(2 of 6)
One document that has already changed the spiritual life of the church is the constitution On the Liturgy, which led to widespread introduction of vernacular languages in the Mass. Another constitution, On the Church, asserting that bishops collectively share ruling power over the church with the Pope, is the charter for what many theologians feel will be a slow, subtle but unstoppable process of democratization within the church. The decree On the Apostolate of the Laity gives greater freedom and responsibility to Catholic laymen.
Of more concern to non-Catholics are the documents that clearly define the end of the church's Counter Reformation hostility to other faiths. One is the much rewritten constitution On the Church in the Modern World, which attempts to express the mind of Catholicism on such matters of common concern as peace and war, world poverty, industrialism, social and economic justice. A decree On Ecumenism, committing Catholicism to work for Christian unity, for the first time acknowledges Protestant bodies as churches that share God's grace and favor. The declaration On Religious Liberty states the right of all men to freedom of conscience in worship. Another declaration, On Non-Christian Religions, condemns anti-Semitism and asserts that the Jewish people as a whole cannot be accounted guilty of Christ's death.
Many bishops readily admit that these and other documents of Vatican II show some omissions and outright failures. The ecclesiastical legislation had to be shaped and sometimes compromised to gain the approval of disparate men—Italian country bishops who have seldom seen Protestants, and Dutch prelates who pray with them almost daily; U.S. cardinals whose most pressing concern is a multimillion-dollar building fund, and Asian missionaries whose church is a Quonset hut. Methodist Observer Albert C. Outler of Texas says that "several of the decrees and declarations are substandard; several are no better than mediocre." One of the worst is a decree on mass communications which implies the right of governments to censor the press; hardly better is the declaration On Christian Education which is little more than a cliche-ridden defense of parochial schools.
Several other documents are clouded by defensive, cautionary phrasing. The noble declaration On Religious Liberty, for example, insists that all men have a duty to embrace Catholicism once they recognize its truthful claims, and argues that the church has always professed liberty of conscience—which ignores several centuries of the Inquisition. The bitterly debated declaration On Non-Christian Religions is not nearly as direct or forceful as the original draft proposed, and omits what might have given it maximum moral impact—a phrase acknowledging the church's role in fostering anti-Semitism in previous centuries.
More disappointing to many Catholics is that Vatican II did not settle pressing ethical issues—most notably, birth control. Since the Pope demanded that this problem be left for him alone to solve, On the Church in the Modern World does little more than reaffirm Catholicism's traditional opposition to contraception. Nonetheless, some progressives take heart from the facts that the text does assert that only parents have the right to decide how many children they shall have, and does not close the door to future change.