The Paradox of Vatican II: Theology in a New Millennium
It is assuredly a moment of grace that the first academic chair to be inaugurated under the auspices of the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Center be dedicated to the study of the Second Vatican Council. Time and again in his fourteen years as Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Bernardin reasserted that the implementation of the directives of the Second Vatican Council stood at the center of his ministry. As a young bishop he had attended the closing sessions of the Council. The two bishops who were his special mentors, Paul Hallinan of Atlanta and John Dearden of Detroit, had both been profoundly transformed by their experience of participation in the Council. Cardinal Bernardin’s own work as a bishop remains for many of us the quintessential example of what it means to lead the Church in the style intended by the Council.