The Second Vatican Council

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“What a treasure there is, dear brothers and sisters, in the guidelines offered to us by the Second Vatican Council, a sure compass by which to take our bearings in the century now beginning.” -Pope John Paul II (Vatican2voice.org, 2015). The Second Vatican council held a large significance for the Catholic Church in the 20th century, altering and developing the Church for the better. The aim for this new age in the church was to allow for an advance in ecumenism and an end to the previously standing fortress mentality the church had expressed inadvertently. It was the twenty-first ecumenical council of the Catholic Church and the second to be held at Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. The council was officially opened under the pontificate …show more content…

Pope John XXIII called the Council almost immediately after his election as he believed that the Church needed to promote the message of faith in a more relevant way to the people of the 20th Century, he called for an Aggiornamento, a replenishment in the way of thinking and doing within the church that would better enable to serve the people of God on …show more content…

The scientific revolution and the rationalism of the Age of Reason in the 19th and 18th centuries, with associated attacks on Church doctrine and authority left the church on the defensive as these movements emphasised the need for human reason to replace revelation and spirituality. Then there were the revolutions in the late 19th and 20th centuries that attempted to force the clergy to obey civil constitution and took an authority from the pope, essentially restricting the practice of faith

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