Alberto Bellini per una teologia del dialogo

Abstract

The contribution deals with the biography and the theological work of Don Alberto Bellini (1919-2012), for a long time teacher at the diocesan seminary of Bergamo. For a brief period, during the years of the Second World War, he studied theology at the Lateran University in Rome, but his encounter with Protestant theology (in his Barthian form) came in Milan at the University of the Sacred Heart with the philosopher Gustavo Bontadini. He was the first Italian theologian to serve as a consultor in the Vatican Secretariat for promoting Christian Unity (from its foundation in 1960 to 1975). He was an expert of Protestant Reformation theology and one of the first interpreter in Italy of the historiographic revision of Roman-Catholic studies on Martin Luther, from controversial to ecumenical theology, from prejudice to a sympathetic approach. In 1960 through the encounter with mons. Johannes Willebrands, one of the most important representatives of the new European ecumenical theology and secretary of the Catholic Conference for Ecumenical Questions, Bellini detached himself from the controversial line and became a true interpreter of the ecumenical dialogue with the Protestant Churches. He was involved in the first dialogue between Catholics and Protestants in Italy in the archdiocese of Milan during the episcopate of Montini. His contribution to the internal debate in the Secretariat for promoting Christian Unity before and during the Second Vatican Council was significant. For example, he proposed a new formulation of the relationship between the Church and the word of God in the internal discussion on the text De Verbo Dei: Ecclesia vivit de Verbo Dei. Bellini was a supporter of the new doctrine of religious liberty using - against the strong objection that religious liberty fosters the spreading of heretic doctrine - the traditional Thomistic doctrine of the “double effect”: religious liberty can give space also to erroneous doctrines, but this is permitted as a secondary effect per accidens et non per se. He was also at the beginning of some of the most important ecumenical initiatives in the diocese of Bergamo, where he played an important role for many decades in priestly and lay formation. He was a promoter of pastoral and theological renewal in a difficult context like that of Italian Catholicism, traditionally in conflict with the churches of the Reformation. Bellini was a supporter of the new doctrines of Vatican II, but in the following years he was also critical of some radical interpretations of the teaching the Council on ecumenism, as in the case of the Benedictine abbot Giovanni Franzoni. The entire theological career of Bellini is linked with the study of Protestantism. His last contributions at the beginning of the eighties - around Luther’s anniversary year 1983 - were related with the history of the interpretations of Luther in the Italian theology of the 20th century and with Luther’s political theology. He wanted to dispel some wrong interpretations of the “two kingdoms” doctrine.