Vatican Council 2 Essay

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6.4 Vatican Council II (1962-1965)
Vatican Council II was convoked by Pope John XXIII. The council promulgated sixteen documents, some of the documents promulgated which are key to our study are the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) and the pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes). These documents discuss to a greater extent many topics one of which is that of marriage.
The Council departs from an assertion that Marriage arises out of a covenant and an irrevocable consent, which each partner freely bestows upon each the other in a mutual exchange. This intimate union and the good of the children impose total fidelity on each of them and argue for a strong bond between them. Christ the Lord has raised this union to the dignity of a sacrament so that it might more clearly recall and easily reflect his own unbreakable union with his body the Church. Christian couples, therefore, nourish and develop their marriage by undivided affection, which stems from the fountain of divine love while at the same time, striving to remain faithful in body and in mind, in good times as in bad times.
The very nature of marriage, the institution of matrimony manifested in the …show more content…

The encyclical is the most debated Church document of the twentieth century. The document sparked a wide range of debates for it was issued at a turbulent epoch of moral relativism in the history of humanity. It reaffirms the traditional teaching of the Church on abortion, sterilization, and artificial means of birth control. The encyclical relies to a greater extent upon the dictates of natural law. In this vain therefore, the pope contends that the intentional use of technology to aggravate the divinely instituted sexual process is inherently immoral and cannot be condoned. The pope clearly went against the public expectation (the liberalization of church’s teaching on the

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