It is easy to be critical of Gaudium et Spes as a document pushed through at the end of the Second Vatican Council when the Holy Spirit was out to lunch or the Conciliar fathers […]
The famous black-and-white photograph of the Second Vatican Council in session, taken from a high balcony at the back of Saint Peter’s Basilica, shows more than 2,000 Council Fathers standing at their places in slanted […]
As far as I know, no participant in the Second Vatican Council summed up its goals or described its spirit as addressing the question whether God’s truth and love are effective, that is, whether they […]
November 21, 2014 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of Vatican II’s central document, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. If the articles that this occasions reflect a strain of theological commentary on this text […]
Of all the documents produced by the Second Vatican Council, none had more revisions, saw more debate, or garnered more controversy than the “Declaration on Religious Liberty” Dignitatis Humanae. This is in part because the […]
As the Church celebrates the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, there is one lesser-known—and some would argue highly disturbing—aspect of the Council that has tended to be overlooked: the absence […]
A revolution in the Church’s thinking and practice regarding the Catholic laity has been underway for the past century or more. This striking development in theology and pastoral policy received by far its biggest boost […]
Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in the July/August 2000 issue of Catholic Faith magazine. It is republished here to mark the feast day for Blessed John Paul II […]
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