What are the changes brought to us by the Second Vatican Council?

Answer 1

Answer from a CatholicI'm writing this answer in 2012, fifty years after the beginning of the Second Vatican Council and, although it will be news to most people in the pews, we are just NOW learning what the Council actually did, and believe me, I was in the Catholic seminary studying for the priesthood immediately after the Council, and I had no idea what the Council was about. We thought it was about putting the Mass, Breviary, and sacraments into English. You know what? The Council NEVER called for putting the Mass and Sacraments into the vernacular, in fact, they specifically, along with the Pope, praised Latin, and called for a "wider use of the vernacular" in the readings and such. Huh? Right. The altars were turned around and the priest now faces the people, again - not called for by the Council. The Council's major documents (and there were a lot) were the Church in the Modern World, and the Constitution on the Church. These documents called for a renewed and vital interest in the Scriptures, Evangelization, making the Church relevant to the world NOT changing the Church to look like the world. The Fathers of the Council were trying to bring the Church to bear on modern problems NOT to bring modern problems into the Church. Read the documents, NOT commentaries on them, they are remarkable, and the changes we actually saw? They were NOT called for the Council.