Priest: Vatican II’s ‘Copernican revolution’ calls for listening to the laity when building churches

June 01, 2017

The ecumenical monastic community in Bose, Italy, is hosting “Inhabit, Celebrate, Transform,” a three-day conference on liturgy and architecture. L’Osservatore Romano has published an advance copy of a lecture by Father Dario Vitali, an Italian diocesan priest who serves as professor of ecclesiology at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

Father Vitali believes that a “Copernican revolution” in theology took place at the Second Vatican Council—a revolution in which being has priority over doing, the people of God precedes the hierarchy, and the sensus fidei [sense of faith] of the entire people of God is affirmed.

Father Vitali affirms that the priesthood of the faithful differs from the ministerial priesthood in essence and said that Vatican II’s “ecclesial renewal” has been “short circuited” by an “ideological framework” in which theologians were presumed to be representatives of the people of God and theological dissent was equated with the sensus fidei. The postconciliar Magisterium, he adds, has skirted the issue of the sense of the faithful and substituted “a more comfortable theology of the laity, built on the cooperative relationship with the hierarchy rather than the primacy of the people of God.”

All this, he continues, has changed with Pope Francis, who has stressed the importance of listening to the entire people of God. When churches are constructed, those in charge of the process should follow the example of the recent Synod of Bishops and truly listen to the baptized so as to “grasp the voice of the Spirit who guides the Church into all truth.”

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• Posted by: Randal Mandock - Jun. 01, 2017 6:39 PM ET USA

  "All this, he continues, has changed with Pope Francis." What is that you say? Pope Francis' priority, if ever there was one, is just the opposite: his is _doing over being_. Just recall, for example, how many of his moral pronouncements are based more on the "pastoral," i.e., the doing, not the being. Is Father Vitali trying to pull the wool over our eyes, or is his "being" a clever shorthand for "existential?" I heartily agree with his concern about the misguided "ideological framework."