User:Pseudo-Richard/History of the Catholic Church

Early Christianity
The Catholic Church considers Pentecost to be the beginning of its own history. According to historians, the Apostles traveled to northern Africa, Asia Minor, Arabia, Greece, and Rome to found the first Christian communities, over 40 of which had been established by the year 100.

The New Testament gospels indicate that the earliest Christians continued to observe traditional Jewish pieties such as fasting, reverence for the Torah and observance of Jewish holy days. However, Christians were directed by Jesus to evangelize non-Jewish peoples. As Christianity spread to non-Jews, disputes over observance of the Mosaic law generated intense controversy. A pivotal moment in this dispute occurred in the mid-1st century, when the circumcision controversy arose and was ultimately addressed at the Council of Jerusalem. At this council, Paul made an argument that circumcision was no longer necessary, vocally supported by Peter, as documented in. This position received widespread support and was summarized in a letter circulated in Antioch.

In the second century, writings by teachers such as Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus defined Catholic teaching in stark opposition to Gnosticism. Other writers such as Pope Clement I, Justin Martyr, Augustine of Hippo influenced the development of Church teachings and traditions. These writers are collectively known as Church Fathers.

Persecution
Early Christians refused to offer sacrifices to the Roman gods or to worship Roman rulers as gods and were thus subject to persecution. The first documented case of imperially-sponsored persecution of Christians occurred in Rome under Nero in the first century and re-occurred under various emperors until the great persecution of Diocletian and Galerius, which was seen as a final attempt to wipe out Christianity. Nevertheless, Christianity continued to spread and was eventually legalized in 313 under Constantine's Edict of Milan.

During this era of persecution, the early Church evolved both in doctrinal and structural ways. The apostles had convened the first Church council, the Council of Jerusalem, to resolve issues concerning evangelization of Gentiles. While competing forms of Christianity emerged early, the Roman Church retained this practice of meeting in "synods" (councils) to ensure that any internal doctrinal differences were quickly resolved, which facilitated broad doctrinal unity within the mainstream churches.

By 58 AD, a large Christian community existed in Rome. From as early as the first century, the Church of Rome was recognized as a doctrinal authority because it was believed that the Apostles Peter and Paul had led the Church there.

The concept of the primacy of the Roman bishop over other churches was increasingly recognized by the church at large from at least the second century although disputes over the implications of that primacy would ultimately lead to schisms.

State religion of the Roman Empire
Despite persecution, Christianity spread and was eventually legalized in 313 under Constantine's Edict of Milan.

Emperor Constantine I commissioned the first Basilica of St. Peter and several other sites of lasting importance to Christianity. By this time, the altar as the focal point of each church, the sign of the cross, and the liturgical calendar had been established and in 380, Christianity was declared the state religion of the Empire.

After the legalization of Christianity, a number of doctrinal disputes led to the calling of ecumenical councils. The doctrinal formulations resulting from these ecumenical councils were pivotal in the history of Christianity. The first seven Ecumenical Councils, from the First Council of Nicaea (325) to the Second Council of Nicaea (787), sought to reach an orthodox consensus and to establish a unified Christendom.

In 325, the First Council of Nicaea convened in response to the threat of Arianism; in order to encapsulate the basic tenets of the Christian belief, it promulgated a creed which became the basis of what is now known as the Nicene Creed. In addition, it divided the church into geographical and administrative areas called dioceses. The Council of Rome in 382 established the first Biblical canon when it listed the accepted books of the Old and New Testament. The Council of Ephesus in 431 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 defined the relationship of Christ's divine and human natures, leading to splits with the Nestorians and Monophysites.

Constantine moved the imperial capital to Constantinople, and the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) elevated the See of Constantinople to a position "second in eminence and power to the bishop of Rome".

Rome had particular prominence over the other dioceses; it was considered the see of Peter and Paul, it was located in the capital of the empire, it was wealthy and known for supporting other churches, and church scholars wanted the Roman bishop's support in doctrinal disputes. From c 350 to c500, the bishops, or popes, of Rome steadily increased in authority.

Early Middle Ages
Following the collapse of Roman power in Western Europe, the Catholic faith competed with Arianism for the conversion of the barbarian tribes. The 496 conversion of Clovis I, pagan king of the Franks, marked the beginning of a steady rise of the Catholic faith in the West. The Rule of St Benedict, composed in 530, became a blueprint for the organization of monasteries throughout Europe. As well as providing a focus for spiritual life, the new monasteries preserved classical craft and artistic skills while maintaining intellectual culture within their schools, scriptoria and libraries. They also functioned as agricultural, economic and production centers, particularly in remote regions, becoming major conduits of civilization.

Pope Gregory the Great reformed church practice and administration around 600 and launched renewed missionary efforts which were complemented by other missionary movements such as the Hiberno-Scottish mission. Missionaries such as Augustine of Canterbury, Saint Boniface, Willibrord and Ansgar took Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic people. In the same period the Visigoths and Lombards moved from Arianism toward Catholicism, and in Britain the full reunion of the Celtic churches with Rome was effectively marked by the Synod of Whitby in 664. Later missionary efforts by Saints Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century reached greater Moravia and introduced, along with Christianity, the Cyrillic alphabet used in the southern and eastern Slavic languages. While Christianity continued to expand in Europe, Islam presented a significant military threat to Western Christendom. By 715, Muslim armies had conquered Syria, Jerusalem, Caesarea, Alexandria, Iraq and Persia, Carthage and much of the Iberian Peninsula.

From the 8th century, Iconoclasm, the destruction of religious images, became a major source of conflict in the eastern church. Byzantine emperors Leo III and Constantine V strongly supported Iconoclasm, while the papacy and the western church remained resolute in favour of the veneration of icons. In 787, the Second Council of Nicaea ruled in favor of the iconodules but the dispute continued into the early 9th century. The consequent estrangement led to the creation of the papal states and the papal coronation of the Frankish King Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans in 800. This ultimately created a new problem as successive Western emperors sought to impose an increasingly tight control over the popes.

Eastern and Western Christendom grew farther apart in the 9th century. Conflicts arose over ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the Byzantine-controlled south of Italy, missionaries to Bulgaria and a brief schism revolving around Photios of Constantinople. Further disagreements led to Pope and Patriarch excommunicating each other in 1054, commonly considered the date of the East–West Schism. The Western branch of Christianity remained in communion with the Pope and remained a part of the Catholic Church, while the Eastern (Greek) branch that rejected the papal claims became known as the Eastern Orthodox churches. Efforts to mend the rift were attempted at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 and Council of Florence in 1439; however, both attempts failed to heal the schism, even though in each case both the Eastern Emperor and Eastern Patriarch agreed to the reunion because they were unable to change the attitudes of the Eastern Churches at large. Some Eastern churches have subsequently reunited with the Catholic Church. In spite of recent attempts at reunification, the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Church remain in schism although excommunications were mutually lifted in 1965.

High Middle Ages
The Cluniac reform of monasteries that had begun in 910 sparked widespread monastic growth and renewal. Monasteries introduced new technologies and crops, fostered the creation and preservation of literature and promoted economic growth. Monasteries, convents and cathedrals still operated virtually all schools and libraries. Despite a church ban on the practice of usury the larger abbeys functioned as sources for economic credit. The 11th and 12th century saw internal efforts to reform the church. The college of cardinals in 1059 was created to free papal elections from interference by Emperor and nobility. Lay investiture of bishops, a source of rulers' dominance over the Church, was attacked by reformers and under Pope Gregory VII, erupted into the Investiture Controversy between Pope and Emperor. The matter was eventually settled with the Concordat of Worms in 1122 where it was agreed that bishops would be selected in accordance with Church law.

In 1095, Byzantine emperor Alexius I appealed to Pope Urban II for help against renewed Muslim invasions, which caused Urban to launch the First Crusade aimed at aiding the Byzantine Empire and returning the Holy Land to Christian control. The goal was not permanently realized, and episodes of brutality committed by the armies of both sides left a legacy of mutual distrust between Muslims and Western and Eastern Christians. The sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, conducted against papal authorisation, left Eastern Christians embittered and was a decisive event that permanently solidified the schism between the churches.

The crusades also saw the formation of military orders which included the Hospitallers, Templars and later, the Teutonic Knights all of whom provided social services as well as guardianship of pilgrim routes. The Teutonic Knights conquered the then-pagan Prussia. The Templars became noted bankers and creditors who were suppressed by King Philip IV of France shortly after 1300. Later, mendicant orders were founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzmán which brought consecrated religious life into urban settings. These orders also played a large role in the development of cathedral schools into universities, the direct ancestors of the modern Western institutions. Notable scholastic theologians such as the Dominican Thomas Aquinas worked at these universities, his Summa Theologica was a key intellectual achievement in its synthesis of Aristotelian thought and Christianity.

Twelfth century France witnessed the emergence of Catharism, a dualist heresy that had spread from Eastern Europe through Germany. After the Cathars were accused of murdering a papal legate in 1208, Pope Innocent III declared the Albigensian Crusade against them. When this turned into an "appalling massacre", he instituted the first papal inquisition to prevent further massacres and to root out the remaining Cathars. Formalized under Gregory IX, this Medieval inquisition put to death an average of three people per year for heresy.

Over time, other inquisitions were launched by secular rulers to prosecute heretics, often with the approval of Church hierarchy, to respond to the threat of Muslim invasion or for political purposes. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain formed an inquisition in 1480, originally to deal with distrusted converts from Judaism and Islam to Catholicism. Over a 350-year period, this Spanish Inquisition executed between 3,000 and 4,000 people, representing around two percent of those accused. In 1482 Pope Sixtus IV condemned the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition, but Ferdinand ignored his protests. Some historians argue that for centuries Protestant propaganda and popular literature exaggerated the horrors of the inquisitions in an effort to associate the Catholic Church with acts committed by secular rulers. Over all, one percent of those tried by the inquisitions received death penalties, leading some scholars to consider them rather lenient when compared to the secular courts of the period. The inquisition played a major role in the final expulsion of Islam from Sicily and Spain.

At the end of the 13th century, Pope Boniface VIII was involved in a heated conflict with Philip IV of France. After a falsified papal bull was circulated by Philip in a "smear campaign" against the pope, Boniface promulgated Unam Sanctam. This clarified the spiritual responsibilities of the pope as supreme over the temporal responsibilities of monarchs. When Philip subsequently attempted to kidnap Boniface, the townspeople came to his rescue. Later, the Papacy came under French dominance, with Clement V in 1305 moving to Avignon. The Avignon Papacy ended in 1376 when the Pope returned to Rome but was soon followed in 1378 by the 38-year-long Western schism with separate claimants to the papacy in Rome, Avignon and (after 1409) Pisa, backed by conflicting secular rulers. The matter was finally resolved in 1417 at the Council of Constance where the three claimants either resigned or were deposed and held a new election naming Martin V Pope.

Reformation and Counter-Reformation
In 1509, the scholar Erasmus wrote In Praise of Folly, a work which captured a widely held unease about corruption in the Church. The Council of Constance, the Council of Basel and the Fifth Lateran Council had all attempted to reform internal Church abuses but had failed. As a result, rich, powerful and worldly men like Roderigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI) were able to win election to the papacy. In 1517, Martin Luther included his Ninety-Five Theses in a letter to several bishops. His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences. Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and others further criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into a large and all encompassing European movement called the Protestant Reformation. In Germany, the reformation led to a nine-year war between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V. In 1618 a far graver conflict, the Thirty Years' War, followed. In France, a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion were fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots and the forces of the French Catholic League. The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre marked the turning point in this war. Survivors regrouped under Henry of Navarre who became Catholic and began the first experiment in religious toleration with his 1598 Edict of Nantes. This Edict, which granted civil and religious toleration to Protestants, was hesitantly accepted by Pope Clement VIII.

The English Reformation under Henry VIII began more as a political than as a theological dispute. When the annulment of his marriage was denied by the pope, Henry had Parliament pass the Acts of Supremacy, 1534, which made him, and not the pope, head of the English Church. Although he strove to maintain the substance of traditional Catholicism, Henry initiated and supported the confiscation and dissolution of monasteries, friaries, convents and shrines throughout England, Wales and Ireland. Under Henry's daughter, Mary I, England was reunited with Rome, {Henry's Act of Supremacy was repealed (1554)}, but the following monarch, Elizabeth I, {second Act of Supremacy, 1558} restored a separate church which outlawed Catholic priests and prevented Catholics from educating their children and taking part in political life until the first Catholic Relief Act of 1778 began the process of eliminating many of the anti-Catholic laws.

The Catholic Church responded to doctrinal challenges and abuses highlighted by the Reformation at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which became the driving force of the Counter-Reformation. Doctrinally, it reaffirmed central Catholic teachings such as transubstantiation, and the requirement for love and hope as well as faith to attain salvation. It also made structural reforms, most importantly by improving the education of the clergy and laity and consolidating the central jurisdiction of the Roman Curia. To popularize Counter-Reformation teachings, the Church encouraged the Baroque style in art, music and architecture, and new religious orders were founded. These included the Theatines, Barnabites and Jesuits, some of which became the great missionary orders of later years. The Jesuits quickly took on a leadership in education during the Counter-Reformation, viewing it as a "battleground for hearts and minds"; at the same time, the writings of figures such as Teresa of Avila, Francis de Sales and Philip Neri spawned new schools of spirituality within the Church. In central Europe, the Counter-Reformation presented the Habsburg dynasty with an opportunity to "combat Protestantism and consolidate their realms in the name of God".

Toward the latter part of the 17th century, Pope Innocent XI reformed abuses that were occurring in the Church's hierarchy, including simony, nepotism and the lavish papal expenditures that had caused him to inherit a large papal debt. He promoted missionary activity, tried to unite Europe against the Turkish invasion, prevented influential Catholic rulers (including the Emperor) from marrying Protestants but strongly condemned religious persecution.

Age of Discovery
Just before the Fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Ottoman Empire in 1453, in an effort to combat the spread of Islam, Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal the right to subdue and even enslave Muslims, pagans and other unbelievers in the papal bull Dum Diversas (1452). Several decades later European explorers and missionaries spread Catholicism to the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Pope Alexander VI had awarded colonial rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal and the ensuing patronato system allowed state authorities, not the Vatican, to control all clerical appointments in the new colonies. Although the Spanish monarchs tried to curb abuses committed against the Amerindians by explorers and conquerors, Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar, openly rebuked the Spanish rulers of Hispaniola in 1511 for their cruelty and tyranny in dealing with the American natives. King Ferdinand enacted the Laws of Burgos and Valladolid in response. The issue resulted in a crisis of conscience in 16th-century Spain and, through the writings of Catholic clergy such as Bartolomé de Las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria, led to debate on the nature of human rights and to the birth of modern international law. Enforcement of these laws was lax, and some historians blame the Church for not doing enough to liberate the Indians; others point to the Church as the only voice raised on behalf of indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, Amerindian populations suffered serious decline due to new diseases, inadvertently introduced through contact with Europeans, which created a labor vacuum in the New World.

In 1521 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan made the first Catholic converts in the Philippines. The following year, the first Franciscan missionaries arrived in Mexico, establishing schools, model farms and hospitals. When some Europeans questioned whether the Indians were truly human and worthy of baptism, Pope Paul III in the 1537 bull Sublimis Deus confirmed that "their souls were as immortal as those of Europeans" and they should neither be robbed nor turned into slaves. Over the next 150 years, missions expanded into southwestern North America. Native people were often legally defined as children, and priests took on a paternalistic role, sometimes enforced with corporal punishment. Elsewhere, Portuguese missionaries under the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier evangelized in India and Japan. By the end of the 16th century tens of thousands of Japanese followed Roman Catholicism. Church growth came to a halt in 1597 under the Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu who, in an effort to isolate the country from foreign influences, launched a severe persecution of Christians or Kirishitan's. An underground minority Christian population survived throughout this period of persecution and enforced isolation which was eventually lifted in the 19th century.

In the Americas, Franciscan priest Junípero Serra founded a series of new missions in cooperation with the Spanish government and military. These missions brought grain, cattle and a new way of living to the Indian tribes of California. San Francisco was founded in 1776 and Los Angeles in 1781. In a challenge to Spanish and Portuguese policy, Pope Gregory XVI, began to appoint his own candidates as bishops in the colonies, condemned slavery and the slave trade in the 1839 papal bull In Supremo Apostolatus, and approved the ordination of native clergy in the face of government racism. Yet in spite of these advances, the Amerindian population continued to suffer decline from exposure to European diseases.

In South America, Jesuit missionaries tried to protect native peoples from enslavement by establishing semi-independent settlements called reductions. In China, despite Jesuit efforts to find compromise, the Chinese Rites controversy led the Kangxi Emperor to outlaw Christian missions in 1721. These events added fuel to growing criticism of the Jesuits, who were seen to symbolize the independent power of the Church, and in 1773 European rulers united to force Pope Clement XIV to dissolve the order. The Jesuits were eventually restored in the 1814 papal bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum.

Enlightenment
Toward the latter part of the 17th century, Pope Innocent XI reformed abuses by the Church, including simony, nepotism and the lavish papal expenditures that had caused him to inherit a large papal debt. He promoted missionary activity, tried to unite Europe against the Turkish invasions, and condemned religious persecution of all kinds. In 1685 King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, ending a century-long experiment in religious toleration. However the religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries played a major role in provoking a backlash against Christianity in 18th century Europe. In a philosophical and cultural movement known as "the Enlightenment", the power and influence of the Church over Western society declined as ideologies such as rationalism, secularism, nationalism, anti-clericalism, liberalism and freemasonry challenged it.

These movements culminated in the violent anti-clericalism of the French Revolution. Direct attacks on the wealth of the Church and associated grievances led to the wholesale nationalisation of church property in France. Large numbers of French priests refused to take an oath of compliance to the National Assembly, leading to the Church being outlawed and replaced by a new religion of the worship of "Reason". In this period, all monasteries were destroyed, 30,000 priests were exiled and hundreds more were killed. When Pope Pius VI sided against the revolution in the First Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Italy. The pope was imprisoned by French troops, and died in 1799 after six weeks of captivity. Napoleon later re-established the Catholic Church in France through the Concordat of 1801. The end of the Napoleonic wars brought Catholic revival, renewed enthusiasm, and new respect for the papacy due in part to his "heroic stand against the tyrant". The papal states were returned, and the Church was "liberated" from its servile ties to European kings thus freeing the Church to return to its "true spiritual mission."

In the Americas, Franciscan priest Junípero Serra founded a series of new missions in cooperation with the Spanish government and military. These missions brought grain, cattle and a new way of living to the Indian tribes of California. San Francisco was founded in 1776 and Los Angeles in 1781. In a challenge to Spanish and Portuguese policy, Pope Gregory XVI, began to appoint his own candidates as bishops in the colonies, condemned slavery and the slave trade in the 1839 papal bull In Supremo Apostolatus, and approved the ordination of native clergy in the face of government racism. Yet in spite of these advances, the Amerindian population continued to suffer decline from exposure to European diseases.

In South America, Jesuit missionaries tried to protect native peoples from enslavement by establishing semi-independent settlements called reductions. In China, despite Jesuit efforts to find compromise, the Chinese Rites controversy led the Kangxi Emperor to outlaw Christian missions in 1721.

In 1773 European rulers united to force Pope Clement XIV to dissolve the Jesuits. The expulsion of the Society of Jesus from the principal Catholic nations of Europe and their colonial empires is seen by some as the first major triumph of the secularist notions of the self-styled Age of Enlightenment. The suppression was also seen by many as an attempt by Catholic monarchs to gain control of revenues and trade that were previously dominated by the Society of Jesus, this included the takeover destruction of the Jesuit reductions and the enslavement of many of their previously-protected inhabitants.

With the reaction against the anti-clerical excesses of the Revolution, especially after 1815, came Catholic revival, renewed enthusiasm, and new respect for the papacy. The Jesuits were finally restored in the 1814 papal bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum.

Industrial age
In response to growing concern about the deteriorating working and living conditions brought about by the Industrial Revolution, Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Rerum Novarum. This set out Catholic social teaching in terms that rejected socialism but advocated the regulation of working conditions, the establishment of a living wage and the right of workers to form trade unions. The Catholic Church exercised a prominent role in shaping the labor movement in the United States. In 1933, two American Catholics, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, founded a new Catholic peace group, the Catholic Worker that would embody their ideals of pacifism, commitment to the poor and to fundamental change in American society.

Although the infallibility of the Church in doctrinal matters had always been a Church dogma, the First Vatican Council, which convened in 1870, affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility when exercised in certain specifically defined pronouncements. This decision in many eyes gave the pope "enormous moral and spiritual authority over the worldwide" Church. Reaction to the pronouncement resulted in the breakaway of a group of mainly German churches which subsequently formed the Old Catholic Church. The loss of the papal states to the Italian unification movement created what came to be known as the Roman Question, a territorial dispute between the papacy and the Italian government that was not resolved until the 1929 Lateran Treaty granted sovereignty to the Holy See over Vatican City.

By the close of the 19th century, European powers controlled most of the African interior. Catholic missionaries followed colonial governments into Africa and built schools, hospitals, monasteries and churches.

In Latin America, a succession of anti-clerical regimes came to power beginning in the 1830s. Church properties were confiscated, the collection of clerical fees from the poor regulated, the number of religious holidays reduced and clerical dress in public prohibited.

The 1930s also saw violence against clergy and expropriation of Church properties in Spain and the Soviet Union. During the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, over 6,000 priests and nuns were killed by republicans and anarchists. In the Soviet Union, persecution of the Church included the execution and exiling of clerics and the confiscation and closure of churches.

On 20 July 1933, the Vatican signed an agreement with Germany, the Reichskonkordat, which guaranteed the Church certain rights and freedoms. Violations of this led to Pope Pius XI issuing the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge  which publicly condemned Nazi persecution of the Church, neopaganism and the culture of racial superiority.



After the Second World War began in September 1939, the Church condemned the invasion of Poland and subsequent 1940 Nazi invasions. During the war, several thousand Catholic clergy were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.

In the Holocaust, Pope Pius XII directed the Church hierarchy to help protect Jews from the Nazis. However, the Church has also been accused of encouraging centuries of antisemitism and Pius himself of not doing enough to stop Nazi atrocities. Debate over the validity of these criticisms continues to this day.

Following the Soviet doctrine regarding the exercise of religion, postwar Communist governments in Eastern Europe severely restricted religious freedoms. Even though some clerics collaborated with the Communist regimes, the Church's resistance and the leadership of Pope John Paul II have been credited with hastening the downfall of communist governments across Europe in 1991. The rise to power of the Communists in China in 1949 led to the expulsion of all foreign missionaries. The new government also created the Patriotic Church whose unilaterally appointed bishops were initially rejected by Rome before many of them were accepted. The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s led to the closure of all religious establishments. When Chinese churches eventually reopened they remained under the control of the Communist party's Patriotic Church, and many Catholic pastors and priests continued to be sent to prison for refusing to renounce allegiance to Rome.

Second Vatican Council and beyond
The Catholic Church initiated a comprehensive process of reform under Pope John XXIII. Intended as a continuation of the First Vatican Council, the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), developed into an engine of modernization, making pronouncements on religious freedom, the nature of the Church and the mission of the laity. The role of the bishops of the Church was brought into renewed prominence, especially when seen collectively, as the college of the successors of the Apostles in teaching and governing the Church. This college does not exist without its head, the successor of St. Peter (the Pope). It also permitted the Latin liturgical rites to use vernacular languages as well as Latin during Mass and other sacraments. Christian unity became a greater priority. In addition to finding more common ground with the various Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church has reopened discussions regarding the possibility of reconciliation between the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church.

Changes to old rites and ceremonies following Vatican II produced a variety of responses. Although most Catholics "accepted the changes more or less gracefully", some stopped going to church and others tried to preserve what they perceived to be the "true precepts of the Church". The latter form the basis of today's Traditionalist Catholic groups, which believe that the reforms of Vatican II have gone too far. Liberal Catholics form another dissenting group, and feel that the Vatican II reforms did not go far enough. The liberal views of theologians such as Hans Küng, and Charles Curran, led to Church withdrawal of their authorization to teach as Catholics.

In the 1960s, growing social awareness and politicization in the Church in Latin America gave birth to liberation theology, a movement often identified with Gustavo Gutiérrez who was pivotal in expounding the melding of Marxism and Catholic social teaching. A cornerstone of the Liberation Theology were ecclesial base communities, groups uniting clergy and laity in social and political action. Although the movement garnered some support among Latin American bishops, it was never officially endorsed by any of the Latin American Bishops’ Conferences. At the 1979 Conference of Latin American Bishops in Puebla, Mexico, Pope John Paul II and conservative bishops attending the conference attempted to rein in the more radical elements of liberation theology; however, the conference did make a formal commitment to a "preferential option for the poor". Archbishop Óscar Romero, a supporter of the movement, became the region's most famous contemporary martyr in 1980, when he was murdered by forces allied with the government of El Salvador while saying Mass. In Managua, Nicaragua, Pope John Paul II criticized elements of Liberation Theology and the Nicaraguan Catholic clergy's involvement in the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI (as Cardinal Ratzinger) have denounced the movement. Pope John Paul II maintained that the Church, in its efforts to champion the poor, should not do so by advocating violence or engaging in partisan politics. Liberation Theology is still alive in Latin America today, although the Church now faces the challenge of Pentecostal revival in much of the region.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s precipitated Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) which rejected the use of contraception, including sterilization, claiming these work against the intimate relationship and moral order of husband and wife by directly opposing God's will. It approved Natural Family Planning as a legitimate means to limit family size. Abortion was condemned by the Church as early as the first century, again in the fourteenth century and again in 1995 with Pope John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life). This encyclical condemned the "culture of death" which the pope often used to describe the societal embrace of contraception, abortion, euthanasia, suicide, capital punishment, and genocide. The Church's rejection of the use of condoms has provoked criticism, especially with respect to countries where the incidence of AIDS and HIV has reached epidemic proportions. The Church maintains that in countries like Kenya and Uganda, where behavioral changes are encouraged alongside condom use, greater progress in controlling the disease has been made than in those countries solely promoting condoms. Feminists disagreed with these and other Church teachings and, with a coalition of American nuns, called on the Church to consider the ordination of women. They stated that many Church documents contained anti-female prejudice and studies were conducted to discover how this may have developed as it was deemed contrary to the openness of Jesus. These events led Pope John Paul II to issue the 1988 apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity of Women), which declared that women had a different, yet equally important role in the Church. In 1994 the apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (On Ordination to the Priesthood) further explained that the Church follows the example of Jesus, who chose only men for the specific priestly duty.

The documents of the Second Vatican Council expressed a new attitude of openness in the Catholic Church toward non-Catholics including Protestant, and Orthodox Christians as well as non-Christians including members of the Jewish faith and Muslims. In the years since, major ecumenical projects have been undertaken with these major religious groups to improve relationships and establish areas of theological agreement and practical cooperation.

Since the end of the twentieth century, sex abuse by Catholic clergy has been the subject of media coverage, legal action, and public debate in Australia, Ireland and the United States.

Present
The Pope remains an international leader who regularly receives heads of state from around the world. As the head of the Holy See, he occasionally addresses the United Nations where the Holy See is the only non-member observer state with all the rights of full membership except voting. The 2005 election of Pope Benedict XVI saw a continuation of the policies of his predecessors. His first encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) discussed the various forms of love and re-emphasized marriage and the centrality of charity to the Church's mission.

Following outcry from Muslims over Pope Benedict's Regensburg address, in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor's remarks critical of Islam, a May 2008 summit between the pope and a delegation of Muslims came to an agreement that religion is essentially non-violent, and that violence can be justified neither by reason nor by faith. In October 2009, the Vatican announced the creation of new ecclesiastical structures to receive Anglican converts to the Catholic Church.

The Church also sponsors the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which provides the Pope with information on scientific matters and whose international membership includes British physicist Stephen Hawking and Nobel laureates such as U.S. physicist Charles Hard Townes. In politics, the Church actively encourages support for candidates who would "protect human life, promote family life, pursue social justice, and practice solidarity" which translate into support for traditional views of marriage, welcoming and support for the poor and immigrants, and those who would work against abortion.