INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE SACRED HEART DEVOTION
Chris Chaplin MSC, member of the General Administration was present. Here is his report.
THE SACRED HEART DEVOTION INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE was held November 8, 9 at Villa Aurelia in Rome. It was hosted by the Priests of the Sacred Heart (Dehonians), in conjunction with the Lucerne University of Teacher Education, under the Patronage of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart was considered from multi- disciplinary perspectives, by academics from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, the US, Canada and Indonesia focussing on iconography, memory, emotion and body in the language, imagery and rituals of the Sacred Heart. Among the theologians, historians, religious scientists, sociologist and art historians who presented their research, these are a few.
Jean-Jacques Olier
Professor David Morgan and Dr. Paul Airiau, explored the development of the iconography in the French school, with Cardinal de Berulle, Jean-Jacques Olier (founder of the Sulpicians), and Jean Eudes, who focused on the sentiments of the Heart of Christ which are signified using symbolic representations. Against this was pitted the anatomically detailed human heart of the person of Jesus promoted by the Jesuits. An interesting rivalry. The piety of Margaret Mary Alacoque in the development of the devotion received frequent mention.
Cardinal de Berulle
A Spanish academic María Antonia Herradón Figueroa PhD, exposed the influences that the devotion has had on politics in Spain, particularly mentioning its use by conservative partisans.
One of the famous images of the anti-Catholic persecution in the Spanish Civil War was the Red militiamen shooting the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Cerro de los Ángeles in 1936. The cry of «Viva Cristo Rey» is associated with this. General Franco later rebuilt the monument.
The theologian Professor Elke Pahud de Mortanges, investigated the relationship of embodiment to the devotion; the individual body, ecclesia as body, geo-political bodies and gender. The Sacred Heart has been a motive in all these modes. Professor Fransiskus Purwanto, reflected on the non-western expression of the devotion seen in the Shrine to the Sacred Heart in Ganjuran, Indonesia. Professor Nicolas Steeves, of the Pontifical Gregorian University, shared some enticing ideas with regard the Sacred Heart as a fundamental stimulus for theological imagination. Most stimulating was his thoughts on faith as imagination.
I look forward to further opportunities to visit such research. Perhaps they will include our own developments in Heart Spirituality.
