at a time of obvious crisis. There was no need for a Barmen-like declaration, a unique status confessionis. Because of this historical context, the council did not need to stress Catholicism’s difference from and discontinuity with other churches, other religious faiths, or other points of view. That kind of dialectical approach was foreign to it, having been discouraged by John XXIII from the outset. At every turn, Vatican II sought to emphasize the significant points of contact between Catholicism