Timeline: Authority of the Second Vatican Council

In a letter dated 12 September 2026 and republished by OnePeterFive, Strickland told supporters who feared he had changed sides that he continues to defend the traditional Roman liturgy and has not moved from his positions.

In a letter dated 18 February, SSPX Superior General Davide Pagliarani confirmed that the consecrations would go ahead on 1 July, citing unresolved disagreement over the Second Vatican Council; Catholic World News reported that the Society had rejected a Vatican offer.

At his general audience, Leo XIV described the Second Vatican Council as a guiding star for the Church's journey, recalling John XXIII's image of its opening as the dawn of a day of light. His 2026 Wednesday catecheses then worked through the Council's documents, including Lumen gentium, Sacrosanctum Concilium and Gaudium et spes.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith announced that an extrajudicial penal process concluded on 4 July had found Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò guilty of the reserved delict of schism. It declared the latae sententiae excommunication under canon 1364 §1; lifting it is reserved to the Apostolic See.

Responding to a 1 June essay by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Archbishop Viganò argued that the Council itself lay at the root of later deviations. After Vatican commentator Sandro Magister wrote that such a wholesale rejection stood at the brink of schism, Viganò defended the idea that the Council be forgotten.

In his Christmas address to the Roman Curia, Benedict XVI contrasted a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture in interpreting the Second Vatican Council with a hermeneutic of reform, warning that the former risked a split between the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church. He repeated the point to Rome's clergy in March 2006.

In an address to a secret consistory, Paul VI criticised the stance of Archbishop Lefebvre, insisted on faithful implementation of the Second Vatican Council and rejected the claim that the Council is not binding. A contemporary press report noted that repeated instructions to close the Écône seminary had gone unheeded; the address came a year after the Society's 1975 suppression, which Lefebvre had contested in Rome.

On Holy Thursday 1969, Paul VI issued the apostolic constitution Missale Romanum, promulgating the Roman Missal revised in line with Sacrosanctum Concilium as a revision of the Missal in use since Pius V's edition of 1570. It added three new Eucharistic Prayers and a three-year cycle of Sunday readings, restored elements such as the prayer of the faithful, and took effect on the First Sunday of Advent, 30 November 1969.

On the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Paul VI closed the Council at a Mass in St. Peter's Square, with the concluding decree In Spiritu Sancto and messages addressed to rulers, women, workers, artists and young people. The decree directed that everything the Council had established be observed by the faithful.

At the Council's last public session, Paul VI promulgated the Declaration on Religious Freedom alongside the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes. The declaration grounds the right to religious freedom in the dignity of the human person and holds that it should be recognised in civil law; a 2019 International Theological Commission document describes it as real progress in the Church's understanding of relations between Church and state.

Paul VI proclaimed the conciliar declaration Nostra Aetate. Its section 4 teaches that Christ's Passion cannot be charged against all Jews then living or against Jews today, and it decries antisemitism. See Judaism and antisemitism.

Paul VI promulgated the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy after the bishops approved it by 2,147 votes to 4. Placed at the head of the Council's documents, it presents the liturgy as the summit and source of the Church's life and laid the foundation for the general revision of the liturgical books, including the Roman Missal.

Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council in St. Peter's Basilica with the address known by its first words, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, presenting the Council's aim as safeguarding Christian doctrine and teaching it more effectively, and preferring mercy to severe condemnation. The Council went on to meet in four autumn sessions between 1962 and 1965.