The volume, in Italian, tries to propose the concept of “Dehonian Studies” with a scientific approach, as it emerges from the experience of the Dehonian Studies Fellowships promoted by the CSD for the last ten years. This program was created to introduce members of the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to Dehonian Studies in a scientific way, responding to the request of the XXII General Chapter (2009) to develop the scope of Dehonian research, studies, and production at the CSD.
The first part of Studia 69 offers epistemological, hermeneutic, methodological and transdisciplinary resources for a propaedeutic path to “Dehonian Studies”. The texts are the “study handouts” that the participants of the Dehonian Studies Fellowships used and that offer an amalgam of information that takes a conveniently cited author as a foundation on which to build, along with other materials, an answer to the challenges of Dehonian Studies. Thus, the first handout is a work focused on the approximation to a possible concept of “Dehonian Studies”, which allows us to concretize as a starting point the life and work of Father Leo Dehon critically studied and able to be interpreted (handout 2). For this reason, handout 3 addresses the problems of Dehonian sources (what to read?), hermeneutics (how to interpret?) and methodology (how to do all this with certain guarantees?), thus preparing a response to new situations, such as the migration of the charism to other cultural realities or the Dehonian response to today’s realities (handout 4).
The second part of Studia 69 presents seven studies that are the result of research carried out with scientific rigor by Dehonian religious who have followed the specialization program in the CSD and that offer a valuable contribution to the academic and scientific reflection on the identity and spiritual and charismatic patrimony of the Congregation from different perspectives: theological-spiritual, historical, hermeneutical, juridical and social. We find there: 1) a hermeneutical analysis and a theological-spiritual interpretation of Father Dehon’s Spiritual Directory; 2) a historical reading of the faith experience of the first religious of the Congregation (cf. Cst 16); 3) a theological-spiritual reflection on the concepts of priesthood and prophecy for an understanding of the Dehonian charism; 4) a juridical approach to the magisterium of the General Chapters of the Congregation after the Second Vatican Council; 5) a social understanding of reparation as a charismatic element of the SCJ Congregation; 6) a hermeneutical work on the first draft of the Constitutions of the Congregation, of 1881; 7) an explanation of the research carried out on the documents of the Archives of the Holy Roman Office on Father Dehon and the Congregation considered important for the understanding of the process that led to the suppression of the Oblates of the Heart of Jesus in 1883.
It is certainly a very useful material for the Dehonian formation of the religious and lay people of the Dehonian Family, requested by the last General Chapter of the Congregation (2024). Thus, this volume on “Dehonian Studies” is intended to be a contribution to awakening consciences on the importance of constantly thinking about and preparing the future of the SCJ Congregation through the effort to understand ever better, also with the skills acquired from study and research, our charismatic identity at the service of the Church for the coming of the Kingdom of Christ.
Studia Dehoniana 69 is available in paper format at the Dehonian Studies Center (direttorecentrostudi@dehoniani.org) and also in digital format on the website https://www.studiadehonianadocs.org/#/pdf/gli-studi-dehoniani.
