In this original book, Ormond Rush makes a significant contribution to the growing body of scholarship on Vatican II. He proposes that a comprehensive interpretation of Vatican II requires that the interpreter not only attempt a reconstruction of the "spirit" of the council emerging during the conciliar debates, but also take into account the various linguistic dimensions of the "letter" of the documents. Attention to genre, structure, rhetoric, intratextuality and intertextuality are all significant in reconstructing the "letter" of the council. In addition, he states that reconstruction of the "spirit" and "letter" must be supplemented by attention to another factor: the post-conciliar reception of the council from different contexts throughout the world over the last forty years. All three of these phases of interpretation must be kept in correlation. The book ends with a proposal for a reception pneumatology that calls for greater recognition of the work of reception as the work of the Holy Spirit of the council. Highlights: --fills a significant gap in the debate regarding Vatican II: clarity in the discussion regarding hermeneutical principles --no book in any language focuses specifically on the principles for interpreting Vatican II --calls for a more comprehensive approach that includes not only attention to the process of original formulation, but also to the texts in themselves --suggests a way through the current impasse in the interpretation of Vatican II +

2020 Catholic Press Association first place award, theology--theological and philosophical studies This book is unique in the literature about Vatican II. From the manifold issues debated at the council and formulated in its sixteen documents, Ormond Rush proposes that the salient features of “the vision of Vatican II” can be captured in twenty-four principles. He concludes by proposing that these principles can function as criteria for assessing the reception of the conciliar vision over the last five decades and into the future. There is no other book that attempts such a comprehensive synthesis of the council’s vision for renewal and reform of the Catholic Church.

Whatever happened to the Second Vatican Council? Has the Catholic Church backed away from its teachings? What, exactly, were those teachings? Did the Council stand for the renewal of the liturgy, for example, or its destruction? Did it bring the Church into the world, or has it allowed the world to infiltrate the Church? On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the closing of Vatican II, Alan Schreck discusses the key documents of the Council and their meaning for Catholics today. He also takes a close look at the ferment and criticism Vatican II left in its wake. What he finds will surprise some Catholics but encourage all to lean into the task of renewing and strengthening the Church for the twenty-first century.

Vatican I and Vatican II represent two of the three ecumenical councils in modern times, yet relatively few studies have sought to understand their relation to one another. In fact, the councils are often positioned as mutually exclusive so that one must choose either Vatican I’s or Vatican II’s presentations of church and ecclesial authority. Failing to understand the relationship between these councils inhibits the church’s self-understanding and risks misinterpreting key aspects of its own tradition; further, it limits the church’s ability to teach effectively on topics of concern to modern women and men, such as authority, freedom, and ecclesiology. Vatican I and Vatican II: Councils in the Living Tradition uses the questions of what, why,and how the councils taught to frame and demonstrate significant points of continuity, complementarity, and difference between them. It argues that only by seeing both Vatican I and Vatican II as communicating vital dimensions of the Christian faith can the church’s living tradition be fully appreciated and speak meaningfully to modern Christian women and men.?

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.

In True Reform, Massimo Faggioli takes Sacrosanctum Concilium as an interpretive key to the Second Vatican Council. He offers a thorough reflection on the relationship between the liturgical constitution and the whole achievement of Vatican II and argues that the interconnections between the two must emerge if we want to understand the impact of the council on global Catholicism

Lumen Gentium, Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, changed how the church thinks about the laity, holiness, baptism, and even the nature and purpose of the church itself. In A Council That Will Never End, the highly regarded ecclesiologist Paul Lakeland marks the fiftieth anniversary of this document's promulgation by taking up three major themes of the constitution, analyzing the text, and identifying some of the questions with which it leaves us. These themes are the role of the bishop in the church and the ways Lumen Gentium's teaching relates to various tensions in today's church the laity and in particular the mixed blessing of describing them in the category of "secularity" and the relationships between the church and the people of God and what they tell us about the ways in which all people are offered salvation. Lakeland is convinced that Lumen Gentium leaves much unfinished business (as any historical document must), that attending to it will take us beyond much of the now sterile ecclesial divisions, and that the ecclesiology of humility it implies marks the way that theology must guide the church in the years ahead.