When the Second Vatican Council was called, it was a jolt of surprise for many of the people of the Catholic religion as well as the rest of the world. It was called in order to redesign the old and somewhat backwards thinking of the Church. It was attended by 2,908 churchmen who redefined the way we today look at the Catholic as well as the way the religion is being practised. A modernization of the Catholic Church was being called for and the bishops of the Second Vatican Council did not hold back when looking to redefine it. In looking at various documents produced at the Council, this paper will investigate the following claim: "The bishops of the Second Vatican Council set out to make the Catholic Church much more like a democracy, didn't they?" The fact the Council sought out to make the liturgy more appealing to the masses and the concept of collegiality provide a strong argument that the Catholic Church did in fact set out to do this while the fact that the Church gives much power the Roman Pontiff refutes this argument. In my opinion, the bishops didn't not seek to make the Church more like a democracy it was just a subsequent consequence of the modern times that we live in.
The term Liturgy by definition means "the work of the people." A huge part of democracy is the concept "by the people, for the people." Prior to the Second Vatican Council, many felt as though the mass was being done for them but not with them. The prayers were completely in Latin and the majority of the time, the priest's back was facing the congregation making them feel excluded and separated from the mass thus making them less of a participant and more of an observer. In the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy or Sacrosanctum Concilium it says that "The liturgy daily builds up those who are in the church making of them a holy temple of the Lord, a dwelling-place for God in the Spirit to the mature measure of the fullness of Christ.