About This Book

The Catholic Church in a Changing World: A Vatican II-Inspired Approach.

By Dennis M. Doyle. Winona, MN: Anselm Academic Press,

2019. 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.

The Catholic Church in a Changing World

A Vatican II-Inspired Approach

Dennis M. Doyle

Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, February 2019. 356 pages.

$32.95. Paperback. ISBN 9781599828626. For other formats: Link to Publisher’s Website.

Review

The Catholic Church in a Changing World is the third iteration of a work intended to introduce students and other readers to the world of Catholicism, and more specifically, to the ecclesial self-understanding of the Catholic Church today (original title: The Church Emerging from Vatican II: A Popular Approach to Contemporary Catholicism, Twenty-Third Publications, 1992; Revised and updated, 2002). The most significant sources of that self-understanding, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, and its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, provide the jumping off point and basic structure for Dennis M. Doyle’s presentation.

Part 1 begins with a general introduction to the Catholic Church and the challenges of the present context and introduces the documents of Vatican II. Part 2 contains eight sections which correspond to the eight chapters of Lumen Gentium (Mystery, People of God, Hierarchy, Laity, the Universal Call to Holiness, Religious, the Eschatological Nature of the Church, Mary), while Part 3 considers the place of the church in the world in accordance with the basic structure of Gaudium et Spes (servant church, Catholic social teaching, marriage and family, culture, economic life, peace and politics, ecology). As the author suggests, the various sections are best read in conjunction with the conciliar documents.

The fruit of a long experience of teaching, this edition updates Doyle’s book “for a new generation of readers” (13), all of them born as the wake of Vatican II subsides and as the modern world, which the council endeavored to address, continues to evolve at an accelerated pace. Each chapter summarizes both historical perspectives and contemporary debate. Following the trajectory of Vatican II’s reflections, Doyle gives ample consideration to the extensive engagement of contemporary Catholicism in ecumenical (interchurch) and interreligious (interfaith) relations, questions of atheism, liberation theologies, the role of women and feminist scholarship, and increasing concern for ecological justice.

This edition contains important new material in which Doyle draws attention to connections between the teaching and trajectories of Vatican II and Pope Francis’ convictions concerning the church and its mission today. Regrettably, while it is mentioned in the list of suggested readings (157), Doyle misses an opportunity to connect Lumen Gentium’s affirmation of the universal call to holiness to Francis’ 2018 exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate, “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World.” Chapter 21 is devoted to Francis’ vision of the church as one that “balances themes of personal conversion and social liberation” (197), together with concern for renewed attention to the task of evangelization. Doyle invites the reader to consider how Francis seeks to advance a synthesis of Vatican II’s approach to the modern world by combining, in his approach to evangelization, concern for personal conversion and incorporation into the church’s missionary outreach; the search for an authentic expression of faith in teaching and witness; and engaging with the world of science, technology, and culture by reading the signs of the times with discerning eyes (198-99). Finally, while acknowledging that the subject of the global ecological crisis was not a direct concern of Catholic Church teaching in 1965, Doyle traces the development of ecological concern (ch. 36) through the pontificates of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, culminating in Pope Francis’ extended reflection on “integral ecology” in the 2015 Encyclical, Laudato Si, “On Care for our Common Home.”

Each brief chapter is presented in an even-handed and engaging manner—drawing from the experience of the author and others to show both the meaning and the relevance of each topic or text. Discussion questions and lists of suggested readings at the end of each chapter invite further reflection and engagement on the part of the readers. The book includes a helpful index. This highly informative and accessible volume will serve as an excellent teaching resource for undergraduates and adult learners.

About the Author(s)/Editor(s)/Translator(s):

Dennis Doyle is Professor in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Dayton