Vatican II at 60: Re-Energizing the Renewal. Edited by Catherine E. Clifford, with Stephen Lampe. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2024. Pp. xxiii +191. $32.00 (ppb).
Vatican II at 60 has a foreword and acknowledgement by Maria Pascuzzi, CSJ, a preface by Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, and an introduction by Catherine E. Clifford, who gives us an excellent analysis of various chapters.
In the 21st Century, Vatican II still engages with the Church and the World. Most Christians today live in the Global South, with the fastest-growing and largest Christian presence in Africa. Our world has changed since Vatican II, when one person in four is Chinese, and one person in three lives under a Communist regime, yet Christians are both divided but there’s ecumenical hope. It’s also a world that advances women throughout the world.
In Chapter One, Catherine E. Clifford writes that the human population has more than doubled. And one in three persons live in India or in China. Unfortunately, one in 10 persons live in poverty, and more than 100 million people have suffered human rights violations and have been displaced. Today, one out of every seven persons has no religious affiliation and the majority of Christians now live in the Global South with the largest and fastest-growing Christian presence in Africa. The issues of violence against women and widespread economic poverty are priorities of international human rights organizations.
Paul Lakeland in Chapter Two speaks of a Council that will never end. Lakeland argues that four persons were saved by Vatican II in Bernard Lonergan, Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, and John Courtney Murray. Lonergan argues that theology has become an empirical science and that scripture and tradition now supply data. The biblical text and theology are part of the complex process of thinking “through this same tradition in a changed and changing worlds.” Karl Rahner saw in Vatican II as the “coming of the world church.” According to Congar’s “My Journal of the Council,” he argues that Msgr. Phillips “is the architect No. 1 of the theological work of the Council” (2012, p. 510). Phillips knew how to put things in context, neutralize “objections in advice,” and could bring others to the solution he desired “WITHOUT THEIR REALIZING IT” (Congar 2012, 509-10).
Chapter Three deals with Reform in Motion: Vatican II and the Liturgy by John F. Baldovin, SJ. Baldovin remarks that the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) and the subsequent implementation of the reform should be understood in the framework of a comprehensive renewal in ecclesiology. Some people claim that the post-Vatican II liturgical reform had been a failure in 1962 and also today. Baldovin argues it has not been tried adequately, and it must be truly implemented, hence, why this essay bears the title “Reform in Motion.”
In Chapter Four, Brian P. Flanagan reflects on Lumen Gentium, Synodality, and the Universal Call to Participation. The major contribution to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) has three major ways: the emphasis of the church as the people of God; the stress on baptism as the sacrament by which the laity share in God’s in Christ’s priestly, prophetic, and royal vocations; and the council’s teaching on the universal call to holiness. Concerning issues of clerical sexual abuse, the status of women and young people, and outreach to Catholics on the margins of ecclesial life, he demonstrates some of the shared concerns of Catholics worldwide.
Chapter Five by Ormond Rush looks on Dei Verbum and the Roots of Synodality the council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. Ormond selects three clusters of teaching on Dei Verbum: revelation, faith, and tradition. Finally, as Pope Francis remarks that a Synod Church …. The faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome, listening to each other, including the Holy Spirit.” (p. 97).
Chapter Six by Marcus Mescher looks at Being the Church in the World: Joys and Griefs, Then and Now. Mescher examines the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes involves a huge shift in the relationship between the church and the world, a mixture between the sacred and the secular, a tertium quid both ecclesia docens and ecclesia discerns (GS 3). The council fathers decided to pledge the “signs of the times.” Millions of Christians do not believe that how we treat creation is a measure how we love and honor its Creator.
Chapter 7 by Elyse J. Raby writes about Beyond “Women in the Church” Gender and Ecclesiology since Vatican II. Vatican II fails to say a lot about women and are not described as complements to men. Pope Francis opened new doors, new offices, and new conversations about women’s participation in the ministry and governance of the church.
A woman had a vote in the Synod of Bishops and created two commissions to study the restoration of women to the diaconate. The Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education (CCE) issued “Male and Female He Created Them, the first Vatican document to follow on “gender ideology.” Raby argues that we do not need “a theology of the woman as Pope Francis suggests.” Rather, talk about the laity must be understood “as including LGBTQ Catholics.” This is one of the best books dealing with Vatican II.
Richard Penaskovic is an Emeritus Professor at Auburn University. His writings have appeared in the Birmingham News, Columbus-Ledger Enquirer, Montgomery Advertiser and online by Informed Comment and Politurco.