He signalled how this shift must take place, through "transdisciplinary dialogue with other scientific, philosophical, humanistic and artistic knowledge, with believers and non-believers, with men and women of different Christian confessions and different religions." (n.9)

As a consequence, the persons who carry New Zealand's Catholic intellectual leadership are now challenged from the top.

They are called from the Pope himself to engage theologically in ways that respect the beliefs, customs, practices, values and even experiences of other faiths and cultures.

The importance of Ad theologiam promovendam for New Zealand's Catholic intellectual voice is that it is now the approved new statutes for the Pontifical Academy of Theology.

This means Ad theologiam promovendam is now the framework for standard Catholic theology worldwide.

Although Francis provided no theological method, something still to be developed by theologians, his framework is clear - dialogue, relationship building, inclusion, engagement, and even experience in a spirit of intellectual charity and prayerfulness.

He called Catholic theology institutes to "weave a network of relationships with other training, educational and cultural institutions, professions and Christian communities that know how to penetrate, with originality and a spirit of imagination, into the existential places of the elaboration of knowledge." (n.7)

Calling especially directors of Catholic theology academies to task, Francis signalled how important it was that "institutional places exist to live and experience collegiality and theological alliance." (n.6) This would mean Catholic theology institutes in New Zealand accepting invitations to dialogue.

Francis referred back to his Address to the Members of the International Theological Commission on 24 November 2022: "Ecclesial synodality commits theologians to do theology in a synodal form, promoting among them the ability to listen, dialogue, discern and integrate the multiplicity and variety of requests and contributions." (n.6)

We can now hold Catholic theology schools that refuse to offer theological inquiry across religious borders as unsafe places to study today. They risk, as Francis stated, "closing in self-referentiality, isolation, and insignificance." (n.5).

Instead, Francis called for his theology academies to be "inserted in a web of relationships, first and foremost with other disciplines and other knowledge." (n.5) Herein lies Francis's universalist approach.

But rather than a weak interdisciplinary dialogue such as the multidisciplinary style in which diverse viewpoints can still remain detached, Francis emphasised the transdisciplinary approach.

This not only favours a better understanding of the object of study from multiple viewpoints, but "the placement and fermentation of all knowledge within the space of Light and Life offered by the Wisdom that emanates from Divine Revelation." (n.5)

To counter potential traditionalist criticisms, this call is actually close to the classical idea of the university from Latin universum, all things, everybody, all people, the whole world, literally, "turned towards the one," from unus "one" and" versare "towards."

From this we get universus meaning "all together, all in one, whole, entire, relating to all," which seems to be the impulse for Francis' universal outreach.

Hence, Francis has not dismissed any source but encouraged them all, sacred and secular, inside and outside religion, especially the concrete situations in which we are inserted, our basic human experiences.

What is new in Ad theologiam promovendam is Francis's push for the personal experience of the religious other and of difficult things we too often want to ignore such as global warming, poverty, homelessness, and suffering.

Francis made the point that we are living in very different times from when Irenaeus, Augustine, the Apologists, Cyril of Jerusalem, the Cappadocians, Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria, did theology.

The same can be said for Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Aquinas, and the entire scholastic tradition, and even the moderns such as Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Thomas Merton, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Therefore, constant return to these Church writers may not necessarily help contemporary theologians respond effectively to current situations.

The Pope's call for greater experiential knowledge of each religion means that a new and effective theological method is now required.

Perhaps Robert Cummings Neville's trans-religious approach might be a good place to start.

In 2017, Neville offered a way to theologise across religious borders by exploring faith-content, what is believed in diverse religions, the "fides quae creditor" that Augustine deftly distinguished from the actual believing or faith proper. Neville's approach was comprehensive and non-critical.

This may also warrant a new definition for theology, one that moves beyond "faith seeking understanding" to signify a competency to converse globally on theological ideas and worldviews, as Francis said, "openly engaging with everyone, believers and non-believers." (n.4)

Neville used the expression "intellectual side of religion" to describe such a theology that brings together insights from all over to develop mutual understanding amongst diverse faith traditions.

The theological possibility of recognizing the equality of theological ideas may be obtained by a methodical modification of specific faith-content to obtain mutual theological concepts which understand and respect the relative points of separation between religions while remaining faithful to one's own home tradition.

The curious consequence of such an approach is the possibility of knowing different ideas about the same theological topics while still believing in those topics.

This is an extraordinary proposition, an outstanding insight into the prospect of a universally relational theology of dialogue and encounter, as Pope Francis has promoted.

Yet the ultimacy of Francis's new approach to Catholic theology lies in being undertaken with intellectual charity because, "it is impossible to know the truth without practicing charity," and also "developed on one's knees, pregnant with adoration and prayer." (n.7)

Let us hope Francis's initiative gives New Zealand's Catholic intellectual leadership time to pause and reflect and open to engage and build relationships across religions and worldviews.

Let us hope that local leadership will support their universal leader's promotion of theology along this journey of dialogue in charity and friendship. With Francis' momentum, maybe they will feel more encouraged to do so.

• Dr Christopher Longhurst is a Catholic theologian, Fellow of KAICIID, and lecturer in theology at Te Kupenga Theological College of Aotearoa New Zealand. The English translations of Ad theologiam promovendam are his.

Pope Francis's revision of the statutes of the Pontifical Academy of Theology is an important development within the discipline of contemporary theology.

Francis emphasises the need for an open theology within a synodal, missionary, and open Church.

Updating the statutes also encourages a robust exchange with various sciences and fosters an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to theological investigations. It is an invitation to scholars from diverse denominations, religions, and academic disciplines to participate in the life of a church that is "open" and engaged in in contemporary questions.

Antonio Stagliano, the Academy President, expressed enthusiasm for this new mission, emphasising the goal of promoting dialogue across all knowledge areas.

For him, the objective is to engage the entire people of God in theological research, transforming their lives into theological experiences.

Theologians wishing to pursue this line of reflection would do well to consider the theological and social perspective of the German Reform theologians of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

More specifically, they should consider the work of Romano Guardini (1885-1968), whom Pope Francis references both directly and indirectly in his writings.

With his first major work, "The Spirit of the Liturgy" (1918), he set standards for the Liturgical Movement and liturgical renewal and contributed to the shape of the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council.

Two other books among his many publications, "Liturgie und liturgische Bildung" (1966) and "Das Ende der Neuzeit" (1950) are also seminal for contemporary theology.

Industrial society of the late 19th century

Guardini's perspective reflects the significant process of change that occurred from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.

He pays attention to the impacts of:

• social transformation through industrialisation, war, and new and often unstable republics;
• the philosophical movements of rationalism and the critiques of positivism and Neo-Kantianism, through Life-philosophy and Existentialism and
• reform theology movement's critique of Neo Scholasticism.

Life-Reform Movement

The Life-reform Movement (Lebensreform) movement was a politically diverse social reform movement in France and Germany that found renewed interest in the Romantic movement.

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), a leading German proponent, differentiated between the individual's life and life as a whole, emphasizing that understanding life required accessing the full, unblemished experience.

He criticised the traditional modern philosophy, focusing on rationality that neglected dimensions of will and emotions.

Like Dilthey, Guardini placed experience at the centre of his reflections on liturgy and life.

While Dilthey argued against limiting sciences to deterministic natural scientific methods, Guardini criticised the restriction of theology by Neo-Scholasticism.

Guardini's criticism of modernity and Neo-Scholasticism mirror each other insofar that an industrial model of living fundamentally changes people's perception of time and alters how individuals relate to others, to their bodies, to society and to nature:

• Industrialisation also brought about a significant change in the human-earth or human-nature relationship.
• Nature became a resource to be exploited, not a "brother" or "sister" or "mother" to be cherished and cared for as we read in Laudato Si'.
• Theologically, God and belief became functions of each other in a mechanism of ritualisation.

The issue for Guardini with respect to theology is that the systemisation of theology (as an academic discipline) especially through Neo-Scholasticism has resulted in theologies loss of contact with its base: namely how people live, work, pray and believe.

Catholic Reform Theologians

Catholic reform theology explored a heightened synthesis of theological and religious knowledge, and Guardini's primary focus was the youth movements of Juventus and Quickborn.

The Catholic youth movement continued the broader movement that emerged at the beginning of the German Empire, emphasizing the importance of educational reform, body, and self-improvement.

Although initially apolitical, it was still exposed to contemporary ideological currents and oriented itself accordingly.

The First World War and the politically polarized phase of the German Youth Movement were transformative events.

The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 forced all other youth organisations into compulsory integration into the Hitler Youth or dissolution.

Theology and life

Among the Reform theologians, Guardini represents the openness to the world and questions of faith posed in the context of culture, that the Pope has offered to theologians.

Guardini advocated for reforming Catholic believers through liturgy, using a liturgical experience that would address the true essence of humanity and not stunt it through tired ritualisation.

True liturgical encounter awakens and glorifies life through the liturgical act when it is intimately connected to the life of God present and active in the whole of creation.

Like Guardini, and as Pope Francis has written, we live in a "change of epoch" that requires deeper theological engagement with societal and cultural changes that mould our understanding of faith, worship, salvation and God.

Just as Guardini's work focused on the relationship between liturgical practice, lived faith and an openness to the world in the Catholic Church, today's cultural context is as central to theological reflection as Scripture and Tradition.

Guardini proposed that liturgy and life are fundamentally connected experiences, and it is the person, as a whole, integral being who prays and lives.

The notion of context is central to theological reflection. Culture is a third source of theology.

To do theology — in any context that considers how people believe and how they pray — theologians must use Scripture, the Living Tradition of the Church and Culture as their sources of reflection when considering how a transformative event becomes a theological experience.

In the context of contemporary theological reflection is seen in an openness to the world and questions of faith and culture.

Paralleling Guardini's focus on the relationship between liturgical practice, lived faith, and an openness to the world Pope Francis emphasises the importance of theological engagement with societal and cultural changes.

Canon Law - not the answer

Francis has set a new direction in the discussion of key theological debates around ordination, blessings of couples and questions of sexuality and gender that the juridic discipline of Church Law cannot answer because it is not a theological discipline.

Starting with Canon Law to solve these theological questions only ends in frustration.

Instead, starting with what people do when they pray when they call on God's name or when they praise God is an utterly theological starting point because it is thoroughly incarnational.

In the end, all theological questions of any significance concern the relationship between what is believed and what is prayed.

Thus, all important theological questions are essentially liturgical questions that refer back to the interrelationship between living, praying and believing as transformative experiences of God's Grace.

• Dr Joe Grayland is a priest and theologian in the Diocese of Palmerston North. Currently on Sabbatical, he is lecturing at the University of Tübingen, Germany.

The Pope signalled how this shift must foster a "fundamentally contextual theology" based on a nexus between relationships, experience, and no longer being self-referential.

The following offers a brief exploration of these features to help appreciate Francis' call for a more open and forward-thinking theology today.

Theology's new relational basis rests - dialogue

According to Francis, theology's new relational basis rests in dialogue.

He said theology "cannot but take place in a culture of dialogue and encounter between different traditions and knowledge, between different Christian confessions and different religions, openly confronting all, believers and non-believers."

This perspective has significant consequences.

The central presupposition of a theology of dialogue is that anyone can understand what is believed about God more deeply when they open themselves to the truth statements of all religions.

However, not only has Francis promoted the importance of theology across religious borders, but for him, theology is no longer only "faith seeking understanding."

Non-believers or people without faith are to be involved.

Therefore, Francis has not only cast the Catholic theology net into the fresh waters of other faith traditions, but he has also overcome the risk of excluding people who do not have faith.

For Francis to undertake this theology across religious borders, we "will have to face the profound cultural transformations" that society is undergoing.

Those transformations affect us all. Intentionally or not, the Pope has made theology relevant for everyone.

Concrete human experience

The Pope has emphasised another source for theology, namely, human experience, the concrete situations in which we are inserted, and knowledge of things gained through our involvement in them.

This is really not revolutionary because experience has been a theological source in the Catholic tradition for quite some time.

However, what is new is Francis's push for the experience of the other.

He is clearly seeking that theology reaches into "the open wounds of humanity and of creation and within the folds of human history, to which it prophesies the hope of a unique fulfilment."

Perhaps Pope Francis' emphasis on broad interfaith experience, even for non-believers, is probably the document's most revolutionary aspect.

He has encouraged a search for the wisdom of the world, call that Wisdom whatever you want - in the Catholic tradition, it is the divine Logos Jesus Christ, to be more clearly a common trans-religious source of theological understanding.

In other words, Francis's new theology is simply a nuanced comparative and intercultural theology.

This new theology's existential basis is signalled by fostering a "fundamentally contextual theology, capable of reading and interpreting the Gospel in the conditions in which men and women live daily."

Still, despite Ad theologiam promovendam's revolutionary undertone, Francis's argument in favour of an existential theology across religious borders is actually rooted in the biblical command to love our neighbour.

He affirmed that "it is impossible to know the truth without practising charity."

Obviously, this requires engagement and connection; therefore, he has linked dialogue and experience-based knowledge because we cannot love what we do not know.

This may be the document's most outstanding and transformative feature.

Theology: a free search for truth

The Pope also made the case for theology no longer being self-referential, that is, a defence of already held positions.

The Motu Proprio begins: "To promote theology in the future we cannot limit ourselves to abstractly re-proposing formulas and schemes from the past."

Francis has indicated that for theology to be worthwhile today, it must reach beyond its own methods and engage with other branches of knowledge.

Rather than proving its own presuppositions, it must be the free search for truth "as part of a network of relationships, first of all with other disciplines and other knowledge."

In other words, theology must be transdisciplinary, that is, "the pooling and fermentation of all knowledge in the space of Light and Life offered by the Wisdom that flows from God's Revelation" (Veritatis gaudium, 2018).

Further, according to the Pope, contemporary theology must present itself as "a true knowledge, as sapiential knowledge, not abstract and ideological, but spiritual, elaborated on its knees, full of adoration and prayer."

In this sense, Pope Francis has blurred the fundamental distinction between theology as knowledge-based inquiry and religion as faith-based practice.

For the Pope, theology is no longer just an academic pursuit.

While prior Magisterial teachings have already affirmed that we can know something decisive about God through other faith traditions (Nostra aetate, 1965), Francis has catapulted Catholic theology into the open space of no longer determining its own position solely from the sources of Scripture and Tradition.

For Pope Francis, a theology whose sources remain within its own system is a closed theology that will eventually become irrelevant.

But a theology that goes beyond its own borders develops friendship with all, therefore being highly relevant for all times.

Evolving consequences

With these hallmarks, Pope Francis has promoted an open theology focused on dialogue and human experience. He has indicated how these are meaningful sources of theology, places we must go to understand more fully God, ourselves, and the world.

With Pope Francis now onboard, we can say that theology schools which do not allow theological inquiry across religious borders are not safe places to study today. They risk exclusivity, isolation, and the production of Francis' "little monsters" - priests and seminarians, even some laity more concerned about defence propositions for what they know little about.

Consequently, opportunities for theology students must exist in Catholic theology schools to study theology beyond a single faith tradition.

Let us hope that any future Catholic Chair of Theology at one of New Zealand's universities will embrace Francis' call for a forward-thinking, experience-based theology of dialogue and relationship.

In sum, Ad theologiam promovendam has promoted an open theology that seeks to understand its own content in a relationship with the people and content of other faiths.

This is more in line with what theology really is, a seeking of understanding, and this is why it is important also for people who do not have faith, and especially important in a country like New Zealand, which has a remarkably high religious diversity with little means to manage that diversity.

• Dr Christopher Longhurst is a Catholic theologian, Fellow of KAICIID, serves on the executive of the Association of Practical Theology in Oceania, and is lecturer in theology at Te Kupenga Theological College of Aotearoa New Zealand.

It must engage widely with contemporary science, culture and people's lived experience as an essential starting point.

Citing the need to deal with "profound cultural transformations," Francis's vision for Catholic theology's future is encapsulated in a new motu proprio (apostolic letter) issued on Saturday.

Called "Ad theologiam promovendam" (To Promote Theology), the letter revises the Pontifical Academy of Theology (PATH) statutes.

Francis says his aim in doing so is "to make them more suitable for the mission that our time imposes on theology."

Theology can develop only in a culture of dialogue and encounter between different traditions and different knowledge, he says.

It needs to consider "different Christian confessions and different religions, openly engaging with everyone, believers and nonbelievers."

Fundamentally contextual

Catholic theology must experience a "courageous cultural revolution" to become a "fundamentally contextual theology" Francis wrote.

Guided by Christ's incarnation in time and space, this theological approach must be able to read and interpret the Gospel as and where people are.

Francis contrasted this approach with theology limited to "abstractly re-proposing formulas and schemes from the past."

Theological studies must be open to the world as a profound "turning point" in their method, which must be "inductive" Francis wrote.

He stressed that this bottom-up re-envisioning of theology is necessary to better aid the Church's evangelising mission.

"A synodal, missionary and outgoing Church can correspond only to an outgoing' theology" he wrote.

This dialogical approach can allow theology to "broaden the boundaries" of scientific reasoning, by allowing it to overcome dehumanising tendencies, he says.

‘Transdisciplinary' and pastoral

Theology must become a "transdisciplinary" part of a "web of relationships" to achieve change, Pope Francis explained.

Priority must be given to "the knowledge of people's common sense" he says.

This is a "theological source in which many images of God live, often not corresponding to the Christian face of God, only and always love."

This "pastoral stamp" must be placed upon all of Catholic theology, he insists.

Described as "popular theology," theological reflection can help with discerning the "signs of the times" he wrote. Theology serves with evangelisation and in transmitting faith, so that faith becomes culture.

Next steps

PATH's president, Bishop Antonio Staglianò, welcomes the fresh outlook.

"Pope Francis entrusts our Pontifical Academy with a new mission: that of promoting, in every area of knowledge, discussion and dialogue ... to reach and involve all of the people of God in theological research so ... [their life] becomes theological life."

PATH will now "network with universities and centres of production of culture and thought," he says.

It will also explore "culturally qualified" ways to propose the Gospel as a life guide, even to atheists.

In addition, PATH will exercise a commitment to "intellectual charity" by focusing on the questions and needs of those "on the existential peripheries."

Source

• AP News
• Eurasia Review