The Vaticaum II Church and her Ecclesiology: a Retrospective Look From the Perspective of 50 Years after Gaudium et spes (Part I)

Abstract

This article is a part of a greater research project whose subject is the renewed look at the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. Its goal is to present the new ecclesiology during the period of the Council through the eyes of the Church's Catholic Social Teaching. This will mean searching for a response to the question of which way the development of ecclesiological thought influences the Church's social reflection within the framework of her social teaching and the moral life of society. Gaudium et spes, the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, will be presented as the center of the discourse and will also indicate the scope of the undertaken analyses. The project will be in the form of a triptych that will be continued in further editions of “Roczniki Teologiczne” (Theological Annual). The immediate purpose for undertaking this topic is the fiftieth anniversary of the last Vatican Council (1962-1965), and in a particular way the pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes.

The first part of the triptych has as its assignment presenting the main sources of the ecclesiology of Vaticanum II and its reforms. In it, the author included the heritage of Vatican Council I, the first of the ecumenical councils where the issue of the Church became the center of Conciliar debates, even if this was only occasionally done at various moments. It was also a summary of a certain period in the history of theological thought and, in its own way, lead Catholic theology onto a new track. Apart from the contribution of the First Vatican Council, we will also point to the most important popes in the period of the last two Ecumenical Councils, as well as to aseries of outstanding theologians who, particularly after the First World War and during the period of the Council, undertook ecclesiological issues in their research work.