Aggiornamento - the Spirit of Renewal

Welcome to Aggiornamento, the new blog site of The Roncalli Center. We welcome contributors, your opinions and your posts. It’s a big church – come on in!

I associate the word aggiornamento with the Second Vatican Council and with Pope John XXIII. An open minded and transforming act to revitalize a spirit of renewal within the church, aggiornamento contains the potential to create a revolution of generosity, joy, hope, peace, justice and mercy through the tempestuous and unleashed wind of the Spirit of God. Wind creates changes in a landscape. Praying aggiornamento is a bit like praying for a hurricane. But in my opinion, that’s exactly what we need again, fifty years after the Second Vatican Council: a great, big ol’ gale of the Spirit’s wind to stir us up and change the landscape of the church into a new way of being church.  

In his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul06/p6eccles.htm, Pope Paul XI espoused the word aggiornamento before resuming the Council after John XXIII’s death and wrote, “We cannot forget Pope John XXIII's word aggiornamento which We have adopted as expressing the aim and object of Our own pontificate. Besides ratifying it and confirming it as the guiding principle of the Ecumenical Council, We want to bring it to the notice of the whole Church. It should prove a stimulus to the Church to increase its ever growing vitality and its ability to take stock of itself and give careful consideration to the signs of the times, always and everywhere "proving all things and holding fast that which is good" with the enthusiasm of youth.”  

I write this in the wake of the recent report by The Pew Research Center, “Nones” on the Rise. http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx. The article reports finding that one in five adults affiliate with no religion whatsoever. In another article in the October issue of America Magazine, James Gorman and Robert Rivers author a prophetic article How to Evangelize http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=13628 and suggest that any success we might anticipate in the way of a new aggiornamento depends greatly on how we creatively craft a more ‘missional’ model of church. If there was ever a time for the church to “take stock of itself and give careful consideration to the signs of the times”(ES), that time is now.

I propose two things with the creation of this center. The first involves putting aside polemic differences that divides us rather than unites us as the Body of Christ and getting our priorities straight. Why would we expect people to come running to worship when they cannot for the life of them witness a passionate and prophetic church ablaze with the love and justice of Jesus in liturgical life, which includes what happens after we leave the building. We need to connect the dots for our young people, whose natural spirituality draws them to serve the world with compassion and justice. However, they so often fail to integrate their interior spirituality with a worshipping faith community. The church needs to take stock of itself and own up to our absent sisters and brothers. It’s time to put our own differences aside and get to work to sustain the legions of our human family who live on the fringe of the church. We need to seek them out and go to them with the Good News, not vice versa.

Secondly, I propose that we go back to basics and pray, study and reflect together on the beauty and prophetic vision of the constitutions and subsequent documents produced by the Second Vatican Council. Words and terms like ‘people of God’ (Lumen Gentium), ‘full, conscious and active participation’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium), ‘the human community (Gaudium et Spes) and so much rich language gave voice to the Council’s desire for the ‘whole world to hear the summons to salvation, so that through hearing may believe, through belief it may hope, through hope it may come to love’ (Dei Verbum).

Through Living Room Dialogues, upcoming podcasts, vimeos, YouTubes, shared blogs and “Roncalli on the Road” events as we come to you when you invite us, we can all deepen an understanding of ourselves as a mission-based church toward an outcome of service in action for the peoples of the world. In word, banquet and mission, we identify ourselves as Christ’s disciples to find God in every living person and every human experience to establish the reign of God in this time and place.

This is our moment of aggiornamento. The jet is leaving the runway and the sky is the limit! Watch the website for new contributors, presenters, updates and events. Follow us through your favorite social media. Welcome to the Roncalli Center – to the journey!