Vatican II, Berkeley and Beyond: The First Half-Century of the Oakland Diocese. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.Vatican II, Berkeley and Beyond: The First Half-Century of the Oakland Diocese

In Vatican II, Berkeley and Beyond, Bishop John Cummins relates how enthusiastically laity, religious, and clergy in the Diocese of Oakland and beyond responded to encouragement to participate in renewal of the church promoted by the Second Vatican Council. The diocese offered models to lay parishioners for full participation in liturgy and the utilization of their talents in church governance, and it engaged university professors in dialogues about nuclear deterrence and the economy. In this spirit, Bishop Floyd Begin, the author’s predecessor, made it possible for Catholic theologians to carry on graduate studies alongside Protestant theologians in the ongoing search for Christian unity. Beyond the diocese, the author chaired a national committee of Catholic bishops, one of which engaged in dialogue with scientists of various faiths on the moral issues involved in scientific discoveries. As a bishop with responsibility for the church universal, the author also reports on his twenty-two-year role as liaison of the U.S. church to the rapidly growing Catholic Church in East and Southeast Asia.

John S. Cummins, following his elder brother, Bernard, was ordained priest for the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1953, serving afterwards in parish, high school, and campus ministry assignments. In 1962, at the division of the archdiocese, Oakland’s founding Bishop Floyd Begin appointed him chancellor in what was his home diocese. The bishop later invited Monsignor Cummins to be executive secretary of the newly fashioned California Catholic Conference of Bishops. In the midst of a six-year term in Sacramento, Monsignor Cummins was appointed auxiliary bishop of that diocese. With the death of Bishop Begin in 1977, he succeeded to the Diocese of Oakland. He retired on October 1, 2003.