An informative and accessible guide to everything you want to know about Vatican II.

This study edition of Irish Dominican Austin Flannery’s (+2008) earlier translation contains all sixteen documents of the Second Vatican Council, plus the forty-nine later documents from popes and Vatican congregations that implemented the details of the Council's decisions. Flannery attempted to include all documents of general interest that form part of the postconciliar process—documents which might be described as organically linked with the conciliar process. This is the translation used in The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the text that both students of the Council and students of the Catechism will want for the complete reference of the Council and its decisions. Special features of the study edition: Larger page size, with larger print and more generous margins Focus questions after each Council document help the reader comprehend the main points Creative questions assist the reader in applying the content of the Council documents to personal experience or to future development in the Church

As Pope Francis leads the worldwide church wholly within and from the teachings of the Council (1962-65), there is a great need in college classrooms and parish faith formation groups—as well as for individuals—to again have access to these documents in contemporary English. This volume contains the sixteen official documents—constitutions, decrees, and declarations—of the Second Vatican Council in the most popular and widely used inclusive-language edition translated by Irish Dominican Austin Flannery (+2008). This edition is also presented with a larger, more readable font than previous editions. Table of Contents: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilum Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church, Christus Dominus Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, Presbyterorum Ordinis Decree on the Training of Priests, Optatam Totius Decree on the Up-to-Date Renewal of Religious Life, Perfectae Caritatis Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People, Apostolicam Actuositatem Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, Ad Gentes Divinitus Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio Decree on the Catholic Eastern Churches, Orientalium Ecclesiarum Decree on the Mass Media, Inter Mirifica Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate Declaration on Christian Education, Gravissimum Educationis Each of these sixteen documents is also available as separate eBooks (PDF, ePub, and Mobi) priced at $2.99 each. An affordable solution for students and scholars who only need to reference particular decrees or declarations. See more on our digital edition page. https://litpress.org/LP/vatdoc_chapter_ebook

Sacrosanctum Concilium opened the door to all Christians to understand the contemporary challenge to their life and health, and it started with the reform of the liturgy. In the words of Paul VI the liturgy is the 'first source of life communicated to us, the first school of our spiritual life, the first gift we can give to Christian people by our believing and praying, and the first invitation to the world.' That is surely true for all of us.

John Henry Newman is often described as 'the Father of the Second Vatican Council'. He anticipated most of the Council's major documents, as well as being an inspiration to the theologians who were behind them. His writings offer an illuminating commentary both on the teachings of the Council and the way these have been implemented and interpreted in the post-conciliar period. This book is the first sustained attempt to consider what Newman's reaction to Vatican II would have been. As a theologian who on his own admission fought throughout his life against theological liberalism, yet who pioneered many of the themes of the Council in his own day, Newman is best described as a conservative radical who cannot be classed simply as either a conservative or liberal Catholic. At the time of the First Vatican Council, Newman adumbrated in his private letters a mini-theology of Councils, which casts much light on Vatican II and its aftermath. The leading Newman scholar, Ian Ker, argues that Newman would have greatly welcomed the reforms of the Council, but would have seen them in the light of his theory of doctrinal development, insisting that they must certainly be understood as changes but changes in continuity rather than discontinuity with the Church's tradition and past teachings. He would therefore have endorsed the so-called 'hermeneutic of reform in continuity' in regard to Vatican II, a hermeneutic first formulated by Pope Benedict XVI and subsequently confirmed by his successor, Pope Francis, and rejected both 'progressive' and ultra-conservative interpretations of the Council as a revolutionary event. Newman believed that what Councils fail to speak of is of great importance, and so a final chapter considers the kind of evangelization—a topic notably absent from the documents of Vatican II—Newman thought appropriate in the face of secularization.

Investigating Vatican II is a collection of Fr. Jared Wicks’ recent articles on Vatican II, and presents the Second Vatican Council as an event to which theologians contributed in major ways and from which Catholic theology can gain enormous insigh

Situating the church within the context of post-World War II globalization and the Cold War, American Catholicism Transformed draws on previously untapped archival sources to provide deep background to developments within the American Catholic Church in relationship to American society at large. Shaped by anti-communist sentiment and responsive to American cultural trends, the Catholic community adopted "strategies of domestic containment," stressing the close unity between the Church and the "American way of life." A focus on the unchanging character of God's law as expressed in social hierarchies of authority, race, and gender provided a public visage of unity and uniformity. However, the emphasis on American values mainstreamed into the community the political values of personal rights, equality, acceptance of the arms race, and muted the Church's inherited social vision. The result was a deep ambivalence over the forces of secularization. The Catholic community entered a transitional stage in which "those on the right" and "those on the left" battled for control of the Church's vision. International networking, reform of religious life among women, international congresses of the laity, the institutionalization of the liturgical movement, and the burgeoning civil right movement positioned the community to receive the Vatican Council in a distinctly American way. During the Second Vatican Council, the American bishops and theological experts gradually adopted the reforming currents of the world-wide Church. This convergence of international and national forces of renewal -- and resistance to them -- says Joseph Chinnici, will continue to shape the American Catholic community's identity in the twenty-first century.

Contemporary scholars often refer to “the event of Vatican II,” but what kind of an event was it? In this first book of the new CUA Press series Sacra Doctrina, Matthew Levering leads his readers to see the Council as a “theological event”—a period of confirming and continuing God’s self-revelation in Christ into a new historical era for the Church. This is an introduction to Vatican II with a detailed summary of each of its four central documents—the dogmatic constitutions—followed by explanations of how to interpret them. In contrast to other introductions, which pay little attention to the theological soil in which the documents of Vatican II germinated, Levering offers a reading of each conciliar Constitution in light of a key theological author from the era: René Latourelle, SJ for Dei Verbum (persons and propositions); Louis Bouyer, CO for Sacrosanctum Concilium (active participation); Yves Congar, OP for Lumen Gentium (true and false reform); and Henri de Lubac, SJ for Gaudium et Spes (nature and grace). This theological event is “ongoing,” Levering demonstrates, by tracing in each chapter the theological debates that have stretched from the close of the council till the present, and the difficulties the Church continues to encounter in encouraging an ever deeper participation in Jesus Christ on the part of all believers. In this light, the book’s final chapter compares the historicist (Massimo Faggioli) and Christological (Robert Imbelli) interpretations of Vatican II, arguing that historicism can undermine the Council’s fundamental desire for a reform and renewal rooted in Christ. The conclusion addresses the concerns about secularization and loss of faith raised after the Council by Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger, and Yves Congar, arguing that contemporary Vatican II scholarship needs to take these concerns more seriously.