Excerpt from The Duke Divinity School Review, Vol. 29: Winter 1964 With what measure of satisfaction the Council fathers turned homeward a second time can only be a matter of surmise. It is fairly plain that all were weary, chastened, and yet hopeful. In two sessions, totaling seventy-nine General Congregations, only two schema of the originally prepared seventeen had been perfected. During the second session three others of central importance had been extensively debated. The fathers had listened to 596 speeches on the part of colleagues. They had heard approximately 24 reports from Council commissioners, charged with preparation, emendation, and re-drafting of decrees. Collectively, they had written thousands of proposed emendations for schemata which in turn had to be reviewed, assessed, and incorporated or rejected by the appropriate drafting committees. Eighty-nine secret ballots had been taken respecting the substance of decrees, not counting nine votes of cloture on further discussion. Each morning at 8 30 the Council fathers had celebrated mass. They had prayed together, endured together, hoped together, jostled one another in the press of the coffee bars - Bar-rabbas or Bar Jonah. N ow they would go home, some together, others singly to remote corners of the earth. They would resume their essential role in far flung places as pastors of pastors and shepherds of souls. And most, I think, would face with renewed spirit and devotion the varying exigencies which the Catholic Church confronts in widely differing parts of the world. There is no doubt in my mind that the devout and compassionate concern of John XXIII for the inner renewal of the Catholic Church has both inspired and released a latent and ripening response on the part of the Church's episcopal leadership, and that from widely differing areas of the world. Not unanimously but predominantly the mood of the Council is one of self-searching. Pastoral concern for the salvation of mankind seems to have replaced dogmatic arrogance or fearful self-defensiveness. There is a leaven of openness at work in the midst and a growing and devout concern for the recovery of essential Christian community, first among brethren within the Church and, secondly, with brethren outside the Catholic fold. It is this leaven and this predominant but not uncontested mood and spirit which, I believe, promises to make the Second Vatican Council, in the end, a fruitful as well as fateful milestone in the history of ecu menical Christianity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.