Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

‘If You Wish to be Perfect’: Change and Continuity in Vatican II's Call to Holiness

‘If You Wish to be Perfect’: Change and Continuity in Vatican II's Call to Holiness In November 2010, just under forty‐five years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, Kurt Cardinal Koch remarked that ‘theology will have to look into the problem of correcting the course’ of the interpretation of key texts from Vatican II. Cardinal Koch, the sitting President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, lamented in the same interview that the Council's documents ‘were interpreted very selectively.’ Speaking of Lumen Gentium , the dogmatic constitution on the Church, the Cardinal noted that though much attention has been paid to the idea of ‘The People of God,’ many Catholics had overlooked other central passages, including ‘The Universal Call to Holiness.’ Several years before the Cardinal's remarks, in What Happened at Vatican II , Jesuit church historian John O'Malley observed that: ‘[a]mong the recurring themes of the council […], the call to holiness is particularly pervasive and particularly important.’ Despite these assertions of centrality by Koch and O'Malley, the Universal Call to Holiness has received scant theological study in the years since the Council. Given its recent reappearance as a topic of discussion in relation to Vatican II, I seek to shed some light on this conciliar theme, especially as http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Heythrop Journal Wiley

‘If You Wish to be Perfect’: Change and Continuity in Vatican II's Call to Holiness

O'brien, Timothy W.
The Heythrop Journal , Volume 55 (2) – Jan 1, 2014
Download PDF
11 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/if-you-wish-to-be-perfect-change-and-continuity-in-vatican-ii-s-call-4ZJcVzVqti

References (3)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2014 Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered
ISSN
0018-1196
eISSN
1468-2265
DOI
10.1111/heyj.12028
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In November 2010, just under forty‐five years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, Kurt Cardinal Koch remarked that ‘theology will have to look into the problem of correcting the course’ of the interpretation of key texts from Vatican II. Cardinal Koch, the sitting President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, lamented in the same interview that the Council's documents ‘were interpreted very selectively.’ Speaking of Lumen Gentium , the dogmatic constitution on the Church, the Cardinal noted that though much attention has been paid to the idea of ‘The People of God,’ many Catholics had overlooked other central passages, including ‘The Universal Call to Holiness.’ Several years before the Cardinal's remarks, in What Happened at Vatican II , Jesuit church historian John O'Malley observed that: ‘[a]mong the recurring themes of the council […], the call to holiness is particularly pervasive and particularly important.’ Despite these assertions of centrality by Koch and O'Malley, the Universal Call to Holiness has received scant theological study in the years since the Council. Given its recent reappearance as a topic of discussion in relation to Vatican II, I seek to shed some light on this conciliar theme, especially as

Journal

The Heythrop Journal – Wiley

Published: Jan 1, 2014

There are no references for this article.