Vatican II, 50 Years On: The Sunlight That Shines Today

• And Good Pope John did it smiling. This would be a joyful revolution and nothing would ever be the same again.
• Catholic Church '200 years behind,' Cardinal says before death

Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

Good Pope John entering Saint Peter's for the opening ceremonies of the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962. "It meant being out in the world," Sister Simone tells The Politics Blog, "encountering life there." AP Photo

October 11, 2012 | Fifty years ago today, in Vatican City, a couple of guys shoved open a pair of larger bronze doors. The pope gave a speech. This is part of what he said:

"In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty. We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand."

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