The Second Vatican Council Beginning with the First Council of Nicaea in 325, the Catholic Church established a tradition of Ecumenical Council meetings to help decide and shape the future of the Church. The most recent Council, called Vatican II, is considered the largest ever in scope and also the most innovative in terms of the amount of changes it produced. The changes in doctrine, dogma and procedures they implemented have had major effects both inside and outside the Catholic Church and continue to this day. Before Vatican II the Catholic Church was an aging dinosaur, still paralyzed by the Reformation and incapable of relating to contemporary man. A modern Church has emerged, tolerant and open towards other religions, accessible to lay people and ready to face this era of reason rather than faith. I argue that the Second Vatican Council, while not perfect or perhaps as progressive as it should have been, was just what the Catholic Church needed if it was going to maintain its status as one of the greatest denominations on Earth. in two parts, the first a historical account of the events of the council and the second an analysis of the most important of the 16 documents approved by the assembled Fathers and their effect on the Catholic Church. WHAT HAPPENED On January 25, 1959, Pope John XXIII announced that he was bringing together what would have been the 21st ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. He proclaimed to his closest advisors that the purpose of the council would be "to proclaim the truth, to bring Christians closer to the faith, and at the same time to contribute to peace and prosperity on earth." Pope John immediately made it clear that his papal reign, which had hitherto been considered rather inconsequential, would make a difference. Church councils are called to contemplate and reevaluate the church's position on issues such as church administration, doctrine and discipline. An ecumenical council is a world council that can only be convened by the pope. All bishops and other high-ranking members of the entire Church must be present. This was to be the first major council in the Church since the original Vatican Council convened in 1869-1870. Immediately following the pope's order, the Vatican bureaucracy of religious leaders, known as the Curia, was born... half of the paper......did nothing more than grant official consent to the beliefs that were already present in the minds of the majority of the Fathers. However, it was a necessary step and required a lot of courage on the part of the people involved. Without it the Church would likely have become a banal antiquity, too stuck in its old ways to be in any way relevant to the modern world. Works Cited Basset, Bernard. Performance in the square. Homage on the door line to a council, with illustrations by Penelope Harter. Fresno: Academy Guild Press, 1963.Berkouwer, GC The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965 Corporal, Rock. Vatican II: last of the councils. Balitmore: Helicon, 1964.Catholic Church: Pope John XXIII. Apostolic Letter of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II: on the 25th anniversary of the promulgation of the conciliar Constitution "Sacrosanctum Concilium" on the Sacred Liturgy. Washington DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1988. MacEoin, Gary. What happened in Rome? The Council and its implications for the modern world. Garden City: Doubleday, 1966. Ratzinger, Joseph. Theological notes of Vatican II. New York: Paulista Press, 1967.