This is a volume of papers given at a conference at the University of Leuven in September 2002, and contains many informative and scholarly articles. All except four of the seventeen essays are in English and those four are in French. The majority of the authors are Belgian or Dutch academics. Although the title says “churches,” most of the articles really concern mainly the Roman Catholic Church.

Part 1, on “Continuities and Discontinuities in Religiousness,” consists of eight articles. Hugh McLeod, in “The Present Crisis in Historical Context,” offers a nuanced overview of current church crises, noting some new aspects in addition to long-familiar ones. Etienne Fouilloux tells of some persons and groups that by the middle of the twentieth century were talking about a renewal of “Christendom,” mainly in France, and how such efforts largely failed. Wilhelm Damberg and Patrick Pasture, discuss “Restoration and Erosion of Pillarised Catholicism in Western Europe.” Pillarization, the groupings of Catholics (and Reformed) in separate religious, social, and political organizations, largely faded in the later part of the twentieth century, but they note that Catholicism survives in more pluralized forms. Gerd-Rainer Horn's description of “Left Catholicism,” which is more strictly anti-capitalist than Christian Democracy, is quite clear, interesting and very informative. Lodewijk Winkeler offers a similar essay on Dutch Catholic intellectuals as showing appreciation of some secular ideas in the years before Vatican II. Liliane Voyé has written a very perceptive and stimulating study of how some Catholics today, feeling alienation and frustration, are attracted to novel ideas like reincarnation. American scholar Jon Butler writes a very perceptive summary of the “American Exception,” explaining how the Christian religion is so much more vigorous in the United States than in Europe.

In part 2, five essays describe “Some Basic Issues in Postwar Church Life.” The first of these, one of the best studies in the volume, is Johan Verstraeten's “Fundamental Changes in the Social Ethic of the Christian Churches.” He shows more understanding of churches, especially the Roman Catholic, than some of the other authors here, including knowledge of papal and council documents, in discussing Catholic developments since Vatican II. Another very good study is that of Anne-Marie Korte on “The Affirmation of Women's Religious Leadership: A ‘Modern’ Issue?” In this very interesting and theologically informed essay she shows that women already perform many significant functions of clergy, even in the Catholic Church, especially in the Netherlands. Hans Ucko, in “Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue,” focuses mainly on the World Council of Churches and its achievements of many years, and then dwells at length on its new challenges today in relating to non-Christian religions.

The third and final part consists of four articles, three of them in French, on the “Impact and Reception of Vatican II.” All four are of high quality. Philippe Chenaux discusses the reception of the council in the Roman Curia, noting that the Curia (Vatican) did take some measures that they seem to have thought were implementing changes called for by the Council, though they did not really do very much. Chenaux notes the good intentions of Paul VI. Jan Grootaers, in a good scholarly study on “Collegialité et Primauté dans l'application de Vatican II,” relates how collegiality really was downgraded in Rome in the years after the council, carefully citing numerous texts such as John Paul II's Apostolos Suos of 1998. André Birmelé contributes a fine essay on Protestant perceptions of some good developments in the Catholic Church stemming from the Council and voices very understandable disquiet about Cardinal Ratzinger's rather disparaging comments about Protestant churches in a document of the year 2000. Finally, Joachim Schmiedl offers a nuanced and informed article on the impact on Catholic religious orders of the changes brought about by the council.

This volume as a whole, though none of the articles says anything very novel, is a good contribution of European scholars to our understanding of current developments and problems of the Christian religion. The volume does not have an index, but does have a very good bibliography of forty double-columned pages.