The council's concern with the liturgy arose from the heart of its pastoral and apostolic charge.

This is surely a Council which cannot content itself with looking to the past.

Profiles of 10 cardinals who served as council "presidents"

On the eve of the opening of Vatican II, the editors call for "a council for our times"

In These Pages: From April 21, 1962

Some day you would like to write a book about Catholicism in America as you have known it. You keep putting it off, and the relentless years keep passing. The book will probably never be written.

Pope John XXIII announces the start date of Vatican II

A review of Hans Kung's advance look at Vatican II by a prominent Jesuit

From 1962, the emergence of a Republican contender named Romney

Let us not chide Cardinal Newman for writing in the middle of the 19th century instead of the middle of the 20th. But also let us not assume that what he had to say then had absolute and unconditioned validity for all such institutions in all times.