February 10, 2014
Half a century after the Second Vatican Council, we “are at the beginning of the rediscovery of the theological meaning of this reform and of its potential for the future of the Church,” Dr. Massimo Faggioli said in delivering the 2014 Hecker lecture. Titled “The Social Message of the Liturgical Reform of Vatican II,” the talk was delivered Jan. 31 to a crowd of almost 200 people gathered at St. Paul’s College in Washington, D.C.
“In light of this changed situation in this extraordinary year 2013, it is appropriate to focus once again on the liturgical reform, but with a less defensive approach and a more future-oriented view,” said Dr. Faggioli, assistant professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. Minn. Among his many works in English and Italian, he has authored, “Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning” (Paulist Press, 2012) and “True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium” (Liturgical Press, 2012). Dr. Fagioli also has a forthcoming book on Pope Francis and the Conclave of 2013 due out this spring.
The Hecker Lecture – named for Paulist Fathers founder Father Isaac T. Hecker – has been a tradition in the Washington theological community since 1975. Held on a date near the Jan. 25 Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, a guest speaker is invited each year to expound or reflect upon one of the core aspects of Paulist spirituality: evangelization, ecumenism, interfaith relations and reconciliation.
Father Paul Huesing, CSP, director of formation for the Paulist Fathers and rector of St. Paul’s College, welcomed those gathered, and said they might be wondering what an oration on Vatican II has to do with Paulist spirituality.
“The Paulist Fathers have always felt Vatican II captured our spirit,” he explained.
In his address, Dr. Faggioli stated that, “From a theological point of view, it is today very difficult and impervious to utilize the pre-Vatican II liturgical movement idea on society because the whole ecclesiological context of Vatican II is lacking and that gives the idea of the liturgy and its social culture a different taste. We must restore the link between liturgical reform and social justice, but this is viable only in the context of Vatican II.”
Another option, more in line – I think – with the intention and the mind of the bishops and theologians of Vatican II,” Dr. Faggioli continued, “is a reading of the liturgical reform and its social message in the context of a “public Catholicism” that does not advocate for a flight from the established forms of presence of the Church and of Catholicism in the social and political debate.
“In a way, in Catholic theology today (especially in the U.S.), we are still facing the alternative between ‘sacramental radicals’ on one side, inclined to an alternate culture and a strategy of separation, and on the other side an idea of ‘Catholic social action,’ or the social ideas of ‘New Deal Catholics.’ This issue is at the heart of the future of the public face of Catholicism, with enormous repercussions for the very essence of Catholicism. The recent ‘liturgy wars’ are part and manifestations of this dilemma.”