Do we need a “rapid theology?”

There’s a new slogan percolating in the Vatican: “teologia rapida.”

Jesuit priest and author Antonio Spadaro, who is undersecretary for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education and the former editor-in-chief of La Civiltà Cattolica, is pushing this new concept, which he thinks is needed because of the Church’s “increasingly radical synodality.” As best as I can grasp it–and it seems to be a concept in the making—“teologia rapida” means “rapid theological thinking.”

What exactly does that mean?

It seems to mean responding rapid changes in a rapidly changing world. Spadaro notes that the pace of change in today’s world has increased over prior ages and appears to want the Church to keep pace.

His essay—”In this time of whirlwind changes, a ‘rapid” theology is needed'”—takes us on an etymological tour of “rapid.” Not only is change “rapid” but, like the rapids of a river, it can shake things up, something both dangerous and exhilarating, and pose special challenges demanding fast response.

My reactions are mixed.

Yes, the Church needs to respond more quickly to the signs, and especially the anti-signs of the times. A hoary adage says that “the Church thinks in centuries.” Traditionally, it seemed the Church could clearly can relate to the claim–I don’t know if it’s apocryphal or not—that, when Nixon asked then-Communist Chinese Premier Zhou En-Lai what he thought of the French Revolution, he answered, “it’s too early to tell.”

Yes, there have been times that the Church has been behind the curve in addressing modern changes in a timely fashion. Because we all know that a favorite refuge of innovators is the claim that, if their “reform” is not immediately uprooted, then “we can’t turn the clock back.”

At the same time, a responsible institution like the Church should not make precipitous and rushed declarations. The Church is not a politician’s press spokesman, expected to react to the news of the moment–a news cycle ever more “rapid”–just to get on to CNN.

I honestly fear the temptations of the latter. Good moral theology insists that Catholic social teaching largely provides general principles, the framework within which individual policy decisions are made. But between general principles and individual policies a large number of steps intervene and, as St. Thomas Aquinas was wont to note, the degree of certainty (and, therefore, of error) between general principle and individual application can increase.

That’s why, in general, Catholic social teaching at least has been content to reiterate the general principles that should guide matters (e.g., principles of human and national rights) while leaving individual applications (e.g., country X’s proper immigration policies) to Catholic policy-makers with informed consciences. That’s not just a bulwark against clericalism, as “Father Smith does not always know best,” but also for subsidiarity, because Father Smith does not always know best because he is not an expert in or probably even familiar with contingent questions which prudence demands inform a policy decision.

If the Church succumbs to the temptation of opining on concrete policy in contingent political matters in which sincere Catholics can disagree, it risks diluting her moral authority to become just another lobby or non-governmental organization. And she will be seen–especially outside the Church–as pushing its “interests” on the public square. That would be the defeat of any value to “teologia rapida.”

Spadaro recognizes the need for more nimble theological response by the Church and correctly identifies what is needed to do that: a certain connaturality, a certain innate “sense” of theological truth that facilitates application of truthful conclusions to changed circumstances.

But such connaturality requires theological stability, a “hermeneutic of continuity” that recognizes what is settled and then builds with confidence on that foundation. The problem, however, is that this pontificate, for which Spadaro is regularly an apologist, has in practice (if not theory) led the Church in precisely the opposite direction. It has unsettled theological certainty, lauded “making a mess” of theological stability, caricaturing those who insisted on its value as yoke-imposing doctors in the chair of Moses.

You can’t have it both ways.

What happens, in fact, is that you run the very real danger of a caricature of “connaturality” that has nothing to do with that concept. It is one which imagines good intentions and some sort of intuited feelings–perhaps accompanied by a momentary “conversation of the Spirit”–to supply what previously long and cultivated theological inquiry arrived at carefully. Grace builds on nature but, without the careful cultivation of that nature, it is somewhat presumptuous to expect God to replace the negligence by inspired intuitions.

Spadaro himself speaks of this “rapid theology” as a process that combines ‘[t]he memory of the Church … with instinct to transform it into “intuition”, which is the ability to sense, discern and quickly evaluate a situation as it develops.” Pardon me if I reject what I should have learned from my Jesuit teachers, but I want that process to lead to concepts that are rationally intelligible and prudentially tested, not intuitions that are “discerned.”

Spadaro’s flight from such rationality seems evident in his argument that “rapid theology” ought to be characterized by “running, without complaining that it has no time to reason, to plan.”

We certainly haven’t seen this Vatican doing that sprint in the case of ex-Jesuit Marko Rupnik.

As an editor and communications official, I understand and even sympathize with Spadaro’s wish for a more responsive Church. But, without the spadework that requires and in the current ecclesiastical climate, I fear what, in fact, that “rapid theology” may mean in practice.

And I dislike slogans. We already went through the “field hospital,” a paradigm that proved risible when, in the middle of a global pandemic when the Church’s presence was more necessary than ever, the ecclesiastical MASH globally struck tent, fled the battlefield, and locked church doors.

That’s why, aware of the inchoate nature of this concept aborning, I warn against a “teologia rapida” devolving into a “teologia stupida”.