The beginning of the Second Vatican Council’s discussion of its decree on the missions, on Nov. 6, 1964, had a particular solemnity. Pope Paul VI decided to use the occasion to make one of his rare visits to the Council Hall. With this gesture, he manifested — as he expressed in his speech to the Council Fathers — his conviction about the “singular importance and magnitude” of the subject to which the Council’s attention would now be directed. 

As he further noted, Christ’s command to preach the Gospel resounded in a special way in the ministry of the pope himself and the “successors of the apostles” or the bishops. Given that the salvation of the world “depended” and “depends” on the fulfillment of this command, the Council in a special way desired to find “new ways,” “new methods” and a new “effort” for this immense task. 

The draft text that the Council would begin considering on the same day had already traveled a long and winding path. To simplify the immense work of Vatican II, the Council’s Coordinating Commission had ordered the commission on missions to reduce an earlier text to just a few propositions: 14 in the draft presented at the Council. In part, this was due to a theological perspective on the missions was already covered in the constitution on the Church, the future Lumen Gentium.  

The Taiwanese Bishop Stanislaus Lo Kuang, in explaining the draft to the Council, recognized that many Council Fathers had felt deluded by the brevity of the revised text. Bishop Lo Kuang explained that, in light of the decision of the Council’s governing body, a more ample description of the missions was not possible. Still, he noted that more elaborate indications could be given by the post-conciliar commissions and that, in the meantime, a “few words” would be enough to inspire the Council Fathers to understand their missionary obligation. 

The Council debate would quickly manifest that a great proportion of the Council Fathers would not accept this rationale. One such voice was Cardinal Joseph Frings, likely once again echoing his theological adviser, Joseph Ratzinger. The archbishop of Cologne stated that the subject of the missions is so essential to the Church and of such importance that it could not be resolved in just a few propositions. 

The African bishops were particularly emphatic about the need to redo the text. They were concerned both to assert the continued importance of the missions but also to reformulate the Church’s missionary effort in light of the end of the colonial period. Cardinal Laurean Rugambwa, for example, desired to more clearly articulate the importance of adaptation. He stated the mission of the Church was hampered when the Church presented a merely Western appearance and became confused with colonial rule. To the contrary, the Tanzanian bishop asserted that authentic adaption, rooted in the mission of Christ’s incarnation, truly seeks to recognize and assume the authentic moral and religious values present in each culture.

On the third day of discussion, the Council would overwhelmingly vote to send the draft back to the commission on missions to be reworked. The commission would a produce new draft, which would be discussed again on the Council floor in October 1965.

This new text framed the Church’s missionary activity within a broader and more supernatural vision of the Church, rooted in the mystery of the Trinity. This same vision is at the center of the Constitution Lumen Gentium, approved in November of the previous year. In words that would find echo in the final text of Ad Gentes, the draft proclaims that the Church is “missionary by her very nature, because she proceeds from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit, according to the will of God the Father.”  

This reworked draft, and the later decree, would be a much-needed affirmation of the Church’s traditional concern for missions within the new historical circumstances faced by the Council. These circumstances had called into question, for many, the very notion of mission. It was evident that the Church’s missionary action, in a general sense, also needed to include areas with a traditional Christian identity where the practice of the faith had diminished. French Bishop Guy-Marie Riobé, speaking in the name of many missionary bishops and superior generals, acknowledged the way in which the social context of evangelization had changed, so as to call for new missionary methods. Such conditions, he noted, could at times erase the distinction between mission territories and so-called Christian ones.

While aware of the complexity of the contemporary situation, many Council Fathers felt that it was vital to preserve the more traditional sense of mission. While on one hand Ad Gentes uses mission in a general sense to describe the Church’s evangelizing effort in its all of its breadth, the decree also draws attention to a more restricted use of the term: “ ‘Missions’ is the term usually given to those particular undertakings by which the heralds of the Gospel, sent out by the Church and going forth into the whole world, carry out the task of preaching the Gospel and planting the Church among peoples or groups who do not yet believe in Christ.” Such activity, the decree states, takes place “mostly” in specific mission territories recognized as such by the Holy See. 

The Council’s deep reflection on this topic, therefore, while providing a new formulation of missionary activity, did not in a way mean a lessening of the Church’s enthusiasm for bringing the Gospel to nonbelievers. The later discussion of the revised text, in October 1965, would serve to affirm even more the urgency of the missions. Various Council Fathers called for the text to be more fully permeated with sacred Scripture and to state more clearly the necessity of missionary activity as well as the call to conversion. Among various subsequent changes, the final decree would cite, in their integrity, Christ’s missionary mandates as recorded in Matthew, Chapter 28, and Mark, Chapter 16.

Another salient point of the later discussion of the text was the need to show how all of the People of God are called to share in this action. The Council Fathers had indeed appreciated, as Pope Paul VI had pointed out, the special responsibility of the pope and bishops in the Church’s mission. However, considering the Council’s renewed awareness of the Church, the final text would put more emphasis on the way in which all the People of God have the duty to foster missions. A completely new section would be added in the final decree on the apostolic mission of the laity, acknowledging their essential role in the Church, through which the “the Faith of Christ and the life of the Church” might “begin to permeate and to transform” the society in which they live. 

In this and in many other ways, the decree Ad Gentes would respond to the desires of many Council Fathers for a deep and extensive text — a magna carta, as one Council Father stated — that might serve as a powerful stimulus for the Church’s apostolic zeal. Ad Gentes also offers a fitting answer to those who might think that the Council’s attitude of compassion towards all humanity might somehow involve a diminishing of the Church’s passion for spreading the Gospel. The document can continue to inspire Christians today to a stronger sense of the need to proclaim the Gospel, in word and in deed, and to support the Church’s missionary activity throughout the world.