The Impact of Vatican I and II on the Catholic Church How 'Novel' was Vatican II?

The first Vatican council in 1869-70 came some 300 years after the previous ecumenical council, Trent in the sixteenth century. Vatican I sought to catch up with the developments of the three intervening centuries. But Rome's imminent fall to the forces of Italian reunification led to the curtailment of the council's agenda to two topics: faith and reason, and the papacy. Vatican II, therefore, had to complete the unfinished agenda of Vatican I as well as to confront major transformations that occurred in the Church and in world during the intervening century. The lecture will seek to explore, in the light of this background, the impact of the two councils upon the Roman Catholic Church.