CONVENING: In St. Peter's, big
room, big expectations
Oct. 11, 1962
A Church Transformed
By David Van Biema
They
marched six abreast across the great square like some damask-clad,
miter-capped army, the Cardinals in scarlet bringing up the rear. More
than 2,600 bishops, the largest such gathering in the history of the
Roman Catholic Church, took seats on 330-ft.-long bleachers in St.
Peter's Basilica and craned like schoolboys for a view of the farmer's
son who had called them here to ... talk. About what? "About
everything," one prelate predicted. "And a few things besides."
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Pope John XXIII, put on his steel-rimmed
spectacles and spoke for 38 minutes, after which his invitees went on
for three more years. John died after the first session of the Second
Vatican Council, but his ideal of the church's aggiornamento, or
updating, flowered in unforeseen ways. By the council's end, the bishops
turned the priest toward his flock during Mass and allowed its
celebration in local languages, concluded it was not the Jews who killed
Jesus, and in 16 hotly debated documents wrestled an all-too-medieval
institution toward modernity. The wrestling goes on. But on that first
afternoon, John talked of the council's "beginning to rise in the church
like the daybreak, the forerunner of the most splendid light." And the
dawn was indeed inspiring, even if full illumination still tarries.
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