Aggiornamento

Aggiornamento (Italian pronunciation: [addʒornaˈmento]), "A bringing up to date", was one of the key words used during the Second Vatican Council both by bishops and the clergy attending the sessions, and by the media and Vaticanologists covering it. It was used to mean throwing open the doors of the Church in a desire to dialogue with the outside world. It was the name given to the pontifical program of John XXIII in a speech he gave on January 25, 1959.

Originally, as John XXIII announced in his 1959 speech, the word only referred to an update of the 1917 Code of Canon law. The revised Code of canon law was not completed until 1983, though. The term describing the Canon law update was eventually broadened to refer to the larger process of Church reform sought at the second Ecumenical Council held at the Vatican.

In June 1961, in an address to a group of Blessed Sacrament Fathers, John XXIII said

The ecumenical council will reach out and embrace under the widespread wings of the Catholic Church the entire heredity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Its principal task will be concerned with the condition and modernization (in Italian: aggiornamento) of the Church after 20 centuries of life. May it be that side by side with this, God will add also, through whatever edification we may offer, but above all by merit of the omnipotence of the Most High who can draw new chosen sons from the very stones, one other result: a movement toward recomposition of the whole Mystical Flock of Our Lord.

The conciliar document most often associated with the aggiornamento is Gaudium et spes. The document was not drafted before the council met, but arose from the floor of the council and was one of the last to be promulgated.

French theologian Yves Congar was a lead theological consultant (peritus) during the Council. Congar was monitored by Holy Office as early as the 1930s and silenced in the 1950s after the Raid on the French Dominicans. His reputation recovered in 1960 when Pope John XXIII invited Congar to serve on the preparatory theological commission of the Second Vatican Council. After the pre-developed council plans were discarded by the attending bishops, Congar played a significant role in the discussions between the Curial minority and the Episcopal majority at Vatican II. In November 1994, Congar was named a Cardinal by Pope John Paul II.

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