Apostolicam Actuositatem is the Second Vatican Council'sDecree on the Apostolate of the Laity. It was approved by a vote of 2,340 to 2 of bishops assembled at the Council, and promulgated by Pope Paul VI on November 18, 1965. The title is Latin for "Apostolic Activity," which is from the first line of the decree, as is customary with significant Catholic documents. (The full text in English is available from the Holy See's website.) The Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, was an Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962 and closed under Pope Paul VI in 1965. ... His Holiness Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini (September 26, 1897 – August 6, 1978), reigned as Pope and as sovereign of Vatican City from 1963 to 1978. ... November 18 is the 322nd day of the year (323rd in leap years), with 43 remaining. ... 1965 was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...
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The numbers given correspond to the section numbers within the text.
The facts were: first, that due to secularization and anti-clericalism, priests and religious no longer had effective access to many areas of society in a number of countries, so that, second, if the Church was to be present there, lay people would have to do the job.
The basic message is this: "The Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the apostolate" ["ApostolicamActuositatem," No. 2].
As "ApostolicamActuositatem" puts it, lay people "ought to take on themselves as their distinctive task this renewal of the temporal order" [No. 7].
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