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(This announcement came from Marty Lucas on Nov 6, 2012.)
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Our St. Francis Parish Peace & Justice sub-committee is publishing a series of six or seven articles in the FORUM, and, hoping a discussion will start.
Our 1st article in the Oct 21st FORUM "Council of Vatican II REFLECTIONS";
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Council of Vatican II
(article written by Paul Schwankl on behalf of the Peace and Justice Committee)
Pope John XXIII announced in 1959, when he had been pope less than three months, that he was convoking the Second Vatican Council. For many leaders in the Church, that was about the last thing they were expecting. Many of the faithful said, "An ecumenical council? What's that?"
An ecumenical council is a meeting of all the bishops in the Catholic Church, led by the pope, usually to address pressing questions of doctrine, worship, or discipline. There had been only twenty before Vatican II; the First Vatican Council, never properly adjourned, ended in 1870. The bishops there defined the dogma of papal infallibility, opening an era in which the guidance of the Church was strongly concentrated in the pope; in fact, there was so much reliance on the pope that a person could wonder whether another council would ever be needed. Pope John's predecessor, Pius XII (1939-1958), seemed to be governing the Church just the way Vatican I hoped for, distilling good current thinking within the Church, and his own thinking, into lots of well-received encyclicals on the Bible, liturgy, communism, family life, and many other subjects. Before he defined the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, Pope Pius consulted all Catholic bishops by mail, but did not call on them to meet.
Pope John thought we needed a bigger change, to "open the windows and let in some fresh air." Some 2,000 bishops met in four sessions from 1962 to 1965. What they did changed the way we think about the Church. Fifty years later, it's a good time to take stock of those changes and see how the Holy Spirit may have been leading us through those bishops, hardly any of whom still walk the earth today.
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Our 2nd article in the Oct 28th FORUM "The Beginnings of a Discussion on Vatican II".
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The Beginnings of a Discussion on Vatican II
(article written by Dick Brown on behalf of the Peace and Justice Committee)
(article written by Dick Brown on behalf of the Peace and Justice Committee)
Fifty years ago this month, the opening session of the Second Vatican Council was convened by Pope John XXIII. While some of us lived during the time of the four sessions of Vatican II (1962 – 1965), most of us in our parish were born after this period and only know the Second Vatican Council by what we have read or heard.
Pope John XXIII who led the Church during the time of the preparation for the Council and during the initial session gave the Council its overarching orientation. He wished the meeting to be a “wonderful spectacle of truth, unity, and charity.” After Pope John's death in 1963, Pope Paul VI oversaw the second, third, and concluding fourth session of the Council. Each of the sessions began in the fall of the year and lasted for ten weeks during which some 2200 bishops along with theologians and observers participated in the proceedings.
Some sixteen documents came out of the deliberations. They dealt with many topics of significance including the liturgy, ecumenism, relationship to non-Christian religions, and the Church in the modern world.
Because of the significance of Vatican II to both the Church and our society in general, members of the Peace and Justice Committee will prepare a series of articles for the Parish Bulletin over the coming months discussing aspects of Vatican II and how it impacts our society.
We would also appreciate your thoughts on how Vatican II impacted your faith life. (Send an email to Kelly Gauthier, chairperson of the Peace and Justice Committee – chaysayd@yahoo.com ; or, call 734-821-2121.) As a final article we will consolidate a variety of these thoughts.
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The 16 Documents Vatican II Approved are listed here.
http://service4justice.blogspot.com/2012/10/second-vatican-council-approved-16.html
http://service4justice.blogspot.com/2012/10/second-vatican-council-approved-16.html
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