Vatican Ii: Did Anything Happen? - Softcover

America magazine review/analysis
Catholic Library World

"After the Second Vatican Council, Yves Congar was concerned that we might become complacent in our theological endeavors, thinking that texts of council would be viewed as fixing once and for all the aims of the aggiornamento called for by Pope John XXIII.  In this regard, Congar would have welcomed the four essays contained in this book...In the encyclical Tertìo Mìllennìo Advenìente, Pope John Paul II held that the central task of the church in the new millennium would be to work toward an authentic assimilation to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.  What we have in this brilliant and much-needed book are four superb thinkers who are doing just that." -Maureen Sullivan, America The National Catholic Weekly, March 3, 2008

"The essays in Vatican II by John  W. O'Malley, Stephen Schloesser, Joseph A. Komonchak, and Neil J. Ormerod provide vigorous challenges to the so-called amnesiac approach of the restorationists." -Terrence W. Tilley, Commonweal, April 11, 2008

For 40 years a battle has been waged over Vatican II between conservatives and liberals, between those who want to go "back to the sources" and those who champion "the spirit of the council." Vatican II: Did Anything Happen? is clearly on the side of those who think something unprecedented happened, that a genie was let out of the bottle that will never be stuffed back.

Comprised mainly of a collection of articles, mostly but not all from Theological Studies, that are without qualification some of the best analysis of the council ever written, this book is a long overdue look at one of the most controversial and revolutionary chapters in the history of the Catholic Church.