Becoming Capable of Symbol

Last Spring I was part of an international colloquium on symbol sponsored by Laval University in Canada. The title of my paper was “Becoming Capable of Symbol: Pope Francis and Romano Guardini in Dialogue.” The proceeds of the colloquium are wending their way through peer review for publication in a scholarly journal, but in the meantime I’ve reworked some of the same material and expanded it for a more general readership.

The article has appeared this week at Sapientia, the blog of Fordham University’s Center for Religion and Culture, under the title “Is the Eucharist a Symbol?”

It is a sad fact of life today that stewardship of our liturgical symbols remains weak in many settings. This is not merely an aesthetic issue but the downstream consequence of a fundamental misunderstanding. The rhetorical opposition between “symbol” and “reality” (dating from the time of the Reformation in the West and still used today) needs to be abandoned. To set symbol against reality is most certainly to miss the point.

Pope Leo has also recently had some incisive things to say about symbol. These offer additional support to the principles evoked by both Guardini and Francis. I’ve incorporated them into the article too.

You can read it all here. [It is not behind a paywall.]

Fordham’s center for Religion and Culture, by the way, offers a lot of quality programming. Those who are not be familiar with it may want to check it out. I am grateful to them for publishing my piece on their blog. FYI, here is their mission statement: “Through public events and conversations with experts and artists, scholars and faith leaders, the CRC seeks to engage and elevate the public dialogue about religion and culture, the mind and the soul, inclusion and identity, politics, and the arts.”