The ‘Benedictine’ through-line in Leo XIV’s thinking about Vatican II

“A new council proved to be not only meaningful, but necessary,” the pope said. He was speaking about Vatican II, especially in light of the momentous changes in the world at the rough midpoint of the 20th century.

It wasn’t the first time the Church had needed a rethinking in light of disruption in the world.

He noted how the capture and sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 “profoundly shook the world of that time,” and also affected the thinking of St Augustine.

“[T]he complete spiritualization of the concept of the Church, for its part, misses the realism of faith and its institutions in the world,” he continued. “Thus,” he said, “in Vatican II the question of the Church in the world finally became the real central problem.”

These were, indeed, the words of the pope.

They were not, however, the words of Pope Leo XIV – once the head of the Augustinian order – but came from a 2022 letter Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote to Father Dave Pivonka, the president of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, in 2022.

I thought about those remarks on Wednesday, when Pope Leo began his series on the Pastoral Constitution