Catholicism and Citizenship, Political Cultures of the Church in the Twenty-First Century by Massimo Faggioli (review)

Abstract

Crisis (2013), also published by Oxford University Press and advertised on the fly leaf of this book, is only referred to once (Laffan) in this volume under review. Dr Antoin E Murphy is a retired Professor of Economics and Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin. CatholicismandCitizenship,PoliticalCulturesoftheChurchintheTwentyFirst Century, Massimo Faggioli, (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2017), xxii+165 pages. Since his move from Italy to the USA in 2008, historian and theologian Massimo Faggioli has gained a reputation as one of the foremost interpreters of the Second Vatican Council in the English speaking world, and of the implications of the Council for the contemporary world. This particular book contains six chapters, two of which (on Religious Life and the new Ecclesial Movements) have already been published elsewhere under different titles. The other chapters arise from a series of lectures delivered by Faggioli in the United States and internationally (including in Dublin at the Loyola Institute in Trinity College Dublin) between 2015 and 2016. The book, then, does not claim to present a single unified argument or conclusion but rather a series of converging reflections and hypotheses around the seminal impact of the Second Vatican Council (and in particular of its Pastoral Constitution on the church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes [GS]) on the relationship between the church and the modern world, in particular the world of politics and citizenship. Faggioli maintains that the non-Eurocentric papacy of Francis, with his uncomplicated and full acceptance of the Second Vatican Council as central to Catholic tradition and normative for our times, gives particular point to a closer analysis of what the Council itself says, how it has been received in the meantime and how its normative teachings need to be supplemented by a deeper reading of today’s ‘signs of the times’, which differ in important respects from the time of the Council itself. He notes that GS, and in particular par. 43, offered an anti-sectarian statement of the church’s role in the modern world – while Christians were citizens of ‘two cities’, their baptism in no way implied a shirking of earthly Studies • volume 107 • number 425 110 Spring 2018: Book Reviews responsibilities but rather an ever deeper obligation to engage in our world, each according to their proper vocation. This was in contrast to a pre-conciliar view, often attributed to what has been called political Augustinianism, in which clear priority was given to the next life, and the state and civil society were viewed with suspicion and even hostility. This attitude has often, for one reason or another, persisted since the Second Vatican Conucil, in particular in some quarters of the United States, where there is a nostalgia for the supposed ‘golden age’of Christendom characterised by the Constantinian settlement lasting up to medieval times, and/or the emergence in more modern times of established churches in states having concordats with the Vatican enshrining particular privileges. Against any kind of temptation to theocracy or integralism, Faggioli notes that GS was positive about churchstate separation and also about the intrinsic value and autonomy within its own sphere of the secular world, while continuing to argue for a place for the church in the public square. However, things have changed since the promulgation of GS in 1965, and its normativity needs to take account of a different set of ‘signs of the times’. Among them are the religiously-inspired terrorist violence of 9/11, the sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic church, growing pluralism and secularisation and the emergence of a globalised world, characterised by the dominance of a ‘technocratic paradigm’ (Pope Francis) and a crisis of the nation-state and of democracy and politics, which appear more and more incapable of solving global issues. In a nuanced analysis of modernity and post-modernity Faggioli argues that Pope Francis is correct in avoiding either a pre-modern turn to nostalgic theocracy or a post-modern acceptance of Catholicism as one cultural stream among others, without claim to universal relevance. Our new situation points to the reality that many modern states, deeply secularised, are ill-equipped to deal with the resurgence of religion in contemporary times. Indeed there has been...