Here is a list of the last four ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church, starting with the most recent:

• Vatican II: 1962-65
• Vatican I: 1869-70
• Trent: 1545-65
• Fifth Lateran Council: 1512-17

Now, these councils didn’t convene continuously during those years, my friends. And thank goodness for that. But I’m more pointing to the length of time between the councils. Trent was necessary as a response to the Reformation, which started almost at the Fifth Lateran Council was concluding. It was more than 300 years later that Vatican I was called; another 90+ years before Vatican II. Some, though, think it’s time for Vatican III, despite people on all sides of the theological spectrum unhappy with the way Vatican II has been implemented (or not implemented, as some argue is the case).

George Weigel is an esteemed author, with a biography of Pope John Paul II among his list of works. He’s a regular commentator and columnist on all things religion and, more specifically, Catholic issues. He offers a number of arguments against convoking Vatican III in this column, Why Vatican III simply won’t happen, on ABC’s Religion and Ethics blog.

Weigel makes the point I mention above: There hasn’t been adequate time for the teachings of Vatican II to take hold. It would distract from the bishops’ core business, he argued.

Would the preaching of the Gospel, which, according to Vatican II, is the first responsibility of bishops, be advanced by gathering the entire world episcopate into a global mega-meeting for three or four months of the year, over a period of years?

And “then there’s the question of resources”, Weigel explains. Is bringing all the bishops together the best use of the Church’s funds?

I’ll let George Weigel bring those arguments together and then state the case most clearly.

These are all good reasons why a general council would be a bad idea for the foreseeable future. But there’s another issue here, one that raises an intriguing question about any future council, no matter when it’s convened: Where could Vatican III (or Lateran VI, or Trent II, or Lyons III, or whatever-the-future-council-is called) possibly be held?

Vatican I (1869-70) met in one transept of St Peter’s because there were only 737 bishops attending. Some 2,800 bishops participated in the four sessions of Vatican II, which met in the fall months of 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1965, although at any one session there were between 2,000 and 2,500 bishops present – and they filled the entire, vast nave of St Peter’s, seated on bleachers built high above the basilica’s marble floor. Add the ecumenical observers, the Council periti (advisers), and other functionaries with access to the Council aula (as the reconfigured basilica was called), and St Peter’s was packed full.

But today? At the end of 2009, the last year for which complete Church statistics are available, there were 5,065 Catholic bishops in the world. A general or “ecumenical” council is, by definition, one in which all bishops have the right to participate (according to Canon 339). Where would this throng of over 5,000 bishops, literally twice the size of the episcopate that attended the most jam-packed session of Vatican II, meet? It certainly couldn’t meet at St Peter’s, or at any of the other Roman basilicas. Indeed, is there a Catholic church in the world that could readily accommodate more than 5,000 bishops, their advisors, the ecumenical observers, and all the others who would rightly claim at least some place in a council hall?

Fair question, right, so George suggests — tongue probably in cheek — that a football stadium might be the place to hold the next ecumenical council. Or what about a “virtual council”, using modern technology to allow the sessions to be international, not requiring bishops all to travel to one common location.

Somehow I don’t see that latter option happening, but there will be a council called at some time in the future, and the growth of the Church around the world means that the number of attendees is simply going to keep growing and growing.

Not a bad problem to have, I guess.