‘Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction’ by Shaun Blanchard and Stephen Bullivant

When recently reading the big Newman biography by Ian Ker and some other books and articles focused on social Catholicism, I kept coming across references to the Second Vatican Council, generally known as Vatican II. I found that my understanding of what it was, when it occurred and its importance was, at best, patchy. If asked, I would probably have said that its principal outcome was to reduce the amount of Latin spoken during Catholic church services and that it liberalised some things a tad, but not nearly enough. I was, in short, pretty ignorant about it. So, as I often do when I identify an alarming gap in my knowledge and want to fill it quickly, I turned to the excellent Oxford Very Short Introduction series.

This 150-page primer is an outstanding example of an OVSI book and it did exactly the job I needed. Over four hours or so in two sittings I filled myself in and can now say that I have the pretty solid general understanding I was seeking.

Every century or so (albeit very irregularly) the Roman Catholic Church holds a council meeting to which the Pope invites bishops from around the world, along with a variety of other participants and observers, to debate questions of mission, doctrine and liturgy. There have been 21 councils recognised as ecumenical by the Catholic Church since the fourth century, although they have occurred at very uneven intervals, sometimes with several centuries passing between them. Because they are such rare events, they tend to be significant historical occasions, and Vatican II was no exception, not least in including a small number of women for the first time.

The councils are generally named after the locations in which they are held. Hence we read in our history books about the Council of Nicaea in 325, which promulgated the original Nicene Creed, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which required Catholics to confess their sins at least once a year, and the Council of Trent, held over several sessions in the mid-sixteenth century, which responded to the rise of Protestantism by promulgating Counter-Reformation policies. Vatican I was held between 1869 and 1870 and ended up strengthening the role and authority of the Pope, particularly in respect of the doctrine of papal infallibility. It was brought to a premature end when Italian troops occupied Rome, hence leaving the Pope with strengthened authority within the church but very much less of the secular variety outside the Vatican City.

Vatican II took place in Rome over four annual sessions held in the autumn of 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1965, concluding, as it happens, just a few days after I was born in December 1965. It was an extraordinary gathering, attended by more than 2,000 bishops from all over the world, as well as theologians, advisers and observers. It had all kinds of consequences, not just for the liturgy (including the subsequent replacement of much of the Latin used in services with vernacular languages), but also in terms of the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and Jews, as well as the other Christian Churches (Protestant and Orthodox), which were henceforth approached as fellow Christian traditions rather than simply as heretical or schismatic bodies. A renewed emphasis was placed on scripture and its relationship with sacred tradition, while the Newmanesque principle that doctrine could develop over time, and that the Church needed to engage seriously with changes in the world outside its confines, was also reflected in the Council's deliberations and conclusions.

These changes were opposed at the Council by a well-organised conservative grouping, but were ultimately introduced as a result of overwhelming majorities voting in their favour. That said, the final documents were often the product of considerable negotiation and compromise between different factions, rather than straightforward victories for the reformers.

This is all explained in the book with authority and in an approachable prose style that also deals with the mechanics of organising such an enormous council and the reams of paper used in drafting, redrafting and redrafting again and again the documents that formed its ultimate outcome. The authors are particularly good at conveying the complexity of the process and the sometimes tortuous negotiations required to arrive at formulations that could command sufficiently broad support.

I learned a huge amount, not least about the important role played at the Council by a young German theologian and priest called Joseph Ratzinger. He was then associated with the reforming wing of the Church, serving as a theological adviser to one of its leading cardinals, but would subsequently acquire a rather different reputation as the principal guardian of Catholic orthodoxy during the long pontificate of John Paul II (himself a participant at Vatican II). Ratzinger, of course, then succeeded him as Pope Benedict XVI, reigning from 2005 until his resignation in 2013. His career is a reminder of how inadequate simple labels such as 'liberal' and 'conservative' can be when applied to figures of real intellectual depth. Here was a man who had helped shape the most consequential reforming council of modern Catholic history, who subsequently devoted much of his career to defending the continuity of Catholic doctrine, and who finally broke with centuries of established practice by voluntarily relinquishing the papacy.

This was another reminder of what makes the Oxford Very Short Introduction series so splendid. One of its great strengths is the calibre of the scholars who agree to contribute to it. Shaun Blanchard is a distinguished historian of modern Catholicism and a specialist in the development of Catholic thought, while Stephen Bullivant is a professor of theology and the sociology of religion who has written extensively about contemporary Catholicism. Both are serious scholars with substantial bodies of published work behind them, yet here they have taken the trouble to distil their knowledge into a short, accessible introduction for the general reader. That is no easy task. I have read dozens of these little books over the years and rarely been disappointed, and this one was among the best.