the last book I ever read (Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church, excerpt three)

from Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church by Philip Shenon:

John, seventy-six on the day of his election, knew he was seen as a caretaker pope, but he had no intention of being one. In fact, from the moment he pulled on those white robes, he delighted in upending the common wisdom that his would be a dull, uneventful papacy. Instead, he wrote, “I have an immense program of work in front of me to be carried out before the eyes of the whole world, which is waiting and wanting.”

His most momentous decision came three months after his election. On January 25, 1959, he announced in a speech that he would summon all the world’s bishops to a meeting in Rome—a so-called ecumenical council—to plot the church’s future. It would be the first such gathering since the First Vatican Council adjourned in 1870. The idea occurred to him, he said, after he noticed that his desk was “piling up with problems, questions, requests, hopes”—all tied to issues that the world’s bishops should be empowered to resolve for themselves. In his speech to a group of cardinals, he offered no date for the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, as it came to be known, although he hoped it could be organized within two or three years. He said he wanted the church to approach the gathering with a spirit of aggiornamento—an Italian word meaning “bringing up to date.” He dreamed the council could bring about reconciliation between Catholics and other Christians. In that hope, he said, the Vatican would issue a “friendly invitation” to representatives of the “separated churches”—Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, as well as the fast-growing evangelical communities of the United States and South America—to send observers. When his speech was finished, he expected to hear applause, maybe even cheers, from the cardinals. “But they did nothing of the kind,” he wrote in his diary, remembering his disappointment. “There was only silence.” L’Osservatore Romano, which the Curia controlled, buried news of the speech deep inside the paper. It censored the pope’s remarks about his “friendly invitation” to non-Catholic Christians—“friendly” was removed, and the reference to “separated churches” was replaced with “separated communities,” reflecting the Curia’s view that there was only one true church. Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro of Bologna was incensed by John’s announcement: “How dare he summon a council only three months after his election.” The new pope, he said, was proving to be “rash and impulsive, lacking in experience and culture.” As John’s friend Cardinal Montini put it: “This holy old boy doesn’t seem to realize what a hornet’s nest he’s stirring up.”