s a theologian of the Church, Journet is best known for his monumental L’Eglise du Verbe Incarne which Congar called the most profound ecclesiological work of the first half of the twentieth century.
The date commonly given for the founding of Opus Dei is
October 2, 1928. On that day, while praying in a Vincentian
residence in the northern outskirts of Madrid, the twenty-six
year old Father ]osemaria Escriva had an inspiration that would
lead to the establishment of what is now called Opus Dei.
The painter Edouard Manet once said, “Concision in art is a
necessity as well as an elegance; a man who is concise makes
you think, a verbose man bores you.” 1 In this article we aim to
give a concise account of how the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception, and she who was the Immaculate Conception,
have been made visible in works of Western art.
This is the doctoral thesis I wrote 1998-2001 under the direction of Father Luis Ladaria (now Cardinal) at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
If one were to ask a typical American Catholic who lived in the United States between 1965 and 1980 what the Second Vatican Council had accomplished, one of the most common re-sponses would surely be “the Council changed the liturgy.”