Once More on Vatican II

When, in the fall of 2012, the commemorative events on the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II began in such profusion, continuing through each of the three successive years marking the half-century of each session, I very quickly grew very weary of all this anniversary-making, not least because it was of course bound up with myth-making of the most dubious sort.

After a bit of a respite, however, I could again contemplate the council without suffering uncontrollably from the desire to rush into the nearest sea and be carried off, never to have to hear of it again. So I was able happily to accept Matthew Levering's commission in the summer of 2015 to write a chapter for the collection he edited with Matthew Lamb, The Reception of Vatican II.  That welcome collection appeared in print earlier this year. My chapter is on Orientalium Ecclesiarum.

I saw Matthew just over a month ago, and he told me sales were a bit slow, so if you have held off on ordering the book, now is as good a time as any to do so! Or if you want to ensure you get a copy in time to leave under the Christmas tree four months from today for your favourite Catholic family member, by all means follow this link to do so!

By the way, I saw Matthew at a splendid conference at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, organized so superbly by Paul Gavrilyuk, author of, inter alia, the very widely praised Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance, and co-editor with Sarah Coakley, of The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity. Paul had invited Sarah to be respondent to my paper, and I am very glad of her gracious and useful comments, which I have taken to heart in continuing to revise the paper for publication, I hope, sometime late next year.