This book opens up a new area of research in the history of the institution of the Irish Presentation Sisters and the impact of Vatican II, 1962–1965 on women religious life in Ireland. The challenges offered by the Council were taken on by the Presentation Congregation and resulted in a trans-national structure known today as the ‘Union of Presentation Sisters’. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Vatican II called for the need for ‘adaptation’ and ‘renewal’ of religious life. This involved not just changes within the structures of religious life, but also meant that, psychologically, religious needed to change how and what they thought religious life in the twentieth century should be. The traditions of centuries had to be examined in the context of the ‘modern’ twentieth-century world and had to adapt to this change. However, the scope of the work is wide-ranging as it also examines issues that surrounded the transformation experienced by the Presentation Sisters. These included relations with the Church at both diocesan level and international level. In their efforts to implement change, they were often hampered by the local Bishops in Ireland but were supported by the Church in Rome. This book explores the whole area of women religious life in Ireland in the post-Vatican II period and examines the implications of these changes in relation to women religious and the Church.

The year 2015 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second Vatican Council, which aimed to align the Church with the modern world. Over the last five decades, women religious have engaged with the council’s reforms with unprecedented enthusiasm, far exceeding the expectations of the Church. Addressing how Canadian women religious envisioned and lived out the changes in religious life brought on by a pluralistic and secularizing world, Vatican II and Beyond analyzes the national organization of female and male congregations, the Canadian Religious Conference, and the lives of two individual sisters: visionary congregational leader Alice Trudeau and social justice activist Mary Alban. This book focuses on the new transnational networks, feminist concepts, professionalization of religious life, and complex political landscapes that emerged during this period of drastic transition as women religious sought to reconstruct identities, redefine roles, and signify vision and mission at both the personal and collective levels. Following women religious as they encountered new meanings of faith in their congregations, the Church, and society at large, Vatican II and Beyond demonstrates that the search for a renewed vision was not just a response to secularization, but a way to be reborn as Catholic women.

The historical record does not show (until now) that there were Vatican Council Mothers as well as Fathers--23 of them, in fact, and their contributions were enormous. McEnroy has interviewed most of the living women who were officially invited as auditors. Here, they share their experiences and perceptions of the church today in relationship to the promise of Vatican II.

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, the author 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. Book jacket.

Endorsements: "Thirty years after the close of Vatican II, we have this fresh revelation of the 'strange Roman experience' of the twenty-three women from fourteen different countries invited to be auditors at the previously all male Council. You will not want to stop before the end." -- Marie Augusta Neal, SND de Namur, Professor of Sociology, Emerita, Emmanuel College, Boston "An important and necessary history that will find great interest for a long time." --Bernard Haring, Moral Theologian "Facts buried in archives come alive in the living voices of these women who now share the 'dangerous memory' of their presence at Vatican II. Carmel McEnroy tells this story with keen insight into women's oppression in the Church, an eye for the humorous detail, and great narrative flair. Thank goodness she rescued this piece of history before it disappeared over the horizon like so much else." --Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ, Professor of Theology, Fordham University "This interesting historical investigation of the exclusion and participation of women at the Vatican Council reveals the dynamics of communication within the Church, including its systematic distortions and the forgiving fidelity of dedicated women. I am glad that this book has been written." --Gregory Baum, Professor of Theology, McGill University Author Biography: Carmel McEnroy, a Sister of Mercy and distinguished professor of theology, was fired in 1995 from St. Meinard Seminary for her public dissent from church teaching on women's ordination. Her name had appeared with hundreds of others in an advertisement questioning the issue in the National Catholic Reporter.

In 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council with the prophecy that 'a new day is dawning on the Church, bathing her in radiant splendour'. Desiring 'to impart an ever increasing vigour to the Christian life of the faithful', the Council Fathers devoted particular attention to the laity, and set in motion a series of sweeping reforms. The most significant of these centred on refashioning the Church's liturgy--'the source and summit of the Christian life'--in order to make 'it pastorally efficacious to the fullest degree'. Over fifty years on, however, the statistics speak for themselves. In America, only 15% of cradle Catholics say that they attend Mass on a weekly basis; meanwhile, 35% no longer even tick the 'Catholic box' on surveys. In Britain, the signs are direr still. Of those raised Catholic, just 13% still attend Mass weekly, and 37% say they have 'no religion'. But is this all the fault of Vatican II, and its runaway reforms? Or are wider social, cultural, and moral forces primarily to blame? Catholicism is not the only Christian group to have suffered serious declines since the 1960s. If anything Catholics exhibit higher church attendance, and better retention, than most Protestant churches do. If Vatican II is not the cause of Catholicism's crisis, might it instead be the secret to its comparative success? Mass Exodus is the first serious historical and sociological study of Catholic lapsation and disaffiliation. Drawing on a wide range of theological, historical, and sociological sources, Stephen Bullivant offers a comparative study of secularization across two famously contrasting religious cultures: Britain and the USA.