Massimo Faggioli, University of St. Thomas

Dr. Massimo Faggioli
[email protected]
ACCU
Washington, D.C.
February 2, 2014
Gaudium et Spes and Its Meaning for A Learning Church
History of GS and its reception and role in Catholic theology today
Key role of GS in Catholic higher education, especially in the US
1. The “Culture” of Gaudium et Spes
A new core curriculum for the Catholic Church, starting a process of learning
1.1. “Signs of the times”, Culture, and Sciences
GS 4: “To carry out such a task, the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing
the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel […]Today, the
human race is involved in a new stage of history. Profound and rapid changes are spreading
by degrees around the whole world. […]”
GS 5: “Today’s spiritual agitation and the changing conditions of life are part of a
broader and deeper revolution. As a result of the latter, intellectual formation is ever
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increasingly based on the mathematical and natural sciences and on those dealing with
man himself, while in the practical order the technology which stems from these sciences
takes on mounting importance. This scientific spirit has a new kind of impact on the cultural
sphere and on modes of thought. Technology is now transforming the face of the earth,
and is already trying to master outer space. To a certain extent, the human intellect is also
broadening its dominion over time: over the past by means of historical knowledge; over the
future, by the art of projecting and by planning. Advances in biology, psychology, and the
social sciences not only bring men hope of improved self-knowledge; in conjunction with
technical methods, they are helping men exert direct influence on the life of social groups
[…]”.
Beyond the Greek-Latin paradigm, for a new Catholicity
New subjects: women, young people, poor, and cultures
Church and poor also culturally: sobriety, austerity, simplicity, agility of the mind,
intellectual humility and chastity, and cultural magnanimity and generosity
1.2. Faith and history, Catholicism and history
Catholicism and globalization: culturally, geographically, and historically. Karl
Rahner and the “world Church”
Global responsibility of the Church towards the world and humankind: a new way of
articulating the global-universal claim of the Catholic Church
Humanization is part of going to the Kingdom
2
“Sozialisatio” of the human person: is it also a “personalisatio”? (GS 6). Modernity is
carried culturally on the shoulders of Christianity, but it is also a “runaway son” (entlaufener
Sohn, in the words of Karl Rahner) 1
1. Contextuality and pluralism
2. Inculturation
3. “Present time as locus theologicus” (Gegenwart as locus theologicus) 2:
a)
the Church looks into history and present time to understand more
deeply the Gospel;
b)
the Church can announce the Gospel only in the language and
context of today;
c)
ability of the Gospel to sustain the encounter with the present times;
d)
the Church needs the help of experts to understand the world of
today;
e)
the whole people of God has the task (but especially Church leaders
and theologians) to listen and make a judgment on the signs of the
times.
Theology of the “signs of the times” as modus procedendi: “the issue of the signs of
the times is not a methodological one, but it affects the fundamental question regarding the
1
Ingeborg Gabriel, “Christliche Sozialethik in der Moderne. Der kaum rezepierte Ansatz von
Gaudium et Spes”, in Erinnerung an die Zukunft. Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, ed. JanHeiner Tück (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2012) p. 617.
2
Regina Polak – Martin Jäggle, “Gegenwart as locus theologicus. Für eine
migrationssensible Theologie im Anschluss an Gaudium et Spes”, in Erinnerung an die
Zukunft. Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, ed. Jan-Heiner Tück (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2012)
p. 670-698.
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relationship between the kingdom of God and history”. 3 GS does not offer solutions, but a
modus procedendi for the Church facing the future.
Rejection of the 19th-century “naturally conservative option” for the Catholic Church
facing modernity: the Catholic “long march” toward modern culture was a long one, and until
recently Catholics were not even supposed to have cultures (plural: political, social culture).
After the shock of the revolutions of the late 18th and mid-19th centuries, modernity was seen
as the fruit of the separation of the world from the moral guidance of the only true Church.
Catholics were allowed to entertain commerce with the modern world only de facto.
“Hermeneutics of acknowledgment” (Hermeneutik der Anerkennung): “the goal of
this hermeneutic of acknowledgment is not the exclusion of others, but the inclusion as much
as possible […] Acknowledgment does not mean rejection in principle, nor uncritical
acceptance […] This acknowledgment builds the foundation of the unity of which the Church
is ‘sacrament’ and ‘instrument’ (LG 1)”. 4
End of a Catholic “subculture”: the end of a “Nebeneinander der Kulturen” 5 and the
beginning of a multicultural world.
Vatican II operates a change of horizons looking at the relationship between Catholic
culture and culture as such: some have seen in it a “Kulturoptimismus” – a cultural optimism
of Vatican II. 6
3
Christoph Theobald, La réception du concile Vatican II. I. Accéder à la source (Paris: Cerf,
2009) p. 779.
4
Ingeborg Gabriel, “Christliche Sozialethik in der Moderne. Der kaum rezepierte Ansatz von
Gaudium et Spes”, in Erinnerung an die Zukunft. Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, ed. JanHeiner Tück (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2012) p. 611-612.
5
Ingeborg Gabriel, “Christliche Sozialethik in der Moderne. Der kaum rezepierte Ansatz von
Gaudium et Spes”, in Erinnerung an die Zukunft. Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, ed. JanHeiner Tück (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2012) p. 617.
6
See Albert Gerhards, “Gipfelpunkt und Quelle. Intention und Rezeption der
Liturgiekonstitution Sacrosanctum Concilium,” in Erinnerung an die Zukunft: Das Zweite
Vatikanische Konzil, eds. Jan-Heiner Tück (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2012), 145.
4
Catholic culture enters the “age of criticism/critical approach” (“Zeitalter der Kritik”:
see Kant, Kritik der reiner Vernunft): “in this age of critical approach it emerges the need to
lay new foundations for the moral-political but also religious horizon of meaning
[Sinnhorizonte] in the context of the modern sense of history marked by a autonomy and by
the experience of rationality”. 7
2. The Open Issues of “Gaudium et Spes” and the Post-Vatican II Period
The interpretation of the relationship between modern culture and Christian
anthropology is at the center of the divide between the two tendencies. The “neoAugustinian” tendency on one side, and the “neo-Thomist” school on the other, have been
described recently in relation to the different anthropologies necessary for a correct
“hermeneutics of the authors” of Vatican II. In the words of Ormond Rush, “the Augustinian
school is wanting to set church and world in a situation of rivals; it sees the world in a
negative light; evil and sin so abound in the world that the church should be always
suspicious and distrustful of it. Any openness to the world would be ‘naïve optimism’”. 8
7
Hans Schelkshorn, “Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil als kirchlicher Diskurs über die
Moderne. Ein philosophischer Beitrag zur Frage nach der Hermeneutik des Konzils”, in
Erinnerung an die Zukunft. Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, ed. Jan-Heiner Tück (Freiburg
i.B.: Herder, 2012) p. 71.
8
See Ormond Rush, Still Interpreting Vatican II: Some Hermeneutical Principles (New
York/Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 15.
5
In Avery Dulles’ description, the neo-Augustinian tendency views the Church as far
removed from a sinful world: “the Church as an island of grace in a world given over to
sin.” 9
In this moment in time in our culture, the encounter between “radical orthodoxy” and
a new form of “Catholic communitarianism”, especially in the Anglosaxon world, represents
a very delicate moment – not just for the survival of the legacy of Gaudium et Spes, but for
the survival of a Catholicism able to interact with modern social imaginary.
“Common good” and “universal common good” are extremely difficult cases to make
in absentia of an ecclesial and magisterial reception of Gaudium et Spes. The crisis of the
idea of “common good” in some Catholic quarters is a product of the cynicism against
Vatican II and of the dismissal of Gaudium et Spes in particular.
There is here a theological-political central element in the culture of GS that has vast
consequences for the Church and for the idea of Catholic education today: Vatican II (and GS
especially) receives and accepts elements from a “modern cosmopolitan culture” that come
from the Christian tradition but also from the secular modernity, such as the idea of an
international legal order and the ethos of global solidarity. In light of the signs of our times,
today at the beginning of the 21st century, “this has lost nothing of its relevance […] the
moral and political universal perspectives of Vatican II come from a creative process of
interpretation that is not closed and finished”. 10
9
Avery Dulles, “The Reception of Vatican II at the Extraordinary Synod of 1985,” in The
Reception of Vatican II, ed Giuseppe Alberigo, Jean-Pierre Jossua, and Joseph A.
Komonchak, eds., (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1987), 353.
10
Hans Schelkshorn, “Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil als kirchlicher Diskurs über die
Moderne. Ein philosophischer Beitrag zur Frage nach der Hermeneutik des Konzils”, in
Erinnerung an die Zukunft. Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, ed. Jan-Heiner Tück (Freiburg
i.B.: Herder, 2012) p. 81.
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3. Catholic Higher Education and Vatican II in Light of “Gaudium et Spes”
“The theological framework ‘creation – sin – redemption’ supports in GS on the one
hand the legitimacy of an ambitious cosmopolitan ethos, on the other hand a questionable
superelevation of the ambivalences of modern science and technology”: 11 all this means for
us a new interpretive process about the role of science and technology as “sub-systems” for
which GS provides only a general theological picture “creation – sin – redemption”.
There is a larger picture here about the ambivalence of modernity (GS 4-9) that goes
hand in hand with the fundamental solidarity “with humankind and its history”. In this sense,
GS offers a clear liberationist perspective and a progressive idea of the role of the Church
(but without explaining the relationship between this progress and the Kingdom of God).
GS marks the beginning of a “world Church”: this puts to an end the rhetoric of
“resentment” towards the modern world. 12 In this there is a transition from a Catholic
“Utopia” (a non-place) to a Church in “Heterotopia”. Using Michel Foucault’s terminology,
Hans-Joachim Sander sees in the Church of GS a heterotopia, like a ship in the modern world
creating a different, other (but not parallel) space. 13
11
Hans Schelkshorn, “Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil als kirchlicher Diskurs über die
Moderne. Ein philosophischer Beitrag zur Frage nach der Hermeneutik des Konzils”, in
Erinnerung an die Zukunft. Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil, ed. Jan-Heiner Tück (Freiburg
i.B.: Herder, 2012) p. 83.
12
See Hans-Joachim Sander, “Theologischer Kommentar zur Pastoralkonstitution über die
Kirche in der Welt von heute,” in Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten
Vatikanischen Konzil, eds. Bernd Jochen Hilberath – Peter Hünermann, vol. 5 (Freiburg i.B:
Herder, 2005), p. 865 (whole commentary pp. 581-886).
13
Hans-Joachim Sander, “Theologischer Kommentar zur Pastoralkonstitution über die
Kirche in der Welt von heute,” in Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten
Vatikanischen Konzil, eds. Bernd Jochen Hilberath – Peter Hünermann, vol. 5 (Freiburg i.B:
Herder, 2005), p. 867-868 (whole commentary pp. 581-886).
7
The theological and ecclesial context of post-Vatican II and modernity: 1)
modernization; 2) change in tradition; 3) communicative dissent (Modernisierung,
Traditionsabbruch, kommunikativer Dissens als Kontext). 14
Cultural-educational issues emerging from the actualized reading of GS:
1. The place that the “liberal arts” have in this “modern cosmopolitan culture” of
the Church of Vatican II
a. in order to be able to judge “the signs of the times”
b. Common good and “core knowledge” (core curriculum)
2. Multiculturalism, Catholic culture, and Catholic citizenship. Challenges of
neo-communitarian trends also within Catholicism
a. Being a good member of the Church and of the social-political
community
b. Risk of sectarianism for Catholic identity? Pope Francis and the
peripheries
14
See Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, Kirche in der ambivalenten Moderne (Freiburg i.B.: Herder,
2012), pp. 170-178.
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