Cavalletti Conferences: History And Analysis
By Paul A. Soukup, S.J.
[This paper was presented at the Theology and Communications Conference, Ariccia, Italy, September 7-12, 2007.]
Theology and Communication: The Cavalletti Conferences
Shortly after the foundation of the Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture (CSCC) in the late 1970s, the Centre took on a major research project, examining the relationship–or lack of relationship–between communication and theology. Founded as a Jesuit contribution to the challenges posed by the communication media in the modern world, and building on the specific academic traditions of the Society, the CSCC quickly responded to bishops and others in the Church who sought a better understanding of communication.
Perhaps more specifically, the CSCC became part of a much wider Church response to the call of the bishops at the Second Vatican Council who, in Inter Mirifica (1963), the Decree on the Means of Social Communication, asked that “All the members of the Church should make a concerted effort to ensure that the means of social communication are put at the service of the multiple forms of the apostolate without delay and as energetically as possible, where and when they are needed” (n. 13). To support this, the Council further decreed that “Priests, religious, and laity should be trained at once to meet the needs described above” (n. 15).
Communio et Progressio, the more detailed and developed follow-up document mandated by the Council, continued this call, not only for specific training in the means of social communication, but for a more sophisticated understanding of communication in general. A training that grounds a person in the basic principles governing the working of the media in human society, as explained above, is nowadays clearly necessary for all. If their character and function is understood, the means of communication genuinely enrich individual minds. (n. 64). Communio et Progressio further calls for preparation of priests and religious in these areas (n. 164) and asks religious orders to consider how best they can help (n. 177). For the Society, part of the answer was research.
After its start, the CSCC explored not only the role of the media in society, but also more specifically how seminarians could best be prepared according to the mandates of Inter Mirifica and Communio et Progressio. The role of communication in seminary education forms a recurring theme in briefing papers prepared by the CSCC staff in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The 1980s also saw added impetus to understanding the religious role of social communication in the rise and initial success of the televangelists–religious evangelical preachers using television–in the United States. There the availability of multiple cable television channels led to a blossoming of this evangelical movement, which until that time had remained relatively unknown in the country. Bishops and others asked whether the Catholic Church should undertake the same kind of work. They, together with the main Protestant denominations, debated the theological pros and cons of such a work. Many, deeply suspicious of the popular quality of the preaching and its rudimentary theology, looked for ways to rebut the movement.
The CSCC librarian, James McDonnell, prepared an initial bibliography of relevant books and papers on the topic. He and Sister Mary Schelling then wrote a proposal for the integration of communication into seminary education. For that vision to take hold, they needed additional preparations. Against the background of these positive and negative concerns, Soukup (1983) on behalf of the CSCC, prepared a detailed review of published literature touching on communication and theology. Working from a grid in which six different approaches to communication intersected four key theological questions, Soukup organized hundreds of books and articles from over a 30-year time span. The review made it clear that questions of communication were not new to theology and that few theologians and communication scholars read one another’s works. The organizational grid demonstrated, however, that greater contact between theology and communication would bear valuable results.
At more or less the same time the CSCC had Soukup prepare his study, Robert A. White, S.J., then the research director of the CSCC, and Peter Henrici, S.J., then the dean of philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, engaged in a series of meetings to propose both general and specific paths of greater cooperation. On the one hand, some members of the Gregorian faculty and administration felt the need for special courses in communication. On the other hand, many felt they lacked the necessary resources and structure to begin a new program. Henrici and White proposed, among other things, that their two institutions begin by co-sponsoring a conference to explore communication and theology. That way, members of the various faculties of the Gregorian would gradually come to know more about communication. The conferences would also bring in faculty members from other places. This idea for a meeting and the success of the first conference, led to a series of conferences named for their site: the Jesuit retreat and conference center at Villa Cavalletti, outside of Rome. The plan for these conferences followed a simple method: about 25 invited, the participants, half theologians and half communication scholars, met for five or six days of conversation. From those conversations would emerge a book of essays produced by the participants after they had returned to their home institutions. The organizers realized that the choice of invited participants mattered greatly: they needed to find knowledgeable scholars, open to interdisciplinary work, who could quickly form research teams or partnerships. The CSCC’s growing network of individuals, located through its other research activities, proved fruitful recruiting ground.
Over time, the organizers, (Henrici and White for the first five conferences), gradually changed the initial Cavalletti model. They discovered after the first meeting that a more specific topic led to better dialogue and that asking the participants to arrive with drafts of papers gave people the opportunity for a more structured conversation. From 1984 to 1997, there would be eight Cavalletti conferences, as well as two Cavalletti-like conferences in the United States, each focused upon aspects of the theology and communication conversation. The first, with the general topic of communication and theology, proved good for discussion, but too general to yield any kind of coherent book. After this, Henrici and White chose specific topics, so as to better gather those with particular expertise and interests.
Here is a brief listing of the Cavalletti conferences and topics, as best as I can reconstruct them from meeting notes and references. (For some of the early conferences, the dates may be erroneous.) Also noted in the list are the books that emerged from a given meeting.
1983 Cavalletti I: Theology and communication: general approaches.
1984 Cavalletti II: Fundamental theology and communication. How might communication study and research inform the basic grounding of theology? What kinds of basic questions for theology could communication address?
BOOK: though the conference participants commissioned papers from each other and proposed a tentative outline for a book, none was produced. Some participants drew on the materials from this conference to develop approaches they later published independently of the conference (see, for example, Dulles, 1989).
1985 Cavalletti III: Philosophy and Communication. Objectives: to examine various approaches to communication philosophy (philosophy of language, explorations of meaning). as a foundation for seminary courses attuned to the role of communication.
PEOPLE: Peter Henrici, S.J., Carlo Huber, S.J., Albert Keller, S.J., Desmond O’Grady, S.J., Francisco Sierra, Octave Ugirashebuja, Santae Babolin, Luigi Bini, Antonio Blanch, Vincent Potter, S.J., John Costello, S.J., Kenneth Schmitz, Jean Bianchi, Clifford Christians, Rüdiger Funiok, S.J., Franco Lever, Gabriel Jaime Perez, S.J., Paul Soukup, S.J., Robert White, S.J., David Eley, S.J., Guido Fauconnier, Thomas Bauer, Jan Chrapek, CSMA, John Orme Mills, OP, Jack St. George, S.J.
BOOK: though the conference participants commissioned papers from each other and proposed a tentative outline for a book, none was produced.
1988 Cavalletti IV: Moral theology and communication. Does the world of the media have an impact on moral theology? How might moral theologians take advantage of media products or of the work of communication scholars?
1988a Marquette University Conference on moral theology and communication. This follow-up conference addressed the same themes, bringing together additional scholars.
BOOK: Rossi, P. & Soukup, P. A. (Eds.). (1994). Mass media and the moral imagination. Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward.
1988 Santa Clara University Conference on communication in the U.S. Church. This conference approached the communication, theology, and culture questions from the perspective of the Church in the United States. The conference originated to reproduce the fruits of the Cavalletti conferences in other locations.
PEOPLE: Robert Leavitt, William Thorn, Peter Mann, Dennis Smolarski, S.J., Robert Waznak, Robert Wister, Henk Hoekstra, Angela Znn Zukowski, MHSH, Frances Forde Plude, Paul Soukup, S.J., Richard Hirsch, Robert White, S.J., and others.
BOOK: Soukup, P. A. (Ed.). (1996). Media, culture, and Catholicism. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward.
1989 Cavalletti V: Ecclesiology and communication. What might communication study teach us about the organizational structure of the Church? More specifically, participants were to “focus on current developments in ecclesiology and the significance of new conceptions and new cultural patterns of communication for ecclesiology and for the life of the Church” (Granfield, 1994, p. v).
PEOPLE: Patrick Granfield, Robert White, S.J., Peter Henrici, S.J., Gregor Goethals, Klaus Kienzler, Hermann Pottmeyer, Francis Sullivan, S.J., Henri Bourgeois, Ricardo Antoncich, S.J., Angela Ann Zukowski, MHSH, Frances Forde Plude, John Catoir.
BOOK: Granfield, P. (Ed.). (1994). The Church and communication. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward.
1991 Cavalletti VI: Foundations for a Theology of Communication. Objectives for the conference: (1) work toward a systematic synthesis regarding the theology of communication using Nos. 1-18 of Communio et Progressio as a point of departure; (2) prepare a book presenting some of the major themes of a theology of communication and a commentary on that theology; (3) exchange ideas on teaching communication and theology.
PEOPLE: Edmund Arens, George Baudler, Lloyd Baugh, S.J., Jean Bianchi, Thomas Boomershine, Henri Bourgeois, Rina Fisichella, Henk Hoekstra, Andre Joos, Kevin Kersten, S.J., Franco Lever, Philip Rosato, S.J., John Sachs, S.J., Robert Schreiter, Horacio Simian-Yofre, Paul Soukup, S.J., Michael Traber, Peter Henrici, S.J., Robert White, S.J., Nuno Bras da Silva Martins.
BOOK: Though conference participants outlined a book project, no book was published from this meeting.
1993 Cavalletti VII: The New Image of Religious Film. How does film contribute to religious meaning? What historical trends appear in the use of religious themes in the cinema? theology contribute to film criticism? This conference brought together members of the International Catholic Organization for the Cinema (OCIC) and theologians.
PEOPLE: Ambros Eichenberger, John May, Peter Hasenberg, Peter Malone, Reinhold Zwick, Sylvain De Bleeckere, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Joseph Marty, Michael Paul Gallagher, S.J., Marjeet Verbeek, Henk Hoekstra, Robert White, S.J., Johan Hahn, Ray Kancharla, José Tavares de Barros, François Vokouma.
BOOK: May, J. R. (Ed.). (1997). New image of religious film. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward.
1997 “Cavalletti” VIII: Media, religion, and popular culture. How does popular culture express religious images, themes, and sensibilities? [This is the first of the Cavalletti-like conferences, held, not at Villa Cavalletti, which the Jesuits had sold, but at another retreat center located across the lake from Castel Gondolfo.]
BOOK: Again, the participants had come with papers prepared and agreed on revisions for a book project, but the designated editors never completed the work.
While the Cavalletti conferences worked well in bringing scholars together and in promoting conversations, they did not succeed as well in making their discussions known among a wider audience. Promised publications simply did not materialize, for three reasons. First, participants did not prepare (or revise) essays in a timely manner. The failure of people to write essays prompted the organizers to ask for papers prepared in advance of the Cavalletti meetings. This succeeded in getting texts, but the initial texts lacked the benefit of the Cavalletti discussions. However, at least volume editors had something to work with. Second, editors did not finish their work in a timely fashion. Several of the Cavalletti meetings (I am aware of this for Cavalletti II and VII) had sets of papers that remained unedited and never moved to publication. Third–and perhaps more limiting–the meetings lacked a publisher willing to bring out such collections. Only in 1993 did the CSCC staff manage to interest Sheed & Ward, a longtime publisher of Catholic intellectual work in the United States, to begin a series on Communication, Culture, and Theology (now titled Communication, Culture, and Religion by the new owners of the imprint). Sheed & Ward subsequently published four sets of Cavalletti papers.
These seven Cavalletti conferences have played a significant role in the development of the “middle history” of the dialogue between communication and theology. An early history had grown up in the work of individual theologians and communication professionals and around the Pontifical Council for Social Communication through the publication of Communio et Progressio. The Cavalletti conferences carried this work forward in creative ways by introducing theologians and communication scholars to one another’s work. One of the most helpful aspects of the Cavalletti meetings came out of their organization according to theological topics: fundamental theology, moral theology, ecclesiology, evangelization, and so on. Without this, much communication reflection on theology becomes scattered and ultimately unfocused.
Another positive contribution of the Cavalletti conferences was the network of people, many of whom have continued to collaborate in their reflections and writing. Third, the Cavalletti meetings inspired similar meetings in other parts of the world, often organized by those who had participated in the ones at Cavalletti. In these and other ways, the meetings set the context in which we work today. Fourth, the Cavalletti meetings enriched the literature on communication and theology through the foundation of Sheed & Ward’s Communication, Culture, and Theology (now Religion) book series. That series not only published the papers from four of the Cavalletti meetings, but also has brought out other books linking communication and theology: books examining Bible translation and media (Hodgson & Soukup, 1997; Soukup & Hodgson, 1999), film studies (Baugh, 1997; Malone, 2007; May, 2001), theological education (Hess, 2005), communication studies (Fortner, 2007), and theological ethics and the arts (Lamoureux & O’Neil, 2004).
The three major themes for our meeting at Ariccia, approach the relationship between theology and communication in similar ways to what we have seen of the Cavalletti conferences. The first, Communication Inside, Communication Outside - from the Centre to Periphery, takes up the twin themes of ecclesiology and evangelization: communication ad intra or within the Church and communication ad extra or outside the Church. In today’s contexts, communication media and technologies heavily influence these movements. One could debate (and we should) whether these media serve this dual mission well, or whether interpersonal communication would better serve the basic functions of organizational communication and evangelization.
The second conference theme, “Theology and Communications”, really describes the whole purpose of the Cavalletti meetings. It also introduces the work of theologians who have incorporated the fruits of communication research into their work and those communication scholars who examine theology or the religious uses of communication media. Without going too much into the topic here, we can observe that these approaches carry the very real risks of people outside their areas of expertise making claims that more serious research does not support. Sadly, much wishful thinking characterizes work on both sides of the theology and communication divide. The Cavalletti approach attempted to minimize these difficulties through academic dialogue and partnership.
Finally, the third conference theme, Communication in Formation, returns to one of the initial motivations for the Cavalletti conferences: How should the Church prepare future ministers in terms of communication in the contemporary world? Clearly, communication forms a central part of any ministry in the Church.
What roles should rhetoric, interpersonal communication, and media studies, play in the formation of clergy and other ministers? Vatican II and the Pontifical Council for Social Communication asked for serious study of the issue, as have the Vatican Congregation for Seminaries and various national conferences of bishops. The Cavalletti approach consisted of preparing materials–books on fundamental theology, ecclesiology, moral theology, and so on–which could inform seminary classes without adding other courses to an already crowded set of requirements.
This brief overview of the Cavalletti conferences helps, I hope, to show where we have begun and where we might go. There is something very hopeful in bringing these questions to a new generation of scholars.
References
Baugh, L. (1997). Imaging the divine: Jesus and Christ-figures in film. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward.
Dulles, A. (1989). Vatican II and communication. In R. Latourelle (Ed.), Vatican II: Assessment and perspectives, twenty-five years after (1962-1987) (pp. 528-547). New York: Paulist Press.
Fortner, R. S. (2007). Communication, media, and identity: A Christian theory of communication. Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward.
Granfield, P. (Ed.). (1994). The Church and communication. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward.
Hess, M. E. (2005). Engaging technology in theological education: All that we can't leave behind. Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward.
Hodgson, R. & Soukup, Paul A. (Eds.). (1997). From one medium to another: Basic issues for communicating the Scriptures in new media. New York: American Bible Society and Kansas City: Sheed and Ward.
Lamoureux, P. & O’Neil, K. (Eds.). (2004). Seeking goodness and beauty: The use of the arts in theological ethics. Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward.
Malone, P. (Ed.). (2007). Through a Catholic lens: Religious perspectives of 19 film directors from around the world. Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward.
May, J. R. (Ed.). (1997). New image of religious film. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward.
May, J. R. (2001). Nourishing faith through fiction: Reflections of the Apostles' Creed in literature and film. Chicago: Sheed & Ward.
Pontifical Council for Social Communication. (1971). Communio et Progressio.
Rossi, P. & Soukup, Paul A. (Eds.). (1994). Mass media and the moral imagination. Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward.
Soukup, P. A. (1983). Communication and theology: Introduction and review of the literature. London: CSCC and WACC.
Soukup, P. A. (Ed.). (1996). Media, culture, and Catholicism. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward.
Soukup, Paul A. & Hodgson, R. (Eds.). (1999). Fidelity and translation: Communicating the Bible in new media. Chicago: Sheed and Ward and New York: American Bible Society.
Vatican Council II. (1963). Inter Mirifica.