Any attempt to evaluate all the accomplishments of the Second Vatican Council's first session would be not only presumptuous but also premature. Some things, however, may be profitably noted.

Some day you would like to write a book about Catholicism in America as you have known it. You keep putting it off, and the relentless years keep passing. The book will probably never be written.

Let us not chide Cardinal Newman for writing in the middle of the 19th century instead of the middle of the 20th. But also let us not assume that what he had to say then had absolute and unconditioned validity for all such institutions in all times.

From 1957, a classic essay by Flannery O'Connor, who died 50 years ago on Sunday.

The novelist had a driving conviction that ran roughshod over our weak-kneed answers.

An essay by Dorothy Day from April 19, 1933.