Booklady Goes Back to School

I have always been fascinated with the great Church Councils, but the one which interests me the most is the last and – in my mind anyway – the greatest, Vatican II.

Last night I started back to school, for the first time in many a year. Depending how you look at it, it’s been three years since I took the Spiritual Classics or twenty years since I completed my master’s degree. I wonder if I still know how to ‘go to school’. I know how to conduct school, prepare for school, prepare others for school, read, study up on a subject, teach a class, help someone else learn . . . guess I’ll muddle through.

The most important part of my new venture – of course – is the books! Here are the three books I’ll be reading. Just from a quick perusal of them, they won’t be any light reading. Wonder if I’ll be doing much blogging for awhile?!

At any rate, it is a subject which interests me very much and I hope to use the knowledge gained from this class to fill out my own understanding of my Church, its role in the world and the development of its relationship with other faith traditions; how the wisdom gained at and promulgated by the council changed the tide of history for Catholics, especially my own relationship with Jesus and others; why the council seemed to result in such devastating losses of religious and faithful and point out/widen a huge difference between the right and left within the Church and finally, what did the liturgical reform mean and where are we today?
Guess I don’t want much do I?

P.S. The wonderful thing about going to school at my age is having the freedom to go for the pure joy of learning. I'm only auditing the class. That means no papers, no tests and if I don't want to take any more classes after this, I don't have to.