Vatican II: The Unfinished Agenda

The council gathered over three more fall periods, progressively taking on a life of its own. No single person or group was in complete control of major initiatives. There were surprises, unexpected developments, disappointments and joys for everyone involved. In the end, most council fathers, the so-called “majority,” were more than satisfied with the final results. On December 6, 1965, they held their last working general congregation, the 168th in number. Then, on December 7, they gathered in their ninth public session, and formally promulgated the last four of the sixteen conciliar documents, giving the lengthy “Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World” (Gaudium et spes) their final formal vote. This pastoral constitution, longest of all conciliar texts and somewhat cumbersome in style, captured well the spirit of the foregoing conciliar acts and deliberations. It approved an inspiring charter for the church on a range of new and old topics, conceived through Pope John’s foundational vision for a council that would update the church to the modern world. Eleven of the sixteen conciliar documents were promulgated in three public sessions in that final period of 1965. Several were just as controversial and surprising, if not more contentious, than the pastoral constitution. This was especially true for two remarkable declarations, “On the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” (Nostra aetate) and “On Religious Liberty” (Dignitatis humanae).

The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council concluded its journey of nearly seven years in early December 1965. Pope John XXIII, now a declared saint, announced his intention to summon a universal council of the Catholic Church in January 1959. Preparations lasted three years and nine months before the council convened under his watchful eye in October 1962. After a fitful initial period of starts and stops, the council fathers gradually discerned ways forward, especially through the guidance of Pope Paul VI who succeeded Pope John after his death in June 1963.

On November 12-13, 2015, for its final in a series of five conferences that began in 2012 and has celebrated the jubilee of Vatican II, Georgetown University focused on these three extraordinary documents as unfinished agendas—Gaudium et spes, Nostra aetate and Dignitatis humanae. All three represent explorations rather than final opinions, agendas for the future than detailed policies for implementation, and beginnings more so than conclusions from those four years of deliberations. These three texts truly reflect a conciliar process extending beyond the council’s formal conclusion. In the tenth and closing public session, December 8, 1965, Pope Paul VI reminded those gathered and all in the world who might listen to think of the council as a whole existing through all its acts, documents, discussions and events taken together. He then prayed that this concluding conciliar greeting may “rise as a new spark of divine charity in our hearts, a spark which may enkindle the principles, doctrines and proposals which the council has organized and which, thus inflamed by charity, may really produce in the church and in the world, that renewal of thoughts, activities, conduct, moral force and hope and joy which was the very scope of the council.”

• Welcome: Dr. John J. DeGioia – President, Georgetown University
  
  
• Keynote Presenter: Juan Carlos Scannone, S.J. – Professor, Philosophy & Theology, Universidad del Salvador, Argentina
  
  
• Discussion Chair: Barbara Mujica – Professor, Spanish & Portuguese, Georgetown University
  
  
• Respondent: José Casanova – Professor, Sociology, Georgetown University
  
  
• Respondent: Matthew Carnes, S.J. – Assoc. Professor, Government, Georgetown University

• Presenter: John Borelli – Special Assistant to the President, Georgetown University
  
  
• Discussion Chair: Drew Christiansen, S.J. – Distinguished Professor of Ethics & Human Development, Georgetown University
  
  
• Respondent: Peter Phan – Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought, Georgetown University
  
  
• Respondent: Heather Miller Rubens – Assoc. Director, The Institute for Islamic, Christian & Jewish Studies, Baltimore

• Presenter: Linda Hogan – Vice-Provost & Chief Academic Officer, Trinity College Dublin
  
  
• Discussion Chair: José Casanova – Professor, Sociology, Georgetown University
  
  
• Respondent: David Hollenbach, S.J. – University Chair in Human Rights & International Justice, Boston College
  
  
• Respondent: Sharon Euart, RSM – Resource Center for Religious Institutes

• Presenter: Christine Firer Hinze – Professor, Theology, Fordham University
  
  
• Discussion Chair: Karen Stohr – Assoc. Professor, Philosophy, Georgetown University
  
  
• Respondent: Drew Christiansen, S.J. – Distinguished Professor of Ethics & Human Development, Georgetown University
  
  
• Respondent: Stephen Hilbert – Office of International Justice and Peace, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

• Presenter: Massimo Faggioli – Director, Institute for Catholicism and Citizenship, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn.
  
  
• Discussion Chair: Gerard Mannion – Amaturo Professor in Catholic Studies, Theology, Georgetown University
  
  
• Respondents: Conference speakers