text: And most conservatives never bothered doing research on WHY things were written in Vatican II's  Constitutions, Documents and Decrees in the first place.   While changes did occur, Vatican II provided American Catholics with an officially sanctioned language for comprehending and discussing the sociocultural changes so many were already experiencing.  
  Long before Vatican II, questions which had lain before the Church for many centuries---without open discussion were:
  1) the role of bishops in their relationship to the bishop of Rome.
  2) the place and role of lay people in the life and operations of the Church.
  3) the understanding and place of religious liberty in the modern Church.
  4) the Church's teaching on divine revelation and its source.
  5) the Church's attitude toward and desire for relationship with the Jews.
  6) the way Christian unity should be approached.
  7) the reform and restoration of the Liturgy [in the vernacular], the catechumenate, and the diaconate.