Optatam Totius, the Decree on Priestly Training, was a document produced by the Second Vatican Council

Second Vatican Council

The Second Vatican Council addressed relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. It was the twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and the second to be held at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It opened under Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and closed...

. Approved by a vote of 2,318 to 3 of the bishops assembled at the council, the decree was promulgated by Pope Paul VI

Pope Paul VI

Paul VI , born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council, he decided to continue it...

 on October 28, 1965. (The full text in English is available from the Holy See's website.)

Contents

The numbers given correspond to the section numbers within the text.

1. The Program of Priestly Training to be Undertaken by Each Country (1)
2. The Urgent Fostering of Priestly Vocations (2-3)
3. The Setting Up of Major Seminaries (4-7)
4. The Careful Development of the Spiritual Training (8-12)
5. The Revision of Ecclesiastical Studies (13-18)
6. The Promotion of Strictly Pastoral Training (19-20)
7. Training to be Achieved After the Course of Studies (21)
8. Conclusion

Optatam Totius influenced German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner

Karl Rahner

Karl Rahner, SJ was a German Jesuit and theologian who, alongside Bernard Lonergan and Hans Urs von Balthasar, is considered one of the most influential Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century...

 to write his work The Founndation of Christian Faith.

Controversy

The period that followed the promulgation Optatam Totius was marked by a severe drop in the number of priestly vocations in the Western World. Church leaders had argued that age-old secularization

Secularization

Secularization is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions...

 was to blame and that it was not directly related to the documents of the Council. Historians have also pointed to the damage caused by the sexual revolution

Sexual revolution

The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...

 in 1968 and the strong backlash over Humanae Vitae

Humanae Vitae

Humanae Vitae is an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI and issued on 25 July 1968. Subtitled On the Regulation of Birth, it re-affirms the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church regarding married love, responsible parenthood, and the continuing proscription of most forms of birth...

. Yet other authors have asserted that the drop in vocations was at least partly deliberate and was part of an attempt to de-clericalize the Church and allow for a more pluralistic clergy.