Catholic discussion of Vatican II is about more than a Council. It is also about the legitimacy of different ways of being Catholic. The question most recently debated — whether the Council represented a change in Catholic teaching and life from what had gone before — invites a judgment on change subsequent to the Council.
The question about teaching is complex. But Vatican II certainly did mark a break with the past in one significant respect: namely, in the way in which the documents it generated addressed their audience.
In contrast to previous Councils which were generally called in times of crises to offer authoritative resolution of disputes about faith, Vatican II did not set out to define faith through clear statements of unacceptable positions or to legislate in the face of abuses.
Its address was less magisterial than pastoral in the sense that the account it gave of faith and its tone was encouraging. It was designed to attract the Catholic audience and to model ways of reflecting on faith and living it.
Changes in forms of address are not insignificant. They shape subsequent reflection about faith by encouraging distinctive emphases and metaphors and imagining the relationships between speakers and hearers in distinctive ways. The generally pastoral and conversational rhetoric of Vatican II encouraged participants to reflect on their inherited tradition, and to listen to and take one another seriously.
It was designed not to end discussion but to begin and to deepen it. But it presupposed that both parties were knowledgeable and grounded in faith.
Vatican II primarily addressed Catholics. But its change of address inevitably also affected relationships with the broader society. The Vatican Council itself modelled this conversation in its document, Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World). This broke new ground. And it became the focus of controversy about the Council.
The then Fr Jozef Ratzinger shared his reservations about the document very early. He criticised it for seeking an imagined common ground for conversation instead of speaking boldly out of Christian faith. He believed this approach unlikely to persuade non-Christians.
He also found its presentation of current social issues to be superficial and ungrounded, reaching into areas where the Church had no competence. His own understanding of how conversation with the secular world should be conducted can be seen in his Encyclicals which work out of deep theological reflection to comment on such issues as the economic order and the