Good counsel.

By the time I was born, the Second Vatican Council was already eight years past and its reforms well underway. With my first J church memory being the local university parish--think guitars and groovy Paulist priests--it should come as no surprise that my liturgical golden oldies come from the St. Louis Jesuits' Glory and Praise. In the slower-to-change parish my family eventually settled in, however, I ended up getting the best of both worlds: some of that ol' time religion from our 60-something pastor along with puppet homilies at the grammar school from our warm-and-fuzzy, shaggy-headed associates.

But if there was one lesson I learned in those years, it was that Vatican II was good for the church. I saw the council's gifts in my dad's Baptism at the Easter Vigil when I was in third grade, in my parents' service as lectors at Sunday Mass, and in the Catholic teachers and youth ministers who taught me that my Baptism was not just a supernatural cleanser but an initiation into the People of God, a people who, in the words of Vatican II, share "the joy and hope, the grief and anguish" of the world.

With 40 years since the council's end this December, the time seems ripe for a look back, and this issue of U.S. CATHOLIC is largely devoted to just that. Father Paul Boudreau reviews the sea change Vatican II ushered in ("Midlife crisis? Vatican II turns 40," pages 12-17), while editor Tara Dix offers a Gen-X view when she asks in The Examined Life if we haven't gotten stuck in the '60s when it comes to the council ("Vatican II, Schmatican II," page 50). Finally, our readers tell us how they rate the council's reforms in this month's Reader Survey ("Vatican too little, but not too late?" pages 18-22).

Still, it's hard to talk about the council's hopeful vision for a renewed church without acknowledging some recent steps backward. As the sex abuse scandal continues to put in sharp relief the reform that still lies before us, many have wondered if Vatican II's vision has been forgotten. Reports from the Vatican and statements by certain U.S. bishops suggesting a ban on gays in seminaries led many to wonder if gay priests--and other lesbian and gay Catholics serving as musicians, teachers, parish ministers, and, yes, Catholic magazine editors--were going to take a fall for the failures of bishops and abusers. While recent reports have suggested milder restrictions on gay seminarians, the slanderous equation of homosexuality with sexual abuse remains a painful and unjust burden for many in the church.

The question always remains, of course: What now? Vatican II, I think, still offers us both joy and hope, a vision of a church big enough for all of us, where all are free to embrace their Baptism and serve as they feel called, and where together, despite our failings, we can become more and more a sign of God's reign.