Word: nicaea
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...strikingly different from the 20 other ecclesiastical assemblies that Roman Catholicism ranks as ecumenical. It is the first council that did not face, or leave in its wake, heresy or schism. Councils have always been the church's last-resort response to crisis - from the First Council of Nicaea, summoned by Emperor Constantine in 325 to combat the Arian heresy, to Trent (1545-63), which had to cope with the Reformation, to the abortive Vatican I (1869-70), which faced bewildering currents of anticlericalism and the effects of the ever-widening industrial revolution...
...first eight councils were largely concerned with defining church doctrine. In the process of stamping out heresies, the fathers extracted from the message of Scripture the essential dogmas of the Trinity. Condemning the thought of an Alexandrian priest named Arius, First Nicaea ruled that Christ was divine-"the only begotten of the Father, of the same substance with the Father." Ephesus anathematized the Nestorians, because they refused to acknowledge Mary as Theotokos, the Mother of God. Chalcedon condemned the Monophysites, for denying that Christ united a divine and a human nature in one person. The councils may have brought...
...Roman Catholic reckoning, 20 councils deserve the name ecumenical-meaning councils representing the entire church in union with Rome. But Anglicans and many Protestants regard only the first four councils-Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451)-as ecumenical; Orthodox churches accept the ecumenicity of three more-the Second of Nicaea (787), the Second (553) and Third (680) of Constantinople. All the others, non-Catholics insist, are simple regional councils of the Latin church...
...Latin parchment document of the papal bull began in the traditional way: "John, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God." Thus, on Christmas morning, Pope John XXIII was to convoke Vatican Council II-potentially an event in Roman Catholic history on the order of the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople or Trent...
Vatican officials have been busy with preparations ever since Pope John said in January 1959 that he intended to call the church's first council since Vatican Council I in 1869-70, and the 20th since Nicaea in 325. As a start, every Catholic bishop in the world was asked what topics the council should consider; the 2,150 replies (called postulata) have been compiled into a secret, 20-volume report from which the agenda will be drawn. Decisions on that agenda will be made, according to majority vote, by more than 2,000 cardinals, archbishops, bishops, abbots...