A Privileged Moment: Dialogue in the Language of the Second Vatican Council 1962–1965 by Ann Michele Nolan (review)

shape and project a public persona and to express his personal and social moral philosophy. His letters are indeed full of aphorisms. The letters also allow us to trace his slow conversion from conciliarist to neutralist to papalist, a transformation dictated not by crass opportunism, but by his concern for the unity and harmony of Christendom and by his search for the institution or person that could provide superior judgment in practical matters. This progressive discernment led him to embrace first the council, then the emperor, and finally the pope. This book will be of use to anyone interested in the Renaissance papacy , in the conciliarist controversy, and humanism. The editors have made available to English readers an important collection of letters, most of which are here translated for the first time. This allows the reader to have direct access to the youthful Piccolomini and not be restricted to the later account in his Commentaries that were translated by Florence Gragg (1936–1957) and more recently by Margaret Meserve and Marcello Simonetta (2003– ). The letters provide us a more accurate picture of his developing and fascinating career. Nelson H. Minnich The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. A PRIVILEGED MOMENT: DIALOGUE IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL 1962–1965 by Ann Michele Nolan. European University Studies. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. Pp. XXI–276. This doctoral dissertation was inspired by the work of John W. O’Malley, S.J. on the rhetorical style of the documents of The Second Vatican Council. Nolan’s central argument is that two Latin words, colloquium and dialogus, have often been translated in English as dialogue without giving sufficient attention to the difference between these two Latin terms and their usage in the authoritative Latin text. Chapter I introduces the problematic posed by the contrasting theologies of the conciliar bishops and related ambiguities in the documents. Chapter II provides a context for the council by reviewing selected modern philosophical and theological currents. Chapter III discusses facets of the history of the council. Chapter IV explores the interpretation of the book reviews 241 242 the jurist council as treated by Hermann Joseph Pottmeyer, Walter Kasper, and especially John O’Malley. Chapter V analyzes various approaches to dialogue and dialectic in the background at the council: from Plato andAristotle down to the influential work of Martin Buber. The chapter culminates in an analysis of Paul VI’s 1964 encyclical Ecclesiam suam, which features the importance of “dialogue” using the term colloquium, never dialogus. Chapter VI is the centerpiece of her argument. Nolan closely analyzes the use of the term “dialogue,” both colloquium and dialogus, in the original Latin texts and the English translations. She argues that dialogus in the documents refers to “official talk,” primarily a formal, official mode of discourse that can be employed in ecumenical relations between competent experts discussing doctrinal and practical differences or as a method of missionary activity with non-believers (atheists) and “the modern world” in order to communicate the truth of the gospel. Colloquium connotes in the documents interpersonal communication whether in the Church (between bishops, priests, and lay persons) or with those outside (non-Christian believers). The translators and the commentators do not distinguish the two words; and “all show a tendency toward an interpretation of the Council in their willingness to translate the less formal more spontaneous colloquium as ‘dialogue’ ” (222). This suggests the growing influence of Buber’s approach to dialogue in the reception of the texts. Moreover, in the documents interpersonal colloquium does not presuppose equality and mutuality in speaking, listening, and learning but operates with strict hierarchical and clerical assumptions thereby making a real dialogical partnership difficult, if not impossible. The final chapter explores how the teachings of the council, especially the technical meanings of dialogus and colloquium, were interpreted, received, and developed afterwards. This valuable study shows how and why the Catholic Church has struggled with the ambiguity about “dialogue” in the conciliar texts during the post-conciliar period. The semantic issues featured in this work have received attention in more recent studies. Nolan is well served by using O’Malley’s rhetorical mode of analysis, but his work also commends casting...