1.1. Preliminaries

Within the Roman Catholic tradition, the First Vatican Council is considered the 20th general council of the church, the first to be convened in the 324 years since the Council of Trent (1545–63). In the history of the church, this was the longest period between ecumenical councils. Given this length of time in which the church had not engaged in a systematic reflection on its own teaching and tradition, and given the enormous intellectual, political, economic, social, and …