This article offers a critical discussion of Ian Ker's book Newman on Vatican II (2014).

We are only now, after more than half a century, uncovering the real significance of what the Second Vatican Council means for the Church. The time lapse in reception has many factors not least that distinctive shifts in emphasis take far longer be appreciated in a real way that practical changes which, for good or ill, can be accomplished by fiat. So that the reception, fast or slow, of the Council is not a uniform process. One area where very little change has been seen is in relation to ‘adapting the Liturgy to the Temperament and Traditions of Peoples’. There was a call at the Council for a deliberate dialogical relationship between the liturgy and culture, and it is this relationship, rather than any particular modelling of it, that is the focus of this paper.

The Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium (1963), envisaged an extensive episcopal liturgical governance role. With the local episcopal conference, the bishop was to regulate the use of language in the liturgy and prepare and translate liturgical prayers into ‘living languages’ and oversee the implementation of liturgical change. These were key conciliar expressions of episcopal governance, which represented a deeper theology of the episcopacy. In subsequent years, the Council's reform agenda was challenged and resisted by the Roman Curia and others. The Curia aimed at protecting its pre-Vatican II position of governance and was not inclined to receive the Council's collegial and synodal ecclesiology. The most recent development, Magnum principium (2017), may be viewed as an opportunity yet to be grasped.