The Second Vatican Council: A Guiding Star for the Church?

In his encyclical, Aeterni Patris, calling for a renewed study of St. Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy. Pope Leo XIII referred to the faith as a “friendly star” for philosophers. What he meant by this metaphor was that the Catholic dogma should serve as a constant reference point so that any philosophical thesis that contradicted the faith had to be in error. Now Leo XIV has declared that the Magisterium of the Second Vatican Council constitutes the “guiding star” for the Church’s journey today. At his January 7 General Audience, the Pope went on to encourage the faithful to read the Vatican II documents: “it will be important to get to know the Council again closely, and to do so not through ‘hearsay’ or interpretations that have been given, but by rereading its documents and reflecting on their content.” [https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-01/pope-at-audience-7-january-2026.html]

Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris encyclical was a great success. It led to a revival of interest in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and the twentieth century Neo-Thomist movement that gave rise to philosophical giants like Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson. Will Leo XIV’s exhortation yield similar results? Those who blame the follies and errors of the 1960s and 70s on the Council itself are unlikely to think so. They subscribe to the dubious logic of post hoc ergo propter hoc (after which, therefore because of which). However, one cannot find in the specific Vatican II teachings any warrant for the bad liturgies, distorted moral doctrine, blatant dissent, and other abuses that took place after the Council was completed.

Progressives might also have issues with Pope Leo’s project because reflecting on the content of these documents reveals that the Council was not as revolutionary as we have been led to believe. Some theologians, usually those anchored to progressive creeds, read these documents to understand the spirit of the council, believing that what was said is less important than how it was said. Thus, they prefer to concentrate on what was “un-said” in these magisterial documents but was somehow still made manifest. However, if Vatican II is to be a reliable guide for the universal Church, it is essential to prioritize the letter over the spirit, the objective over the subjective. Trying to discover what the documents didn’t directly say but convey through allusion, tone, and style threatens to make theology a completely subjective and arbitrary affair.

If the faithful read these documents to comprehend what the Council actually said, they will be quite surprised at their orthodoxy. This claim is not meant to suggest that the Council’s teachings are devoid of ambiguities or other problems. Ratzinger once criticized certain paragraphs of Gaudium et Spes for sounding “downright Pelagian.” But, for the most part, the doctrinal content of the Vatican II documents is fully in line with Sacred Scripture and the traditions established by previous Councils.

Those who accept Pope’s Leo’s invitation to engage the texts of Vatican II should begin with Pope John XXIII’s 1962 opening speech to the Council participants which makes clear that while the truths of the faith can be reformulated or expressed differently, they cannot be changed in substance: “For the deposit of faith, the truths contained in our venerable doctrine, are one thing; the fashion in which they are expressed, but with the same meaning and the same judgement, is another thing.” Thus, the Pope unequivocally reaffirms the immutability of doctrine and conveys that his intention was certainly not to modify the core teachings of the faith.

Given what Catholics have been told about the Council, the faithful are apt to be quite surprised by Pope John’s speech. What other surprises might one find in the texts of the Council? One of the most elegant documents that deserves careful reading and contemplation is Dei Verbum about Divine Revelation. Although some progressives argue for the idea of ongoing public revelation through sources like the sensus fidelium (“sense of the faithful”) or the “signs of the times,” Dei Verbum makes it abundantly clear that such revelation has been completed in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ and passed down to us by the apostles. “Jesus completes the work of revelation. . .and no new public revelation is to be expected” (§ 4). In addition, this Revelation, “the source of all saving truth and moral teaching,” cannot be changed, for “God in his goodness arranged that whatever he had revealed for the salvation of all nations should last forever in its integrity” (§ 7). We find not even the slightest hint of modernist historicism in Dei Verbum or in any of the other documents.

Some theologians have pointed to Vatican II to justify their claim that there are many pathways to salvation other than Jesus Christ or even that God Himself established a plurality of different religions, both Christian and non-Christian. But once again a careful reading of the documents will easily dispel this myth. We read in Ad Gentes, the document on missionary activity, about the great importance of missionary work for the history of salvation. “Through the work of preaching and the celebration of the sacraments, whose center and summit is the holy Eucharist, missionary activity makes present Christ who is the author of salvation” (§9). Similarly, Gaudium et Spes declares that “it is the church’s belief that Christ. . .and no other name under heaven is given to people for them to be saved” (§ 10). There are traces of goodness and truth in other religions, but they are “a preparation for the gospel and bestowed by Him who enlightens everyone that they may in the end have life” (Lumen Gentium, §16).

Some moral theologians and influential clergy, especially during the papacy of Pope Francis, have spoken of a paradigm shift in moral theology. They have also sought to marginalize the Church’s traditional moral framework of natural law. During Pope Francis’ Synod on the Family one Cardinal said that “natural law doesn’t mean anything anymore.” Moral truth, we’re told, is historically conditioned and not something permanent or immutable because human nature itself changes in ways that negate moral premises that were once true. Can this paradigm shift find some justification in the texts of Vatican II? On the contrary, a careful examination of Dignitatis Humanae reveals a reaffirmation of a universal and unchanging natural law: “The supreme norm of human life is the divine law itself, eternal, objective, and universal” (§ 3). To reinforce this statement there is a reference to Part I-II, Question 93 of Aquinas’ Summa which explains that “the eternal law is the unchangeable truth, and everyone knows this truth in some sense. . .the general principles of the natural law.” For the authors of Dignitatis Humanae there was no doubt that this divine, eternal law included the morally binding precepts of the natural law. Similarly, Gaudium et Spes (§74) speaks of “the natural and Gospel law” (lex naturalis and evangelica). Dignitatis Humanae also explains that these unchangeable “principles of the moral order derive from human nature itself” (§14). And the Council’s conception of this immutable human nature as a “unity of body and soul” (corpore et anima unus) clearly derives from Aquinas’ hylomorphic anthropology with all its important implications (Gaudium et Spes, §14).

Finally, given the heated debate over the traditional Latin Mass it is instructive to read what Vatican II had to say about liturgy and the Latin language. We’re often given the impression that the Council abolished Latin from the sacred liturgy in favor of the vernacular. But that is not the case. In Sacrosanctum Concilium the council fathers wrote that “the use of the Latin language is to be maintained in the Latin rites, except where a particular law might indicate otherwise” (§ 36) While the council fathers recognized that there was a suitable place for the local language in the liturgy, especially for the Scripture readings and common prayers, they also insisted that “steps should be taken so that Christian believers can at the same time also say or sing in Latin appropriate parts of the Mass” (§ 54). Sacrosanctum Consilium also recognized the unique importance of Gregorian chant, which “should be given a place of primacy in liturgical activity” (§ 116).

We have only scratched the surface in this essay, but there are many more examples of how the Council has been misunderstood or misrepresented. Unfortunately, too many theologians have abused the texts of the Second Vatican Council as a means of arguing in favor of modifying defined Church doctrine. But the Council did not proclaim an ecclesial paradigm shift, signal the need for a revolution in the Church, or question the transcendent order of nature. It did not say that we can find God’s message in new forms such as cultural trends or “signs of the times.” Instead, it emphasized the defense of doctrinal orthodoxy and the mission of transmitting the deposit of the faith. Perhaps we can hope that if the real Vatican II does become a “guiding star” for the Church, it could one day sound the death knell for the progressive agenda that the whole Church will hear.

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