New thinking about Catholic education from Latin America: What the bishops said at Medellin (1968), Puebla (1979), Santo Domingo (1992), Aparecida (2007)

The preparation, convocation, and implementation of the Second Vatican Council sparked changes at theological and organisational levels in the Catholic church. Both types of changes created a new structure for the relationship of different elements within the church and between the church and the world. This was not the first time the Catholic leadership redefined its relationship with the secular world – to agree in eliminating the pontifical states in the First Vatican Council in 1870 is one example – but is the first time that an internal change promoted such a positive relationship with the world. The church understood both (1) that she could collaborate in the well-being of the world, and also (2) that she could find many things for her own well-being in the secular world (LG 44). The idea of a self-contained organisation in opposition to the world was over with the advent of the Vatican II.