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The Belgian Contribution to the Second Vatican Council: International Research Conference at Mechelen, Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve (September 12-16, 2005). Edited by Doris Donnelly, Joseph Famerée, Mathijs Lamberigts, and Karim Schelkens. [Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, Vol. CCXVL] (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters. 2008. Pp. xii, 716. euro85,00 paperback. ISBN 978-9-042-92101-6.)
No one paid the Belgians at Vatican II a higher tribute than Father Yves Marie Joseph Congar, the important French Dominican peritus at the council, who observed in his diary that in large measure it was at the Belgian College in Rome that the council got its theological shape. Monsignor Gérard Philips, Bishop Émile-Joseph De Smedt, and, of course, Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens are familiar to even casual students of Vatican II, but they are only the most prominent members of a remarkably well-trained group of prelates and theologians that, as Congar suggests, had a collective impact on the council unlike that of any other national group. This volume provides both a panoramic overview of the Belgian contribution and careful analyses of key figures in their relationship to the council and to other participants in it.
With over half the papers in English, it is especially welcome in the North American context, where few scholars have followed the remarkable outpouring on the continent in the past twenty years of studies that have moved our understanding of the dynamics of...