Vatican II's Language Marks Pivotal Shift.

n their writings, the Second Vatican Council’s bishops demonstrated that the choice of communication style for handing on Catholic teaching is a significant, perhaps pivotal, pastoral decision. The bishops chose a persuasive style of language to shift the priority of their teaching away from that of winning arguments to that of building common ground. As a result, according to the eminent church historian Fr. John W. O’Malley, SJ, the council’s final documents teach in a communication style whose “goal is the winning of internal assent, not the imposition of conformity from outside.”1 I