Originally published at National Catholic Register
The universal call to holiness is a signature teaching of the Second Vatican Council. The topic forms the subject of the fifth chapter of Lumen Gentium, the Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church.
With this text, Vatican II stated decisively that “all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity …”
The teaching was a radically new pronouncement, at least in the context of solemn declarations by the Church. The topic also had a certain novelty within the Council itself. A chapter dedicated to the call to holiness was not present in the initial draft of Lumen Gentium presented at the beginning of the Council. This earlier text, after describing the hierarchy of the Church, dedicated a chapter to the “states for acquiring Evangelical Perfection,” that is, the religious life.
In the spring of 1963, in a meeting of the commission for coordinating the Council’s work, Belgian Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens presented the suggestion for a specific chapter dedicated to the topic of holiness in the Church. He took as his starting pointing the earlier text on the “state of perfection,” understood in the
