FOREWORD

2.The Apostolic Constitution Sapientia Christiana represented in every respect the mature fruit of the great work of reforming ecclesiastical studies initiated by the Second Vatican Council. In particular, it consolidated the progress made in this crucial area of the Church’s mission under the wise and prudent guidance of Blessed Paul VI, while at the same time heralding the contribution, in continuity with the past, which would be made by the magisterium of Saint John Paul II. As I have had occasion to note, “one of the main contributions of the Second Vatican Council was precisely seeking a way to overcome this divorce between theology and pastoral care, between faith and life. I dare say that the Council has revolutionized to some extent the status of theology – the believer’s way of doing and thinking”.[4] It is precisely in this light that Optatum Totius strongly proposes that ecclesiastical studies “be more suitably aligned and… work harmoniously towards opening more and more the minds of the students to the mystery of Christ.

For it is this mystery which affects the whole history of the human race, [and] continually influences the Church”.[5] In order to achieve this, the conciliar Decree urges joining meditation with the study of sacred Scripture, “the soul of all theology”,[6] together with assiduous and conscious participation in the sacred Liturgy, the “primary and indispensable source of the truly Christian spirit”,[7] and the systematic study of the living Tradition of the Church in dialogue with all people of our time, listening attentively to their concerns, their sufferings and their needs.[8] Consequently, Optatam Totius stresses, “pastoral concern… ought to permeate thoroughly the entire training of the students”,[9] so that they become accustomed to “transcending the limits of their own diocese, nation, or rite, and to helping the needs of the whole Church, [and] prepared in spirit to preach the Gospel everywhere”.[10] Pope Paul VI’s Evangelii Nuntiandi and Populorum Progressio, and John Paul II’s Redemptoris Hominis, issued only a month before the promulgation of the Apostolic Constitution, are milestones along the way which led from these directives of Vatican II to Sapientia Christiana. The prophetic inspiration of Pope Paul’s Apostolic Exhortation on evangelization in the modern world is forcefully echoed in the Foreword of Sapientia Christiana. There we read that “the Church’s mission of spreading the Gospel not only demands that the Good News be preached ever more widely and to ever greater numbers of men and women, but that the very power of the Gospel should permeate thought patterns, standards of judgment, and norms of behaviour.

In a word, it is necessary that the whole of human culture be steeped in the Gospel”.[11] John Paul II, for his part, especially in the Encyclical Fides et Ratio, reaffirmed and developed, with regard to the dialogue between philosophy and theology, the conviction underlying Vatican II’s teaching that “the human being can come to a unified and organic vision of knowledge. This is one of the tasks which Christian thought will have to take up through the next millennium of the Christian era”.[12] Populorum Progressio likewise played a decisive role in the reordering of ecclesiastical studies in the light of Vatican II. The experience of the various local Churches has shown that it, together with Evangelii Nuntiandi, offered significant encouragement and concrete direction for the inculturation of the Gospel and the evangelization of culture in various regions of the world and in response to present-day challenges. This social Encyclical of Paul VI, in fact, incisively states that the development of peoples, essential for attaining justice and peace worldwide, “must be well rounded; it must foster the development of each man and of the whole man”.[13] It also speaks of the need for “wise men in search of a new humanism, one which will enable… [human persons to] find themselves”.[14] Populorum Progressio thus interprets with prophetic vision the social question as an anthropological question, one affecting the fate of the entire human family. This is the distinct interpretative key that would inspire the Church’s subsequent social teaching, from Laborem Exercens to Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, to John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus, to Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate and to Laudato Si’ Renewing the invitation to a new way of thinking proposed by Populorum Progressio, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the urgent need “to experience and to steer the globalization of humanity in relational terms, in terms of communion and the sharing of goods”.[15] He emphasized that God wants to associate humanity to that ineffable mystery of communion that is the Blessed Trinity, of which the Church is a sign and instrument in Jesus Christ.[16] For this actually to take place, he invites us “to broaden the scope of reason” thus enabling it to understand and guide the powerful new forces troubling the human family, “animating them within the perspective of that ‘civilization of love’ whose seed God has planted in every people, in every culture”.[17] This in turn will “foster the interaction of the different levels of human knowledge”, theological and philosophical, social and scientific.[18]

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