Mary on the Eve of the Second Vatican Council

The Blessed Virgin Mary is uniquely associated with Catholicism, and the century preceding the Second Vatican Council was arguably the most fertile era for Catholic Marian studies. In 1964, Pope Paul VI published the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, or Lumen Gentium (LG), the eighth chapter of which presents the most comprehensive magisterial teaching on the Blessed Virgin Mary. As part of its Marian Initiative, the Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame invited scholars to a conference held at Notre Dame in October 2013 to reflect the rich Marian legacy on the eve of the Second Vatican Council.

This volume, which is dedicated to Fr. Edward D. O’Connor, C.S.C., contains essays highlighting the historical development of Mariology during the “Marian century,” by major ressourcement theologians, whose reflections decisively influenced the development of the Lumen Gentium, as well as Marian modalities emerging in the Catholic Church of that time. It concludes with a pastoral reflection and impulse to recover the importance of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the nexus mysteriorum (Benedict XVI), uniting within herself and re-echoing the greatest mysteries and teachings of the faith (Cf. LG, 65). The essays unanimously stress that the Blessed Virgin Mary is not merely a peripheral figure in Christian faith and in the panorama of theology. More than fifty years after Lumen Gentium, students of theology as well as Marian devotees take their bearings from this document in order to promote the person of Mary and the study of Mariology, as well as grow in authentic Marian piety. This book will have great appeal to students and scholars of Catholic theology and history, particularly those interested in Mariology.

Contributors: Ann W. Astell, Peter Casarella, John C. Cavadini, Lawrence S. Cunningham, Brian Daley, S.J., Peter J. Fritz, Kevin Grove, CSC, Msgr. Michael Heintz, Matthew Levering, Danielle M. Peters, James H. Phalan, CSC, Johann G. Roten, S.M., Christopher Ruddy, Troy Stefano, and Thomas A. Thompson, S.M.

John Cavadini is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and editor of Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI (2013) and Who Do You Say That I Am? (2004), both published by University of Notre Dame Press.

Danielle M. Peters is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame.