On January 25, 1959, the newly elected Pope John XXIII invited 18 cardinals from the Vatican bureaucracy to attend a service at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. He told them he planned to summon a global church council. The horrified cardinals were speechless, which the Pope mischievously chose to interpret as devout assent.

But, in reality, the Vatican bureaucrats, known as the Curia, were aghast. The Pope, 77, had been elected purely as a caretaker, but here he was indulging a novel, unpredictable, dangerous and, above all, they believed, unnecessary notion.

In their view it would create ungovernable expectations and might even lead to changes. And if there were to be changes - always undesirable - then the Curia would manage them without any outside intervention, as they had for centuries.

They regrouped and fought back. If they could not avoid the council, then they would control it. They proposed 10 commissions controlled by Curia members to run the council, which would discuss 70 documents prepared by the Curia. Everything was designed to reinforce the status quo.

The Curia were right to worry. What Pope John unleashed, now known as Vatican II, was the most momentous religious event since Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation 450 years earlier.

"It was a revolution," says American theologian John Markey. "It was the most fundamental shift in self-understanding by the church in 1500 years. It is not over yet."

The winds of change proved more like a tornado, leaving almost nothing untouched. It is difficult for people under 60 to grasp how radical, how wide-ranging and how deep the effects were because they do not remember the church as it was before the council - "frozen in a time warp", as Jesuit priest Gerald O'Collins told The Age. Read more

Sources

• The Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: Church of the Good Shepherd

This interview is with journalist, author and broadcaster, Clifford Longley, who is one of the UK's leading lay Catholics. He was invited to Australia by the progressive Catholic organisation, Catalyst for Renewal, and he delivered a series of lectures in May this year on the legacy of Vatican II.

In the interview he focuses on the issues and challenges in developing a mature Catholic laity in the light of the teachings of the Council, and the video also features excerpts from the inaugural Rosemary Goldie Lecture he gave on this topic.

It's fitting that his talk was delivered in this context, as Rosemary Goldie was one of Australia's leading lay Catholics. She was a theologian and lay activist, and one of the first women to be named an official observer of Vatican II. She died in Sydney in 2010 at the age of 94.

After the Council for several years she was Under-Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, one of the first women and lay people to serve as a bureaucrat in the Curia. In this capacity, in the 60s and 70s she helped organise a number of major international lay congresses in Rome.

After this she was appointed a Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Lateran University in Rome. While large in intellect and influence, she was tiny in physical stature, and Pope John XXIII referred to her affectionately as ‘la piccinina' which translates from the Italian as something like ‘a little slip of a thing.'

Clifford Longley was born in the UK in 1940, and has had a distinguished career mainly as a print journalist. He worked as a general reporter on a number of newspapers before specialising from 1972 onwards in the coverage of British and international religious affairs.

He wrote a weekly column on religion for The Times from 1972 till 1992, and from 1992 to 2000 for the Daily Telegraph. This made him the longest continuously appearing columnist in British national papers, and in 1986 he was honoured with an award for ‘Specialist Writer of the Year' in the British Press Awards.

During this time, as well as his work as a columnist, he was leader writer and religious affairs editor for these newspapers. Since 1994 he has been a columnist, contributing editor and leader writer for the prestigious weekly Catholic journal, The Tablet.

In more recent times he has also made regular appearances on radio. Since 2002 he's been a contributor to Thought for the Day, and since 2004 he's been a panelist on The Moral Maze, both on BBC Radio 4.

Longley has also been a consultant to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, and has been on the advisory council of the Three Faiths Forum. In 1998 he was made an honorary fellow of St Mary's College at the University of Surrey.

As well as his prolific writing for newspapers and journals, his books include The Times Book of Clifford Longley, The Worlock Archive and Chosen People.

Sources

• Peter Kirkwood in Eureka Street
• Image: UCA News