Bernard Häring is one of the foremost theologians of the Catholic Church. His theological skirmishes and battles over the last several years are a record not only of a personal journey but of the contemporary vicissitudes and transformation of the oldest continuous institution in the Western world.

Häring's difficulties with the Holy Office, the Vatican's once-powerful heresy-hunting tribunal, began during the first sessions of the ante-preparatory commissions for Vatican Council II. Employed as a professional theologian by the German bjshops, he ran into immediate difficulty with Cardinal Ottaviani and Archbishop Pietro Parente, the two top men at the Holy Office, and with the violent-tempered Franciscan, Ennenegildo Lio, Defender of the Bond, whose persistent efforts to smother any suggestion of progress in the documents to be debated at the Council were constantly and successfully challenged by Häring.