Cultural studies
“Different ways of being Catholic”. The Second Vatican Council 1962–65 in the autobiographical writings by Hans Küng, Joseph Ratzinger and Elisabeth Gössmann
The occasion for celebrating from October 2012 to November 2013 the Year of Faith in the Catholic Church was the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council. The latter’s objective was to critically examine and modernise the Catholic doctrine. The aim of this article is to look at the picture of the Second Vatican Council as deriving from the personal chronicles of the German- speaking theologians Hans Küng, Joseph Ratzinger 2005–2013 Pope Benedict XVI and Elisabeth Gössmann. This includes an analysis on different forms of religiousness and how they are de fined in relation to institutionalised religion, and of the role of individual godliness as a life-stabilising constant.