I remember Vatican II like it was yesterday, but it is more than fifty years ago. Don’t tell me that leaders have no impact on their organizations. I grew up in the church of Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII (1939-1958). This pious, austere leader pope gave the impression that canonical Church rules were very important. Being an American Catholic meant going to church on Sunday, learning Latin to understand your memorized prayers, not eating meat on Friday, confessing your immodest thoughts, praying the rosary, wearing medals and scapulars, and most of all, doing what the priest told you to do.

With the advent of Angelo Roncalli as Pope John XXIII (1958-1963) things began to change ever so slightly as he talked about an aggiornamento, an updating. This leader pope was a heavy set man who smiled a lot. He seemed to enjoy life as opposed to his dour predecessor. He called for an ecumenical council in 1959. Most people did not fully understand what that meant, since the only two most recent councils that people could recall were the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and the First Vatican Council (1868-1870). The expectations were that it would be some kind of internal Church affair, to upgrade some canonical rules.

I graduated from Loyola University Chicago in June, 1962. In September, 1962, I was on my way to study theology in Rome as I sailed on a cruise ship to Naples. I met George Lindbeck, with his wife and young daughter, on his way to be the Lutheran observer at Vatican II. He told me that there was a greater possibility of reconciliation between Lutherans and Catholics than Catholics with Orthodox and Anglicans. I disagreed with him.

Instead of studying theology in Rome, I went to Louvain, Belgium, to study with the periti of Cardinal Suenens. I had classes with Gustave Thils, as he insisted that Vatican II was just the completion of Vatican I that had defined papal infallibility. Now was the time to explain episcopal collegiality and the role of the sensus fidelium of non-clerics. He worked on the Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, with his fellow faculty member, Gerard Philips. There was this great joke at that time that Cardinal Suenens wanted collegiality for everyone, except in his own diocese.

In the middle of Vatican II, the pope died in 1963, as Giovanni Montini became Pope Paul VI. There was some talk about Suenens becoming pope, but Montini, the protégé of Pope Pius XII, yet influenced by the French intellectual Aristotelian Thomistic Jacques Maritain guided Vatican II to its conclusion in 1965. He was a bridge pope, leading the Roman Catholic Church into the European twentieth century.

I also had the opportunity to study in Trier, Germany with Balthasar Fischer, who was in charge of the committee that was working on what has become the RCIA. I, in fact, made a presentation to this international committee, explaining my doctoral work on the history of confirmation. Actually, Balthasar Fischer wanted me to convince the rest of his committee that it would be a good idea to have confirmation immediately after baptism for adult baptism. So, I always joke that I had an impact on one billion Catholics by having confirmation right after baptism at the Easter Vigil RCIA.

When I returned to America, I saw that American Catholics had no idea of the scholarship that had gone into the various documents and decrees from Vatican II. There was a group who were saying that nothing had changed. On the other hand, some others said that everything had changed. There were more disputes about liturgy and celibacy than anything else. The biggest impact for most people was the fact that the Catholic Latin Mass had now become a Protestant English service, with singing all over the place. What happened to silent prayer?

People forget that it was not the documents of Vatican II that changed American Catholic life, but it was the interpretation of these documents. In fact, there was a return to sources, particularly fourth century Christianity. It was the implementation committees that followed Vatican II that had the greatest impact on Catholic life.

The document that caused the most difficulty was not a Vatican II document, but the encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Humana Vitae. Until that document was released in 1969, there was a general consensus that the documents of Vatican II needed to be studied and implemented in a gradual way with great understanding. Suddenly in 1969, no one could talk about all these important theological, dogmatic, and liturgical documents. Everything was about contraception. The periphery had become the essential. The problem of papal Roman authority versus collegiality and sensus fidelium became a practical matter of who could be a real Catholic. We began to find cafeteria Catholics. The role of the hierarchy was really in question.

In America, Roe versus Wade slightly shifted the contraception debate to abortion. Suddenly Evangelical anti-abortion Christians were along side of Catholics fighting legalization of abortion. The liberation theology had a minimal impact in the United States. However, feminist theology, like the question of the non-European experience, has dominated since Vatican II, which barely touched these problems. In the end, what was left unsaid at Vatican II became more important than the documents themselves.

Meanwhile the liturgical wars and the sex wars continued unabated in the United States. Karol Wojtyla became the beloved Polish Pope John Paul II (1978-2005). He held the line, no more crazy stuff about liberation and feminism. The pope speaks so we all should listen. We needed a good old fashioned Catholic Catechism. So Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedicat XVI (2005-2013), created one that left peace and social justice issues on the back burner with doctrinal purity on the front burner. Finally we live in the age of the Argentinean Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis I (2013- ). How we interpret and understand the twentieth century Vatican II will define who and what we are as Roman Catholics in this twenty-first century.