DECREE ON THE APOSTOLATE OF THE LAITY Vatican II

The biggest meeting in the history of the world?

Ante-Preparatory Commission: A letter asking for their ideas “with complete freedom and honesty went to 2,598 elicited 1,998 responses (77%) from six lines to 27 pages. They filled eight large-format volumes, totally over five thousand pages. The documentation from this phase filled twelve volumes.

Ten Preparatory Commissions were headed by cardinals who with one exception were prefects of a department of the Curia. The exception was the Apostolate of the Laity because there was not any department for the laity. The preparatory commission generated another seven volumes; all together the official documentation of the council itself was 32 volumes, many running more than nine hundred pages.

A total of 2860 council fathers attended part of all of the four sessions. In contrast only 750 bishops participated in Vatican II. They represented 116 different countries: 36 percent from Europe, 34 percent from the Americas, 20 percent from Asia and Oceania, and 10 percent from Africa. Most bishops brought a secretary and a theologian. An estimated 7,500 people were present in Rome at any given time because of Vatican II.

The sixteen final documents of the council run in a standard Latin edition to slightly over 300 pages in comparison to 130 pages for the Council of Trent. The documents almost equal all the documents of the other nineteen ecumenical councils.

Ecumenical Councils and Synodal Governance

The first eight ecumenical councils were held in Greek cities of Asia Minor, conducted in Greek, and convened by the emperor or empress. The remaining thirteen ecumenical councils were all held in the West, conducted in Latin and (except for the Council of Constance) were convoked by the Pope.

In the fourth century a council (synod is the term now used for non-ecumenical councils) was meeting someplace in the Greco-Roman world about every five years. Between 306 and 711 at least thirty five councils were held in Spain. The Synod of Whitby in Northumbria in 664 is justly famous. The Council of Trent decreed that provincial councils convoked by the metropolitan bishop were to be held every three years. In the United States seven provincial councils were held in Baltimore between 1829 and 1849 follow by three plenary councils in 1852, 1866, and 1884.