Of the many sweeping reforms to emerge from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the vision of a constitution for the Catholic Church whose design would embody the liberating power of Jesus' love, as well as carry the work of the Church into the 21st century, has been one of the most powerful impetuses for church renewal within Catholicism. Those involved in the movement to produce a written constitution for the Catholic Church contend that such a document would reform the often rigid hierarchical structure and autocratic governance of the church and introduce a more democratic form of church procedure. With critical theological acumen, Swidler, a professor of theology at Temple University, examines the revolutionary and dynamic turns Vatican II took. Such turns, he argues, provided the impetus needed for laypeople to organize a variety of church renewal movements which reclaimed the freedom of the individual believer from the static doctrinal authority of the church. The revolutionary nature of the proposed constitution for the church, the Second Vatican Council version that Swidler reproduces in an appendix, is demonstrated by a clause which states that "All Catholic women have an equal right with men to the resources and the exercise of all the powers of the Church." Swidler's study provides significant insights into the character of contemporary American and European Catholicism, and it offers important suggestions for bringing the church into conversation with contemporary culture.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
In a manner emblematic of American Catholicism, Swidler, professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University, issues a call for revolution that is at the same time a call for restoration. Specifically, he reminds readers that Vatican II was envisioned by John XXIII and his successor, Paul VI, as a sort of "constitutional convention" and that this understanding is consistent with the earliest councils of Christianity. He describes Vatican II as a "Copernican turn" toward the world, toward dialogue, toward the historical dynamic, toward freedom, and toward inner-church reform, but each turn is also articulated as a return to the democratic polity of early Christianity. The discussion and the appended draft constitutions (for the church, for the parish, and for the diocese) will be of particular interest to American Catholics but may also appeal to students of church polity from outside that tradition. Steve Schroeder
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