This book assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. Opening with a contribution from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, it next explores the impact, relevance, and promise of the Declaration Nostra Aetate before turning to consider how Vatican II in general has influenced interfaith dialogue and the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the postconciliar decades, as well as the contribution (...) of particular past and present thinkers to the formation of current interreligious and comparative theological methods. Additionally, chapters consider interreligious dialogue vis-à-vis theological anthropology in conciliar documents; openness to the spiritual practices of other faith traditions as a way of encouraging positive interreligious encounter; the role of lay and new ecclesial movements in interreligious dialogue; and the development of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Finally, it includes a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican’s II’s opening to particular faiths such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. (shrink)

Lumen Gentium establishes the relationship «Church - Communion - Mission». In fact the recognition of the connections among these three terms refers back to an understanding of the Church as mystery, set in relation to the trinitarian, christological and anthropological mystery. In the light of Lumen Gentium, the affirmation of the understanding of the Church as mystery cannot be separated from the assertion of the sacramentality of the Church. The focus on the contents of the dogmatic Constitution on the Church (...) and on the historical amd cultural context of the present day allows an understanding of the relationship between Church, communion and mission against the background of the Church understood as the «sacrament of the Kingdom of God». Lumen Gentium does not directly correlate the notions of «sacrament» and of «Kingdom of God», but in its content, it clearly suggests the possibility of such a correlation. (shrink)