Sources of Renewal: The Implementation of the Second Vatican Council

Sources of Renewalis Karol Wojtyła’s intense study of the Second Vatican Council’s documents and his ambitious vision of how the Council might best be implemented. Initially published in 1972 and revised after Wojtyła’s election to the papacy, Sources of Renewal lays out the foundation for how Wojtyła, first as Archbishop of Kraków and then as Pope, sought to translate the constitutions, decrees and declarations of Vatican II into the faith and life of the Church. This translation and implementation, he comments, ought to be considered as “the response of faith to the word of God as it proceeded from that Council.… The teaching of Vatican II stands revealed as the image, proper to our time, of the Church’s self-realization.” To this end, Sources of Renewal quotes copiously and studies closely the documents of Vatican II with the intent of answering firmly those questions which press upon all the baptized: What does it mean to be a Christian, to live in the Church and in the modern world?

An absolutely essential book for assessing, interpreting, and understanding the documents of Vatican II, Sources of Renewal also offers a glimpse into the mind of the man who was Pope in the immediate wake of the Council and presents his view of the Council and its implications for the Church as the “sacrament of salvation.”