What are the unique characteristics of Vatican II?

1.) This Council included the largest number of Council Fathers of any of the previous twenty Ecumenical Councils in the history of the Church.

2.) This council included representatives from non-Catholics faiths and from the Russian and Greek Orthodox Churches.

3.) This Council was truly international in every sense of the word. Vatican I had been composed of primarily European bishops.

4.) This Council included a virtual army of press corps, which indicated a greater openness within the Holy See to social communications. This was apparent within the decree on Social Communications composed by the Council (Inter Merifica).

Page 17 of 185.) Vatican Council II was the first council to have the use of electricity, telephones, typewriters, and computerized voting. These small factors certainly increased the overall efficiency of communications and accommodations among the Council Fathers as a whole.

6.) This Council met without the influence of a temporal power, without temporal pressures, and without the need to refute any specific heresy per se.

7.) Women: This was the first Ecumenical Council wherein women played a definitive role as well. They were by no means passive spectators. Pope Paul VI invited a select group of women to attend the 3rd and 4th sessions. 23 women served as official auditrices/listeners, offering proposals, coordinating meetings, and taking active roles in the meetings on the documents on the Laity and the Church in the Modern World.

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