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In the thirty-third episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Massimo Faggioli, Professor in Historical and Contemporary Ecclesiology at Trinity College Dublin. Faggioli begins by offering an overview of recent research on Vatican II, interpretations of the council’s ongoing significance, and the ways the council impacts the lives of Catholics as well as Protestants today. He then shifts to talking about his own experience of growing up in Italy, the ongoing influence of Vatican II on his life, and his eventual formation as a theologian and ecclesial historian. As with the formation many scholars are blessed to receive, Faggioli extends his gratitude to circles of scholars in Italy and Germany who selflessly supported younger scholars. For Faggioli, understanding the influence of Vatican II took on new possibilities when he came to the United States. While not disparate in nature, Faggioli found scholars and parishioners in the United States experience Vatican II in ways that are unique to the ways scholars and parishioners in continental Europe experience it. That awareness led Faggioli to pursue a project that now includes how scholars and parishioners around the world experience Vatican II including scholars and parishioners in Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. Faggioli concludes by discussing the discernment process that led him to accept an appointment at Trinity College Dublin and the ways theologians and the Church can be of even greater service to one another in the years to come.
- Massimo Faggioli’s Theology and Catholic Higher Education: Beyond Our Identity Crisis (Orbis Books, 2024)
- Massimo Faggioli and Catherine E. Clifford’s (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II (Oxford University Press, 2023)
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Massimo Faggioli, Professor in Historical and Contemporary Ecclesiology at Trinity College Dublin. Thank you for joining us.
Massimo Faggiolo: Thank you for inviting me.
Todd Ream: In his Introduction to Vatican II, published by Catholic University of America Press in 2017, the theologian, Matthew Levering, frames Vatican II as he notes in the subtitle: An Ongoing Theological Event.
And toward the close of that work, he references your understanding of Vatican II as being historicist in nature, an understanding which could undermine Vatican II’s fundamental desire for reform and renewal rooted in Christ.
In what ways do you believe his understanding of your approach to Vatican II has merit? And in what ways do you believe maybe it’s off base or he doesn’t consider all of the details that you’re striving to argue?
Massimo Faggiolo: So I’m honored by the fact that Matthew Levering, who’s a very influential theologian mentioned my work. I think his characterization is a little incomplete because my studies on Vatican II started from a historical perspective because I think this is how the Church itself looks at Vatican II as an event that took place in a particular time, in a particular context. But I think it’s incomplete to, I mean, label me as a historicist because that connotation contains the idea that my theology is very subjective and very subject to excessive, that excessive adaptation to the times, to the cultural fashions, socio fashions.
Now, I have to say that since my first books on Vatican II, so these last 10 years, more or less, I have devoted much more time and energy to the study of the documents. So not just the event, but also the documents myself, but also editor, co-editor of various books. So here, Levering and I, and I have different perspectives. But I think that actually, I suspect we are much closer than he might suspect because I have a very strong sense that we are entering a new phase where the documents are becoming relevant again. And so we have seen this with popular announcement early January when he announced a serious of catechesis on the documents of the council.
So I think we are closer than maybe he thinks, or maybe closer than we were. And so things are starting to converge maybe a little more than in that phase, in the early 2000 2010s where the debate was a bit more heated than it is today.
Todd Ream: Thank you. One of those books, you just echoed that you’ve been the editor and author of several books on Vatican II, one of the most recent books is The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II, published by Oxford University Press in 2023 that you co-edited with Catherine Clifford. That book, however, is but one of at least four books you’ve authored and edited on Vatican II, along with a host of other books that relate to various themes or figures that relate to Vatican II.
As a theologian, why has Vatican II come to be of such interest to you? Where did it begin? What are its origins? And then how have your interests changed and evolved over the time?
Massimo Faggiolo: Thank you for this question because this is very much at the root of, of my, of my itinerary, and it’s also a very meaningful difference between Catholicism in Europe and in North America. So I was born in, in 1970 and in Italy in the seventies, eighties the Vatican II was really much part of the experience of my parish priests, of my professors, my Scouts Association leaders. It was not something distant, and it was also, also not something that was controversial. So this is much more common in the United States where you have very different interpretations of the Second Vatican Council. In Italy, and in Europe generally, in the late the 20th century, Catholics could be divided on many things, but not on, on the Second Vatican Council.
And so that was my Catholic culture also because, so there’s a particular context in the region where I was born, so there was that moment of confluence in the 1970s, sixties, seventies, confluence between Catholic intellectuals, liberal intellectual, liberal in the American sense of the word, and also left-wing socialists, and they were really collaborating in building and, and also defending the Italian democracy from domestic terrorism. And so Vatican II was really the basis of this consensus of a Church that is service to the human family beyond ideological boundaries.
So that Vatican II gave me a sense belonging, not just to the Church, which, which has always been there, as a cradle Catholic, but also as a Church as part of a project for more communion beyond boundary, beyond national boundaries, beyond ethnic boundaries. And so that’s how it started. Then when you start knowing more about it, you want to more about the final documents, the different phases, and so you start, of course, with Pope John and with John Kennedy, the mythology, right? And so this is how you start usually, but then things got more serious, let’s say.
And so that’s how it started in Bologna. Well, actually started in my hometown Ferrara, which is a half an hour north of Bologna towards Venice, and then my studies in Bologna where I, I graduated, and then I spent my first few years as a research fellow in the institute where the history of the Second Vatican Council in five volumes was being co-directed by many scholars for an international network of scholars. That’s how it started. And so that’s what, in the end, brought me to America because in the early 2000s in, in the US Catholic Church, there was a lot of interest for, for the Second Vatican Council, John O’Malley’s book What Happened in Vatican II was published in 2008. So that was a particular moment, and it was the right one for me to come to America and start my career there.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. A professor in American Religious History course in which I was once enrolled, made the argument that the greatest story emerging from a survey of 20th century American religious history is the warming of relations between Catholics and Protestants. In what ways do you believe Vatican II plays a role in the warming of those relations?
Massimo Faggiolo: Oh, there’s no question about that. So that is true for the United States, for Europe, but everywhere, so let, let’s not forget that until Vatican II, the idea of the so-called mixed marriages was very difficult to, to become accepted by the Church, but also by your parents, by, by your friends participating in services or liturgies of the Church that was not your church, the Catholic Church was, was, was formally prohibited. And so that was something that really has changed the lives many Christians, Catholics, non-Catholics, because the aspirations to better relations between churches didn’t start.
And it’s really not about better diplomatic relations between but it’s the common effort to convert all of us to the Gospel, right? And so this is not a conversion to each other, negotiation to each other, but it’s a way to explore how to be more faithful to the demands of, of, this is not going to go away. That’s something that has changed for sure, the bilateral relations, the multilateral relations, the participation. But it was really, really part of the core effort of the Second Vatican Council saying, what does it mean to be a Christian in the modern era?
And so, and so, that was the abandonment of the idea that I have the truth and all the others are condemned to the nation, and all of us have to get together and convert ourselves to, to the Gospel. That’s, it’s something that has become even more evident, I think 60 years after the Second Vatican Council.
Todd Ream: Thank you. For Protestants then whose knowledge of Vatican II may not be great or significant, what would you encourage them to consider in terms of understanding when seeking to foster relationships with their Catholic brethren?
Massimo Faggiolo: That’s a very good question. So there’s a very famous quip by Martin Marty who said that Vatican II was the favorite council of Protestants. Uh, that’s very true. So I think that there are many things that have an echo in the heart and minds of every Christian because for example, the turn of the theology of the second, of the Second Vatican Council much more directly to the Scripture.
So that happens at the Vatican II with the constitution Dei Verbum, the liturgical reform. it’s no longer necessary to pray in Latin necessarily, all of us. the idea that the Church lives in this world, in, in, in this history, not on a separate planet as an island of grace we, which is, is unaffected by what happens. And the constitutional age, Lumen Gentium, which reframes the essence of the Church as a communion much more important than the structure, the hierarchy, the legal architecture. And so these four key steps, so they coincide with the four constitutions, the four most important documents of the Second Vatican Council. And so this is a classic way to represent the importance of the Second Vatican Council.
So I would add also documents that often are left behind because they are, in theory, less, less solemn, less formal, like the document that says that the Catholic Church believes that the right to the freedom of religion is a fundamental human right. That’s a new thing, that’s a new development and the declaration on the relations between the Church and non-Christian regions, which, which contains for the first time, a formal declaration of antisemitism, that happened, of course, 20 years after World War ii, after the Holocaust. So that was one of the most delicate, more complicated document to pass and vote. And so there are some major points that really represent a turn. And as Pope Leo XIV said in October, the rejection of antisemitism for the Catholic Church is a point of no return. And this happened at the Second Vatican Council.
So these are just a few reasons. In one sentence, it’s the most consequential event in the history of the Catholic Church in four centuries since the 16th century. That’s the shortest definition that I can give.
Todd Ream: As you mentioned, you were born in Ferrara and grew up there and then earned your bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Bologna, and then a PhD from the University of Turin.
At what point did you discern an important component of how you understood your vocation was as service as a lay theologian?
Massimo Faggiolo: Well, it was during those years immediately after my first degree because in Bologna, the famous, or for some people controversial Bologna School, had a very vocational idea of the job of the theologian. And so it was not just an academic setting, but it was also a human community of people who felt called to do something for the Church. So that’s very far from the idea that the Bologna school is a tradition of ultra liberal people, And so, so that was part of my experience already because I was coming from the experience of Catholic Associations in, as a minister in my local church. So that setting in Bologna was really very intense because we were called to study Vatican II and so on as a service to the Church.
So that happened around the end of the nineties, the year 2000, I was in the Vatican often for research during the year of the Great Jubilee, which was prepared by John Paul II since 1993, 94, as a path towards purification of our memories of how we, how we approach the past. So, I mean, I, I experienced those years as a preparation towards a moment when it was very important to do Church history as a contribution to a Church that did want to go back to the denial of facts that members of the Church had committed serious sins historically against Jews, against women, against heretics, against indigenous people. So that was an intellectual process for me, but also very personal, very spiritual. And so it became natural for me to see myself called to the vocation of the theologian, which is a profession, but also a vocation indeed.
Todd Ream: You mentioned experiences that you had along the way. Were there mentors who helped cultivate this sense of vocation and discernment that you experienced?
Massimo Faggiolo: Well, so my first mentors were in my hometown Ferrara, some of my professors in the high school, classical high school, which meant you took five years of Latin, five years of Greek, so that was a particular experience. My parish priest who did his PhD on Teilhard de Chardin at the Gregorian two professors at the Local Theological Institute, one in Scripture and the other one in Judaism. And so that was, Ferrara was already very, very, very important for me.
And then Bologna, my number one mentor was Giuseppe Alberigo, was the editor-in-chief of the five volume history of the Second Vatican Council. He was the director of the Bologna Institute, and he was a lay scholar, a lay church historian and theologian who started his career studying the Council of Trent and then moved on to, to the Second Vatican Council, and this is what he told me to do. And so my PhD dissertation was on Trent actually. This is how you understand the long-term trajectories of the Church and so on.
And so, and then finally, when I spent my year in Germany in Tübingen, Peter Hünermann, who died in December 2025 at the age of 96, he was the, the director of the Denzinger of this great collection of Church documents that give evidence to the living tradition of the Church. He was a great scholar, a great professor, a great mentor because he knew the tradition like few other people. And so these three names in Europe.
And then when it came to America, the most important for me was John O’Malley, the Georgetown Jesuit, who was very helpfully helping me adapt to the American system and so on. And so that was, was a very important figure for me because he told me that he had read my book even before knowing me personally. And so that was a surprise because I didn’t expect him to, but he, so he was a real gentleman, a real humanist in the best sense of the world. And so a Jesuit, but who knew Italian history very well, European history, literature. And so that was, was a, a, natural speaking partner if I can say so of John O’Malley.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Authors then, perhaps there’s some of these individuals who you also named as mentors, but authors who impacted your work and your sense of vocation?
Massimo Faggiolo: Well, all these mentors for sure. And then before I came to America, I became more familiar with some names of contemporary European theology, the German French Jesuit, de Lubac and Rahner. who’s one of the most important commentators on the Second Vatican Council, but also on theology and music and the arts and so on. In Italy, Pierangelo Sequeri, who’s a leading figure in theology and anthropology, theology and the arts sacramental theology, and then the Classics especially Yves Congar, who’s the most consequential theologian at the Second Vatican Council. So the Pantheon of the theologians of the Second Vatican Council.
And when I moved to America, a whole new world opened to me, and so I’ve been helped especially by the work of some Jesuit historians of Catholicism like Mark Massa at Boston College Stephen Schloesser at Loyola Chicago Gerald Fogarty at University of Virginia. So those were the big names that really helped me find and orient myself in the, in, in, in, in this new world because European scholars, American Catholicism is largely unknown, and that was, was my experience when I, I arrived, that I, I, I was in that situation.
Todd Ream: When coming to this new world, then part of the reason for doing so was that you accepted an appointment on the faculty at the University of St. Thomas, and then an appointment on the faculty at Villanova University, a diocesan school, and then an Augustinian school.
Would you describe the discernment process then that led you to make the transition across the Atlantic and the experiences that you had in terms of how your service in these institutions helped your sense of vocation deepen?
Massimo Faggiolo: Actually, my first year was at Boston College at the Jesuit Institute as a visiting fellow. And so Boston was my landing spot as it happened for for many other Catholics. And so I became familiar with the Jesuit kind education and so St. Thomas was very important for me because that is America and, and an American Catholicism, which is far enough from the two coasts, that gives a, a, a European a perspective an America that you don’t see easily in the movies or in, in so that was very important. So our two children were born there.
The decision to come to America was also because my wife is American. And so we decided that it made more sense for us, and that was a very good decision back then. And so at St. Thomas in the Twin Cities, I understood a lot about American Catholic education, American Catholic and politics. Um, Minneapolis was already there, a very important place to understand American progressive culture and so on, but also a very diverse university with very different kind of Catholic sensibilities, more social, more feminist, more Thomist, more traditional. So that helped me interact.
And then the decision to move to Villanova was because, at Villanova, they had just started a new PhD program in theology and they told me that they needed someone like me to cover 19th, 20th century Catholicism and Vatican II and so on. And so that was a very interesting proposal because that gave me the chance to work with doctoral students. Um, and you’re right, the transition from a diocesan to a, to a university like Villanova, which has the charism of its order, has some difference, some interesting differences, and so there was a more visible presence at Villanova of the Augustinians which turned out to be very interesting when Pope Leo was elected because it gave me a possibility to understand something because I was working every day with Augustinian in Augustinian institution. So that was very important.
And so, so at the same time, Villanova is on the East Coast and is on the corridor between New York and Washington DC, the social dynamics are a little different. So I, I, I was very fortunate to, to, to have these two long experiences in two different places that has become very important for us to understand America, to understand Catholicism at this time.
Todd Ream: Before we move on, I have a critically important question then to ask you as an Italian. Philadelphia is one of my favorite cities in which to eat, where could you find a decent meal then as an Italian in Philadelphia?
Massimo Faggiolo: Well, that was quite easy, I have to say. So I, I, I never had bad experiences. As, as my colleagues know, I really have a hard no when it’s about pineapple pizza. That’s, that’s an absolute no. So as I tell my colleagues, my students, I am a Vatican II Catholic, but I’m a traditionalist when it’s about Italian food. So there’s no, no adaptation, no adjournment on that. There’s, there’s no.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In 2025, you mentioned then you must have received a blessing from your American wife because you went back across the Atlantic, but this time to Dublin, to Ireland and to Trinity College.
Can you talk a little bit about the discernment process that led you to Trinity College and how your experiences have gone your first year?
Massimo Faggiolo: So I started a few months ago here at Trinity, so I’m, I’m still exploring, I mean learning how things work. So it is different both from the American system but also from the continental European system because it’s much more shaped by a British academic model. So that’s new to me. The decision was for my wife and I that we had been considering for a few years now, especially after COVID, the possibility of going back to Europe. I mean, my wife is American, but she’s a scholar of Italian literature and of European, early modern literature. And so that was attractive to her as well.
It has been a difficult decision, of course, because, because in America, I spent 17 years, which is a big part of my life. Um, but having said that, I think Ireland and Dublin are an ideal location because it gives you the opportunity to remain in touch with the American contacts and universities and so on more than other places in continental Europe. And, and, and so Dublin is, is a global, it has become really a global city globalized hub. Um, and so that’s, that’s what led us to accept this, this opportunity. Uh, she was as convinced as I was that that was a good idea.
But it’s been the most difficult and exhausting process because, I mean, moving yourself is one thing, moving the whole family, it’s more complicated. But I think it was really worth it because, I mean, from Ireland, especially for, for, for a Catholic scholar, so there’s so much that has happened, but also it’s happening, right, because Ireland is becoming more secular, but it maintains a very special role for Catholicism. So it’s not a normal country island. It’s a special place for someone who has my interests.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Not to mention too, 17 years of acquisition of books and then moving those which are most important to Ireland also could not have been an easy process of selection.
Massimo Faggiolo: We haven’t moved them yet. So they’re still in Pennsylvania, by the way. Because we have those books and the piano and so on. So logistically, it’s something that is not done yet. But yeah, books are the most important thing and the ones that I have behind me are just the last acquisitions of the last few months, but most of them are still stateside.
Todd Ream: Still in Pennsylvania, yeah. Thank you. We opened by discussing your work concerning Vatican II, but you’re the author and editor, however, of approximately a dozen books.
When you look at the arc of those books, is there a question or a theme that unifies them? And is there a progression in any way that your interests have followed?
Massimo Faggiolo: I think so, so I, I think there’s a common theme, which is ecclesiology or the study of the Church from a historical point of view and from a theological point of view. So my first book on, on the idea of bishop at the Second Vatican Council, second book on the new ecclesial movements, and then on the ecclesiology of the liturgical reform. And so ecclesiology is always there in my, in my publications.
Now, what has happened in these last few years is that I have started together with an American colleague to edit a new series for Brill Publishers in the Netherlands on global Catholicism. Because that’s my experience. So America gave me a very important experience about American Catholicism, but also many more connections with Latin America and Australia and Asia. And in my trips to these different continents, I’ve seen how different the shape of the Church can be. The same Catholic Church, but in Australia or in Chile or in Hong Kong is different. And so this is an emerging field of studies because I mean, for many years, we have talked about global Christianity or world Christianity, but not global Catholicism.
And so this, and so that is the present development where, so we work with scholars that are local in Asia, in Australia, and so on, and we want to help the Church and the scholar community to understand what is different in global Catholicism, is one of the products of the Second Vatican Council. So the legitimacy of, of different ways to structure a, a, a local church ministry and so on. So it is Vatican II and it is a physiology through and through with other deviations sometimes. But that’s the most important focus of, of, of my academic trajectory.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. In terms of one of those deviations, although ecclesiology is a theme that runs through it and perhaps even organizes it in terms of the themes that you emphasize, another one of your most recent books published by Orbis Books in 2024 is Theology and Catholic Higher Education: Beyond Our Identity Crisis. I find it, you published this book obviously before you came to Dublin, but I do find it ironic now that you are situated within blocks of where arguably the most famous set of lectures on the relationship between the Church and the university we’re ever given, those by John Henry Newman that are collected into what we now know as the Idea of a University.
But to begin, what is the core of the argument that you were seeking to advance in that book?
Massimo Faggiolo: The core of the argument is that theology in university, even in Catholic universities, it’s in a crisis because it has not been convinced as much as I think it should of its own proper mission and, and, and its proper voice. And I think one of the problems has been that in this last 30, 40 years, more or less, it has become convinced that acquiring from a mythological point of view, but also contents themes from other disciplines can supply a deficit of attention coming from the outside, from the Church and so on. So I’m strongly convinced that theology has to work with the social sciences, with history, all of that, but it cannot be substituted by those disciplines. Um, because otherwise it’ll end up being unable to connect with Church, but not just with the bishops, but with the living experience of the real people who, who go to Church or don’t go to Church, but they still believe, right.
And so there’s this, so the risk is of building self-sustaining world, which especially for theology is, is risky because in the end, you convinced that you are, you are in charge of the Church, you are in charge of the belief, and on, right. And so that is an argument that is critical of both sides of the neo-integralists, neo-fundamentalists on the so-called right, but also of some excesses the post Vatican II theology. So that’s the argument and, and, and it’s a love letter to university theology. So I strongly believe that it is necessary to have theology in university, even in non-Catholic universities.
I mean, I, I strongly believe of that, but this makes more sense if we are willing to keep our own voice and to do theology with Scripture, with liturgy, with the fathers of the Church, with the mothers of the Church. So open to that and not being absorbed by social studies, anthropology, political sciences, because that in the end makes us lose our, our voice, I think.
Todd Ream: Yeah. These constellations that eventually get organizationally identified then as something akin to religious studies instead of theology.
Massimo Faggiolo: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes.
Todd Ream: If this is the message then that you want theologians to hear in terms of the value of what they can contribute and what their, their, the subject matter that they curate can contribute, what do you hope that university administrators hear when they encounter this book?
Massimo Faggiolo: So a very nice reviewer of my book said that this book should be used by those who hire administrators and professors of all disciplines in Catholic universities. And so that’s a very, very, I mean, high praise. I, I don’t want to say this, but I think that, I hope that this book helps those who are in, in charge of the high policy governing universities understand that theology is not a a, a nuisance, but without that, those universities would become just irrelevant or just like, like any at university, which will be measured against a certain kind of standard. And in the end, it’ll make them irrelevant less, less important. Uh, and so that’s the argument I am.
I think that it has been read by with attention by those who I hoped would read that book. Um, it’s part of a much larger conversation because there are other books on this subject. As a theologian who was coming from the outside and has explored this, I think I can offer some outsider perspective that maybe are a, a, a little different from, from the native, let’s say native Catholic theologian’s perspectives.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In addition to works such as the ones we’ve discussed in book form and articles in theological journals and such, you also serve as a columnist for publications such as Commonweal.
In what ways do writing for those outlets, ones that reach perhaps what we may call more popular audiences, in what ways has that impacted your understanding of your vocation as a theologian?
Massimo Faggiolo: It does impact that. And so this coincided with my American experience because it started shortly after I arrived in America. So I think it’s essential for a scholar, especially scholars to interact with something like the Church to be able to explain in a way that respects their intelligence, what’s happening in ways that are going to be always a little unpredictable. So in the sense that my point was I don’t want to be someone whose readers know already what they’re gonna get when they see my name, right.
And so, being critical of your favorite Pope as I have been with Pope Francis, for example, right. And so that was a painful thing to do sometimes. But it was a way to show that, I mean, obedience in the Catholic Church is not to be understood in a sycophantic way or in a prone way that manipulates your mind, right? And so long as that kind of activity doesn’t take over, over your scholarly production, that’s one problem sometimes. So, but that is something that with time you become able to manage and you start being able to have your scholarly production and your popular article talk to each other and maintaining different standards, different length language, all that.
So that has been a great, great source of enrichment because it helped me stay focused on what was happening in the Church every week. And so that helped me under, I mean, staying focused, what’s the meaning of this document? Because I have to write about this, right. And so as an historian, you might wait months or years after it’s published, but if you have to write for an audience, you want to know it now, what your thoughts about this are and so on. So that’s been, this is something that’s much more lively, much more common in America than in Europe. And so that’s been a great gift for me.
Todd Ream: Thank you. We’ve talked about your sense of vocation as an academic theologian, I want to ask you now though, about what virtues you believe intellectual and moral were to cultivate, and then also theological virtues that you believe are important for academic theologians to pray to receive.
Massimo Faggiolo: I think that the virtue of hope is the most urgent and most necessary. So the year 2025 was the year of the Jubilee of Hope. I was lucky enough that I was invited to speak in Australia and America and in Germany about this Jubilee that gave me hope. Because I’m working on that. You have to think hard about what it means to, because of course, if you are called to talk about hope, you are supposed to give hope. So that’s the second part of your question.
I think that the first part is more complicated and I have discovered that in academic life, it has become more difficult to stay or become self-critical, I mean critical of your own “party,” let’s say, of your own group, your own tradition. That’s something that is costly because it impacts your popularity sometimes. It impacts your connections, your ability to compete. Um, and so, but I think that this is really at, at the heart of any chance of saving the university, which is, which is an institution that is now in, in, in, in a deep crisis as we know for good reasons and wrong reasons, but it’s undeniable.
And so a certain amount of humility and of ability to criticize your own, your people, your side of the argument sometimes, that’s the most important thing that I have learned.
And that’s when, when academia is at as its best as you know, now everything has to live in the environment of the market. And so that makes it more difficult, right? Because once funding was coming from governments and it was not impacted by popularity of the argument and so on. So, but I still think that this is worth it, yeah.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Before we close our conversation today, I want to ask you, in what ways do you believe then that the Church can become of greater service to theologians, especially theologians who serve in context such as the university, but then also in what ways can theologians in such a context become of greater service to the Church? In what ways can we build better bridges between the two and foster greater relations between the two that are mutually productive?
Massimo Faggiolo: The church can help theologians by encouraging them this academic vocations, intellectual vocations in those disciplines who don’t make money quickly and affluently are in crisis. And so the Church understands this, I think. And so there are some small things that I’ve seen. I mean, Pope Francis, Paul Leo do, but right now theology faces a long-term crisis, and the Church I think understands that the most important risk is not to be subject to the criticism of theologians but of a Church which works without the critical voice of theology.
And on the other side, theologians, I think understand that their profession is a vocation and a ministry. And so there are different ways of doing that. So some ministries are recognized, instituted, acknowledged, and some are not. And so sometimes the work of theologians is acknowledged. Often it’s not, but the importance is the feeling that you are working, not ultimately for the hierarchy, but you, you working for the people of God, for your fellow human beings. That’s the thing.
And so this is something that is shared, I think. But again, it’s one of those things that it’s very hard to see formalized or visible in university today. And so theologians themselves have to work on this to keep that spirit alive because it’s not going to come easily from the institution that is governed by other mechanisms these days.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Thank you very much. Our guest has been Massimo Faggioli, Professor in Historical and Contemporary Ecclesiology at Trinity College Dublin. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.
Massimo Faggiolo: Thank you. It’s been a great pleasure.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
