Unfinished Journey: The Church 40 Years After Vatican 2 Essays for John Wilkins

by Ivereigh, Austen

• ISBN13: 9780826471000
• ISBN10: 0826471005
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-01-30
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

When the world's Catholic bishops gathered in Rome forty years ago, they triggered a revolution: a new vision of the Church for the modern world. No longer a lighted castle in a dark world, the Church was now seen as a pilgrim, sharing the joys and anxieties of all peoples -- a reinvigorated and renewed Church that was semper reformanda. But today there is a sense of disappointment among many Catholics that the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-66) have been truncated, ignored, or even undermined in the contemporary Church, which continues to suffer from clericalism, centralism, male domination, and institutional defensiveness. There is a sense of a journey unfinished. What went wrong? How can the Church better be faithful to the promises it made at the Council? To mark the retirement of John Wilkins, the long-serving editor of the London Catholic weekly, The Tablet, 19 of the most distinguished Catholic writers of the age were asked to suggest answers to those questions. The result is a fascinating series of essays on a huge range of topics by a truly international cast of theologians, commentators and journalists, including Hans Kung, Joan Chittister, Eamon Duffy, Timothy Radcliffe, Nicholas Lash, Michael Novak, John Cornwell, Rembert Weakland and Clifford Longley. Unfinished Journey also includes a tribute to John Wilkins by the late-lamented Guardian columnist, Hugo Young. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

About the Contributors	v
Introduction	1	(12)
Austen Ivereigh
Part I Taking Stock
Vatican II: Of Happy Memory -- and Hope?	13	(19)
Nicholas Lash
The `Open Church' 40 Years Later: A Reckoning	32	(17)
Michael Novak
Tradition and Reaction: Historical Resources for a Contemporary Renewal	49	(20)
Eamon Duffy
Part II The Unfinished Journey
On Having the Courage of One's Convictions	69	(9)
Hans Kung
Images of the Church: From `Perfect Society' to `God's People on Pilgrimage'	78	(13)
Rembert Weakland
Wanted: The Other Half of the Church	91	(11)
Joan Chittister
Augustine, Aquinas or the Gospel sine glossa? Divisions over Gaudium et spes	102	(17)
Joseph Komonchak
Power and Powerlessness in the Church: The Chance for Renewal	119	(15)
Timothy Radcliffe
Religious Freedom: The Limits of Progress	134	(15)
Michael Walsh
Where Does Catholic Social Teaching Go from Here?	149	(21)
Clifford Longley
The Scientific Search for the Soul	170	(13)
John Cornwell
The Place of Philosophy in the Life of the Church: A Time for Renewal	183	(13)
John Haldane
Captivated Ambivalence: How the Church Copes with the Media	196	(12)
Lavinia Byrne
The Church and the Media: Beyond Inter mirifica	208	(19)
Alain Woodrow
Part III Signposts from Afar
A Lead from Asia	227	(13)
Thomas C. Fox
How Base Communities Started: Paraguay's Christian Agrarian Leagues	240	(17)
Margaret Hebblethwaite
Truth beyond Division: Eastern Meditation and Western Christianity	257	(15)
Shirley du Boulay
Oscar Romero, Bishop-Martyr and Model of Church	272	(15)
Julian Filochowski
Part IV Postscript
John Wilkins: A Tribute	287
Hugo Young