Paulist Press Vatican II Collection (7 vols.)

Vatican II was the first Council in the story of Catholic Christianity to deserve being labeled intercontinental and intercultural. What has been its impact? How should one describe and evaluate its reception by Catholics and its wider follow-up among others? How should this twenty-first Council be heard, received, and lived as we move further ahead into the twenty-first century? What perspectives does it offer for the future to those who seek to assimilate it creatively?

As a leading theologian, Gerald O’Collins uses a highly personal approach in answering these and many other questions, which makes for a compulsively readable book that illuminates the workings of the Church.

Living Vatican II explores the liturgical renewal after Vatican II, the reception of the Council’s moral teaching, the impact of Vatican II on theology, and the work of some key institutions in Rome and elsewhere toward implementing the teaching and decisions of this Council. Finally, the book offers insightful suggestions about the future of the Church.

The Second Vatican Council produced a charter for the church of the twentieth century and beyond. Part of the Council’s fascination is that it involves many “stories.” The Road to Vatican II is an attempt to tell the story behind the stories of this landmark in church history.

Somehow, more than 2,500 bishops, who often disagreed on the most critical issues, managed to product 16 documents that touched the very essence of the Catholic faith. How is it possible that so much could have been accomplished in four brief Council sessions, from 1962 to 1965? How did the Church move from Pius IX at Vatican I (1869-1870) who espoused a rigid, hierarchical model of church to a John XXIII at Vatican II (1962-1965) a Council which ushered in a collegial, communio model of church?

In answering these questions, Maureen Sullivan highlights those theologians whose efforts over the years before the council were actually the seeds of what flourished at the Council. These theologians were indeed prophets among us, often suffering because of their convictions. Ultimately they were instruments of the Holy Spirit in our midst. They offered the Church a renewed vision of the faith and a methodology to facilitate theological endeavor. They also rediscovered in the New Testament a language of life that could speak to contemporary men and women.

This book presents the incredible theological changes that took place on the road to Vatican II; it examines the contributions of some of the key theologians on this road; and it finds evidence of their influence in key documents of the Second Vatican Council.

This book presents the rich spirituality that Vatican II offers to all the faithful, a spirituality that has been widely neglected. Debates over the Council s theological and pastoral teaching continue to distract attention from the Council’s central message about the universal call to holiness. Such holiness attends to the manifold presence of the risen Christ, the life of the liturgy, the Scriptures that lead and feed us, the prophetic, priestly and pastoral mission of all believers, and the need to hear the cry of the poor.

Gerald O’Collins opens up some of the spiritual treasures to be found in the Vatican II documents, an area that has seldom come into view.

Still Interpreting Vatican II proposes three phases of investigation. First, a hermeneutical inquiry must determine the meanings intended by the authors of Vatican II’s documents by reconstructing the “spirit” of the documents in the context of their conciliar debates and committee work. Second, a hermeneutic of the texts must look at issues of genre, structure, rhetoric, intratexuality, and intertextuality—all of which are significant in reconstructing the “letter” of the Council. Third, the effort to reconstruct both “spirit” and “letter” must be supplemented by attention to the post-conciliar reception of the Council and its texts.

Still Interpreting Vatican II concludes with a proposal that believers see the Holy Spirit at work not only in the Council’s letter and spirit, but in the continuing act and challenge of receiving the Council at the dawn of the third millennium. By pursuing these three hermeneutics and recognizing that the Spirit is still at work, the current impasse over interpreting Vatican II may yet be broken.

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, writes about the Council from the experience of one who was there—one who took part as an official peritus, or expert, in the work of Vatican II.

Regarded as one of the outstanding young theologians to emerge from the conciliar period, the author mirrors in his observations here his intimate familiarity with the theological issues discussed, the positions taken, and the battles fought. But he does not seek to record the “diplomatic factors, intramural power plays, and antagonism among groups.” His purpose is to “attempt to delineate the inner aspects, the spiritual profile of the Council.”

The book includes a special preface by the author setting forth the character of the observations as his “account of a personal journey through the landscape of each session, with an open view toward further developments.” There is also a new introduction written by Thomas Rausch, SJ, that provides a balanced and contemporary context for the book.

For twenty-first-century Catholics and theologians interested in understanding contemporary Catholicism in light of Vatican II, Massimo Faggioli offers a balanced presentation of the Council’s key issues and their interpretation by major theologians and church historians at work in global Catholicism.

Kevin W. Irwin sheds light on the Catholic experience since theSecond Vatican Council. Focusing on implementing and praying the liturgy as reformed after the Council, this book invites discussion of how the Church can continue liturgical reform.