Palazzo Maffei Marescotti, new headquarters of the Pontifical Academy of Theology – Imoagoeconomica
The new headquarters of the Pontifical Academy of Theology is inaugurated today in Rome, at Palazzo Maffei Marescotti (via della Pigna 13/A). On this occasion, from 5.30 pm, a moment of study on theology in the pontificate of Francis will take place.
Speeches by the president of Path, Antonio Staglianò (we publish the text here) and by Giovanni Cesare Pagazzi. The initiative is open to theologians, teachers, members of Pontifical Academies and universities, personalities from the world of culture.
«He who has thought the deepest, loves the absolutely alive». This verse by Hoelderlin strongly tightens the relationship between “Thought and experience”. When thinking is authentic it is never abstract, it captures life, because it is born “in life”. Pope Francis did well in He loved us to quote Martin Heidegger on the beginning of thinking as produced by emotion: the emotional shock of “goosebumps” gives rise to deep thought. To promote theology for the Path (Pontifical Academy of Theology) this is a “shocking emotion” to generate a theological thought that is up to the cultural challenges of the present time, “liquid” (according to Bauman), “foamy” (according to Sloterdijk). A new theological thought can begin in a See like this, ready to become a “think tank”, for a cultural project that looks at people’s life of faith, at Christian testimony in complex and plural societies, at the inculturation of the Gospel, broadening the boundaries of collaboration and dialogue, integrating – through the figure of the “Referent Interlocutors” – even those who believe differently or those who “believe they don’t believe at all”, thus living that synodal style that summons believers and non-believers “together” to “think” to resist the degradation of human barbarism, manifest in the useless massacres of wars, as in the commodification of the bodies of consumerism, in the alienation of the future Metaverse of AI, as in the common selfishness that is at the basis of communities that are increasingly less supportive, and increasingly individualistic and conflictual, violent. It is this theology “that smacks of flesh and people”, created in the wisdom style that Monsignor Giovanni Cesare Pagazzi will tell us about, that expresses the “novelty” of the path that Path undertakes with this inauguration. It is an entry into the “novum” of the Incarnation, inhabiting, and touching with new melodies and new music, the “strings” of the bows stretched between “celestial mechanics” (“the starry sky above me”) and “the tragedy of exist in the flesh” (the moral law within me), from which we are distracted by materialistic culture, as by technocratic scientism with its hallucinating salvation, subservient to the nihilistic project of post-human condition. Such a large participation in the event signals the interest and the right expectations that dwell in our hearts for an undertaking that we could call “Christic Enlightenment”, at the service of a “Christianity of light” that overcomes the blindness of the world, as outlined in the Holy Father’s homily at the conclusion of the last Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality. We are therefore inaugurating not so much a new headquarters for Path, but realistically “a headquarters for the New Path. The Path is in fact “new” with its three new faces – the Academic face, strengthened by the creation of the Council of Higher Studies and the expansion of the members from 44 to 55 – the Wisdom face which will develop through the theological cenacles, widespread everywhere – the Solidarity face that will “demonstrate” how the “fides quarens intellectum” is embodied in faith that works through charity. The prelate secretary Father Marco Salvati will speak to us conclusively about these three faces. We sincerely thank the Holy Father for giving us this venue, obtained thanks to the thoughtful mediation of His Eminence Baldo Reina, together with the closeness of Monsignor Edgar Pegna Parra, deputy of the Secretariat of State, to whom we ask to initiate this inauguration, illustrating the “whys ” and the ways in which the renewal of Path marks a step forward in the renewal that Preach the Gospel asks all the Structures of the Holy See to make their respective and synodal contribution to evangelization and to the announcement of the joy of the Gospel visible.
