The Second Vatican Council (Book Review)
The Second Vatican Council: An Unwritten Story is a total vindication of the traditionalist critique of the Council and its relation to the current state of the Church.
Using only documentary evidence - including records of Council proceedings, texts of interventions by the Council Fathers, personal correspondences of John XXIII and Paul VI, and personal diaries of the periti - Dr. Mattei reconstructs the tumultuous days leading up the Council and thoroughly documents the thoughts and aspirations of the Council Fathers as the event that was Vatican II exploded on the world stage.
This is where Mattei's book has its greatest value: in revealing the intentions, thoughts and opinions of the participants in the Council.
Reading the words of the actual Fathers on this subject demolishes a lot of canards about the Council. For example, it is often asserted that the ambiguity of the Council documents is an accusation made by Traditionalists who seek to blame the Council itself for the Church's problems; however, the comments of the Council Fathers themselves reveal that even while the Council was in session, ambiguity and vagueness were serious concerns for many of the participants in the Council (see here).
While post-Conciliar critiques have focused on the liturgy, there was really not that much debate at the Council about liturgical matters.
The most controversial subject was undoubtedly the Council's teaching on "collegiality", which many conservative bishops believed was in flat contradiction of Vatican I and was plainly invented in 1962.
More debate was held on this question than any other, with the concept of religious liberty as expounded in Dignitatis Humanae coming in second (a tidbit I found awesome was that Karol Wojtyla found grave problems with the religious liberty schema and thought the concept of truth found therein was too disassociated with Christ, who is truth).
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