AS AN ONGOING THEOLOGICAL EVENT
Matthew Levering
The Catholic University of America Press
Washington, D.C.
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-8132-2930-0
SACRA DOCTRINA SERIES
Series Editors
Chad C. Pecknold, The Catholic University of America
Thomas Joseph White, OP, Dominican House of Studies
1. Persons and Propositions: Dei Verbum in Context
2. Active Participation: Sacrosanctum Concilium in Context
3. True and False Reform: Lumen Gentium in Context
4. Nature and Grace: Gaudium et Spes in Context
5. Vatican II as an Ongoing Theological Event: The Way Forward
My first thanks go to my dear friend Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP, for suggesting that I write an introductory book on this topic. During the writing process, I was aided by two speaking invitations for Fall 2015: from Christopher Ruddy and Robert Miller to speak at the Catholic University of America to a conference devoted to Dei Verbum, and from Fr. Antonio López, FSCB, to speak at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America to a conference devoted to Gaudium et Spes. In a very different form, parts of chapter 4 will appear as “Nature and Grace in Gaudium et Spes: The Status of the Theory of the Natural Desire for the Supernatural” in a book edited by Antonio López (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, forthcoming). Many thanks to these good friends for the invitations to speak and for their gracious hospitality.
The process of revising the manuscript was a difficult one. I owe particularly extensive thanks to my colleague Fr. Scott Hebden and to Fr. Innocent Smith, OP, both of whom read the draft in its roughest form and made incisive and wide-ranging corrections. Fr. Robert Imbelli, Andrew Meszaros, and Fr. Thomas Guarino read and corrected portions of the manuscript and also merit my deep thanks. To others who helped me during the revising of the manuscript, I extend my warm thanks. Christopher Ruddy graciously read a penultimate draft of the introduction, chapter 5, and the conclusion, and his superb corrections and insights enabled me to make some crucial last-minute additions and deletions. My research assistant and friend David Augustine, now a doctoral student at the Catholic University of America, did the bibliography and helped me with the book in a variety of other ways.
A short, introductory book such as this one pursues various goals at once and can achieve only some of them! Fundamentally, the book seeks to be of service to a movement of renewal in Catholic theology, rooted in a strong sense of divine revelation and of the transformative power of Jesus Christ.
At the Catholic University of America Press, John Martino ably steered the manuscript to publication. I ...
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About An Introduction to Vatican II as an Ongoing Theological EventContemporary scholars often refer to “the event of Vatican II,” but what kind of an event was it? In this first book of the new CUA Press series Sacra Doctrina, Matthew Levering leads his readers to see the Council as a “theological event”—a period of confirming and continuing God’s self-revelation in Christ into a new historical era for the Church. This is an introduction to Vatican II with a detailed summary of each of its four central documents—the dogmatic constitutions—followed by explanations of how to interpret them. In contrast to other introductions, which pay little attention to the theological soil in which the documents of Vatican II germinated, Levering offers a reading of each conciliar Constitution in light of a key theological author from the era: René Latourelle, SJ for Dei Verbum (persons and propositions); Louis Bouyer, CO for Sacrosanctum Concilium (active participation); Yves Congar, OP for Lumen Gentium (true and false reform); and Henri de Lubac, SJ for Gaudium et Spes (nature and grace). This theological event is “ongoing,” Levering demonstrates, by tracing in each chapter the theological debates that have stretched from the close of the council till the present, and the difficulties the Church continues to encounter in encouraging an ever deeper participation in Jesus Christ on the part of all believers. In this light, the book’s final chapter compares the historicist (Massimo Faggioli) and Christological (Robert Imbelli) interpretations of Vatican II, arguing that historicism can undermine the Council’s fundamental desire for a reform and renewal rooted in Christ. The conclusion addresses the concerns about secularization and loss of faith raised after the Council by Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger, and Yves Congar, arguing that contemporary Vatican II scholarship needs to take these concerns more seriously. |
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