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Only Connect: Romano Guardini, Gaudium et Spes and the Unity of Christian Existence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Patrick Gorevan
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Abstract

Romano Guardini's theory of oppositions (Gegensatzlehre), which helped him forge a unity within multifaceted realities such as Church and liturgy, also inspired him to achieve a unity between the secular and sacred aspects of the Christian life, as the Second Vatican Council was later to do, particularly in Gaudium et Spes. While Gaudium et Spes 36 concentrated on a Christian view of the autonomy of created realities, Guardini diagnosed the gulf between faith and life in a neglect of the interplay of creation and redemption: ‘to save redemption by the Son, [man] has been forced to abandon creation by the Father’. In a way which was prophetic of later criticisms of Gaudium et Spes and also of fruitful applications and developments of its doctrine, Guardini called for a reflection on the light which the work of redemption sheds on the created world and on man's life within it, that the believer may stand with his faith amid the concrete, actual world, and rediscover that world in his faith.

Keywords

GuardiniGaudium et Spescreationunity of lifeautonomy
Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 100 , Issue 1088 , July 2019 , pp. 425 - 433
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Krieg, Robert in Romano Guardini. A Precursor of Vatican II (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997) p. 180CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has spoken of Gaudium et Spes as containing the polarities which Guardini had identified, including that between human autonomy and our relationship to Jesus Christ.

2 Guardini, Romano, Der Gegensatz (Mainz: Matthias Grűnewald, 1925), pp. 210-11Google Scholar, quoted in Gerl-Falkowitz, H.B., Romano Guardini (Kevalaer: Topos, 2010, p. 177)Google Scholar.

3 See for example D'Acunto, Giuseppe in ‘Concretezza e opposizione in Guardini’, Información Filosófica 8 (2011), pp. 107-20Google Scholar, for further examples of Guardini's application of ‘opposition’ to various areas, such as the process of knowledge: intuition of the singular and universal knowledge are not contradictory realities, but inhabit one another.

4 Freedom, Grace and Destiny (Chicago: Regnery, 1960), translated by John Murray, pp. 9-10.

5 The Church and the Catholic (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1935), translated by Ada Lane, p. 109.

6 Cf. Novak, Michael, ‘A Letter to Roberto’ in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 3 (2000), pp. 70-84 (72-73)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Paul VI, Encyclical Evangelii nuntiandi, 8 December, 1975, 20.

8 The Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, on the Church in the Modern World, 7 December 1965, represents the Council's attempt to dialogue with the world of today, sharing its ‘joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties’ (no. 1). It deals with man's dignity, calling and activity, in the light of Christ, and applies these ideas to family, culture and public life.

9 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 36.

10 Rowland, Tracey, Culture and the Thomist Tradition after Vatican II (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Guardini, Romano, The World and the Person (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965)Google Scholar, translated by Stella Lange, p. 204.

12 Guardini, Romano, Conscience (London: Sheed & Ward, 1932)Google Scholar, translated by Ada Lane, p. 64.

13 Roland Millare, ‘The Primacy of Logos over Ethos: The Influence of Romano Guardini on Post-Conciliar Theology’ (The Heythrop Journal, 2013), pp. 974-983, at pp. 980-81. Millare quotes Guardini ‘“Existence as a whole, things, man and action, come from God's grace… Only because the creating God really placed the created world in man's hand can the latter come upon the idea that he must create an autonomous culture.” (Romano Guardini, The World and the Person, pp. 21, 24)’ and concludes: ‘Autonomy is not the natural order, which God has created in and through grace’ (at pp. 980-981).

14 Freedom, Grace and Destiny, p. 10.

15 Ibid., p. 11.

16 Ibid., p. 82.

17 The World and the Person, p. 31.

18 Ibid., p. 23.

19 Cf. McCabe, Herbert OP, God Still Matters (London: Continuum, 2002), pp. 11-12Google Scholar.

20 The World and the Person, p. 204, note 3.

21 Ibid, p. 26.

22 Kasper, Walter, ‘The Theological Anthropology of Gaudium et Spes’ in Communio 23 (1996), pp. 129-140 at p. 137Google Scholar.

23 Cf. Peterson, Brandon, ‘Critical Voices: the reactions of Rahner and Ratzinger to “Schema XIII” (Gaudium et Spes)’, Modern Theology 31 (2015) pp. 1-26 at pp. 2-3 and pp. 25-26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Kasper, art. cit, pp. 138-40. Brandon Peterson, in the article mentioned above, points to subsequent pontiffs interpreting Gaudium et Spes through the lens of paragraph 22, thus privileging the point of view of redemption.

25 John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici (1988), 17.

26 The phrase ‘unity of life’ is associated with the preaching of St Josemaría, the founder of Opus Dei. He began to use the term in 1931 and it became a core description of his aim, in particular as addressed to lay people: ‘Christians must not resign ourselves to leading a double life: our lives must be a strong and simple unity into which all our actions converge’ - Christ is Passing by (Dublin: Veritas, 1974), 126.

In recent years, Vita Consecrata, John Paul II's 1996 Apostolic Exhortation on the renewal of Religious life (67) encouraged religious too to exercise themselves in the ‘difficili arte vitae unitatis’ (67). In the Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests (1994), Priests for the Third Millennium (1999) and The priest, pastor and leader of the parish community (2002) the Congregation for Clergy has recommended the practice to priests. Cardinal Martini S.J. spoke of ‘unity of life in a fragmented world’, and many recently formed associations, blogs and initiatives – some consciously taking up the suggestions offered in Christifideles Laici – also refer to this ideal.

27 Cf. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 3 a. 8 ad 2.

28 The Spirit of the Liturgy (London: Sheed and Ward, 1938), translated by Ada Lane, p. 22.