A new book is taking a fresh look at one of the landmark events of the 20th century, and the New York Times’ Peter Steinfels offers a preview:

Was the Second Vatican Council, as the cultural historian the Rev. John W. O’Malley proposes, “quite possibly the biggest meeting in the history of the world”?

Obviously the council did not draw the sheer numbers who gather for the Olympics or political conventions. But consider that for two and a half months each fall from 1962 to 1965, 2,400 Roman Catholic bishops from 116 nations, assisted by thousands of aides, theological advisers and other Christian and non-Christian leaders, met in St. Peter’s Basilica to debate, revise and vote on documents that would significantly change the life of a two-millennia-old institution now claiming more than a billion adherents worldwide. Whether or not Vatican II was the world’s biggest meeting, it certainly had huge consequences. Catholics the world over began to worship actively in their own languages with a new emphasis on Scripture. The church affirmed religious liberty, condemned anti-Semitism, highlighted common ground with other Christians, recognized godly elements in non-Christian religions and generally abandoned a centuries-old embattled stance toward modernity for one emphasizing dialogue and shared struggles for human dignity.

And whether or not the council was the world’s biggest meeting, Father O’Malley has written one of the best and most needed books about it, “What Happened at Vatican II” (Belknap/Harvard University, 2008).

Because nothing in present-day Catholicism can be discussed without reference to Vatican II, a fierce debate rages about its interpretation. It is a debate with implications for Judaism, Islam, science and secular politics as well as other Christians.

The accusation that Vatican II has been misinterpreted — and that this misinterpretation is responsible for most of Catholicism’s current ills — has gained semiofficial status in Rome. The fault lies, it is said, with a “hermeneutic of discontinuity” — a phrase of Pope Benedict XVI. By focusing on conflicts surfacing during deliberations while ignoring the affirmations of continuity in the final documents, this interpretation presents Vatican II as a rupture with the Catholic past and substitutes a vague “spirit of the council” for those texts on which the council voted.

It is true that Vatican II neither repudiated nor added any central Catholic dogmas: The creed proclaimed today at Sunday Mass in every American parish is the same as before the council — except it is said now by the whole congregation in English (or Spanish, or dozens of other languages) rather than by the priest alone in Latin.

It is also true that the “spirit of the council” has been promiscuously invoked by people championing changes that never entered the thinking of the assembled bishops. Similarly, repetition of Pope John XXIII’s byword for the council’s task — “aggiornamento,” or “updating” — has obscured that many changes undertaken by the council were intended to recover ancient truths and practices rather than adjust to contemporary conditions.

But Father O’Malley’s superb history demonstrates why any effort to shuffle the cards of continuity and discontinuity so as to minimize the profound reorientation wrought by the council borders on the ludicrous.

Only with the council did the church break out of what he sketches as a “long 19th century” of traumatic combat, with the French Revolution and the threatening political and ideological world that followed.

Such an event was by no means foreordained when, 50 years ago next month, Pope John XXIII sprung the idea of a council. Even in October 1962, when the world’s bishops finally assembled, they might very well have rubberstamped a series of routine texts prepared under Vatican oversight and gone home.

How the bishops took charge of the agenda and radically reshaped the outcome is a story of bold confrontations, clashing personalities and behind-the-scenes maneuvers, all recounted in colorful detail by Father O’Malley. A majority of bishops seemed primed for change, yet the path to final agreement was strewn with obstacles, whether from the stalwarts of the status quo or papal interventions. This is a tale with plenty of cliffhangers.

Take a look at the link for more.