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  • Still More Light on Vatican Council II
  • Jared Wicks S.J. (bio)
Dialogo e rinnovamento. Verbali e testi del segretariato per l’unità dei cristiani nella preparazione del concilio Vaticano II (1960–1962). Edited by Mauro Velati. [Istituto per le scienze religiose, Serie: Fonti e strumenti di ricerca, 5.] (Bologna: Il Mulino. 2011. Pp. 939. €60,00. ISBN 978-8-815-13188-1.)
Konzilstagebuch Sebastian Tromp SJ, mit Erlauterungen und Akten aus der Arbeit der Kommission für Glauben und Sitten, II. Vatikanisches Konzil. Edited and annotated by Alexandra von Teuffenbach. Vol. II, pts. 1 and 2 (1962–63). (Nordhausen: Verlag Traugott Bautz. 2011. Pp. 1279. €150,00. ISBN 978-3-883-09625-4.)
The Council Notes of Edward Schillibeeckx 1962–1963. Critically Annotated Bilingual Edition. Edited by Karim Schelkens. [Instrumenta Theologica, XXXIV.] (Leuven: Peeters. 2011. Pp. xxx, 77. €28,00. ISBN 978-9-042-92453-6.)
Il Concilio Vaticano II. Una storia mai scritta. By Roberto de Mattei (Turin: Lindau. 2011. Pp. 625. €38,00. ISBN 978-8-871-80894-9.)

This review article continues three earlier presentations of publications of source-documents and scholarly studies on the Second Vatican Council and its documents.1 Presented here are (1) an ample documentary record of work in the Secretariat for Promoting the Unity of Christians during the Council’s preparation; (2) the second volume (covering October 1962 to September 1963) of the office diary of Sebastian Tromp, secretary of the Council’s Doctrinal Commission; (3) the diary of Edward Schillebeeckx for the Council’s Period I of 1962, with added comments during Period II on the orientation [End Page 476] votes of October 30, 1963; and (4) a one-volume traditionalist and highly critical account of the whole Council, which treats as well background during the pontificate of Pius XII and reports on the negative effects of the Council on the Catholic Church to 1978 under Pope Paul VI.2

The 1960–62 Preparatory Work for the Second Vatican Council by the Secretariat for Promoting the Unity of Christians

Mauro Velati has given us a most welcome work of documentation on how the Secretariat for Promoting the Unity of Christians fulfilled its mandate of bringing the ecumenical cause into the 1960–62 preparation for the Second Vatican Council.3 Pope John XXIII instituted the secretariat on Pentecost Sunday, June 5, 1960, by a paragraph of his Motu Proprio, Superni Dei nutu, in which he formally initiated the direct preparation of the Council.4 Following upon the massive collection by the broad-based canvas of 1959–60 of topical proposals from the Council’s future members, the curial congregations, and pontifical universities and faculties, in June 1960 the pope established the ten preparatory commissions of the Council. These were to submit schemas in areas such as theology, bishops and the governance of dioceses, religious life, the liturgy, studies and seminaries, the missions, and the lay apostolate. To the ten commissions, the pope added two “secretariats” —one to prepare a conciliar treatment of the modern means of communication and the other to help Christians not in communion with the Apostolic See to follow the work of the Council and more easily find the way “to attaining that unity for which Jesus Christ prayed earnestly to the Heavenly Father.” As well, [End Page 477] the pope instituted a large Central Preparatory Commission of cardinals and bishops to review schemas produced by the particular commissions and secretariats to evaluate their adequacy for submission to the whole Council.

The new volume assembled by Velati documents a principal part of the Unity Secretariat’s first two years of activity, giving (1) the initial draft texts produced by each of the secretariat’s several subcommissions, (2) the minutes of meetings in which the secretariat’s members and consultors evaluated each draft, and (3) the revised texts that the secretariat either circulated among the preparatory commissions or in certain cases to submitted to the Central Preparatory Commission for eventual treatment by the whole Council. Velati’s collection is unique, since we do not have publications documenting, with texts and minutes of meetings, the genesis of the schemas that the ten preparatory commissions or the other secretariat developed for...

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