The Cambridge Companion to Vatican II
Edited by Richard R. Gaillardetz
(Cambridge university press, 378 pp, £26.99)
Tablet bookshop price £24.29 • tel 020 7799 4064

“Has anyone ever heard of the Second Vatican Council?” Six years ago, I put that question to a large gathering of couples preparing for Catholic marriage in the Archdiocese of Vancouver. Not one hand went up. I recalled this startling experience as I read Ormond Rush’s contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Vatican II. His chapter on “Conciliar Hermeneutics” points out a fundamental requirement of hermeneutics. A text only “comes to life” when we read it. An unread text is dead. We cannot understand Vatican II, the most important event in the history of the modern Catholic Church, and the 16 documents that it issued, unless we read those documents in their historical ­context and apply them to “our particular ­circumstances”. The splendid Companion engages readers in the lively process of ­understanding and interpreting Vatican II in its time, and applying it for our times.