Ecclesiology and the Franciscan Charism
The Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conv: Volume 5
- Theology
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Published: 2023
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Publisher's Description
This volume of the Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner on Ecclesiology and the Franciscan Charism contains some of the most practical of all of Fehlner's writings. This volume is divided into three parts. In the first, we are treated to Fehlner's first reflections on ecclesiology in the wake of Vatican II and his own earlier research into Bonaventure's ecclesiology and Duns Scotus's teachings on grace and personhood. To Fehlner, these studies, along with his Tractatus de gratia and teaching notes on the mission of the Holy Spirit, all from the 1960s, contain the rationes seminales of the entirety of his later thought. In part two, we find writings mainly from the following two decades on the Conventual Franciscan charism, the ecclesiola, the church in microcosm. Here we can readily discern the radical effects of Fehlner's encounter with Maximilian Kolbe and this volume's close affinity with volume six of this series, on St. Maximilian Kolbe. In part three of this volume, comprising essays from the final fifteen years of his life, Fehlner brings his lifetime of prayerful contemplation and research directly to bear upon practical spirituality. In these essays, Fehlner's spiritual testament, our author presents his Catholic and Franciscan charismatic vision of Christian life.
Endorsements (2)
“In this volume, Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conv. (1931–2018), shows how ecclesiology is central to the Franciscan charism. Drawing on the insights of St. Bonaventure and St. Maximilian Kolbe, he sheds light on the Franciscan understanding of history as well as the complementary roles of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit in the Church. This volume contains a brilliant introduction by Fr. Timothy Geiger, OFMConv., and many instructive insights by Fr. Fehlner on the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the life of the individual and the Church.”
“For nearly fifty years, I dialogued with Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner about the Franciscan intellectual tradition. His theological nuance was profoundly impacted by St. Francis of Assisi’s seminal insight that the Blessed Virgin Mary was the ‘Virgin Made Church’ (Virgo facta Ecclesia)—a leitmotif in the unfolding theology of St. Bonaventure—and the coherent ground for the principle of ‘charity’ which serves as the interpretive optic for the whole body of Fr. Fehlner’s ecclesiology. This volume offers a Franciscan ‘blueprint’ for the meaning of Church—ever ancient, ever new.”
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