A look back at the Second Vatican Council through the coverage offered by America and Commonweal offers two lessons: First, we should not expect the journey of the church after the Synod on Synodality to be smooth sailing. Second, the church is very much capable of getting through such turmoil, and emerging stronger from it.
Vatican II
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Remembering Edward Schillebeeckx: the theologian working from the shadows of Vatican II
Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., wasn’t officially a ‘peritus’ at the Second Vatican Council, but that didn’t stop him from having a powerful influence on the council and on church theology for decades afterward.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
Heaven and hell in post-Vatican II Catholicism: How to move from fear to love
There is no bigger question for Catholics today than this: Why should anyone become or remain Catholic?
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
How Jacques Maritain went from antisemite to Catholic champion of the Jewish people
The intertwined stories of Jacques Maritain and ‘Nostra Aetate’ underscore the need for Christians, now more than ever, to repudiate and combat antisemitism.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
The ancient origins of Catholic anti-Semitism—and what we owe our Jewish siblings today
Christians may not be fully aware of the bloody history of anti-Semitism that was fueled in part by Christian anti-Judaism going back to the origins of Christianity.
Posted inFaith, Short Take
Young U.S. Catholics want more orthodoxy. That doesn’t mean they reject Vatican II.
Catholic life in the United States is deeply rooted in the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. But that might not mean what you think it means.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
We need to renew the Catholic imagination. Poets, artists and theologians can help us do that.
There can be no separation between the confession of Christ and the transformation of life, between Christian thinking and Christian living, and between theology and spirituality.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Yves Congar, Vatican II’s greatest theologian
Perhaps no thinker influenced Catholic theology in the 20th century more than Yves Congar, O.P.
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
From 1967: An interview with Yves Congar
In 1967, Patrick Granfield, O.S.B., conducted this wide-ranging interview with Yves Congar, O.P., the great theologian of Vatican II.
Posted inFaith, Short Take
Friends and colleagues remember Richard Gaillardetz, theologian, mentor and witness
Friends and colleagues remembered Richard Gaillardetz, who died on Tuesday, as a perceptive theologian, mining in his talks, articles and books the ecclesiology of Vatican II and Pope Francis’ vision for the church. They also noted the powerful witness of his reflections on his final months of life.