Studying History

Earlier this week, on the feast of the Presentation of Mary, Pope Francis issued a Letter "On the Renewal of the Study of Church History." While directed primarily at the importance of the study of Church History in priestly formation, the Pope's letter could hardly be more timely, given the widespread decline in the serious study of history almost everywhere and the consequently diminished sense of historical consciousness in our societies.

Countering this, the Pope calls for "the cultivation of a clear sense of the historical dimension that is ours as human beings. No one can truly know their deepest identity, or what they wish to be in the future, without attending to the bonds that link them to preceding generations." The Pope highlights "the urgent need for a greater sense of history at a moment when we see a tendency to dismiss the memory of the past or to invent one suited to the requirements of dominant ideologies. Faced with the cancellation of past history or with clearly biased historical narratives, the work of historians, together with knowledge and dissemination of the their work, can act as a curb on misrepresentations, partisan efforts at revisionism, ad their use to justify wars, persecutions, the production sale and utilization of weapons and any number of evils."

Certainly, our own recent American experience this past decade, with all its ideological excesses and extremes - from "Woke" to MAGA" - with all their accompanying distortions of American and world history have provided abundant confirmation for the Pope's concerns.

The particular focus of the Pope's practical concern is the renewal of the study of Church History in seminaries. I have been away from that setting now for almost 40 years, and so I have no specific sense of what happens in contemporary seminaries or of how well or poorly history is taught. The papal letter suggests that there may be some fundamental inadequacies in historical training, of which he is a better judge than I. He suggests "students are rarely formed in how to read the fundamental texts of ancient Christianity such as the Letter to Diognetus, the Didache or the Acts of the Martyrs. When this happens, students will be ill-equipped to read them and resort instead to ideological filters or theoretical pre-conceptions that do not permit a lively and stimulating understanding."

Likewise, "Church history helps us to see the real Church and to love the Church as she truly exists, and love what she has learnt and continues to learn from her mistakes and failures."

In conclusion, the Pope emphasizes that his concern is with actual and serous study. He notes that "study serves to ask questions, not to be numbed by banality and to seek meaning in life. Moreover, study should enable us to reclaim the right to reject today's many seductive voices that distract us from this search."