TWO
VATICAN II
AND HUNGARY
- • • Árpád von Klimó
In most Western countries, the Second Vatican Council has been
understood as a major event of the 1960s.1 The Council became
not only a symbol of the renewal and modernization of the Cath-
olic Church, but also a sign of the more general social, political,
and — most of all — cultural changes of the time. Catholics all
over the world began to engage in public debates surrounding the
gathering of their bishops and leading theologians at the Vatican.
How were the documents of the ecumenical council to be
understood? Some believers were confused or even appalled by
ideas intended to open the Catholic Church to a modern world
that the clergy had for decades depicted as a sinful, dangerous
place. Seen against this background, the story of the Second Vati-
can Council has often been narrated as part of the postwar trend
toward further modernization, democratization, and emancipa-
tion of civil societies, as a step toward more “progress.”2 For a
50
- I use the term “West” as a synonym for most of Western Europe’s non-
Communist countries, as well countries such as the United States, Canada, and Aus-
tralia—that is, where capitalism and liberal democracy predominated. - I would argue that disappointment with the encyclical Humanae vitae (1968),
which banned the use of contraception, can be explained at least in part by expec-
tations that many Catholics in the West had developed because of Vatican II. For
a brief, but precise, description of this disappointment, see DeGroot, Sixties Un-
plugged, 364–69.