Vatican II was a council that began on October 11, 1962. At this council, religious officials attempted to remain faithful to the ancient heritage of the Roman Catholic Church while also bringing a renewal of church life. Vatican II was infused with a desire to return to some of the original Scriptural and patristic understandings of the faith, while helping the Church to remain relevant to the modern world.

Changes Resulting from Vatican II

Most people who lived through Vatican II are most familiar with the ways in which the Catholic worship experience was transformed as a result of the council. The services were no longer in Latin, but instead used the language of the locals (the vernacular). The priest no longer served facing the altar, but instead faced the people. In many cases, statues were removed from churches or placed in less conspicuous locations in an effort to appease Protestants.

Vatican II also represented a shift from the more rigid scholastic thought that had dominated official church theology since the Council of Trent to a more Biblical and patristic form of exegesis, meaning that the Church's revised interpretation of the Bible would be based more on the writings and beliefs of the fathers of the Christian Church. Vatican II encouraged lay ministry, the selforganization of convents, and an increasingly strong desire to reach out to “the separated brethren” — Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

One of the most significant debates related to Mary from this Council revolved around the question of how teachings about Mary would be incorporated into the documents from the council. Some of the more “progressive” theologians argued that the statements about Mary should be included as one chapter in the larger context of all of the writings from the Council, while some of the more traditional Catholics had hoped that the writings related to Mary would be preserved as a separate document.

These more traditional Catholics feared that if the teachings about Mary were not kept separate, they might be reduced or minimized. Those who felt that Mary should occupy a chapter of the larger collection of statements instead of an entire document felt that it was more appropriate to place Mary in the context of the larger church. The vote between these two groups was extremely close: 1,114 people were in favor of including the documents related to Mary in the larger body of work, while 1,074 wished to keep documents related to Mary separate. So the decision was made to include the writings about Mary as the final chapter of the council's constitution.

The decisions that resulted from Vatican II about Mary were extremely deliberate in their wording. There was a conscious effort to minimize “past excesses” while also avoiding the error of being too narrow-minded in statements surrounding Mary.

Statements were made about Mary's role in the Church and her role in the history of salvation. Mary was called a “helper.” Controversial titles such as Advocate and Mediator were carefully qualified; Mary could be called by those titles only when they were being used in a minimalist sense, which would imply that Mary shares in these ministries of Christ because of her relationship with him.

The Wake of Vatican II

Many theologians feel that Vatican II produced significant documents related to Mary, which brought helpful clarity and nuance to discussion about Mary in the Catholic Church. At the same time, in the wake of Vatican II, the role of the Virgin Mary has often been downplayed. Charlene Spretnak, in her book Missing Mary, describes the aftermath of the council, in which statues disappeared, rosary use in the parishes became more infrequent, and certain novenas for the Virgin Mary were no longer said. In Spretnak's opinion, one result of Vatican II is that there is now an entire generation of American Catholics who have not experienced the full scope of Marian devotion that would have been a staple of their parents' and grandparents' spirituality.