I've had this book since 2005 and only just this year did I read it. It is interesting to read a book that was written well after the facts presented occurred, and then from the perspective of twenty years after that. When written, godless Communism had fallen. But, now, after 20 more years, totalitarian regimes have replaced Communism in many places.
While the other three Constitutions of Vatican Council II were well received as representing the views of the vast majority of bishops, they were not totally accepted. Indeed, a hard-core was opposed even to the Council itself. As the years have passed, there has been considerable erosion. But Gaudium et Spes was supposed to have been the crown jewel of the Council, and it turned out to have been too timid. This could not have been foreseen but it had in its timidity the seeds of its own undoing. At best, one might imagine what might have been.
The fate of Inter mirifica has been even worse. It was written and approved against a backdrop of great uncertainty about what to say and, worse, how to say it. ( )