On Dec. 8, the Church celebrates the 60th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council. Vatican II was the first “pastoral” ecumenical council in the history of the Church.  Called by St. John XXIII in 1959, the Council was not convened to settle doctrinal questions or disputes as in the past, but to bring about a great missionary renewal of the Church to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the modern world. However, the legacy of Vatican II over the past 60 years has not been without controversy. There has been much confusion and misunderstanding surrounding Vatican II because there has been a widespread misinterpretation of the Council since it’s closing sixty years ago.  

When Jesus, therefore, saw his mother and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, thy son.”  Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, thy mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home (Jn 19:26, 27). 

With those words, the dying Christ commended his mother to the loving care of St. John the Apostle. Where Mary lived with the beloved disciple afterward is an open question.

Dominating the skyline of 1200-year-old Hamburg, Germany, stands the towering ruins of St. Nikolai Church.  At the time of its reconstruction in 1874, it was the world’s tallest building. Today it is a blackened skeleton of its former glory and a haunting reminder of one of the most devastating bombing campaigns of World War II. In July 1943, the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive launched Operation Gomorrah, a multi-day campaign that culminated in some of the war’s most devastating firebombing.

Who or what is Jesus? 

According to author Martin Mosebach, “The early Christians knew that the Christian message was Jesus himself. The essence of the Gospels’ new, more profound, and more compelling picture of God was that God had become flesh, present among us.” (“The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy” (Ignatius Press). There was much confusion about Jesus’ precise relationship to God.