Between Sacrament and Ritual tracks Schillebeeckx's sacramental theology from his influential work in the 1960s, through to his last work in 2000 and the archived papers for his planned new book on the topic, never completed before his death.

Using original archival research and Schillebeeckx's previously untranslated work, Tom Mclean highlights the continued relevance of this prominent theologian.

In Schillebeeckx's unfinished work, he highlighted the importance of ritual studies to understanding the sacraments, especially the category of performance. McLean boldly takes up those threads and puts them in dialogue with contemporary approaches to ritual and performance. He also takes care to attend to critiques by decolonial, womanist and marginalized voices to propose a model for how the sacraments can still be understood to work today.