1962–1965

The Second Vatican Council: the collegiality of bishops and the Church in the modern world

John XXIII, elected in 1958, convened the council for the sake of "aggiornamento": dogma is unchanging, but the form of its expression can and must change; Protestants are "separated brethren." According to Lane, the constitution on the Church seeks to correct the First Vatican Council's emphasis on the absolute sovereignty of the pope: bishops are "successors of the apostles in the authority of teaching and pastoral governance," and the body of bishops has supreme and full power over the universal Church "together with its head, the Roman pontiff, and never without him," while the pope retains full, supreme, universal power. Rahner understood catholicity as the Church's incarnation in the various situations of the world and developed the collegiality of bishops as a sign of catholicity rather than a limit on papal power. The pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes expressed the Church's solidarity with the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties of people of our time.