Nearly sixty years on, what further information can be known about Vatican II (1962–65), the transformational event in the history of the modern Catholic Church? This volume in the Cambridge Companion series offers 18 essays on the topic. Six chapters in Part I address the historical, pastoral and theological contexts for the council; the remaining 12 essays in Part II treat “themes fundamental to the council's teaching.” An Appendix handily offers a bibliography of “Sources for the Study of Vatican II.” The range of scholars is international, yet nearly all reside in theology departments. This is not a volume that treats the popular responses to the Council, its impact on everyday Catholics, or its implications for present-day crises. Theologians seem to be the anticipated audience.

The chapters in Part I include discussion of church life and papal leadership prior to the Council, forms of theological renewal inspired by it, and examination of the Council itself as process and event to be interpreted. One great change wrought by Vatican II was to move Catholics from regarding the church as an institution, to experiencing it as a community—as the “people of God.” The Council called the laity to an active role in the church. Another change was the reversal of the Church's intransigent antimodern position on most aspects of 19^th and 20^th-century society and culture, less thoroughly addressed here.

The volume's second part is wide-ranging in its topics, from evangelization tactics to leadership and governance, to liturgy, to professed religious life, to moral theology, to ecumenical efforts and outreach to non-Christian religions, to the newly uplifted role of the laity. Nonetheless there are gaps in the volume, which skews toward insider church language and ways of seeing itself. No essays address the impact of the Council documents on race or gender inequality, the nuclear threat, or climate change. Trends such as the growth in third-world theologies are mentioned, but not discussed in any detail. There is no mention of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, which by now is a global scandal. Since Catholic conservatives are fond of blaming Vatican II for all manner of contemporary evils, a response to those claims would be welcome. Overall the essays are well-written and documented, but the volume's net effect is that of a summary of familiar material.