Abstract
THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO VATICAN II 'It bears the hallmarks of the fatigue, division, and compromise that accompanied its creation as council fathers argued over religious life and its place within the church', states Gemma Simmonds as she describes the Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life, Perfectae Caritatis, at the beginning of her chapter, 'Professed Religious Life', in Gaillardetz's Cambridge Companion to Vatican II. [...]there are a host of characters and movements, each with their part to play: authors of drafts; bishops of the minority vote, who occasionally would pin their hopes on direct intervention and fraternal correction by the pope, only to be frustrated in their efforts; theologians under suspicion before the council who subsequently became central to the development of its key themes and agenda; observers, who had no voting powers or even permission to deliver speeches but had the ear of bishops during informal encounters or gatherings outside the conciliar room; and the liturgical, biblical, and theological movements as well as preconciliar popes-unlikely protagonists-who laid the groundwork for the ressourcement and aggiornamento agendas subsequently taken up at Vatican II. Turnbloom, Flanagan, Osheim, Rausch, Lennan and Simmonds expertly navigate the Vatican II landscape through their consideration of seemingly separate topics, but in the end present ecclesiological perspectives from different angles-often neglected perspectives, too, as Flanagan's chapter on the treatment of the Holy Spirit in the history of the Christian faith points out. While Gaillardetz humbly states in the preface of the book that it is a 'companion' and not a 'substitute for the documents themselves', 'a set of complementary readings that can help the reader plumb the riches of the council documents more profitably', I suggest the value of this book is that in this one volume the reader comes to an understanding of just what makes Vatican II and the church itself complex. [...]any simplistic approaches to the church and its reforms by theologians and activists, religious journalists and historians, and reformists, fundamentalists and traditionalists alike will all be met instead with a historical drama that resists singular focus on any one individual, movement, text, interpretation, or vision for the church.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 371-374 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Australasian Catholic Record |
Volume | 99 |
Issue number | 3 |
Publication status | Published - Jul 2022 |