The Catholic Church in a Changing World: A Vatican II-Inspired Approach.
By Dennis M. Doyle. Winona, MN: Anselm Academic Press,
- 356 pages. $32.95.
The Catholic Church in a Changing World is an admirable achievement. It updates and enhances the author’s 1992 book titled The Church Emerging from Vatican II: A Popular Approach to Contemporary Catholicism. Like its predecessor, this current edition is a rare combination of academic theology and personal story telling, successfully blending the official Catholic teaching with positions of contemporary theologians.
Since the book is organized according to the chapter titles of Vatican II documents Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, an initial glance at the table of contents may give the impression that this is a book on the ecclesiology of Vatican II. That is only partially true, however. The reader discovers early on that the discussion of the book is much broader than the council’s ecclesiology. The book is really an introduction to contemporary Catholicism in which various issues are framed against the background of the positions taken by the Second Vatican Council. After an introduction, which lays out some elementary context of contemporary Catholicism, thirty-two topics are discussed, including the nature and mission of the church, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, authority, justice, ecology, and economics. Compared with the first edition, three chapters in the current volume are brand new, thirteen are updated, and some twenty remain the same, except for the discussion questions and bibliography. Doyle’s formula of short chapters (approximately ten pages)—each stating a theme before analyzing it in light of the council, presenting various viewpoints, and concluding with questions for discussion and suggestions for further reading—is pedagogically well-suited for undergraduate courses in theology/religion as well as for study groups.
Two of the three new chapters, 1 and 21, concentrate on Pope Francis and the new wine his pontificate has brought to the fellowship of the Catholic Church and beyond. The chapters present Francis as someone dedicated to inclusion and balance, as was the council, and as someone whose ecclesiology creatively combines evangelization and liberation. Many other updates in the book concern Francis’s leadership (e.g., on economic and environmental justice) of which Doyle is critically supportive.
Clarity of exposition and a masterful blending of scholarship and teaching makes this a highly readable book for beginners in theology. The content is organized intelligently, presented accurately, with nuance, and with balance and fairness to every side of the controversies. In addition to wide learning, the author should be commended for a not-so-common ability to express complex theological ideas in non222 technical jargon, such as explaining the notion of subsistit in (Lumen Gentium 8) in terms of the church of Christ “dwelling within” the Catholic Church or explaining that, for Rahner, God is the “endpoint” of our transcendence. This is what the best teachers are known for, and there is ample evidence in this book that Doyle is one of them. Raised before Vatican II but trained in theology after the council, Doyle takes advantage of his personal experience of these two worlds. He uses it to introduce individual chapters with personal stories rich in insight and good humor and, throughout the chapters, to make observations that reveal not only his knowledge but wisdom as well. The result is that this book uniquely connects belief with life.
I highly recommend this book for undergraduates as an introduction to Catholicism or for a course in ecclesiology. Graduate students who have had limited exposure to ecclesiology would profit from it, too. Dennis Doyle, a veteran educator and scholar, brings the Second Vatican Council to life and presents it as an indispensable foundation for contemporary Catholics.