Now, in Ong's 1965 review of Pope John XXIII's Journal of a Soul, Ong says that the late pope's book "is indeed artlessly written, and reveals an essentially artless man. But it also shows a degree of discipline and control, of strict 'Tridentine' seminary training and intensely introspective interior life, that is sure to strike terror into the faint-hearted and to appear absolute nonsense to those who, in [the Danish religious philosopher Soren] Kierkegaard's terms, live only by esthetic or even ethical reflection. Pope John lived a life of uncompromising and assertive faith" (page 37).
By happy coincidence, Ong also quotes at length from young Roncalli's December 1903 journal entry that Faggioli quotes at greater length in his 160-page 2014 book (page 25 - quoted in full below):
"'It will always be my principle, in all spheres of religious knowledge and in all theological or biblical questions, to find out first of all the traditional teaching of the Church, and on this basis to judge the findings of contemporary scholarship. I do not despise criticism and I shall be most careful not to think ill of critics or treat them with disrespect. On the contrary, I love it, I shall be glad to keep up with the most recent findings. I shall study the new systems of thought and their trends; criticism for me is light, is truth, and there is only one truth, which is sacred'" (quoted by Ong on pages 38 and 61).
Twenty-two-year-old-Roncalli's private manifesto to himself tended to guide him through his subsequent life. According to Faggioli in his 160-page 2014 book, "[Pope] Pius X [1835-1914; elected pope in August 1903] [is] the pope who in 1907 launched the purge against theological 'modernism'" (page 2).
Now, in Ong's 1965 book review, he says, "Still, facts are facts. In this day of witnessing, Angelo Roncalli's life witnesses the fact that his kind of [scrupulous Trent-based] ascetical training can produce not constraint but tranquil freedom of spirit. No distraught Jonathan Edwards anywhere here. From his seminary days, Roncalli was at ease both with tradition and with novelty, and with their vigorous interaction" - as was Ong himself (page 38).
In addition, Ong says, "To the Catholic who knows the tradition of his [or her] Church, the interior of this man is as familiar as the house one has grown up in. To others also, for all its careful scaffolding, it is too human to be strange. John's constant marveling at the goodness of things is heartening, for, like Catholic priests generally, he had looked often into vast wastelands of evil. He was constantly surprised at what he felt to be God's provident intervention in his own affairs. The suggestion of an ecumenical council astonished him even after he had made it, and he records as a great grace from God the readiness with which he acceded to the idea of a council once it had entered his mind - by some divine inspiration, he felt sure, 'quite contrary to any previous supposition or idea of my own on this subject'" (page 62).
Now, in 1984 in London, and in 1985 in New York, the English former Jesuit Peter Hebblethwaite's 550-biography was published with two slightly different titles - as John XXIII: Pope of the Council (London: G. Chapman) and as Pope John XXIII: Shepherd of the Modern World (New York: Doubleday).
In 2000, Margaret Hebblethwaite (born in 1951), the widow of Peter Hebblethwaite (1930-1994), published a 300-page abridged edition titled John XIII: Pope of the Century (London and New York: Continuum).
In 2002, the writer American Thomas Cahill (born in 1940) published the 250-page book Pope John XXIII: A Penguin Life (New York: A Lipper/ Viking Book), in which he devotes the first seventy pages to recounting the history of the Roman Catholic Church, the papacy, and Italy. Among other things about Italy, Cahill says, "Early in the twentieth century, liberal electoral reforms extended the vote to all adult males who could read and write, but this included less than a fifth of the adult male population" (page 108).
Between 2003 and 2008, the carefully edited scholarly editions of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli/ Pope John XXIII's Il Giornale dell'Anima were published in Italian in Bologna (see Faggioli's "Abbreviations" for the complete bibliographic information, pages vii-x).
In 2012, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Faggioli published the 200-page book Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning (New York: Paulist Press).
In March 2013, the cardinal-electors of the Roman Catholic Church elected the aging Argentine Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to be the new pope. He took the name Pope Francis in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. As we noted above, in 2014, Pope Francis officially canonized Pope john XXIII a saint.
In 2015, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council, Faggioli updated fourteen of his previously published studies to bring them up to date with the still emerging pontificate of Pope Francis in the 350-page book A Council for the Global Church: Receiving Vatican II in History (Minneapolis: Fortress Press).
But also see my OEN review essay "Massimo Faggioli on Vatican II and on American Catholicism" (dated March 16, 2021):
In 2021, Faggioli further updated his thought about Pope Francis in his new 160-page book Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, translated from the Italian by Barry Hudock (New London, CT: Twenty-Third Publications/ Bayard Faith Resources; orig. Italian ed., 2021).
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