To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II

Weigel (The Next Pope), a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, examines the impact of the Second Vatican Council in this thorough chronicle. Through close readings of the council’s decrees and declarations, Weigel explores why Pope John XXIII took the rare step of convening “all the world’s Catholic bishops” in sessions that lasted from 1962 to 1965, as well as how the proceedings changed the Catholic church. The Second Vatican Council met to address the “challenge to Catholicism posed by the modern world,” which included clerical infighting, reactionary papal policies, and the social dislocations caused by two world wars and the Cold War. Weigel suggests that the church was motivated by a desire to achieve a “revitalized western humanism” and by the belief that the “sacred liturgy should be reformed organically” by returning to its “medieval and patristic forms.” The author challenges conventional readings of documents produced by the council, such as when he asserts that contrary to the populist reputation of the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,” it largely preserves the church’s formal hierarchy even as it emphasizes the laity’s “responsibility” to spread the word of God. Weigel delivers a probing study of the figures and theologies that influenced Catholic policy, though his focus on Western European events gives little mention of how Catholic practices elsewhere influenced the outcome of the council. Still, there is much valuable work in this fluid reevaluation of Vatican II’s origins and impact. (Oct.)