This book is the first major study to analyse the word ‘dialogue’ in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. ‘Dialogue’ actually translates two different Latin words, and , which do not mean the same thing. After a clear explanation of the important distinction between the dialectic of Thomism, where dialogue leads to an end-point, and the modern meaning of dialogue as an open-ended process between equal partners, the book argues that these dissimilar concepts became blurred in the documents of the Council. A careful analysis of the interpretation of this word in a comparison across five major English translations of the documents demonstrates how the rhetorical power of dialogue was manipulated depending on how it was translated. A provocative assessment of the significance of the different contexts in which each word was used offers a new insight: the existence of a two-tier system of dialogue depending on who was the Church’s partner in dialogue. Nonetheless the conclusion illuminates a common subtext to all uses of dialogue and illustrates how it is possible to receive Vatican II in the twenty-first century in an authentically dialogical way.weiterlesen