Vatican II is primarily a method to be copied, the annual meeting of the National Conference of Priests of Ireland (NCPI) has heard today.
Speaking at the conference meeting in Dublin, the theme of which is "Pastoral Energy and Structure in the Church forty years after Vatican II", Presentation Sr Anne Codd told the assembled religious that Vatican II's spirit of diversity was relevant to a multiracial Irish society.
"Vatican II is primarily a method to be replicated. There is a multiplicity of voices in our society and in the Church today - voices from the margins," she said.
Vatican II's establishment of a world church ensures that it remains relevant to modern Irish society, "multiracial and multicultural", Sr Codd indicated.
Over the coming two days, the conference, based at All Hallow's College in Drumcondra, will examine the Church's standing four decades after Pope John XXIII's historic blueprint for the development of the Catholic Church.
Almost 100 people are expected to attend the conference.
Regarded as the chart for the modern Catholic Church, Vatican II was the product of the Second Vatican Council, the treatises of which were published in 1965. Among the changes introduced were the saying of Mass in the vernacular, having priests face the congregants, increased authority for non-priests, and a general modernisation of the practice of Catholicism.
The recommendations of the Council have been the subject of fierce debate within Catholicism in the intervening decades, with reforming theologians often finding themselves at odds with what they claim is the continuance of centralised Church power, a policy most notably practiced by the current Pope John Paul II.