Product Description

During four years in session, Vatican Council II held television audiences rapt with its elegant, magnificently choreographed public ceremonies, while its debates generated front-page news on a near-weekly basis. By virtually any assessment, it was the most important religious event of the twentieth century, with repercussions that reached far beyond the Catholic church. Remarkably enough, this is the first book, solidly based on official documentation, to give a brief, readable account of the council from the moment Pope John XXIII announced it on January 25, 1959, until its conclusion on December 8, 1965; and to locate the issues that emerge in this narrative in their contexts, large and small, historical and theological, thereby providing keys for grasping what the council hoped to accomplish.

What Happened at Vatican II captures the drama of the council, depicting the colorful characters involved and their clashes with one another. The book also offers a new set of interpretive categories for understanding the council’s dynamics—categories that move beyond the tired “progressive” and “conservative” labels. As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the calling of the council, this work reveals in a new way the spirit of Vatican II. A reliable, even-handed introduction to the council, the book is a critical resource for understanding the Catholic church today, including the pontificate of Benedict XVI.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40554 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780674031692
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
From 1961 to 1965, the world closely watched the proceedings of Vatican II, the Catholic Church's council on the condition and future of the faith. Georgetown historian O'Malley presents the most thorough account of the proceedings of the council itself, from the time it was declared in 1959 until its conclusion in 1965, fulfilling the book's title. O'Malley gives a thorough and detailed history of the event, situating it in the longer history of the church and previous councils. But the bulk of the book concerns the characters and controversies of Vatican II itself, the biggest meeting in the history of the world. Though challenged by a conservative minority, the progressive majority of Vatican II reoriented and refashioned the Catholic Church: opening it to ecumenical relations, declaring its support for religious liberty and ending the practice of the Latin Mass. Infusing the council was the spirit of aggiornamento—Italian for updating. O'Malley shows how Vatican II allowed the church to modernize while also remaining true to its traditions and convictions. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Michael Novak The Second Vatican Council, which held 10-week sessions every autumn between 1962 and 1965, is almost universally regarded as the single most significant religious event of the 20th century. It was probably also the single largest meeting of active decision-makers in the history of the human race -- between 2,400 and 2,800 bishops, their theological advisers and other participants gathered each year in the huge nave of St. Peter's Cathedral. Its ceremonial splendor was irresistible to world television. Thousands of journalists descended on Rome to witness the intense, passionate arguments about a new opening of the church, a thaw in world affairs, a thorough reform of one of the world's oldest institutions. And the debate has never stopped. Over the last two or three decades, a huge argument has erupted among theologians, journalists and intellectuals about what "Vatican II" actually did. Conservatives tend to argue that the council took several false and damaging turns, leading unintentionally from the confident Roman Catholic Church of the 1950s to the empty churches (in Western Europe) today. As the great progressive Jesuit Gustave Weigel, who loved irony, once predicted during the council, swirling a splash of scotch in a plastic cup at a party: "All good things, given enough time, go badly." Progressives tend to argue that the council reaffirmed ancient traditions even as it made significant reforms: clearing the way for the Mass to be said in native languages, endorsing the search for heartfelt cooperation and doctrinal dialogue with other Christians and, above all, encouraging deeper self-understanding and warm relations with Jews. In other words, progressives say now (as some did then) that the council's essential purpose was conservative in nature, rooted in lessons from the pre-medieval church. They wanted, for instance, to resume the ancient tradition of speaking of the church as a "people" -- the "people of God" -- and of bishops and priests as "servants" of the people of God. They argued that celebrating Masses in vernacular languages and small, informal settings was more in keeping with the practices of the early church. Well, then, what was really new? Going back to the documentary record to answer this question, the Rev. John W. O'Malley set himself a Herculean task. The council's proceedings alone, without commentary, fill 32 hefty volumes. During the intervening years, hundreds of memoirs, insiders' amateur reportage (such as letters by bishops to their dioceses), diaries and memoranda have come to light. It is impressive how much of this material O'Malley, a Jesuit priest and professor of theology at Georgetown, has studied in the original languages and analyzed in his new book, What Happened at Vatican II. O'Malley also tells a good story. Though his main effort is to interpret what took place at this immensely complex event, he recounts the surprise announcement of the council by John XXIII ("good Pope John") in 1959. He details the three years of preparations and thoroughly chronicles each of the council's four sessions. For some readers, O'Malley's interpretive framework may be slow going, since he uses theological terms unfamiliar even to many Roman Catholics. But, in essence, he argues that the council was trying to do three things: bring new openness to Catholic thinking; update its teaching to face contemporary questions; and return to St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom and other ancient sources richer than those of the post-Enlightenment era. His main point is that Vatican II differed in its way of thinking from every other doctrine-setting gathering in the church's history, from the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. to the First Vatican Council in 1869. His preferred word for this is "style," though sometimes he says "method," "approach" or "language." Vatican II was distinctive, he contends, in its attention to the liberty of the human person and to the connectedness of the human community. The new spirit was to affirm, not condemn; to be open, not closed; to focus on ideals to live by, not things forbidden. "Vatican II was unprecedented," he writes, "for the notice it took of changes in society at large and for its refusal to see them in globally negative terms as devolutions from an older and happier era." He says the council underscored the authority of bishops while, at the same time, trying to make them "less authoritarian." For bishops, priests and everybody in authority, it recommended the ideal of the servant-leader. It upheld the legitimacy of modern methods in the study of the Bible. It condemned anti-Semitism and discrimination "on the basis of race, color, condition in life, or religion." It called on Catholics to cooperate with people of all faiths, or no faith, in projects aimed at the common good. And it supplied "the impetus," O'Malley writes, "for later official dialogues of the Catholic Church with other churches." O'Malley is quite fair to the conservative minority of bishops at the council (who were startled to learn that they were the minority, after so many decades of precedence and power). He takes pains to show the reasonableness of their claims and their insight into the ill effects of some of the work of the council, including the departure of thousands of priests and nuns, a general confusion about what the Catholic Church is bound to teach, and the danger of a church so "open" it stands for nothing. Yet there is no doubt that O'Malley's heart lies with the progressive majority. This bias is also fair; after all, the progressives did win nearly all votes by impressive margins, often two-to-one. But many of today's progressives think that the church has lost its nerve since the council and has not gone far enough to adapt to the modern day, particularly in respect to the role of women. On these claims, O'Malley is silent. Reading the book, I remembered meeting O'Malley in 1963 at one of the U.S. bishops' daily press conferences after the council's morning events. A young scholar, he was working on a book on the Augustinian reformer Giles of Viterbo (1469-1532) under a prestigious fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. I was covering the council as a freelance journalist and later published a book on the Second Session (1963) under the title The Open Church. I report this only to make two points: Based on my experience of the same events, O'Malley does a truly superior job of reporting the crucial details and capturing the moods and passions of that time. Secondly, he has the advantage of many testimonies not known to us back then. These, too, he handles deftly. But to my thinking, O'Malley's approach is a little too lacking in irony, a little too blind to the council's negative effects and much too blind to errors committed by progressives in pursuit of noble goals: Translations of council documents (and important texts of the Scriptures) were so ideologically cast that they distorted the meaning. The abruptness of changes in the sacred liturgy unloosed a sense of instability and make-it-up-yourself theology. In some places, there followed a "me decade" of "cafeteria Catholics" who felt they could pick and choose from church doctrines. O'Malley mentions that Joseph Ratzinger, then in his 30s, was among the leading progressive theologians at the council. Meanwhile, he overlooks a long memo from Krakow's young Bishop Karol Wojtyla urging the council to focus on two questions -- What do we mean by "the human person"? And what is the nature of human "community"? -- which is exactly what the council did. O'Malley's study would have benefited from a section on Wojtyla and Ratzinger, who became the intellectually powerful Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Both were champions of the progressive cause during the council, while in later years also unmasking the deficiencies in the progressive view. Since they became the council's chief interpreters for the next four decades, a chapter on their critiques would have given What Happened At Vatican II a sharper focus. Nonetheless, O'Malley's book is a splendid introduction to a story of longed-for change, its good consequences and its sometimes depressing, unintended ones.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
This remarkable book, in places a veritable page-turner, not only recaptures the drama and the struggles of Vatican II, but gets to the very heart of the issues under all the many ramifying words and acts of the Council. The reader can see how awkward and inadequate the familiar oppositions of liberal/conservative and progressive/reactionary are to the passionate struggles that took place. In fact, it was only through a recovery of Biblical and Patristic sources that Vatican II managed to return the Catholic Church to the twentieth-century world, and to open a dialogue which the traumas of the Reformation and French Revolution had inhibited.
--Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age (20080901)

In this elegant and erudite book, the dean of American historians of Christianity tells the story of Vatican II. As a student, John O'Malley attended sessions of the Council. Now he shows us what happened, sets the Council before a richly reconstructed historical background, and makes clear why it still matters so much. His book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the modern history of the Catholic Church.
--Anthony Grafton (20081018)

This is a masterful presentation. It carries the reader deeper into the reality and outcome of Vatican II than do the other existing books on the Council.
--Jared Wicks, Professor emeritus, Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome (20081103)

What Happened at Vatican II offers a one-volume history of the Second Vatican Council that not only tells the story in a way that brings out its drama, but, more importantly, calls the reader's attention to distinctive features of this council that are crucial for its interpretation. I do not know of any one volume that compares with this book for an in-depth account of what happened at Vatican II and of the factors that were at play in this major event in the life of the church.
--Francis Sullivan, Boston College (20081005)

It is an axiom that Ecumenical Councils take 50 years to assimilate and digest. If so, this clear and readable account of Vatican II is right on time—and on target. O'Malley's characteristic concision and wide learning luster every page.
--Kenneth L. Woodward, Newsweek Contributing Editor and author of Making Saints (20081225)

With characteristic acumen and grace, John O'Malley has written a splendid book on Vatican II: the history, the meanings, and above all the enduring importance. Once again we are all in this great scholar's debt.
--David Tracy (20081220)

From 1961 to 1965, the world closely watched the proceedings of Vatican II, the Catholic Church's council on the condition and future of the faith. Georgetown historian O'Malley presents the most thorough account of the proceedings of the council itself, from the time it was declared in 1959 until its conclusion in 1965, fulfilling the book's title. O'Malley gives a thorough and detailed history of the event, situating it in the longer history of the church and previous councils...O'Malley shows how Vatican II allowed the church to modernize while also remaining true to its traditions and convictions. (Publishers Weekly 20090227)

O'Malley's book represents a gift from his generation, which experienced the council, to the cohort coming of age today. The signal accomplishment of the book is synthesis. In just four hundred pages, O'Malley provides a thorough yet gripping overview of the lead-up to the council and each of its four sessions. He wisely avoids lengthy quotations from the sixteen documents produced by the council, which are sometimes written in opaque, "churchy" language. Instead, he captures the main points of the texts, as well as the floor debates and behind-the-scenes struggles that generated the council's drama. He thus fills what has long been a gaping hole: the absence of a single volume written at a popular level that provides a guide to the council--both its actual results and what might have been had the bishops headed in another direction...The book is a major accomplishment, which no doubt will help to keep the memory of the council alive.
--John L. Allen Jr. (Bookforum 20090201)

A gripping account of the drama of Vatican II as it played itself out over its four sessions from 1962 to 1965. Far from being a dry analysis of the sixteen conciliar documents, the book concentrates on the debates that frothed beneath the deceptive serenity of these documents. Personalities come to the fore in the contest between the minority of bishops who resisted change and the majority who favored it as desirable and necessary...O'Malley's emphasis on the importance of style is arguably his greatest contribution to understanding what happened at Vatican II...O'Malley's book is a helpful remedy for preserving Catholic memory. It rehearses not only what happened at Vatican II for a growing number of readers unfamiliar with the debates and documents but, more important, it gives them a way to think about what happened.
--Hilmar M. Pabel (The Tablet )

Volumes have been written on the council, but O'Malley offers a fresh perspective by setting it in the historical context of earlier councils and by attending to the language of the documents as well as the personalities and politics of the participants...It should appeal to a wide readership, populated as it is by colorful characters and offering an original approach to the study of the council and an authoritative guide through its proceedings and documents. O'Malley conveys a vivid sense of why Vatican II remains a beacon for some and a burden for others in the ongoing conflict between conservatives and liberals--words that, as O'Malley makes clear, are inadequate to describe the complexity of the positions they describe, and the visions invested in them.
--Tina Beattie (Times Higher Education Supplement )

The highest accolade that the late John Tracy Ellis could pay a historian was to say that he had written a "rich" book. There is little doubt that he would have been ready to pronounce that judgment on this book because of O'Malley's thorough research, lucid presentation, balanced judgments, shrewd insights and elegant style. If you want to know what happened at Vatican II, begin with O'Malley.
--Thomas J. Shelley (America )

Based on my experience of the same events, O'Malley does a truly superior job of reporting the crucial details and capturing the moods and passions of that time. Secondly, he has the advantage of many testimonies not known to us back then. These, too, he handles deftly...O'Malley's book is a splendid introduction to a story of longed-for change, its good consequences and its sometimes depressing, unintended ones.
--Michael Novak (Washington Post Book World )

[An] acutely observed history of the Council, now the go-to work on "what happened at Vatican II." [O'Malley] is particularly illuminating when he gives the background and context to the debates (often very heated) that gave birth to its decrees. The narrative might be Whig, but the history is fair--and rivetingly told.
--Edward T. Oakes, S. J. (Wall Street Journal )

Father O'Malley has written one of the best and most needed books about [the Second Vatican Council]...[A] superb history...How the bishops took charge of the agenda and radically reshaped the outcome is a story of bold confrontations, clashing personalities and behind-the-scenes maneuvers, all recounted in colorful detail by Father O'Malley. A majority of bishops seemed primed for change, yet the path to final agreement was strewn with obstacles, whether from the stalwarts of the status quo or papal interventions. This is a tale with plenty of cliffhangers.
--Peter S. Steinfels (New York Times )

In this single volume, O'Malley has filled the need for a readable account that meets three goals: providing the essential storyline from Pope John's announcement on January 25, 1959, to the council's conclusion on December 8, 1965; setting the issues that emerged into their historical and theological contexts; and thereby providing "some keys for grasping what the council hoped to accomplish."... O'Malley analyzes Pope John's motives and goals, and masterfully lays out the contexts and important issues of the council...O'Malley's book enables one to re-experience the event of Vatican II and to ask whether its initiatives will ever be fully implemented.
--Bernard P. Prusak (Commonweal )

[A] lucid, coherent assessment of the Second Vatican Council.
--T. M. Izbicki (Choice )

Customer Reviews

What happened at Vatican II? The answer is lots!
I just finished reading What happened at Vatican II? I enjoyed it thoroughly. The history of the council reads like such a novel!

I particularly enjoyed learning about Maximos IV whom I had not heard of before. He played a significant role reminding the council fathers that Catholicism was much bigger and complex than the Western Church, and he did this with elegance and audacity to boot.

And of course there is the role of Paul VI, what a contrast from John XXIII's approach to the everyday running of the council. Paul's suggestions to the council were interventions that undermined the new emphasis on collegiality that the council fathers were experiencing and writing about in the council.

But most of all I think the hermeneutic O'Malley offers in the final chapter to account for the center-periphery, change, and style issues that run through the pre-conciliar church, the council and our own times is brilliant and helps to move the state of the question beyond continuity and discontinuity or liberals vs conservatives.

Thank you and congratulations!

A Good Book for the General Reader
What Happened at Vatican II is an excellent and interesting book I can recommend to any general reader. While it details in strong and readable narrative, the people and activities of a specific religious group, the Catholic Church, anyone with an interest in human nature, world events, history, and faith will find this well-written book valuable. O'Malley is a strong writer who never loses the reader in the complexities of the event, the people, and the ideas. He also avoids grinding axes even with the incredible explosiveness of the ideas and personalities involved in Vatican II.

As a person trained in communication research, I was particularly interested and fascinated in reading about the procedures and networks of communication that drove Vatican II. The Catholic Church is the oldest human institution on earth and is layered with hundreds of years of ritual, procedure, canon law, and tradition. Yet within what one might easily misperceive as an ossified organization, the play of human nature and the role of communication were vital to the outcome of Vatican II. O'Malley draws a compelling case study of how people act in a complex decision making event even with such an old, established hierarchy.

For people of any faith or ethical tradition, this book would also be valuable source for reflection upon your own theology, ethics, and values. O'Malley provides excellent descriptions of the ideas and policies the Catholic leadership considered during Vatican II (plus you can visit the Vatican website to read the complete documents if you are that interested - I found it useful to read O'Malley's descriptions with my computer on a good search engine). Even if you are not a strong Catholic, you can still appreciate the questions, arguments, and decisions made at Vatican II and wonder upon them for your own growth.

This is a history book and not a polemic. O'Malley does not preach from this pulpit, but rather provides a clear, compelling, interesting, and useful look of the people in that pulpit.

A Must-Read
If you are looking for the one book you will read on the meaning of the Second Vatican Council, search no further for you have found it in What Happened at Vatican II . Fr,. O'Malley is both a church historian and an historian of culture, recognized as the best in his field. These two areas of his expertise combine marvelously in this ground-breaking study of Vatican II. Whereas other historians of the Council catalogue its proceedings, Fr. O'Malley cogently and convincingly explains what the impact of those proceedings were for the history of the Roman Catholic Church. He deftly demonstrates how Vatican II diverged from previous councils in style as much as substance. By abandoning the language of the Roman Senate that had characterized previous Roman Catholic Church councils, Vatican II spoke to the People of God without condemnation and anathema. In this sense, the wishes of Pope John XXIII for a pastoral rather than a doctrinal council were realized.

Fr. O'Malley's engaging writing style brings all of the major players of the Council to life. He eschews simplistic explanations and gets to the heart of the matter in each of the four periods that the Council met between 1962-1965.

At a time when some in the Roman Catholic Church actually repudiate Vatican II and attempt to claim that nothing of import really happened at the Council, Fr. O'Malley presents a vibrant and vital portrayal of the reform that the Council intended for the Roman Catholic Church. One of his most poignant insights is that those who would downplay the significance of Vatican II for the history of the Roman Catholic Church actually do the Council a great disservice by denying it the greatness that it had hoped for in its reform of the Catholic Church. Fr. O'Malley's assessment of the Council puts the lie to their denial.

You will not be disappointed by this book. Not only is it a pleasure to read, but it is also a repository of full and substantive factual information on what happened at Vatican II.