Sacrosanctum Concilium opened the door to all Christians to understand the contemporary challenge to their life and health, and it started with the reform of the liturgy. In the words of Paul VI the liturgy is the 'first source of life communicated to us, the first school of our spiritual life, the first gift we can give to Christian people by our believing and praying, and the first invitation to the world.' That is surely true for all of us.

Archbishop Angelo Roncali (later Pope John XXIII) read True and False Reform during his years as papal nuncio in France and asked, A reform of the church 'is such a thing really possible?" A decade later as pope, he opened the Second Vatican Council by describing its goals in terms that reflected Congar's description of authentic reform: reform that penetrates to the heart of doctrine as a message of salvation for the whole of humanity, that retrieves the meaning of prophecy in a living church, and that is deeply rooted in history rather than superficially related to the apostolic tradition. Pope John called the council not to reform heresy or to denounce errors but to update the church's capacity to explain itself to the world and to revitalize ecclesial life in all its unique local manifestations. Congar's masterpiece fills in the blanks of what we have been missing in our reception of the council and its call to "true reform." Yves Congar, OP, a French Dominican who died in 1995, was the most important ecclesiologist in modern times. His writings and his active participation in Vatican II had an immense influence upon the council documents. With a few other contemporaries, Congar pioneered a new style of theological research and writing that linked the great tradition of Scripture and the Fathers to contemporary pastoral questions with lucidity and passion. His key concerns were the unity of the church, lay apostolic life, and a revival of the church's theology of the Holy Spirit. He was named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in recognition of his profound contributions to the Second Vatican Council. Paul Philibert, OP, has taught pastoral theology in the United States and abroad. He is a Dominican friar of the Southern Province. His translation of a collection of Congar's essays on the liturgy has recently been published by Liturgical Press under the title At the Heart of Christian Worship. His book The Priesthood of the Faithful: Key to a living Church (Liturgical Press, 2005) reflects the ecclesiology of Yves Congar and his Vision of the apostolic life of the faithful."

Fifty years after the promulgation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, a great moment has dawned in which a more dispassionate assessment of the reception of this important document has become imperative in order to enable the Church to undertake necessary steps in realizing the full potential of the renewal envisaged by the Council Fathers. The present study identifies peculiar and diverse challenges confronting the process of reception in the Nsukka Diocese/Nigerian Church today. However, the author acknowledges that the full reception of Sacrosanctum Concilium is still a work-in-progress. Uchenna Aba is a Catholic priest in Nsukka, Nigeria, and currently the Chaplain of St. Martin's Parish, Goch, Diocese of Muenster, Germany. Dissertation. [Subject: Religious Studies, African Studies]

An overview of 10 key insights from CSL that have shaped the Mass we celebrate today.Reverend Joshua R. Brommer, STL, is the Administrative Assistant to the Bishop and the Director of the Office of Worship for the Diocese of Harrisburg. He earned his Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, in 2007 with a focus in Sacramental Theology and the doctrine of grace. Since ordination, he has served as parochial vicar in three parishes in the Diocese of Harrisburg, taught in the Diocesan Permanent Diaconate Formation program, and offered many classes, lectures, and retreats.

From 1962 to 1965, in perhaps the most important religious event of the twentieth century, the Second Vatican Council met to plot a course for the future of the Roman Catholic Church. After thousands of speeches, resolutions, and votes, the Council issued sixteen official documents on topics ranging from divine revelation to relations with non-Christians. But the meaning of the Second Vatican Council has been fiercely contested since before it was even over, and the years since its completion have seen a battle for the soul of the Church waged through the interpretation of Council documents. The Reception of Vatican II looks at the sixteen conciliar documents through the lens of those battles. Paying close attention to reforms and new developments, the essays in this volume show how the Council has been received and interpreted over the course of the more than fifty years since it concluded. The contributors to this volume represent various schools of thought but are united by a commitment to restoring the view that Vatican II should be interpreted and implemented in line with Church Tradition. The central problem facing Catholic theology today, these essays argue, is a misreading of the Council that posits a sharp break with previous Church teaching. In order to combat this reductive way of interpreting the Council, these essays provide a thorough, instructive overview of the debates it inspired.

Sheds light on and invites discussion about the experience in which Catholics have been engaged since the Second Vatican Council in implementing and praying the liturgy as reformed after the council.

The first document enacted by the Second Vatican Council was its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the liturgical reform mandated by that document has probably had a greater impact on the average Catholic than any other action of the Council. That this liturgical reform has not in every respect been the unalloyed success hoped for by the Council Fathers, however, has only been grudgingly recognized. The liturgists and other Church officials responsible for implementing the reforms have had a vested interest in claiming success, even where there was evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, the many and sometimes abrupt liturgical changes made were bound to affect long-established modes of worship and devotion - not to speak of the drastic move from Latin to the vernacular, which came shortly after the Council, and which necessarily entailed radical change in the Church's worship. In July 2007, Pope Benedict XVI signaled that the liturgical question needed to be revisited when he issued a motu proprio that allowed, some fortyplus years after the end of the Council, a wider celebration of the unreformed pre-Vatican-II Mass in Latin as an "extraordinary" form of the Roman rite. While the pope's motu proprio was not a repudiation or cancellation of the Vatican II liturgical reforms - as some liturgists feared (and some tradition-alists hoped) - it did indicate a sane and sensible papal recognition that liturgy must be developed organically, not "manufactured" by a "committee." Above all, the pope recognized that the question of the liturgy must be approached realistically in the light of how the reforms have actually worked out, not of how some have imagined that they might or should have worked out. This book by Kenneth D. Whitehead, who has written extensively both on Vatican II and on the liturgy, explains Pope Benedict's action in its proper context and describes the reactions to it, while making special reference to some of the pontiff's own extensive previous writings on the liturgy. The author then doubles back to evaluate the Vatican II liturgical reforms generally - how and why they were enacted, what has actually come about as a result of them, and how and why a "reform of the reform" is now called for. Book jacket.

As the church marks the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, too few Catholics have an adequate grasp of what the council contributed to the life of the church. The problem is understandable. The Second Vatican Council produced, by far, more document pages than any other council. Consequently, any attempt to master its core teachings can be daunting. There is a danger of missing the forest for the trees. With this in mind, Keys to the Council identifies twenty key conciliar passages, central texts that help us appreciate the Vision of the council fathers. Each chapter places the given passage in its larger historical context, explores its fundamental meaning and significance, and finally considers its larger significance for the life of the church today. Chapters include exploration of Sacrosanctum Concilium's demand for full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgy; Lumen Gentium's eucharistic ecclesiology; Gaudium et Spes's vision of marriage as an intimate partnership of life and love; Nostra Aetate's approach to non-Christian religions; and more.

This book is among the first social scientific studies of liturgical change in the Catholic church. The analysis is guided by a consistent theory of policy implementation, and it uses first-hand empirical data to ground its assessment and conclusions.