Will There Likely Be Another Ecumenical Council in My Lifetime?

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catholic03

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I am interested in whether or not it is likely there will be another Ecumenical Council in my lifetime.

I was born about 35-40 yrs after the Great Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, and so I am probably going to be here for another 60-70 years.

I wonder, is it likely or possible that there will be another Ecumenical Council in my lifetime?
Thanks.
 
Doubtful.

But anything is possible. Something tells me that few Popes would want to call another “pastoral council” like Vatican II.

And there really isn’t a big issue regarding Dogma & Doctrine at the moment (unless female deacons gets more traction)

Personally, I the two ways I can see one happening is:
  1. if it was to reunite the Catholic Church with one or more of the Orthodox Churches.
  2. if Germans go too far and start to ordain women, or something like that.
 
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Probably not.
They have synods now to address issues gradually as things come up.

But bishops also communicate far more with bishops around the world than they used to.

An ecumenical council would be enormously expensive, and present security issues in the age of terrorism.
 
I doubt it, solely because the flaps from V2 are still being tied down.

Isn’t the pattern roughly a church council once in a century? Plenty of century left.

That said, it would be awesome if all the Churches were to rejoin at Jerusalem II.

ICXC NIKA
 
commenter said:
An ecumenical council would be enormously expensive, and present security issues in the age of terrorism.
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Those are two very good points. From time to time, in recent decades, we have heard voices saying that Vatican 2 left too many loose ends and that a Vatican 3 is needed to tie them all up. My hunch is that no pope would convene a Vatican 3 as long as there are people still around who had direct personal experience of Vatican 2, but that, of course, will change eventually. However, I can easily see that the cost and, even more, the terrorist threat could effectively postpone it indefinitely.
 
BartholomewB said:
From time to time, in recent decades, we have heard voices saying that Vatican 2 left too many loose ends and that a Vatican 3 is needed to tie them all up
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Another way of looking at it is that we live in a climate of hostility towards
current religious authority.

This is like a teenager who doesn’t want to obey his parents; so he looks for loose ends in how authority was passed on from his great grandparents to his grandparents. As long as he can find what he calls loose ends, in his mind his current disobedience to his parents is justified.

Do you think he’ll ever stop finding loose ends?
 
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Yes, but the “teenagers” saying this are themselves archbishops and cardinals. So they get to have a say in what happens next!
 
Maybe we will have a Dogmatic Vatican III which will make a list of Anathemas and Dogmatically define the meanings of everything in Vatican II, especially those things which the Society of St Pius X have struggled with. After this they would struggle no more (and others wouldn’t).

A dogmatic Vatican III would perhaps be the best way of uniting the traditionalists and the “less traditional” people in the Church and the best way to clear up all the confusion some of Gods people are experiencing.
 
Paul_Edwards said:
a Dogmatic Vatican III which will make a list of Anathemas and Dogmatically define the meanings of everything in Vatican II, especially those things which the Society of St Pius X have struggled with. After this they would struggle no more
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The March of Dimes organization was set up for the sole purpose of raising money for Polio vaccine research. That vaccine was discovered in 1955.

The organization goes on today, raising money, paying salaries, recruiting volunteers. Likewise, the SSPX will always find a reason to continue the struggle as an independent organization.

It’s organizational momentum.
 
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Paul_Edwards said:
Maybe we will have a Dogmatic Vatican III which will make a list of Anathemas and Dogmatically define the meanings of everything in Vatican II, especially those things which the Society of St Pius X have struggled with. After this they would struggle no more (and others wouldn’t).
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If Vatican III dogmatically defined religious freedom, do you think SSPX would formally leave the Church? That is about the only way they could stop struggling imo.

If they dogmatically defined that there should be only a single rite in each Church? (didn’t Trent do this, allowing only 200+ yr old rites as exceptions?) Or if they made a disciplinary with the same effect)

Ecumenism is the biggest problem. Should Orthodox bishops be full participants? Do we need a reconciliation first, or during? Can it be an Ecumenical Council if the Patriarch of Moscow does not send a representative?
 
Dovekin said:
If Vatican III dogmatically defined religious freedom, do you think SSPX would formally leave the Church? That is about the only way they could stop struggling imo.
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At present they regard the benefits (in retaining and attracting vocations and lay supporters) of their semi attachment to the Church to outweigh any drawbacks (People leaving). I think SSPX will chart their course based on preference of the bulk of their members and supporters, not on what the Vatican might do in a Council.

If the bulk of supporters react one way, or the other, to something the Vatican does, that reaction would guide the leaders.
 
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Dovekin said:
If Vatican III dogmatically defined religious freedom, do you think SSPX would formally leave the Church? That is about the only way they could stop struggling imo.

If they dogmatically defined that there should be only a single rite in each Church?
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And what if it defined that women can be priests, contrary to centuries of tradition? God would never allow the Church to Dogmatically Define error, that is exactly the point. So they would accept all the result, but the results would certainly not be those, and if they defined that there would be only one rite, it would be a return to the traditional one. If it was possible to define such things it would’ve happened at Vatican II, but they deliberately avoided using dogma for a reason.
Dovekin said:
Or if they made a disciplinary with the same effect)
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Disciplinarians are not the same as Dogmas. That kind of dispciplinary seems to already exist.
Dovekin said:
Do we need a reconciliation first, or during
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As to the Eastern Orthodox, we do not need a reconciliation first although it would be nice nevertheless.
 
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phil19034 said:
Personally, I the two ways I can see one happening is:
  1. if it was to reunite the Catholic Church with one or more of the Orthodox Churches.
  2. if Germans go too far and start to ordain women, or something like that.
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Re: the East, we may very well see some of the smaller Churches come in during our lifetime. But I don’t see that happening at a Council.

It would involve perhaps a Synod or maybe discussions with the Vatican, Eastern Catholic Churches, and the EO Church.

Re Germany, i think the secularists and the media, would love to see a Council. The real solution would take backbone by officials in Rome.
 
commenter said:
Re: the East, we may very well see some of the smaller Churches come in during our lifetime. But I don’t see that happening at a Council.

It would involve perhaps a Synod or maybe discussions with the Vatican, Eastern Catholic Churches, and the EO Church.
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I agree. However, I guess a council would be needed if there was a Dogmatic issue to resolve before reunion. But regardless, I don’t see a council happening
commenter said:
Re Germany, i think the secularists and the media, would love to see a Council. The real solution would take backbone by officials in Rome.
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Again, I totally agree. I don’t want to see this happen.
 
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