An Introduction to Vatican II: The Council and Its Major Constitutions

During the year of faith (2012), Pope Benedict XVI encouraged Catholics to rediscover the riches of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council as a means to strengthen their faith and love for the Church. Through a thorough discussion of key themes, major documents, and historical context, this course hopes to deepen the understanding to the development of the Church’s wisdom.

The course focuses on the reasons which gave rise to Vatican II, it continues by examining the common misconceptions regarding the council, moves on to general principles and themes, and lastly considers the key documents which emerged from the council. Some questions that will be considered: Why study Vatican II? What is the relationship between the Church and the Modern world? How can the Church defend the deposit of faith given the rise of science and the loss of religiosity? What is the essence of the Sacred Liturgy and how can it be most faithfully preserved? Are the ministers of the Church in need of reform? Or is the Church itself simply "outdated"?

Over the past forty years the documents of the Second Vatican Council’s have shaped, guided, and influenced almost every dimension of the Church’s pastoral ministry in Catholic education, in social ministries, in catechesis, and in evangelization. The branches and arms of the Catholic Church must continuously drink from their source, who is Christ. The Church is first and foremost a mystery whose origin is in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, the light of the nations. The council did not change this most constitutive element––it rather brought clarity to its pastoral application, or as St. John Paul II once said, the council is to be as a whole "a sure compass by which to take our bearings in the century now beginning” (Pope John II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, 57).