Vatican II: Continuity or Rupture?

In  1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council in Rome.  Before the Council, the Church's liturgy was in Latin, its hierarchy  largely unquestioned by it members, and Catholics were everywhere  recognizable by their habit of abstaining from meat on Fridays, as much  as by their devotion to the Virgin Mary.  Everyone knew that Catholics  thought theirs was the one true Church, and that it was opposed to much in the modern world, most obviously contraception, abortion and sex outside marriage.

Within five years of the Council's closing in 1965, all of these things had  changed--the liturgy was translated into vernacular, Catholics no longer  abstained from meat on Fridays, and vast numbers of its members--including its clergy--openly rejected its teaching on sexual  morality.  To this day, debates rage among Catholic clergy and scholars about what sort of changes Vatican II introduced.

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