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The Roman Catholic Church from1500 to present
Church history background
The church through history chapter 3
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Recommended: The Roman Catholic Church from1500 to present
The 2nd Vatican Council
Starting with the First Council of Nicaea in 325 the Catholic Church established a tradition of ecumenical Council meetings to help decide on and shape the future of the Church. The most recent Council, called Vatican II, is considered to be both the largest ever in scope and also the most ground breaking in the amount of change it yielded. The changes in doctrine, dogma and procedure they enacted had major effects both inside and outside the Catholic Church and continue to today.
Before the Vatican II the Catholic Church was an aging dinosaur, still crippled by the Reformation and unable to relate to contemporary man. It emerged from it a modern Church, tolerant and accepting of other religions, accessible to the laity and ready to grip with this age of reason over faith. I contend that the Vatican II council, while not being perfect or perhaps as progressive as it should have been, was just what the Catholic Church needed if it intended to maintain its status as one of the largest denominations on Earth.
This paper is divided up in to two portions, the first a historical account of events of the council and the second an analysis of the most important of the 16 documents approved by the assembled Fathers and their effect on the Catholic Church.
WHAT HAPPENED
On January 25th 1959, Pope John XXIII announced that he was assembling what was to be the 21st ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. He proclaimed to his closest advisors that the purpose of the council would be “to proclaim the truth, bring Christians closer to the faith, and contribute at the same time to peace and prosperity on earth.” Pope John immediately made it very clear that his papal reign, which up until this point was considered rather inconsequential, was going to make a difference.
Councils of the church are called to contemplate and reevaluate the church’s position on matters such as church administration, doctrine and discipline. An ecumenical council is a worldwide council that can only be called by the pope. All bishops and other high-ranking members of the whole church are to be present. This was to be the first major council in the Church since the original Vatican Council that was convened in 1869-1870.
Immediately after the pope’s order the Vatican’s bureaucracy of religious leaders, which is known as the Curia, sprung...
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...ly did little more than grant official consent to the beliefs that were already present by that time in the minds of the majority of Fathers. It still was a necessary step and required a lot of bravery on the part of those involved. Without it the Church may well have become a trivial antiquity too stuck in its old ways to be in any way relevant to the modern world.
Works Cited
Basset, Bernard. Preist in the piazza. Goal line tribute to a council, with illustrations by Penelope Harter. Fresno: Academy Guild Press, 1963.
Berkouwer, G.C. The Second Vatican Council and the new Catholicism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965
Caporale, Rock. Vatican II: Last of the councils. Balitmore: Helicon, 1964.
Catholic Church: Pope John XXIII. Apostolic letter of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II: on the 25 anniversay of the promulgation of the conciliar Constitution “Sacrosanctum Concilium” on the Sacred Liturgy. Washington D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1988.
MacEoin, Gary. What Happened at Rome? The Council and Its Implications for the Modern World. Garden City: Doubleday, 1966.
Ratzinger, Joseph. Theological Highlights of Vatican II. New York: Paulist Press, 1967.
Elected in 1958 as a ‘caretaker Pope’, Pope John XXIII implemented the greatest reforms in the Church’s history. His involvement within the Church had played a significant contribution to the reforming of social, political and liturgical Christian traditions. During the early twentieth century, the Catholic Church still held the century old conservative beliefs and traditions as they continued to separate the Church from the secular world, therefore, disadvantaging the Church to a world that was modernising. In addition to this, the Church restricted modernist thoughts due to the belief that new theologies would threaten the power and authority of the Church, but ...
On May the eighth of this year, the Conference of United States Religious Leaders and Ministers was held in Chicago, Illinois. The conference is an annual event coordinated by church leaders who each send a representative to take part in the discussions. Father Gregory McAllister of the Diocese of Arlington traveled to Chicago to attend the conference and share his knowledge. He spoke on behalf of the Catholic Church, while ministers and clergy from various religions from across the country also shared their views on the topics discussed.
Through the close study of two of the aspects shown in the diagram, their contributions allow Christianity to be considered a living religious tradition. The significant contributions of Pope John XXIII, during both his papal and Pre-papal life have had everlasting effects on not only Catholicism, but Christianity as a whole and lead to the sense of Christianity being a living religious tradition. His works include two Papal encyclicals, Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris, along with his work being Apostolic Delegate of Greece and Turkey. Moreover, The significant practice of Baptism has further contributed to Christian being considered a living religious tradition as it accounts for the premise of most Christian beliefs to be initiated, especially in terms of salvation and affirming the beliefs in the trinity and following the teachings of Jesus Christ.
More particularly, it recognizes the authority of the ecumenical councils at which East and West were represented together. These were the councils of Nicaea I (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus(431), Chalcedon(451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680), and Nicaea II (787) (Encarta 1996). The power of teaching and guiding the community is bestowed on certain ministries, particularly that of the bishop of each diocese or is directed through certain institutions, such as councils...
This loss of power was a direct result of several factors: the patriarchal canons of early Eastern and Western Church councils, the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, and the decree of Emperor Theodosius that made Christianity the state religion of Rome (Lynch,10). These events led to positions in the Church such as presbyter, deacon, and bishop being held in high regard, and also hi...
The Council of Trent was called because of Martin Luther’s rebel against the practises of the sacraments. He was a monk of the church yet he became one of the most influential and powerful figures in the history of church. He questioned
...dea of new culture and tradition. With the changes being made in the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church was being reborn. Vatican II is very important when it comes to learning about the history of the Catholic Church and will forever be remembered.
It is acknowledged that at this time the Church community has not yet reached its highest potential and is faced with the limitations of human shortcomings and temporal constrictions. With an understanding of its abilities and its boundaries, the Church seeks to work with the world community to come closer to the life to which God calls the world." As this quote from one of the Documents in Vatican II states, the Church needs to have a relationship with the "outside world" as the Church itself is comprised of humans. And that the Church has a good relationship with the outside world is necessary for the Church to reach its highest potential. These are some of the changes that took place in Vatican II and naming all of them would not be necessary. The modern Church is the way it is because of most of what happened in Vatican II.
and the Holy Roman Emperor considered it his mandate to protect the Roman Catholic Church and
Another major dividing issue between the two churches was the possession of power.Traditionally, the Pope was the top leader of the church and all matters of divinity were his concerns, but this changed when Eastern Europe adopted Caesaropapism. With this practice there was no separation of church and government. The emperor in the east began controlling the church through his newly appointed eastern Pope, and therefore controlled all divine and earthly matters. An example of this can be seen through Constantine's influence at the Council of Nicaea, around 325 C.E.
Roles of the Catholic Church in Western civilization has been scrambled with the times past and development of Western society. Regardless of the fact that the West is no longer entirely Catholic, the Catholic tradition is still strong in Western countries. The church has been a very important foundation of public facilities like schooling, Western art, culture and philosophy; and influential player in religion. In many ways it has wanted to have an impact on Western approaches to pros and cons in numerous areas. It has over many periods of time, spread the teachings of Jesus within the Western World and remains a foundation of continuousness connecting recent Western culture to old Western culture.-
At the beginning of the sixteenth century church theologian, Martin Luther, wrote the 95 Theses questioning the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. In this essay I will discuss: the practices of the Roman Catholic Church Martin Luther wanted to reform, what Martin’s specific criticism of the pope was, and the current practices Pope Francis I is interested in refining in the Roman Catholic Church today.
College students may still be majoring in liberal arts due to being too specialized in college or not researching enough about the college they will be attending. Going to college for the first time without an open mind and being too narrowly minded could be the never-ending cycle of college. Which can possibly lead to a career mistake and in “Why Focusing Too Narrowly in College Could Backfire,” by Peter Cappelli, he explains exactly why. Peter Cappelli points out
The Church was organised into a hierarchical system that sustained the Church’s stability and control over the people and lower clergy, by organising them into different groups. First there were the ordinary believers, the citizens of the kingdom who followed the Christian faith. Then there was the clergy, the members who devoted their lives to the church. Each group of the clergy was assigned specific functions by the clergy nobles to help run the Church competently. Amongst all the clergy associates, the Pope was at the top, he had the equivalent if not more power than the ruling monarch and was in charge of all political affairs and administered the clergy. He was able to dictate political laws and even comment on the Monarch’s decisions. Under the Pope, there were the bishops. The bishops directed church courts and managed cases correlated to the public such as marriage, wills and other public predicaments. Priests held religious services that consisted of sacraments, baptisms and the usual Sabbath services. The monks and nuns received manual labour that required helping clean the monasteries and assist the needy. Educated monks copied manuscripts of medieval and ancient knowledge in the Scriptorium. Finally...
Throughout this paper, we will look into the disappointing church corruption of the middle ages, more specifically, the unbiblical practices, serious problems, hypocritical popes, and finally, the people trying to fight the corruption!