Beyond Vatican Ii The Church At A New Crossroads

Building on her previous important work, Religious Life at the Crossroads, Sister Amy Hereford draws attention to emerging currents, particularly among the smaller cohorts of younger religious, to reflect on the ongoing meaning of vows, formation, community, and mission, amidst the rapidly changing currents in the church and society.

Attempts to bridge the divide in the Catholic Church between traditionalists and the mainstream Church.

The Second Vatican Council produced a charter for the church of the twentieth century and beyond. Part of the council's fascination is that it involves many "stories." The Road to Vatican II is an attempt to tell the story behind the stories of this landmark in church history. Somehow, more than 2,500 bishops, who often disagreed on the most critical issues, managed to produce sixteen documents that touched the very essence of the Catholic faith. How is it possible that so much could have been accomplished in four brief council sessions, from 1962-1965? How did the church move from Pius IX at Vatican I (1869-70), who espoused a rigid, hierarchical model of church, to John XXIII at Vatican II (1962-65), who ushered in a collegial, communio model of church? In answering these questions, Sullivan's book highlights those theologians whose efforts over the years before the council were actually the seeds of what flourished at the council. These theologians were indeed prophets among us, often suffering because of their convictions. Ultimately they were instruments of the Holy Spirit in our midst. They offered the church a renewed vision of the faith and a methodology to facilitate theological endeavor. They also rediscovered in the New Testament a language of life that could speak to contemporary men and women. Hence, this book presents the incredible theological changes that took place on the road to Vatican II; it examines the contributions of some of the key theologians on this road; and it finds evidence of their influence in key documents of the Second Vatican Council. Book jacket.

In the decades following the Second Vatican Council, Catholic liturgy became an area of considerable interest and debate, if not controversy, in the West. Mid-late 20th century liturgical scholarship, upon which the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council were predicated and implemented, no longer stands unquestioned. The liturgical and ecclesial springtime the reforms of Paul VI were expected to facilitate has failed to emerge, leaving many questions as to their wisdom and value. Quo vadis Catholic liturgy? This Companion brings together a variety of scholars who consider this question at the beginning of the 21st century in the light of advances in liturgical scholarship, decades of post-Vatican II experience and the critical re-examination in the West of the question of the liturgy promoted by Benedict XVI. The contributors, each eminent in their field, have distinct takes on how to answer this question, but each makes a significant contribution to contemporary debate, making this Companion an essential reference for the study of Western Catholic liturgy in history and in the light of contemporary scholarship and debate.

Winner of a first-place award for a first time author and second-place in popular presentation of the faith from the Catholic Media Association. During the past five decades, the Second Vatican Council has been alternately celebrated or maligned for its supposed break with tradition and embrace of the modern world. But what if we’ve gotten it all wrong? Have Catholics—both those who embrace the spirit of Vatican II and those who regard it with suspicion—misunderstood what the council was really about? Fr. Blake Britton discovered the truth and beauty of the council while he was in seminary and he has witnessed firsthand the power of its teachings in the life of his own parish. In Reclaiming Vatican II—a partnership between Ave Maria Press and Word on Fire Catholic Ministries—Britton presses beyond the political narrative foisted upon the post-conciliar Church and contends that Vatican II was neither conservative nor liberal, but something much more beautiful and challenging. Britton clears up misconceptions about the council and reveals how—when properly understood and applied—it fosters a richer experience of being in the Church. Britton says Vatican II promotes a radical return to the Church Fathers and the Scriptures, holding both a commitment to tradition and the need for constant renewal in life-giving balance, recenters the Church on sacred liturgy and encourages both active participation and genuine encounter with transcendence, and charts a clear path for the Church’s renewal and empowers it for evangelism and transformative engagement with the world. Britton invites all Catholics to step beyond the polarization and embrace Vatican II as one of our greatest resources for being in the Church in a way that is faithful, engaged, and effective if we answer its radical call to worship and renewal.

The first document enacted by the Second Vatican Council was its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the liturgical reform mandated by that document has probably had a greater impact on the average Catholic than any other action of the Council. That this liturgical reform has not in every respect been the unalloyed success hoped for by the Council Fathers, however, has only been grudgingly recognized. The liturgists and other Church officials responsible for implementing the reforms have had a vested interest in claiming success, even where there was evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, the many and sometimes abrupt liturgical changes made were bound to affect long-established modes of worship and devotion - not to speak of the drastic move from Latin to the vernacular, which came shortly after the Council, and which necessarily entailed radical change in the Church's worship. In July 2007, Pope Benedict XVI signaled that the liturgical question needed to be revisited when he issued a motu proprio that allowed, some fortyplus years after the end of the Council, a wider celebration of the unreformed pre-Vatican-II Mass in Latin as an "extraordinary" form of the Roman rite. While the pope's motu proprio was not a repudiation or cancellation of the Vatican II liturgical reforms - as some liturgists feared (and some tradition-alists hoped) - it did indicate a sane and sensible papal recognition that liturgy must be developed organically, not "manufactured" by a "committee." Above all, the pope recognized that the question of the liturgy must be approached realistically in the light of how the reforms have actually worked out, not of how some have imagined that they might or should have worked out. This book by Kenneth D. Whitehead, who has written extensively both on Vatican II and on the liturgy, explains Pope Benedict's action in its proper context and describes the reactions to it, while making special reference to some of the pontiff's own extensive previous writings on the liturgy. The author then doubles back to evaluate the Vatican II liturgical reforms generally - how and why they were enacted, what has actually come about as a result of them, and how and why a "reform of the reform" is now called for. Book jacket.