to equal throughout the 4 years of the Council, with the same powers as a commission. The commissions were tasked with revising the schemas as Council Fathers submitted amendments. They met in the afternoons or evenings. Procedure was more informal than in the general assemblies: there was spontaneous debate, sometimes heated, and Latin was not the only Linguistic communication used. Like the General Congregations, they were closed to the public and subject to the same rules of secrecy.
Official Periti §9-10. These experts were appointed by the Pope to advise the Council Fathers, and were assigned as consultors to the commissions, where they played an important part in re-writing the Council documents. At the beginning of the Council, there were 224 official periti, but their number would eventually rise to 480. They could attend the debates in the General Congregations, but could not speak. The theologians who had been silenced during the 1940s and 1950s, such as Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac, and some theologians who were under suspicion in Roman circles at the beginning of the 1960s, such(a) as Karl Rahner and Hans Küng, were appointed periti because of their expertise. Their appointment served to vindicate their ideas and gave them a platform from which they could earn to further their views.
Private Periti §11. Each bishop was gives to bring along a personal theological adviser of his choice. Known as “private periti”, they were not official Council participants and could not attend General Congregations or commission meetings. But like the official periti, they gave informal talks to groups of bishops, bringing them up to date on developments in their particular area of expertise. Karl Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Küng first went to the council as some bishop's personal theologian, and were later appointed official periti. Some notable theologians, such as Edward Schillebeeckx, remained private periti for the whole duration of the Council.
Observers §18 . An important innovation was the invitation by Pope John to Orthodox and Protestant Churches to send observers to the council. Eventually 21 denominations or bodies such as the World Council of Churches were represented. The observers were entitled to sit in on all general assemblies but not the commissions and they mingled with the Council Fathers during the breaks and let them know their reactions to speeches or to schemas. Their presence helped to break down centuries of mistrust.
Lay auditors. While not provided for in the Official Regulations, a small number of lay people were invited to attend as “auditors” beginning with theSession. While not permits to take part in debate, a few of them were asked to mention the council about their concerns as lay people. The first auditors were all male, but beginning with the third session, a number of women were also appointed.
John XXIII opened the council on 11 October 1962 in a public session at St. Peter's basilica in Vatican City and read the declaration Gaudet Mater Ecclesia before the council Fathers.
What is needed at the present time is a new enthusiasm, a new joy and serenity of mind in the unreserved acceptance by all of the entire Christian faith, without forfeiting that accuracy and precision in its presentation which characterized the proceedings of the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. What is needed, and what entry imbued with a truly Christian, Catholic and apostolic spirit craves today, is that this doctrine shall be more widely known, more deeply understood, and more penetrating in its effects on men's moral lives. What is needed is that thisand immutable doctrine, to which the faithful owe obedience, be studied afresh and reformulated in contemporary terms. For this deposit of faith, or truths which are contained in our time-honored teaching is one thing; the shape in which these truths are species forth with their meaning preserved intact is something else. Roncalli, Angelo Giuseppe, "Opening address", Council, Rome, IT.