Towards a better understanding of Vatican II

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The two books linked in the article are cheap - in fact one is a free ebook:

Documents of Vatican II - free ebook

Confiliar Octet $14.41 - Concise Commentary on 8 key texts of Vatican II (Available in Aust from Fishpond https://www.fishpond.ae/Books/Conciliar-Octet-Aidan-Nichols/9781621642862)

What follows is an excerpt only from the article on Catholic Culture "Toward a Deeper Understanding of Vatican II" 

Quote

 

https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/deeper-understanding-vatican-ii-with-aidan-nichols-op/

Conclusion

Too many Catholics who express strong opinions, good or bad, about the Second Vatican Council have never actually read the documents, let alone troubled to understand the issues the Church wanted to address effectively in the mid-twentieth century. To make up for this lack, I have tried to provide an overview of conciliar teaching, disciplinary change, and pastoral emphasis in my own series of commentaries on the documents, which CatholicCulture.org makes available as a free ebook containing thirty-four separate articles in sequence: The Documents of Vatican II: A Summary and Guide.

But every Catholic who has struggled to understand the nature and the importance of the Council owes an enormous debt to Aidan Nichols for his book Conciliar Octet, published in August by Ignatius Press. In my estimation, it is one of the best books in its class, clarifying many of the human questions surrounding the Council and certainly increasing my respect for the Council’s achievement. The Council addressed important Catholic issues in ways which should have enabled the whole Church to grow in faith and commitment—without in the least justifying the widespread errors which followed.

Here we have a Council devoted to Catholic renewal, but perhaps just a little too late for an immediately effective course correction. The Church as it operated beyond the Council sessions was, apparently, already too far lost in the culture of Western modernity. Because of constant deviations from the letter of the Council, the documents themselves have also been obscured in the smoke of battle. Sadly, it has been an uphill battle just to get back to a point at which Catholics can read the documents with an understanding of the good they contain. Conciliar Octet generates light instead of heat. The result is a better grasp of the mystery and mission of Christ for the Church as a whole.

Aidan Nichols, OP: Conciliar Octet: A Concise Commentary on the Eight Key Texts of the Second Vatican Council (Ignatius Press: 2019) 180 pp.