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If you're interested. This is Vatican l summed up.
IV. THE RESULTS
In comparison with the large scope of the preparations for the council, and with the great amount of material laid before it for discussion in the numerous drafts and proposals, the immediate result of its labours must be called small. But the council was only in its beginnings when the outbreak of war brought it to a sudden close. It is also true as is known, that reasons within the council prevented a larger result from its sessions. Thus it was that in the end only two not very large Constitutions could be promulgated. If, however, the contents of these two constitutions be examined their great importance is unmistakable.
The contents meet in a striking manner the needs of the times.
A. The dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith defends the fundamental principles of Christianity against the errors of modern Rationalism, Materialism, and atheism. In the first chapter it maintains the doctrine of the existence of a personal God, Who of His own free volition for the revelation of His perfection, has created all things out of nothing, Who foresees all things, even the future free actions of reasonable creatures, and Who through His Providence leads all things to the intended end. The second chapter treats the natural and supernatural knowledge of God. It then declares that God, the beginning and end of all things can also be known with certainty by the natural light of reason. It then treats the actuality and necessity of a supernatural revelation, of the two sources of Revelation, Scripture and tradition, of the inspiration and interpretation of the Holy Scripture. The third chapter treats the supernatural virtue of faith, its reasonableness supernaturalness, and necessity, the possibility and actuality of miracles as a confirmation of Divine Revelation; and lastly, the founding of the Catholic Church by Jesus Christ as the Guardian and Herald of revealed truth. The fourth chapter contains the doctrine, especially important today, on the connection between faith and reason. The mysteries of faith cannot, indeed, be fully grasped by natural reason, but revealed truth can never contradict the positive results of the investigation of reason. Contrariwise, however, every assertion is false that contradicts the truth of enlightened faith. Faith and true learning are not in hostile opposition; they rather support each other in many ways. Yet faith is not the same as a philosophical system of teaching that has been worked out and then turned over to the human mind to be further developed, but it has been entrusted as a Divine deposit to the Church for protection and infallible interpretation.
When, therefore, the Church explains the meaning of a dogma this interpretation is to be maintained in all future time, and it can never be deviated from under pretence of a more profound investigation. At the close of the Constitution the opposing heresies are rejected in eighteen canons.
B. The other dogmatic Constitution is of equal, if not greater, importance; it is the first on the Church of Christ, or, as it is also called in reference to its contents, on the Pope of Rome.
"The introduction to the Constitution says that the primacy of the Roman pontiff, on which the unity, strength, and stability of the entire Church rests, has always been, and is especially now, the object of violent attacks by the enemies of the Church. Therefore the doctrine of its origin, constant permanence, and nature must be clearly set forth and established, above all on account of the opposing errors. Thus the first chapter treats of the establishment of the Apostolic primacy in the popes of Rome. Each chapter closes with a canon against the opposing dogmatic opinion. The most important matter of the Constitution is the last two chapters. In the third chapter the meaning and nature of the primacy are set forth in clear words. The primacy of the Pope of Rome is no mere precedence of honour. On the contrary, the pope possesses the primacy of regularly constituted power over all other Churches, and the true, direct, episcopal power of jurisdiction, in respect to which the clergy and faithful of every rite and rank are bound to true obedience. The immediate power of jurisdiction of the individual bishops in their dioceses, therefore, is not impaired by the primacy, but only strengthened and defended. By virtue of his primacy the pope has the right to have direct and free relations with the clergy and laity of the entire Church. No one is permitted to interfere with this intercourse. It is false and to be rejected to say that the decrees issued by the pope for the guidance of the Church are not valid unless confirmed by the placet of the secular power. The pope is also the supreme judge of all the faithful, to whose decision all matters under examination by the Church can be appealed. On the other hand, no further appeal, not even to an ecumenical council, can be made from the supreme decision of the pope. Consequently the canon appended to the third chapter says: "When, therefore, anyone says that the Pope of Rome has only the office of supervision or of guidance, and not the complete and highest power of jurisdiction over the entire Church not merely in matters of faith and morals, but also in matters which concern the discipline and administration of the Church throughout the entire world, or that the pope has only the chief share, but not the entire fullness of this highest power, or that this his power is not actual and immediate either over all and individual Churches, or over all and individual clergy and faithful, let him be anathema."
The fourth chapter, lastly, contains the definition of papal infallibility.
First, all the corresponding decrees of the Fourth Council of Constantinople, 680 (Sixth Ecumenical), of the Second Council of Lyons, 1274 (Fourteenth Ecumenical) and of the Council of Florence, 1439 (Seventeenth Ecumenical), are repeated and confirmed. It is pointed out, further, that at all times the popes, in the consciousness of their infallibility in matters of faith for the preservation of the purity of the Apostolic tradition, have acted as the court of last instance and have been called upon as such. Then follows the important tenet that the successors of St. Peter have been promised the Holy Ghost, not for the promulgation of new doctrines, but only for the preservation and interpretation of the Revelation delivered by the Apostles. The Constitution closes with the following words:
"Faithfully adhering, therefore, to the tradition inherited from the beginning of the Christian Faith, we, with the approbation of the sacred council, for the glory of God our Saviour, for the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and the salvation of Christian peoples, teach and define, as a Divinely revealed dogma, that the Roman pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when he, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, decides that a doctrine concerning faith or morals is to be held by the entire Church he possesses, in consequence of the Divine aid promised him in St. Peter, that infallibility with which the Divine Saviour wished to have His Church furnished for the definition of doctrine concerning faith or morals; and that such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not in consequence of the Church's consent, irreformable."
What is given above is essentially the contents of the two Constitutions of the Vatican Council. Their import may be briefly expressed thus: in opposition to the Rationalism and Free-thinking of the present day the first Constitution gives authoritative and clear expression of the fundamental principles of natural and supernatural understanding of right and true faith, their possibility, necessity, their sources, and of their relations to each other. Thus it offers to all of honest intention a guide and a firm foothold, both in solving the great question of life and in all the investigations of learning. The second Constitution settles finally a question which had kept the minds of men disturbed from the time of the Great Schism, and the Council of Constance, and more especially from the appearance of the four Gallican articles of 1682, the question of the relation between the pope and the Church. According to the dogmatic decision of the Vatican Council, the papacy founded by Christ is the crown and centre of the entire constitution of the Catholic Church. The papacy includes in itself the entire fullness of the power of administration and teaching bestowed by Christ upon His Church. Thus ecclesiastical particularism and the theory of national Churches are forever overthrown. On the other hand, it is extravagant and unjust to say that by the definition of the primacy of jurisdiction and of the infallibility of the pope the ecumenical councils have lost their essential importance. The ecumenical councils have never been absolutely necessary. Even before the Vatican Council their decrees obtained general currency only through the approval of the pope. The increasing difficulty of their convocation as time went on is shown by the interval of three hundred years between the nineteenth and twentieth ecumenical councils. The definitions of the last council have, therefore, brought about the alleviation that was desirable and the necessary legal certainty. Apart from this, however, the hierarchy united with the pope in a general council is, now as formerly, the most complete representation of the Catholic Church.
Lastly, as regards the drafts and proposition which were left unsettled by the Vatican Council, a number of these were revived and brought to completion by Pius IX and his two successors. To mention a few: Pius IX made St. Joseph the patron saint of the Universal Church on 8 Dec., 1870, the same year as the council. Moral and religious problems, which it was intended to lay before the council for discussion, are treated in the encyclicals of Leo XIII on the origin of the civil power (1881), on freemasonry (1884), on human freedom (1888), on Christian marriage (1880), etc. Leo XIII also issued in 1900 new regulations regarding the index of forbidden books. From the beginning of his administration Pius X seems to have had in view in his legislative labours the completion of the great tasks left by the Vatican Council. The most striking proofs of this are: the reform of the Italian diocesan seminaries, the regulation of the philosophical and theological studies of candidates for the priesthood, the introduction of one catechism for the Roman church province, the laws concerning the form of ritual for betrothal and marriage, the revision of the prayers of the Breviary, and, above all, the codification of the whole of modern canon law.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15303a.htm
