Vatican II Studies Unit
“Artisans of a New Humanity:”
Imagining Future/s in and with the World
The Second Vatican Council was revolutionary for its integration of historical methods into its deliberations and documents, distinguishing it from earlier councils. If Lumen Gentium recognized the eschatological value of the pilgrim church whose inner nature and purpose can only be realized while journeying toward God's kingdom (LG ch.VII), Gaudium et Spes articulated the Church's mission to be a servant to the contemporary world, learning from the “experience of past ages, the progress of the sciences, and the treasures hidden in the various forms of human culture” (GS, 44). Pope Francis’ recent 2023 motu proprio Ad Theologium Promovendum builds on the Council’s teachings by clearly articulating the need to learn from the world through a transdisciplinary method that fosters a dynamic interaction between theology and other academic disciplines (such as economics, sociology, and political science) to effectively journey toward God's kingdom while actively addressing the concrete challenges of contemporary human existence.
When considering the period leading up to, during, and after the Council, how does treating theology/Church from a historical (and later contextual) perspective facilitate interdisciplinary exploration of the future? How can collaborative methods (such as Conversations in the Spirit) serve as a resource for grassroots initiatives that address current pressing issues, while imagining “other possible futures, past and present?” How might contemporary uses of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary methods help the Church become “artisans of a new humanity” (GS, 30)?
Curated/Closed Call Session: Event, Legacy, and Vision: The Future of Vatican II Studies
In response to the FUTURE/S challenge posed in the AAR Presidential Theme 2026, namely to interrogate the narratives, traditions, and scholarly practices that both open up and delimit the horizons of our disciplines, this session invites critical reflection on the Future of Vatican II Studies. With six decades of scholarship behind us and the 60th jubilee now past, we raise the question if we are at an endpoint, a continuation, or the threshold of a new era in Vatican II research?
This session takes recent major initiatives as its point of departure, considering them as the basis to identify lessons learned, evaluate current trajectories, and articulate possible pathways forward. Three initiatives will serve as focal points for this collective inquiry:
- Vatican II: Event and Mandate – as this project and its unfolding volumes (Herder/Peeters)present an international, collaborative endeavor developing intercontinental and intercultural histories and commentaries of the Council and its documents.
- The Legacy and Limits of Vatican II in an Age of Crisis – as this volume (Liturgical Press) critically highlights the limits of past research while proposing new methodological and hermeneutical trajectories.
- Vision of Vatican II on Revelation, Church, Ecumenism, and Education – as this project and its unfolding volumes (Brepols) seek to advance the global reception of Vatican II with particular attention to history, intertextuality, and global reception.
By placing these initiatives in dialogue, the session – featuring two speakers and two respondents - seeks to address several guiding questions, including to whom the future of Vatican II Studies belongs, how the field can serve both academia and society in the coming decades, which dominant narratives continue to shape the discipline; and where these may need to be revised, expanded, or disrupted.
*** We will also co-sponsor a session with Ecclesiological Investigations and Christian Spiritualities on the topic of Difficult Conversations ***
This Unit gives scholarly attention to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), one of the most significant events in the history of the Catholic Church — an event that had wide-ranging implications for other faiths, other Christian churches, and for the wider world alike. This Unit has a double focus: first, deepening the understanding of the history of Vatican II, its link with movements of renewal in Catholic theology and in the Church in the decades prior to Vatican II, and the history of the reception of the Council, and the redaction history of the different documents of the Council; second, a strong theological on both to the hermeneutical issues connected to methods of interpreting conciliar teaching and its ongoing reception in a changing context. By looking more closely at the past, our Unit hopes to promote greater conciliarity and synodality in the Christian churches in the present. In this second mandate of its presence within the American Academy of Religion, the Vatican II Studies Unit turns its attention to the reception of Vatican II within the various social and cultural contexts of the Americas and elsewhere, and to its continuing influence in the changing context of twenty-first century global Christianity.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dries Bosschaert | dries.bosschaert… | - | View |
| Jaisy Joseph, Villanova University | jaisy.joseph@villanova… | - | View |