Rebuild My Church^[1]
Peter Damian Fehlner’s Appropriation and Development of
the Ecclesiology and Mariology of Vatican II

 Fourth in a Series
by
Edward J. Ondrako OFM Conventual
University of Notre Dame

“Because we are all gifted by God with minds, we are all capable of thinking metaphysically or we do not have a mind,” Fr. Fehlmer would say to dissuade any doubts. That means, simply, that he promoted thinking on the deeper level or secondary level. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things and includes abstract concepts such as being, or what is, vs. non-being. Metaphysics deals with knowing, identity, time and space. In a word, Franciscan metaphysics says the unsayable and manifests the hidden about infinite Being and finite, created being. Because of his exceptional skills as a metaphysician-theologian, it is no surprise that Fr. Fehner differed with recent presentations of the saints. Take the example of his knowledge and love of St. Maximilian M. Kolbe. Fr. Fehlner extrapolated from the high Mariology of the martyr of charity to prove that Kolbe was a Scotist. That insight is not found anywhere else and worthy of the hard work to understand the validity of Fr. Fehlner’s claim. Fr. Fehlner critically engaged modern thinking and took issue with the “interpreter’s theory of how a writer of the past, even recent past, is conditioned by cultural circumstances no longer existent, and to be understood even by himself, needs to be ‘reread’ in terms of a current and diverse cultural ambient.”^[2] When the investigator and inquirer engages Fr. Fehlner’s Bonaventurian-Scotistic method with St. John Henry Newman’s personalist method, the convergence is indisputable.

Overview
The point is that Fr. Fehlner joined Pope St.John Paul II to defend the dismissal of metaphysics by critics who react to truth as once upon a time and is now anachronistic. The Holy Father respectfully encountered skeptics who view Christianity as repressive, authoritarian and obscurantist, the opposite of true humanism. The Holy Father answered those who have nostalgia for what is perceived as the loss of Christianity and engaged those who would criticize Christianity but not dismiss it totally.

Veritatis Splendor (1993) and Fides et Ratio (1998) by the philosopher Pope St. John Paul II is a unit. Veritatis Splendor is to counter the free fall of truth by drawing attention to certain fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine that risk being distorted or denied in our age. He saw the secular invasion in the West as increasing with ever more virulent force from its roots in pre-Kantian, Kantian, Hegelian, Marxist thought that was carried forward by Nietzsche and his epigone, Heidegger. Catholic Christian scholars have to study the valid points of all critics who are guests that can become unruly because they know the teachings of Christianity but repackage them. Cultural expression that amounts to thinking that no longer looks to truth, or to “cancel” truth, demands^[3] patient inquiry and investigation into regulatory principles of the truth. The Holy Father’s narrative employs philosophy, forms of thought and amplifies culture which recovers philosophy’s original vocation. Fides et Ratio builds upon Veritatis Splendor and concentrates on defining truth itself in relation to faith.

Contours in Fr. Fehlner’s Franciscan theology with Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio imbues his essays. Besides the primacy of Christ and Mary, Fr. Fehlner joined Pope St. John Paul II in writing about Mary as the memory of the Church (Redemptoris Mater). Fr. Fehlner said to me that he was developing a Franciscan theology of Mary as “memory of the Church.” It is not an overstatement to claim that Mary may be likened to the thread that weaves all of the essay together.

Fr. Fehlner’s Marian metaphysics is one example of how he says the unsayable and manifests the hidden in words. E.g. his metaphysics articulates the contrast between what is possible to be known about the blessed life in heaven and a person’s capacity for knowledge and freedom about retribution that follows upon misuse of freedom or seeking pleasure, a good in itself, with a form without God which is dangerous. The fragility, vulnerability, and a certain order of decay accompanies living without God and the secular invasion which accompanies modernity. Knowledge and freedom is often confused by an influx of competing impetuses that need to be clarified. Who is clarifying? Who becomes the referee? Secular modernity reinvents itself with a hostile edge that wants to be the sole referee.

Summary
What is the connection between God as love, light, and beauty? In a postmodern world, we do not assume the standard perception of knowing what is not in this life such as Dante’s Commedia.^[4] Yet, Dante is more real than we are in conveying an ugly world that we want to be less ugly and a heaven that is tota pulchra. Heaven, hell and Catholic purgatory motivate a person. Difficulty believing in hell as eternal perdition or holding that hell is empty, intimates that there is something like a hellish existence. People are capable of perceiving that because there is a sort of primal fear about being buried alive for eternity. They believe in crime and punishment and the avoidance of evil. Hell, therefore, has a representability more than heaven. Purgatory has a kind of experiential quotient. Purification is taking place for one’s entire life. There are all kinds of relationships where persons have been addicted, robbed, abused, used and destroyed and punishment comes. When a person dies, the thought is that the person is not bad enough to go to hell, but not good enough to go to heaven. Compare St. Bonaventure’s The Triple Way which outlines the means or acts whereby a person cooperates with grace to put order into one’s soul. In life there is a dynamic movement from the purgative way to the middle illuminative way and to the higher unitive way, a dynamic going up and down the ladder of life.

Christians care about actions which have eternal consequences. Catholic Christian regulatory guidance for building up this world now has an eye on the next life. To build up this world matters. God is the supreme object of satisfaction of our desires and that is joy. To Dante, hell was believable and only he could have written about hell with his gift of representability. No one has crafted such a great Christian text that presupposes the drama of perdition or salvation. The Inferno retains its literary reception while the Paradiso remains the most difficult to represent because it is about the afterlife. Dante dares to represent with shocking ambition and almost adds to the biblical text.

Throughout his essays, Fr. Fehlner refers to Kantianism which to his metaphysical theological mind functions as a “virus”in modern thought. He praised the contributions of Kant, but fled from Kantian philosophy that countered Catholic doctrine. “Sanctification of the intellect” was his defense to post-Kantian theological and philosophical thought and radically arbitrary human autonomy. Fr. Fehlner monitored Rahner’s engagement with Kantianism, especially the immanent and transcendent Trinity. His Bonaventurian-Scotistic philosophical and theological critical engagement clashed with Rahner’s Transcendental Thomism. He is unequaled among modern and contemporary theologians in how he incorporates the Trinitarian theology in St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure and Bl. Duns Scotus.

Study Questions

• Does the principle of the “sanctification of the intellect” / and intellectual humility help or hinder your understanding of the metaphysical-theological thinking of Fr. Fehlner?
• Fehlner’s idea is that metaphysics is for everyone with a mind. Does he convince you that you are capable of thinking on a deeper level?
• Fehlner aims to guide how theology ought to be conducted in the future, i.e. with the model of the radically humble will of the Virgin Mother? Do you understand the significance of her will to be perfectly one with the will of God?

________________________

^[1] E. J. Ondrako, Rebuild My Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC., 2021). [ISBN 978-1-943901-19-0].
^[2] P.D. Fehlner, St. Maximilian M. Kolbe: Pneumatologist (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 2024), 12.
^[3] When I was teaching Catholic thought to graduate students in a secular university shortly after Pope John Paul II died in 2005, I was welcomed and treated most cordially but told never to make any truth claims.
^[4] The sixth entry in this series continues with reflections on Dante.

Rebuild My Church^[1]
Peter Damian Fehlner’s Appropriation and Development of
the Ecclesiology and Mariology of Vatican II

 Third in a Series
by
Edward J. Ondrako OFM Conventual
University of Notre Dame

Fr. Fehlner taught his students to think deeply in order to understand transcendence and truth. For example: does God suffer with our sufferings; what is liberalism in religion? One of his best answers was how St. John Henry Newman fought liberalism in religion all his life. Carrying this forward, iIt is one thing to chart the free fall of transcendence and truth which begins in the mid seventeenth century. It is quite another thing to climb out of the precipice or to chart a way beyond its growth into the twenty-first century. Fr. Fehlner does not leave us in the precipice. Thought patterns from his multiple essays assist us in a very readable and persuasive manner on how to climb out.

Fr. Fehlner’s works say the unsayable and the hidden. The Bonaventurian-Scotistic primacy of the will has its object of love, and the intellect, its object, truth. To love in truth is the driving force in removing violence, overcoming rivalry through peace, showing the harmony of faith, and the understanding of doctrines as the Trinity, Christ, Mary, Creation, sin, forgiveness and merit. To say the unsayable with a Franciscan voice never grows old. St. John Henry Newman aligns with the Franciscans: “To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.“^[2]

Fr. Fehlner is a faithful interpreter of the goals of life set forth in St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum and his method accompanying the Itinerarium, i.e. to love and to live by truth in the De Triplici Via. Pope St. John Paul aligns when he quoted the Prologue of the Itinerarium in Fides et Ratio n.105. Let theologians remember “to be on guard against supposing that reading is enough without fervor, speculation without devotion, research without wonder, carefulness without any delight, labor without piety, knowledge without charity, understanding without humility, study without divine grace, clarity without divinely inspired wisdom.”^[3]

Overview
Does God suffer? In the 1960’s there was almost no interest, but today, the question has much interest. Ancient and contemporary patripassion, the term for suffering and God, drew me to Fr. Fehlner’s clarifications of an idea with little traction during his first years of teaching but has taken off. Fr. Fehlner saw deeply into the question: does God suffer if we suffer? Human beings may suffer beyond what is describable, such as POW’s. To Fr. Fehlner, St.Maximilian Kolbe was not only a “martyr of charity,” as Pope St. John Paul II described him, but The Theologian of Auschwitz.^[4] Does God suffer with POW’s?

The answer is part of Fr. Fehlner’s theological clarity and amplification of St.Bonaventure and Bl. Duns Scotus who became my preferred resource in Rebuild My Church.^[5] Consider the gift of modernity which is viewed positively by some and negatively by others, and a mixed reaction by still others. The twilight of modernity, or post-Christian culture is part of God’s loving providence that is captured accurately by St. Bonaventure’s aphorism: the work of Christ does not go backward, but forward.

Patripassionism is aligned with contemporary relativism, i.e. the false assumption that the truth reveals itself equally in different truths, even when they contradict each other. The erroneous conclusion is that there is no objective truth and everything is reduced to opinion, the freefall of truth. At the time of his election in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI immortalized the post-truth problem with his term the “dictatorship of relativism.” In 2010, he beatified John Henry Newman. Pope Francis canonized Newman on October 13, 2019. St. Newman’s hands-on approach proves him a saint for our times.

The doctrinal truths at the heart of the matter center on why Christ can only suffer in his humanity, but not in his divinity. This cannot be passed over for it has everything to do with the contemporary post-truth leaning world. The Son of God became incarnate willingly in order to suffer. This truth is absolutely central to our reflection on the mystery of the Trinity, the foundation for everything Catholic Christians believe. It is why Fr. Fehlner bristled with the interpretation of the Trinity that became associated with Transcendental Thomism, Karl Rahner, S.J., and his students. Meditation on the mystery of the Trinity leads to only one conclusion that it is impossible for the Divine Persons to suffer, except metaphorically.

Fr. Fehlner answers from St. Francis of Assisi as he prays before the crucifix of San Damiano with copious tears. The triumph of the Cross, understood in a Franciscan sense, is not suffering but love that is willing to suffer and in order to suffer must become incarnate. In antiquity, the Church understood the difference and made a judgment that patripassionism was a heresy. In modernity, a new form of the ancient error is in Hegelian inspired thought on God and suffering. Hegelian evolutionary thinking devalues the truth about suffering and God. Further critical analysis by Fr. Fehlner will continue..

Summary
Liberalism in religion or the belief that there is no objective truth to any religion but only opinion was the line in the sand for John Henry Newman. Fr. Fehlner found his thought precise in diagnosing a problem plaguing modernity. If coupled with a Hegelian interpretation that God suffers, not only does liberalism in religion misrepresent, but, it misremembers or repackages objective truth. Hegel said his conceptual grid could account for everything that happened and would happen. Hegelian thinking links with thinking that everything is an opinion. Remember that upon being named a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII, the central thesis of Newman’s acceptance speech in May 1879, the Biglietto, was on liberalism in religion. This exemplifies parallels between the works of St. John Henry Newman and Fr. Fehlner. His Bonaventurian-Scotistic originality is thoroughly documented in: “Scotus and Newman in Dialogue.”^[6]

Contemporary neo-patripassianism betrays lack of confidence in doctrinal definitions of why it is impossible for the divine Persons to suffer. Christ only suffers in his humanity. Franciscans preach that Christ became human willingly in order to suffer out of love not out of necessity. This is the central thesis to Fr. Fehlner’s teaching. The reader will discover a progressive illumination why St. John Henry Newman’s writings have considerable similarity with the thought patterns, theological and philosophical, of Bl. John Duns Scotus.^[7] Furthermore, the similarity is in Fr. Fehlner’s amplification for today’s readers.

Study Questions

• Does God suffer? Why is contemporary patripassionism dangerous to faith in our Savior? Can I say that I too am God? Why or why not? (Think of Hegel in the first essay.)
• Why did St. John Henry Newman devote his life to counter liberalism in religion, the view that there is no objective truth and all religions are merely matters of opinion? Does it matter in modernity?
• What happens to faith and reason without objective truth, that everything is only opinion? Can you understand the free fall of transcendence and truth? (Think of Pope St. John Paul II)

__________________________

^[1] E. J. Ondrako, Rebuild My Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC., 2021). [ISBN 978-1-943901-19-0].
^[2] John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Doctrine (1845, London: uniform edition, 1900).
^[3] Prologus, 4: Opera Omnia, Florence, 1891, vol. V. 296. Itinerarium mentis in Deum introducens eundem monet “ne forte credat, quod sibi sufficiat lectio sine unctione, speculatio sine devotione, investigatio sine admiratione, circumspectio sine exultatione, industria sine pietate, scientia sine caritate, intelligentia sine humilitate, studium absque divina gratia, speculum absque sapientia divinitus inspirata.” In the Protagoras, Socrates had no room for akrasia or weakness of will. Rather, the young have the duty to learn to philosophize and the old to philosophize in order not to grow weary. Fr.Fehlner and John Paul II would agree and apply the principle to theology.
^[4] See P. D. Fehlner, The Theologian of Auschwitz (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Press, 2020).
^[5] See Rebuild My Church: Peter Damian Fehlner’s Appropriation and Development of the Ecclesiology and Mariology of Vatican II (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC, 2021).
^[6] P. D. Fehlner, “Scotus and Newman in Dialogue, “ in The Newman-Scotus Reader, ed. E. Ondrako (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 2015, rpt, canonization issue 2019), chapter seven. This study was written to assist the reader to understand the key elements of Scotistic thought that support Fehlner’s claim for striking similarities in the thought patterns of Duns Scotus and Newman. The originality of Fehlner’s discovery is an invitation for further inquiry and investigation.
^[7] P.D. Fehlner, “Scotus and Newman in Dialogue,” in E. Ondrako, The Newman-Scotus Reader: Contexts and Commonalities (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 2015, rpt. Canonization Issue, 2019), 239-389. See 383-84.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
June 13, 2021

Rebuild My Church^[1]
Peter Damian Fehlner’s Appropriation and Development of
The Ecclesiology and Mariology of Vatican II

 Second in a Series
by
Edward J. Ondrako OFM Conventual
University of Notre Dame

“I seek you, I desire you, I rise to go to you, I welcome you, I exult in you; and, finally I cling to you.”^[2] Seven aspirations in a Bonaventurian mode express the love of a devout soul with the Lord in this life and in the afterlife. It is difficult to write about the afterlife. Dante’s Paradiso, however, works as almost nothing else works to say the unsayable. Saying the unsayable also works in the Collected Essays^[3] of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner. The reader will discover what many of Fr. Fehlner’s students and listeners to his homilies experienced: the presence of a master teacher, preacher and Franciscan priest. Humbly and with brevity, Fr. Fehlner affirmed why he preferred the way of St. Francis of Assisi without ever forcing anyone to do the same and dissuading anyone from trying to imitate him. He understood that St. Francis and his theologian disciples, St. Bonaventure and Bl. John Duns Scotus, lived in easier times in premodernity. Do not expect to be theologians overnight, Fr. Fehlner insisted, while unfolding the daunting challenges of living in modernity and some would say, the twilight of modernity.

Fr. Fehlner was the first systematic theologian to explain St. John Henry Newman^[4] and heavily rationalist ecclesiastical climate in England during the nineteenth century. Earlier in my academic career, Franciscan teachers had lauded Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, but a comprehensive approach within the Franciscan School only came from Fr. Fehlner amplified Kolbe’s thinking in the daunting Scotistic framework which made Kolbe unquestionably a theologian. Kolbe’s other gifts such as his visionary approach with employing modern communications media for evangelization were known, but not Kolbe’s theology. After Kolbe’s Beatification on 17 October 1971 by Pope St. Paul VI and Canonization on 10 October 1982 by Pope St. John Paul II, as ‘martyr of charity,’ Fr. Fehlner wrote the definitive study for validating his claim to be a theologian that is masterfully argued first, from the order of intention; second, his theology and critical question; the love of learning and desire for God; Marian epistemology-metaphysics; third, cause of the Immaculate at the heart of the Franciscan charism; its Bonaventurian-Scotistic foundations; fourth, the historical genesis and development of the Kolben narrative; fifth, nature of and implementation of the Militia of the Immaculate; sixth, the “golden thread of Frnciscan history; Kolbe’s spiritual evolution in relation to the theology of history of St. Bonaventure; seventh, the historical and doctrinal backdrop in the Church; supported by a Marian metaphysics for interpreting history; eighth, a visible crescendo of the primacy of charity; ninth, Kolbean theory of the metaphysics of the will according to Duns Scotus; and ninth, the development of Kolbe’s theory of the will; all leading to the tenth and final section on theory and praxis explained with the clarity that follows a progressive illumination. The “order of intention” had its “order of execution.”

Fr. Fehlner added a glossary of terms to help readers find Kolbe’s thought strikingly readable. An extensive bibliography supports Fr. Fehlner’s claim that St. Maximilian M. Kolbe fulfills correctly the title “Theologian of Auschwitz.”^[5] The growth and development just described as a progressive illumination is a term that I first used with Fr. Fehlner and, happily, he approved and readily incorporated it into his theological vocabulary because he understood the way I was incorporating progressive illumination as it neatly binds the ancients, premodernity, modernity, postmodernity and our post-Christian culture.

Overview
The seven aspirations from St. Bonaventure’s “method” in The Triple Way or The Kindling of Love encapsulates Fr. Fehlner’s scholarly Franciscan practices, form of life and golden years. A learned believer, he lived the “goal” as summarized by The Journey of the Mind to God.^[6] The Triple Way and The Journey of the Mind to God. As companion works, they bind my seven part series to introduce “Rebuild My Church.” Seven aspirations express seven degrees of the unitive way.^[7] A way is not a stage of growth for one who desires to be perfect as Christ exhorts his followers, but a metaphor for the means available to a person to attain the three constitutive elements of wisdom or happiness. The metaphor of way conveys eternal possession of absolute peace, face to face vision of absolute truth, and full enjoyment of goodness or absolute love. Weaving such triplets, Bonaventure identifies the first way for beginners; the second way for the advanced; and third way for those who have reached perfection. The three ways are a ladder for the person to ascend and descend.

It may seem like a giant step from the three ways, but, Fr. Fehlner’s account of the timeless Franciscan vision of St. Bonaventure was fully in step with Pope St. John Paul II’s analysis of a certain positivist cast of mind relating to scientific and technical progress. In Fides et Ratio, n. 91, the Holy Father recognizes that some thinkers refer to our age as “postmodernity,” first used with reference to aesthetic, social and technological phenomena, then transposed into the philosophical field, but has remained somewhat ambiguous because postmodern is sometimes positive and sometimes negative. The philosopher Pope realized that a consensus in judgment has yet to align with historical periods. Postmodern designates complex and new factors that have produced widespread, powerful, and important changes with the terrible experiences of evil, the collapse of rationalist optimism, the disillusionment of putting too much trust in the progress of reason as the source of all happiness and freedom, which he called nihilism. Fr. Fehlner chose to condense his reasons for eschewing nihilism.

Summary
A straight line continues from the four gospels to St. Bonaventure and to the works of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner as a metaphysician-theologian in the mode of St. Bonaventure, Bl. John Duns Scotus, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and Vatican II, from pre-modernity to modernity, the twilight of modernity and post-modernity. That same straight line continues into the twenty-first century, a time I now call a post-Christian culture. Difficulties and opportunities abound for Catholic thought to negotiate with figures on that historical trajectory. Fr. Fehlner was always ready to engage the contexts and concepts critically. He recognized weakness in providing Christian regulatory answers to methods that are hidden within any eclecticism because eclecticism played into the hands of those who denied the enduring validity of truth and the historical and cultural context for truth claims. Fr. Fehlner resisted any claim to the truth of philosophy to be determined on the basis of its appropriateness to a certain period and a certain historical purpose (Fides et Ratio, n. 87). He summarized: if the cultural circumstances have changed, never make the methodological mistake of saying that a writer has to reread what she wrote to be understood by herself in terms of a current and diverse cultural ambient. Pope John Paul II applied this principle to theological inquiry and compared historicism to modernism. Where there was a visible absence of critical evaluation in light of the tradition, this form of modernism was incapable of satisfying the demands of truth which is what theology engages.

Study Questions

• How might we identify the free fall of transcendence and truth in our post Christian culture?
• What might help us to climb out of the precipice or to chart a way beyond the free fall?
• What are the Triple Way and Fides et Ratio saying about the unsayable truth about God?

_____________________

^[1] E. J. Ondrako, Rebuild My Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC., 2021). [ISBN 978-1-943901-19-0].
^[2] In te Exulto; et tibi finaliter adhaereo St. Bonaventure, De Triplici Via seu Incendium Amoris, ch. 3, 8.
^[3] J. Isaac. Goff, gen. ed., Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, Publ., 2021), first of nine volumes forthcoming.
^[4] John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Doctrine (London: Longmans, Green and Co., uniform edition after the original in 1845). Newman’s seven notes are: fidelity to the original idea; continuity of principles; the power to assimilate ideas from outside; early anticipations of later teaching; logical sequence discernible when developments are examined; preservation of earlier teaching; and continuance in a state of chronic vigor.
^[5] Peter Damian Fehner, The Theologian of Auschwitz: St. Maximilian M. Kolbe on the Immaculate Conception in the Life of the Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC., 2020).
^[6] Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum was written after he visited the place where St. Francis had received the stigmata. De Triplici Via seu Incendium Amoris was written to explain Bonaventure’s original synthesis of the method of three ways for reaching union with God: purgative; illuminative; and unitive.
^[7] Way is a term from Pseudo-Dionysius to explain stages of perfection that can only be discerned if the person practices spiritual exercises that fit The Triple Way explained within a Franciscan context. The Triple Way is the method. The first way is purgative; the second way is illuminative, and the third way is unitive.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
June 12, 2021

June 11, 2021: Our Lady of the Angels Province friar Richard Rome, OFM Conv. (top left) renewed his Simple Vows during Mass, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, at our pastoral ministry of Mother Cabrini Catholic Church, in Shamokin, PA, in the presence of several friars and the local faith community of the three Franciscan parishes in the Shamokin, PA area. Afterwards, everyone enjoyed heart to heart conversation over coffee and baked goods from the famous Broadway Bakery in Mt. Carmel. Friar Rich has been serving with the friars of Mother Cabrini Friary during his Apostolic Year of Formation, with the focus of his ministry serving as Director of The Franciscan Center, in Coal Township. The vow renewal took place at the hands of his Friary Guardian & Pastor of Mother Cabrini Catholic Church, Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Martin Kobos, OFM Conv. (top right).  His vow renewal was witnessed by Fr. Michael Lasky, OFM Conv. (2nd from left – JPIC Commission Chairman and Pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish – Coal Township & St. Patrick Parish – Trevorton) and Fr. Everest Valentine Nyaki Mkenda, OFM Conv. (bottom – a friar from Tanzania, who has been living and serving with our friars since 2019, while continuing his studies in America). Also pictured above if Fr. Angelo Geiger, OFM Conv., Parochial Vicar of all three Shamokin area parishes.
Simple Profession is for a term of three years, so friars often have to renew their vows, during their Post Novitiate stage of formation. During this time they are continuing their studies, including a Fraternal Apostolic Year of formation, which friar Rich has just completed. In July, he and two of his confreres will Profess their Solemn Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.

Please keep friar Rich in your continued prayers.

Rebuild My Church^[1]
Peter Damian Fehlner’s Appropriation and Development of
the Ecclesiology and Mariology of Vatican II

 First in a Series
by
Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
University of Notre Dame

“It pleases me that you teach the friars sacred theology, so long as in these studies the spirit of prayer and devotion is not extinguished, as is contained in the rule.”^[2] This is a quintessential direct answer from St. Francis of Assisi to St. Anthony of Padua, theologian, teacher, preacher, and miracle worker whose feast we celebrate on June 13. Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conventual (1931-2018), from Our Lady of Angels Province in the USA, followed the directive of St. Francis the founder of the Order to St. Anthony with an incredible fidelity to the history of the Franciscan Order especially in face of the massive challenges to faith from modernity, which has begun with the Enlightenment. In 2017 he had read closely my study, Rebuild My Church, about his life. “You have represented the development of my entire life’s thought correctly,” he said. I could not have wished for more and that serves as the prompt for this first in a series of short summaries to share the gift of getting to know and to understand this sometimes enigmatic friar thinker and teacher of countless Franciscan friars and faithful. Our Lady of Angels Province website has generously accepted my offer to make known a gifted and humble friar who is not known as well as he ought to be known.

Overview.
It sometimes happens that something present is not seen by persons who see other things that are in plain sight. St. Augustine calls this aorâsia (Greek) or caecitas (Latin) City of God: 22, 19). Hiddenness may architectonically hold together The Works of Peter Damian Fehlner and his lifelong scholarly engagement with the relation between premodernity and modernity. For his entire life, Fr. Peter Damian (1931-2018) taught what he believed to be the correct teachings of the Church throughout its history. That encompasses creation, the fall, the prophecies and miracles of the Old Testament that all lead to the Incarnation and sacrifice of Christ. Receiving the Word in her Immaculate Heart, Mary was found worthy to conceive the Creator and to nurture the beginnings of the Church. Fr. Fehlner critically engaged proof from prophecy to show evidence of a continuous intention found in Sacred Scripture. This intention is manifested in the unfolding of a continuous efficacious plan: the wisdom of God and the needed perspective for everyone to see. There is one Mediator who condescends to dwell with everyone. We are the Mediator’s temple and our heart is his altar. God desires the heart that is bruised, humble, and sorrowful. The only begotten Son of God is our priest. His sacrifice is real and truly free. The wisdom of the Cross is not the experience of suffering. Rather, cruciform wisdom is love willing to suffer, which requires becoming incarnate in the form of a servant. St. Francis of Assisi and his theologian disciples could not be further apart from Luther and Calvin on the theology of the cross and its implications for the hierarchy of truths in Catholic doctrine as articulated at Vatican II (UR, 11). The Council intended to open a kind of fraternal rivalry to prompt dialogue and lead towards a deeper realization of the unfathomable riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8). True sacrifice is designed to unite us to God which makes possible our true happiness. Truth is gifted to the Church through Christ in the Holy Spirit. The truth of the Church is renewed in the Eucharist. The prayer and good works of the Church, despite the stains of sin and scandal, is the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit which enables the Church to be the light of the world. One member is All-Holy, Mary, the Mother of the Church. She awaited the Spirit her Son had promised with the Apostles and became the pattern of the Church at prayer. She accompanies the pilgrim Church’s homeward steps with a Mother’s love until the Lord’s Day.

Summary.
“Rebuild My Church” is the first critical analysis of the development of the thought of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, for whom the work of Christ always moves forward, never backward. At Vatican II, engagement with modernity began in earnest for the first time with the Catholic Church’s irrevocable goal to build a “bridge” to modernity. As the Council intended, Fr. Fehlner critically engaged thinkers with Kantian, Hegelian-Marxist, and Heideggerian inspired thought that seeks to repackage Christianity. The Council taught that reform and renewal of the entire Catholic church meant that these daunting figures in modernity have to be engaged critically which Fr. Fehlner did both explicitly and implicitly as a gifted metaphysician-theologian. Whoever had the privilege of listening to him lecture and preach, never left with a doubt why he was repeating the Scotistic^[3] concept of the perfect will as radically ordered and unitive, and why the ordered will was not willfulness in modern philosophy or ideology, cloaked in freedom. I will identify ideas that are hostile to Christianity in a readable manner because their influence is ubiquitous and seductive. Vatican II taught us to invite many religious thinkers for dinner with whom we will wrestle but we are on the journey together through the storms of modernity. Some guests may have a cruciform pattern, but may become unruly guests.

Fr. Fehlner elegantly crafted his reply to the complex truth and phenomena thrown up by history. Vatican II taught to bring on board from modern life when the context of the believer and history have changed. Fr. Fehlner read the Catholic thinkers from St. John Henry Newman to Erich Przywara, S.J., Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar, O.P., Henri de Lubac, S.J. in the twentieth century and their full measure of direct or indirect reading of Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger. Catholic thinkers recognized helpful insights, but overall, read them negatively. Fr. Fehlner was no exception. Famously, he feared the Kantian deformation espoused by Kant for its insistence on the absolute autonomy of the transcendental “ego.” Fr. Fehlner identified why the radically autonomous will of the creature in the thought of Kant was the exact opposite to the radically humble will of the Immaculate Virgin and the unique Marian tradition from the origins of the Franciscan Order. In sum, there is no consensus Catholic view.

Hegel had no time for philosophical modesty and made the claim that his thought summed up all of philosophy. The interpreter may think this is tragic or comic, but Hegel risks everything to insist that all philosophies are oriented towards his. If we think Hegel’s claim is “out there,” for starters, ponder why and how people reinvent themselves today. Focus on the dramatic change about religious liberty during the course of recent political campaigns! Fr. Fehlner knew that incorporation of Hegelian thought foreshadowed the roll back of religious liberty and primacy of conscience. Pope St. John Paul II did not miss the potential and real rollback In Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio, nor Benedict XVI in his panoply of writings. Pope Francis’ Fratelli Tutti is one of his writings that subtly exposes the historicist sleight of hand in current Hegelian interpretation. What does all of this mean? Hegel’s affirmation of Christian beliefs in the creation, incarnation, redemption, Church and afterlife are merely apparent. History is not to be interpreted as a spousal vision, but only as pedagogy. Modernity unveils the secret of the divine who was always ourselves. “I too am God.”^[4] Kierkegaard, the Danish Lutheran father of existentialism, refused to recognize Hegel’s presentation as Christian and thoughtHegel was an imbecile.^[5] What this means to a Christian believer today is that Hegel continued and developed Kant’s substitution of the invisible church of rational believers for the historical church of faith, which Nietzsche and Heidegger seemed to be only too happy to follow. Kant’s secularity replaced Hegel’s sublation. The historical Church is not dismissed but refigured as a shadow of the secular.

Our Common Journey
The greatest studies on the central mystery of our faith, the Trinity, are arguably by St. Augustine and St. Bonaventure.^[6] Learning about the mind and heart of Fr. Fehlner and “Rebuilding the Church” is to trust verses Hegel who is an extraordinarily learned philosopher who would leave us with nothing. Hegelian braggadocio and its adherents as Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger, have oceanic gaps from this quintessential Franciscan’s “deep knowing.” Hegel seems to know little about philosophy and theology between the third and sixteenth centuries. Hegel’s analysis of history strikes no prophetic complaint or echoes of lament of the Psalms. The post Vatican II dialogical world remembers the claim that in Protestant thought Hegel essentially rediscovered the central importance of the doctrine of the Trinity but with no mention of the traditional authorities of the doctrine of the Trinity: Augustine, Gregory Nazianzen, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, nor Luther, Calvin and other Protestant theologians. Hegel keeps strange company with Jacob Boehme (theosophist), Philo of Alexandria, and Valentinus. Creation is necessary and God has a lot to gain from creation of the world. Without the world, God is nothing. Fr. Fehlner reminds us that knowledge of the Blessed Trinity is the most practical of all knowledge for it reminds us of our goal and joy of life, sharing in the love of the Father and Son in the Holy Spirit.

Study Questions.

• If we forget the essential elements in a world of lowered expectations, will we remember what Christianity was and is?
• As Christian thinkers, will we unapologetically know where we are and where we stand vs. flight to a bunker mentality that witnesses only to those in the bunker?
• If we allow ourselves to be “reinvented by a hostile secularism,” what will our worldview be? Change in the Holy Spirit is knowing how to productively forget and what to remember.
• While engaging modernity critically, will we intercept subtle efforts to “repackage” Christianity?

_____________________

^[1] E.J. Ondrako, Rebuild My Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC., 2021). [ISBN 978-1-943901-18-0]
^[2] Placet mihi quod sacram teologiam legas fratribus, dummodo inter huius studium orationis et devotionis spiritum non extinguas, sicut in regula continetur (EpAnt).
^[3] Bl. John Duns Scotus (1265-1308) was the “subtle doctor” and “Marian doctor” who systematically supported the absolute primacy of Christ, a theme that was the driving force for Fr. Fehlner.
^[4] “I too am God” is Ludwig Feuerbach’s skillful affirmation of Hegel’s thought that concludes that Christian beliefs are all myths and that the secret of modernity is that the divine was always ourselves. See Cyril O’Regan below.
^[5] See Cyril O’Regan, “97 Theses on Hegel and His Catholic Thinkers” in Church Life Journal, McGrath Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame (31 Auugst 2020). This is O’Regan’s hypothetical about Kierkegaard.
^[6] See P.D. Fehlner, in J. Isaac Goff, Caritas in Primo (New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2015), Afterword, 311-321.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
June 11, 2021

In this (eventually 12 part) series, Friar Tim Kulbicki, OFM Conv. delves into the Constitutions for the Order of Friars Minor Conventual; a document presenting the original charism of the Order, given to us from our founder St. Francis of Assisi 800 years ago, and describing how that charism translates into modern terms.

Eucharistic Procession led by friar Antonio and Friar Calixto

The June 2021 Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) celebrations at our pastoral ministry of Holy Cross Catholic Church (Atlanta, GA) included the Eucharistic Procession through the neighborhood, led by Our Lady of the Angels Province student friar Antonio Moualeu, OFM Conv., with Benediction and Adoration presided over by the parish’s parochial vicar, Fr. Calixto Salvatierra Moreno, OFM Conv.
{Note: Photos taken from the Holy Cross Atlanta Español Facebook page where you will find several more beautiful moments from the celebration}

Why is friar Antonio in Atlanta?
During the Post-Novitiate stage of formation, our student friars not only engage in furthering their education, but also take the time to participate in active ministry. This past year we had four student friars in study in Washington, DC and two in study in San Antonio, TX.
Friar Antonio and friar Fabian Adderley, OFM Conv. lived in a large community of student friars from several provinces, in the Post-Novitiate San Damiano Friary (San Antonio, TX), under the direction of Our Lady of the Angels Province Friar Gary Johnson, OFM Conv. and Our Lady of Consolation Province Friar Andy Martinez, OFM Conv. While friar Antonio will return to San Antonio to continue his Doctoral studies after his summer break with our friars of Holy Cross Friary (Atlanta, GA), this summer friar Fabian will begin his Apostolic Year of Formation with our friars of St. Bonaventure Friary (Toronto, ON).
The other student friars of our province have also been assigned to spend the summer in varied friaries throughout our province. Please keep them all in your prayers as they proceed in their vocation formation.

Our province will be holding a Summer Discernment Retreat, from July 29 – August 2, 2021 (The Feast Day of Our Lady of the Angels). To sign up or for more information about vocations, contact our Province Vocation Director ~ Br. Nick Romeo, OFM Conv. at vocations@olaprovince.org.

Throughout our province Education Ministries, the students, teachers, staff, volunteers and friars are celebrating the end of the 2020/2021 School Year. It was not an easy year for our world. Our students, from PreK – Graduate School, had to learn to adapt and still thrive in a pandemic world. Although the struggles were very real, these young people grew personally, academically, and spiritually. We are grateful to have hopefully been able to be a source of strength for the school communities we serve.

Friar Pedro, friar Joseph and Friar Marek were joined by the St. Peter School Principal and the PreK teachers in a candid shot with the students.

June 2, 2021: To end the year with a joy filled and very Franciscan celebration, our friars of the St. Peter Friary (Pt. Pleasant Beach, NJ) were visited by the PreK students, teachers & principal of St. Peter School, to help with “Planting Day” in the friary garden. The students stayed and celebrated with yard games and treats for a well deserved job well done. The Point Pleasant Beach Police Department, which is very active in the local community and are often present on campus, helping with student activities and special projects, participated too. Fr. Pedro de Oliveira, OFM Conv., Fr. Marek Stybor, OFM Conv., Fr. Richard Rossell, OFM Conv., Fr. Brennan-Joseph Farleo, OFM Conv., and student friar Joseph Krondon, OFM Conv. enjoyed their participation in the planting and the fun.

Friar Richard, Friar Brennan-Joseph, and the local visiting police officers joined friar Joseph and Friar Marek for another shot with the students before the planting begins

Friar Marek works with the school principal and one of the officers to help a group of students plant in a side box, while the Friary Guardian, Friar Brennan-Joseph, oversees the whole project.

Friar Pedro joins in the fun with a game of cornhole against the officers, while the kids cheered for him!

Kicking on his summer break from classes at The Catholic University of America, friar Joseph started his summer assignment with his confreres of the St. Peter Friary with some planting instruction.

________________

The month of June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
In thanksgiving for the perseverance and successes acquired during this past academic year, we pray:

Prayer of Thanksgiving and Praise to the Sacred Heart

Lord, you deserve all honor and praise,
because your love is perfect and your heart sublime.
My heart is filled to overflowing with gratitude
for the many blessings and graces you have bestowed upon me and those
whom I love.
Forever undeserving, may I always be attentive
and never take for granted the gifts of mercy and love
that flow so freely and generously from your Sacred Heart.
Heart of Jesus, I adore you.
Heart of Jesus, I praise you.
Heart of Jesus, I thank you.
Heart of Jesus, I love you forever and always.
Amen.

June 1, 2021: Our Lady of the Angels Province friar Fabian Adderley, OFM Conv. renewed his Simple Vows in the Chapel of the San Damiano Friary – House of Formation (San Antonio, TX), where he has been in residence as a student friar, since 2018. The vow renewal took place at the hands of his Friary Guardian, Post Novitiate Director and Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Gary Johnson, OFM Conv. His Simple Vows are now renewed for 14 months. The friary is one of several Houses of Formation in the USA, and is of the Province of Our Lady of Consolation. As such, two friars of that province, Friar Richard Kaley, OFM Conv. & Friar Tim Unser, OFM Conv., served as friar Fabian’s witnesses. Friar Fabian first professed his Simple (Temporary) Vows on July 16, 2018. Simple Profession is for a term of three years, so friars often have to renew their vows, during their Post Novitiate stage of formation. During this time they are continuing their studies and moving into their Fraternal Apostolic Year of formation prior to their Solemn Profession of the Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. This stage usually, but not always, takes more than initial three years. Soon, friar Fabian will being his own Fraternal Apostolic Year of formation, with our friars in Toronto, Ontario.
Please keep him, and his formation journey, in your continued prayers.