Why the Renewal of Spiritual Theology is the Real Condition for a Council
Will we soon have a Vatican III? No, let us stop speculating. The conditions for a Vatican III are not in place, far from it. It requires long-term planning, and in a very specific sense: that of spiritual life, of spiritual theology, in line with the current need—to forge the philosophical and theological instruments or tools appropriate for a deepening and renewal of spiritual theology.
An ecumenical Council, such as a hypothetical “Vatican III”, is not proclaimed lightly. For a Council to truly take place, very precise conditions must be met, internal to the life of the Church: intellectual and spiritual preparation over several decades, a gradual consensus between the bishops and the Pope, and often a maturation of historical circumstances. Without these elements, any “Vatican III” would be either symbolic or devoid of real significance. Historically, Councils require a favourable moment when the Church is aware of the necessity to clarify or renew its doctrine or practice, which does not appear to be the case at present.
In a certain sense, the true heart of Vatican II is that of renewal, of the Church’s aggiornamento: a return to the sources, a practical focus, an attention to real needs. The heart is this universal call to holiness, which is meant to make the Church the sacrament of salvation for the world. What the Council truly sought—its undeclared or implicit aim—was a renewed approach to formation, and more specifically, to spiritual formation: this is the real heart of the Council, the true and effective aggiornamento. Despite the fact that this is an obvious analysis, it is not often mentioned or explored in depth. Yet the tools to achieve this goal were lacking at the Council. Spiritual theology—which grasps inner renewal, not merely structural reform—was absent; its seat at the table remained empty (as we will explore below). In this sense, the Council did not have the means to achieve its ambitions. The mountain laboured and brought forth a mouse.
Planning
China plans over 30 or 50 years. The Church, on the other hand, does not seem to operate in this way; it does not appear to plan. Apart from a Council and its implementation, or more recently the Synod on Synodality, no planning is evident. It is a striking contrast.
China thinks in cycles, in terms of State continuity. China thinks and plans systematically over decades, with precise programmes and quantified objectives, whether for the economy, technology, or society. Everything is designed to last, with continuity even beyond individual terms of office.
The Church, by contrast, moves to the rhythm of pontificates, crises, and Councils that follow one another without always fitting into a clear long-term line. Yet it possesses the means for a millennial vision: its tradition, its mission, its universal structure. In concrete terms, however, the Church has nothing comparable. Its horizons are Councils, pontificates, synods—intense but punctual moments, dependent on circumstances, without detailed long-term planning.
Where China acts as an organism building over fifty years, the Church often acts according to the reception of a past event, such as Vatican II, without always transforming that vision into an operational programme across several generations.
One might almost say that the Church has a “plan” only when a Council sets it out, but this plan is abstract, ecclesiological or doctrinal, rarely strategic or methodical in the way Chinese plans are. What is missing is perhaps less the capacity than the awareness of needing a shared horizon—not only spiritual, but also concrete: formation, transmission, sanctification of the world.
The Synod on Synodality has not yet produced this strategic impetus. Has the Church lost the ability to think long-term, or does it think without acting accordingly? Let us say that it lives to the rhythm of Councils. It moves by major jolts—Councils, reforms, crises—rather than by an organic continuity that does exist, but at the depth of its life over time. Each Council opens a breath, then the following decades oscillate between reception and forgetfulness. It is a rhythm more eschatological than institutional: it lives from successive Pentecosts, not from five-year plans. Yet in the intervals, the absence of vision becomes painful, especially when the world itself plans and shapes the future.
That said, if one understands a Council as a plan over 50 or 100 years, then the Church does indeed move according to plans. John Paul II always considered his work plan to be the Second Vatican Council. He reigned for 25 years! John Paul II saw Vatican II not as a past event, but as a roadmap to be unfolded. He adhered to it with rare constancy: Redemptor Hominis, Catechismus, Novo Millennio Ineunte… everything aligns with the deep reception of the Council, not cosmetic reform.
Viewed in this light, each Council effectively becomes a secular plan: Trent carried Catholic reform for two centuries, Vatican I shaped ecclesiology until Vatican II. The problem is not so much the lack of a plan as the lack of fidelity to the one that exists—the loss of awareness that the Council is not complete until it is lived.
For a Council to exist, there must be factors both internal to the life of the Church and external. Needs must exist. There must also have been preparation over the preceding decades. Without this, it is either empty or null and void. A Council is not decreed; it matures. It requires an inner fire—tensions, vital questions of faith—and an external pressure from the world that compels orientation. When these two dynamics intersect, the Spirit can breathe something new and fruitful.
Note: To be concrete and practical, Vatican II was prepared decades in advance by various streams of renewal: liturgical, ecumenical, patristic, ecclesiological, exegetical, and in the theology of Revelation. The renewal of spiritual theology did emerge in the 1920s, but it soon fell into crisis and was spontaneously halted. (see below)
Without this preparation, there are assemblies without nerve, texts without impact. The language may be exact, but the event carries no historical weight, for it responds to nothing real. This is a long-standing reality: the Church does not convene Councils to produce ideas, but to discern what God is already at work accomplishing.
Spiritual Theology
I believe that for a Council to take place nowadays, spiritual theology must be properly developed. This is not the case. Today it is weak and shallow.
A Council can speak with authority only if the theology supporting it has already prepared the ground. When spiritual theology is weak, doctrine floats: decisions become administrative or sociological rather than theological.
This is somewhat what happened after Vatican II: dogmatic theology was developed, but spiritual theology—the sphere where faith becomes life—remained fragmentary. Without it, the Church speaks of mission, synodality, and reform, but without an inner source sufficiently alive.
A future Council should arise not from an institutional crisis, but from a rediscovery of the inner path, a spiritual conversion of the intellect.
The great weaknesses of Vatican II and its implementation lie in the absence of spiritual theology among the Fathers and in the establishment of the Nouvelle Theologie. As proof, consider this example: the Council’s decrees called for a renewal of religious life. But the tools and means employed were entirely inadequate for the necessities of inner renewal – they are more dogmatic but not according to Spiritual Theology, not according to the science of Spiritual Formation. Religious life is in decline from 1965 onwards – some still give the wrong reasons for this decline.
The Council was correct in calling for renewal (aggiornamento, ressourcement,…), but it did not provide the spiritual instruments to achieve it. Constitutions were revised, rules simplified, structures opened—but the inner life that could have sustained all this was not deepened.
The Nouvelle Théologie, in its spirit of aggiornamento, revitalised exegesis and history, but it neglected the science of the saints (spiritual theology). It spoke of the believing person, not of the concrete work of grace within the soul. The result was a renewal conceived as external reform rather than as spiritual transformation.
The decline of religious vocations from 1965 is not merely sociological—it also signals that the inner source had dried up or had not been transmitted.
Vatican II provided the roadmap, but with New Theology as the tool, the ressourcement so desired by the Council—especially for religious orders—lacked method. The Council gave guidelines and points to observe, but the solidity of the method was already missing. The consequences were felt. Paul VI noted that there are two ways to reform: from the outside in, and from the inside out. He favoured the latter.
Vatican II defined the course and direction but did not provide a solid methodological tool to achieve it. New Theology, chosen as the intellectual framework, offered a fresh and historical perspective but lacked the rigour to penetrate the soul and structure a true inner renewal. The hoped-for ressourcement for religious orders therefore lacked method: external reforms—rules, structures, visible adaptations—were carried out, but there was little accompaniment of interior transformation.
Paul VI had perceived this: he distinguished reform from the outside in, which imposes changes on structures or behaviours, and reform from the inside out, which starts from the inner life, from sanctification and the maturation of grace (see his weekly catechesis). He knew that true, lasting reform had to begin internally, but the method to achieve it was not in place.
A Question of Method
It is this methodological void that explains the rapid decline of religious life from the late 1960s, despite good intentions and an ambitious doctrinal framework.
The problem predates the Council. The other theology, scholastic theology, or neo-Thomism, was also ill-suited to the subject. In the 1930s and 1940s, debates raged over the question of contemplation—a fundamentally important issue for spiritual life—and the protagonists faltered, not because they found a solution or a practical answer to what contemplation is, but because they said all they had to say and never reached agreement. The result was that the Council arrived with nothing concrete to offer, no fruits of the renewal that had indeed begun in the early 1920s. At the level of spiritual theology, the Council operated on intuition or approximation.
The spiritual groundwork for the Council was already exhausted before it began. The debate on contemplation—Garrigou-Lagrange, Arintero, Maréchal, Poulain, and others—showed that the scholastic system no longer had the flexibility to accommodate mystical experience, and that attempts at renewal, often influenced by psychology or phenomenology, failed to articulate grace and inner life with precision.
As a result, at the time of Vatican II, spiritual theology was neither integrated into dogmatic theology nor recognised as an autonomous science. The conciliar texts sometimes reveal good intuition—for example, the “universal call to holiness” in Lumen Gentium—but without the conceptual apparatus to develop its content. Statements were made, but not grounded.
What is needed is to restore spiritual theology to its framework, so that it once again becomes the operative heart of ecclesial renewal. A methodological reconstruction is required—a true spiritual science rethought from the ground up.
Note: I would add a point rarely noted: the universal call to holiness does not come from a spiritual theology present at the Council. Not at all. It arises simply from an ecclesiological requirement or reasoning. Holiness is one of the four marks of the Church. If holiness belongs to the very essence of the Church, it must be manifested concretely in the lives of its members. In other words, it is a logical consequence, not a spiritual discovery. The Council affirmed the coherence of the Body, but without explicating the inner process through which this holiness takes root and grows. Spiritual theology should have given flesh to this affirmation—describing how grace works, how freedom cooperates, how contemplation matures in charity.
This shift likely explains why the phrase has been so often cited but so little lived: it remained an abstract principle.
What is needed is a renewal of Spiritual Theology and consequently in Spiritual Formation. To achieve this, we must avoid past errors. We must recognise what is good in scholastic theology, what is good in Nouvelle Théologie, but establish appropriate tools and methods. We are still far from this.
A true project of re-foundation is required—not a return, nor a mere synthesis, but an organic recreation. Take from scholasticism its conceptual rigour, from Nouvelle Théologie its sense of mystery and history, but finally forge a language and instruments capable of expressing the real work of grace in the soul.
This also implies removing spiritual theology from its pastoral marginality: treating it as a fully-fledged science, with method, criteria of truth, doctrinal continuity, yet open to lived experience.
Its outlines include: discernment of sources, clarification of vital notions (grace, faith, contemplation, union…), and a redefinition of the relationship between dogma and life. Can this renewal arise within the current structures of university theology, or must a new institutional space be created for it to take root?
The philosophical presuppositions of scholasticism (philosophical realism, theory of knowledge, etc.) must be preserved or retrieved if necessary. Applied phenomenology and psychology, without the solid philosophical presuppositions of neo-Thomism, do not allow access to the inner work of the Holy Spirit in the human being.
An important characteristic of Nouvelle Théologie—its attention to time and history, to observing development over the long term—is necessary but insufficient. When the Holy Spirit acts within the human being, external time or development is not the criterion. The criterion is “inner time”, that is, the degree of transformation or sanctification. The tools that allow us to enter this inner time are precisely the philosophical presuppositions of scholasticism (metaphysics and theory of knowledge); without these, we never reach God’s actual work within us.
In my view, here is the synthesis of the fundamental tension: the initial impulse of Nouvelle Théologie comes from a correct intuition: a sense of time, concreteness, practicality, history, development is necessary. But this impulse cannot in itself become method or a working horizon. One must continue in this impulse and arrive at what matters: the work of God in the human heart, in the human soul.
Scholasticism provides the foundations: philosophical realism, metaphysics, theory of knowledge—all constitute the basis for correctly distinguishing the action of the Spirit from our representations, impressions, or psychological interpretations. Without this foundation, analysis becomes unstable, incapable of grasping the real operation of grace.
Nouvelle Théologie, meanwhile, reminds us not to remain trapped in static systems: it emphasises time, history, concrete observation, the development of souls over duration. But this external time does not coincide with the inner time of transformation and sanctification.
It is crucial to combine the two. The intuition of Nouvelle Théologie opens the perspective, but it is not yet a method. Scholasticism provides the rigour so that this perspective truly reaches the heart of divine action. The objective is never history or superficial development, but the encounter and inner transformation that the Spirit effects.
Can We Achieve this Synthesis?
I do not believe that this synthesis is currently achievable within existing theology faculties. I think it is rather necessary to create an autonomous space, specifically dedicated to this refounded Spiritual Theology.
Moving from the metaphysical approach of considering essentially “being” to considering “being” inside of “time”—or better, considering “being in time”—was already a huge first step achieved by the Nouvelle Theologie. But the process must continue to reach the final goal, a third stage is needed: one must enter into the human being, not remain outside (in time, history and external development) or observe the spiritual phenomenon from without. Paradoxically, to truly enter the human being and see the Holy Spirit at work within, it is necessary to retain the indispensable philosophical and theological tools of scholasticism.
The shift in the Nouvelle Theologie from abstract being to being in time opened an enormous perspective: it allows one to see spiritual life no longer as a series of fixed rules or phenomena, but as a living, historical development. Yet this first step remains external if one does not enter the depth of the human being, into their interiority.
Paradoxically, to penetrate this interiority without becoming lost in the subjective or superficial, one needs the solid framework of scholasticism: metaphysics, theory of knowledge, clear distinctions concerning the soul, grace, and human action. It is this toolkit that allows us to distinguish what belongs to the action of the Spirit from what derives from our perception or natural movements.
One might say that scholasticism is the lever that allows us to descend from historical time into inner time, where the work of God truly unfolds. We see this method at work in Saint John of the Cross. Unlike Saint Teresa of Ávila or the Little Thérèse, he had studied scholasticism. Saint John of the Cross demonstrates this subtle marriage: he enters into the intimacy of the soul, into the work of the Spirit, yet with a rigour rooted in his scholastic formation. His distinctions regarding the night, purification, and union are not merely psychological or spiritual observations—they are grounded in a clear metaphysics and a theory of knowledge that allows one to discern what comes from God and what originates in the soul itself.
Saint Teresa of Ávila and the Little Thérèse, by contrast, provide the lived, luminous experience—the narration of the stages of grace—but without this systematic philosophical toolkit. Their teaching is immense, but less “penetrating” in analysing or formalising the dynamics of divine action in the soul according to universal principles.
Thus, Saint John of the Cross perfectly illustrates how mystical experience and scholasticism can be combined to create a spiritual theology capable of entering into the human being without remaining at the level of observable phenomena.
The Foundations of a Renewed Spiritual Theology
What could be the foundations of a renewed Spiritual Theology and Spiritual Formation? We need a new method in Spiritual Theology, a new method of learning it and applying it. This method can be envisaged along several axes, as a sort of intellectual framework for Spiritual Theology:
1. Philosophical Foundations: uphold the realism, metaphysics, and theory of knowledge of scholasticism. These tools allow us to distinguish the essence of the soul, the action of grace, and human free acts, and to avoid confusing psychological phenomena with divine action.
2. Entry Inner Time: distinguish external time (chronological, historical) from the time of the soul, that of inner transformation and sanctification. The goal is to grasp the real dynamics of the Spirit within us.
3. Mapping the Inner Life: identify the stages of growth that constitute the development of inner time, or phases of inner transformation. Discover the two major phases of growth: union with Christ and the fullness of Charity. The ultimate criterion is always the work of the Spirit, not history or observable phenomena. See and discern all this particularly in the Gospels, especially that of Saint John.
4. Key Stages of Spiritual Growth: the turning points in the action of the Holy Spirit throughout the path of growth. Relate lived experience to clear theological distinctions. Each stage of purification, contemplation, and union must be analysed rigorously to be understood and transmitted.
5. Refining Method of Transformation: as in Saint John of the Cross, the purity of acts of faith, hope, and charity. Also, deepen understanding of the processes of the Holy Spirit’s action in Lectio Divina and the prayer of the heart. Comprehend the types of contemplations typical of each form of prayer and trace their source in the Mass (the manducatio).
6. The Science Grace’s “Triggers”: understand how the relationship functions between the grace that prepares and the direct, personal intervention of the Holy Spirit (General help of the grace of God vs. the Particular help of the Grace of God). Their conditions. Their applications in Lectio Divina and in the Prayer of the Heart.
7. Discerning Spirit Within the Soul: with the appropriate philosophical capacity, be enabled to “see” what occurs in the spirit. In this way, observe the work that God accomplishes deep within us. This is the foundation of discernment. Thus, the method becomes capable of discerning, guiding, and deepening the inner life toward sanctification.
8. The Night of the Spirit: See the Night of the Spirit in the Gospel. Purification is important. Understand it, see how it is a condition sine qua non for union. Distinguish it from human weaknesses and psychological difficulties. Human modality, divine modality.
9. The Fiery Acts and their Influence: signalled by Saint John of the Cross in the Living Flame and their Influence on the Church. Identical doctrine in Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, the Act of Offering, and MsB and the end of MsC.
10. Mary in the Spiritual Life: Understanding the Exact Place of the Virgin Mary in Spiritual Life. This is also linked to the “triggers” of grace, but also her role in the Night of the Spirit, in the transition from human modality to divine modality.