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Half a century ago, the Catholic Church embarked on an historic transformation. With the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII challenged Roman Catholics to throw open the windows of the Church. To that end, over a three year period, the council modernized the language of the Mass, gave a larger role to laypeople, introduced the concept of religious tolerance and started a dialogue with other faiths. As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, those reforms provoked a backlash and, say many Catholics, are now being reversed.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE: At Rome's Basilica of St Paul outside the walls, a 50th anniversary photo exhibit celebrates what's known as Vatican II. The sound is the recorded voice of Pope John XXIII. It was here that the newly elected pontiff stunned the world by calling the first Catholic Church Council in nearly a century. He called for the institution's renewal and more interaction with the modern world. Today, there are few visitors to the exhibit, but 50 years ago the Council stirred great excitement. Hans Kung was the youngest theologian at Vatican II.
HANS KUNG: It was a time of a new hope when everybody was proud that we are able to convoke such a council and having a real renewal of the Catholic Church.
POGGIOLI: No new dogma was issued, but the Council transformed the Church from an exclusive to an inclusive institution. Altars were turned around and priests faced the newly recognized people of God. Vatican analyst Marco Politi was in high school at the time.
MARCO POLITI: For my generation, Vatican Council II was really a revolution. There was a new way to have relationships with the Jews. There was a new way to look to at the other Christian confessions. There was a new way to handle the relationship with Islam and there was a new liturgy.
POGGIOLI: Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent for the British Catholic weekly The Tablet, says the liturgical changes had a deep impact on churchgoers.
ROBERT MICKENS: I remember my grandmother being so happy that the mass was in English, because she could understand it. I mean, she grew up with the Latin.
POGGIOLI: At the time, Father Thomas Reese was studying at a seminary - so isolated from the world that students were unaware the council was taking place. But its effects, he says, were abrupt.
FATHER THOMAS REESE: In one week, if you eat meat on Friday you're going to go to hell. The following week, you can have meat on Friday. The Church changed.
POGGIOLI: Not all issues could be discussed at the council - for example, priestly celibacy and the role of women. However, Vatican II gave bishops a sense of empowerment. They spoke candidly and many openly criticized the Vatican ban on artificial birth control. Robert Mickens of The Tablet says the bishops' assertiveness shocked the hierarchy.
MICKENS: This caused much concern among the conservatives, that this was undermining unity in the Church, undermining the power and voice of the pope. So slowly there was a clawing back.
POGGIOLI: Pope John's successors, Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, were both present at the Council and were among those who felt its effects went too far. As pope, John Paul, with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger by his side, introduced what's known as the Restoration and appointed bishops loyal to the Vatican.
The major casualty was collegiality, the concept that bishops had a role in the decision-making process. Theologian Hans Kung, who was disciplined by John Paul as too liberal, says the two popes were not able to suppress everything that came out of the Council. But he adds, the conservative backlash has been considerable.
KUNG: They are again complaining that the Church is too much adapted to the times and to this modern society. Another key word was dialogue. Today, we have again inquisition against theologians, against American sisters and renounce of freedom of teaching and conscience in the Church.
POGGIOLI: In the aftermath of the Council, says Mickens, the Church lost the opportunity to come to terms with its longstanding nemesis - the liberal ideas ushered in by the French Revolution.
MICKENS: We really haven't made our peace as a Catholic Church, as an institution, with the Enlightenment. The Vatican is a great example. It's an absolute monarchy. The Enlightenment got rid of all that.
POGGIOLI: Father Reese says the current Church is unable to communicate with the world around it.
REESE: There's this tremendous split between theologians and the hierarchy. This is has had a very bad impact on church.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI BYLINE: Today, the church hierarchy is still reeling from clerical sex abuse scandals across the world, there's a shortage of priests, and in Europe churches are empty. In Latin America, Catholicism is losing faithful to other Christian religions.
Polls show that large numbers of Catholics, even majorities in some countries, no longer follow the pope's strict pronouncements on obedience and sexual morality. But many analysts say that despite Vatican retrenchment, the spirit of the council is still very much alive among the People of God.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome.
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