As the church marks the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, too few Catholics have an adequate grasp of what the council contributed to the life of the church. The problem is understandable. The Second Vatican Council produced, by far, more document pages than any other council. Consequently, any attempt to master its core teachings can be daunting. There is a danger of missing the forest for the trees. With this in mind, Keys to the Council identifies twenty key conciliar passages, central texts that help us appreciate the Vision of the council fathers. Each chapter places the given passage in its larger historical context, explores its fundamental meaning and significance, and finally considers its larger significance for the life of the church today. Chapters include exploration of Sacrosanctum Concilium's demand for full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgy; Lumen Gentium's eucharistic ecclesiology; Gaudium et Spes's vision of marriage as an intimate partnership of life and love; Nostra Aetate's approach to non-Christian religions; and more.

A lively debate continues in the Roman Catholic Church about the character of the teaching provided by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Did it represent a decisive rupture with previous doctrine, or the continuation of its earlier message under new conditions? Much depends on whether the Council texts are read in the light of subsequent events, which shook and sometimes smashed the life, worship and devotion of traditional Catholicism – rather than considered for themselves, in their own right as documents with a prehistory that historians can know. In this work Dominican scholar and writer Aidan Nichols maintains that the Council texts must be interpreted in the light of their genesis, not their aftermath. They must be seen in the light of the public debates in the Council chamber, not the hopes (or fears) of individuals behind the scenes. On this basis, he provides a concise commentary on the eight most significant documents produced by the Council, documents which cover pretty comprehensively all the major aspects of the Church’s life. Nichols describes the Council as a gathering where the Conciliar minority – guarded, prudent, and concerned for explicit continuity at all points with the preceding tradition – played a beneficial role in steadying the Conciliar majority, enthused as the latter was by the movements of biblical, patristic and liturgical ‘return to the sources’ and a desire to reach out to the world of the (then) present-day in generosity of heart. The texts that emerged from this often impassioned debate remain susceptible to a reading of a classically Christian kind. That is precisely what Nichols offers in this book.

The true story of how the National Security Council was transformed from a small advisory board under Truman, virtually to supplant the State Department under Nixon, and then to conduct covert, illegal operations under Ronald Reagan.

Interviewing war criminals and their victims, Neuffer explains, through the voices of people she follows over the course of a decade, how genocide erodes a nation's social and political environment. Her characters' stories and their competing notions of justice-from searching for the bodies of loved ones, to demanding war crime trials, to seeking bloody revenge-convinces readers that crimes against humanity cannot be resolved by simple talk of forgiveness,or through the more common recourse to forgetfulness.

By encouraging engagement with the modern world and a refocusing of traditional teaching, the Second Vatican Council brought new life into the practice of Catholicism. The council's impact on the Church is still playing out today, and with many current church issues finding their roots in differing interpretations of Vatican II it has never lost relevance. Vatican II: The Essential Texts brings together the key documents of the council. As the council is commemorated on its 50th Anniversary, readers will be returning to these source materials to understand the Church's developing positions on its relationship with the secular world and other religions, the role of lay people, human rights and the common good, the liturgy and other still highly relevant issues. In addition to the introductions from Pope Benedict and James Carroll, the documents will also be accompanied by brief historical prefaces from Professor Edward Hahnenberg.

The sixteen documents of the Second Vatican Council are the most important texts produced by the Catholic church in the past four hundred years. They shape virtually every aspect of church life today. But hardly anyone ever reads them… —From the Introduction In this indispensable guide, Edward P. Hahnenberg outlines each of the documents produced by the Second Vatican Council. Offering the background for each work, its language and context, this book provides a clear and concise overview of the Council's work and its significance in the life of the church. Each document's history, content, major concerns and effects are considered. Significant quotes provide a sample of the language, and contemporary topics provide discussion opportunities. Scripture scholars and students—and every Catholic—will find this a valuable resource.

How did medieval people think about the environments in which they lived? In a world shaped by God, how did they treat environments marked by religious difference? The Keys to Bread and Wine explores the answers to these questions in Valencia in the later Middle Ages. When Christians conquered the city in 1238, it was already one of the richest agricultural areas in the Mediterranean thanks to a network of irrigation canals constructed under Muslim rule. Despite this constructed environment, drought, flooding, plagues, and other natural disasters continued to confront civic leaders in the later medieval period. Abigail Agresta argues that the city's Christian rulers took a technocratic approach to environmental challenges in the fourteenth century but by the mid-fifteenth century relied increasingly on religious ritual, reflecting a dramatic transformation in the city's religious identity. Using the records of Valencia's municipal council, she traces the council's efforts to expand the region's infrastructure in response to natural disasters, while simultaneously rendering the landscape within the city walls more visibly Christian. This having been achieved, Valencia's leaders began by the mid-fifteenth century to privilege rogations and other ritual responses over infrastructure projects. But these appeals to divine aid were less about desperation than confidence in the city's Christianity. Reversing traditional narratives of technological progress, The Keys to Bread and Wine shows how religious concerns shaped the governance of the environment, with far-reaching implications for the environmental and religious history of medieval Iberia.