Religion 385 Topics in American Catholicism

The Catholic Sixties

Reading Guide for Gaudium et spes

By the time Gaudium et spes was promulgated on December 7, 1965, by Pope

Paul VI, John’s successor and one of the key figures responsible for carrying forward
John’s reforming vision in the council’s debates, the Catholic Church was already a very
different institution than the one that had come out of the Second World War. The
Council had done its work. The changes in the church’s worship had begun.

Pope Paul IV

Some brief political background: Pope John XXIII had reconciled the church to
the Italian political situation, going so far as to call the creation of the Italian state (which
had proceeded with such violence against the papacy and had confiscated papal lands)
“providential.” On July 15, 1961, John promulgated Mater et Magistra which celebrated
what the Pope called “a development in man’s social life.” By this he meant increased
social responsibility for the poor and the recognition of a common human destiny. The
letter breathes a spirit of optimism and of acceptance of the modern world and of the
good that men and women have done, Catholic and not. (So novel was the orientation of
Mater et Magistra, so open to the world, including progressive movements, that the CIA
took an interest in it.) John had also set to work reforming the Curia and the Italian
episcopacy, stripping them of some of their power and privilege.

Giovanni Battista Montini, Paul VI, is a figure of controversy, not least because
one of the hallmarks of his papacy was the encyclical Humane Vitae (1968) prohibiting
contraception. Not until the international sex scandals of the 1990s would church
authority and prestige be more corroded than it was with Humane Vitae. Conservatives
revile Montini for not stopping post-conciliar excess (another hallmark of Paul’s papacy
was the laicization of thousands of priests and nuns), liberals revile him for not being
liberal enough. Nonetheless, it was under his signature that Gaudium et spes was
released.

(A historical aside: so controversial is Paul that so-called Catholic Traditionalists,

meaning Catholics who view the Second Vatican Council and all that followed it as a
betrayal of Catholicism, claim that he was an imposter pope, established by liberal forces
out to destroy Catholicism.)

It may be worth pointing out that before the Council, Catholics were generally
prohibited from participating in social activities with people of other faiths. They needed
special permission to attend the weddings or funerals of Protestant friends.

Here are some questions for our discussion:

1. What is the tone or language of the text? What are some of its key
words and phrases? Perhaps a better question is: what are the
languages of the Preface and the Introduction?

2. How is the “church” characterized by the letter, and what is missing

that you might otherwise expect to see in a discussion of what the
Catholic Church is? What is the church’s relationship with other
social organizations?

3. How is the human characterized?

4. What are the dilemmas of the modern world?

5. What is the promise of the modern world?

6. How are citizens imagined participating in their governments?