Dr Shaun Blanchard

PhD
Lecturer in Theology

Email: shaun.blanchard@nd.edu.au

  • Biography

    Shaun Blanchard is Lecturer in Theology on the Fremantle campus. A North Carolina native and graduate of UNC, Oxford (Blackfriars Hall), and Marquette, Shaun writes on a variety of topics in early modern and modern Catholicism, publishing in outlets like Commonweal, America, Church Life Journal, and The Tablet. He is the author of The Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II (OUP: 2020) and, with Ulrich Lehner, co-edited The Catholic Enlightenment: A Global Anthology (CUA: 2021). With UNDA colleague Stephen Bullivant, Shaun co-wrote Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction (OUP: 2023). With Richard T. Yoder, Shaun co-edited From Port-Royal to Pistoia: A Jansenist Anthology (CUA Press, forthcoming 2024). In his free time, Shaun likes to watch college (university) football and basketball, travel (especially to visit churches and archives in Italy and friends in England), and eat at the incredible cafes and restaurants in Fremantle and Perth. He lives in Fremantle with his wife Ann-Marie, and loves cats, fried chicken sandwiches, and English beer. Shaun’s devotion to the University of North Carolina’s football team has taught him more about eschatological hope than all of his theological study.

  • Teaching areas

    • Systematic and Historical Theology

  • Research expertise and supervision

    • Contemporary global Catholicism
    • Vatican II
    • Vatican I
    • The Jansenist-Jesuit conflict
    • Catholicism and the Enlightenment

  • Books

    • The Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II: Jansenism and the Struggle for Catholic Reform. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020).
    • Coauthor with Stephen Bullivant, Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, March 2023).
    • Coeditor with Ulrich L. Lehner, Catholic Enlightenment: A Global Anthology. Series: Early Modern Sources (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2021)
    • Co-editor with Richard T. Yoder, From Port-Royal to Pistoia: An Anthology of Jansenist Sources in Translation. Series: Early Modern Sources (Catholic University of America Press: forthcoming, 2024).

  • Book chapters

    • “This Side of the Alps: The Catholic Enlightenment in Britain and Ireland,” in Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, volume 3: Relief, Revolution, and Revival, 1746–1829, edited by Liam Chambers (series edited by James E. Kelly and John McCafferty) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 264–285.
    • “True and False Reformers in the Church: Congarian Lessons for Today,” in Salvador Ryan and Declan Marmion, eds., Reforming the Church: Global Perspectives (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2023), 17–33.
    • “Reform vom Arno bis zum Rhein – Die jansenistische Synode von Pistoia und die deutschsprachigen Länder,” in Der Jansenismus im deutschsprachigen Raum, 1670–1789: Bücher, Bilder, Bibliotheken. Translated by Christoph Schmitt-Maaß. Series: Frühe Neuzeit (Volume 250). Edited by Christoph Schmitt-Maaß (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023), 203–223.
    • “The ‘Fifth Vial’: Charles Walmesley’s Ultramontane Apocalypticism,” in British and Irish Religious Orders in Europe, 1560–1800: Conventuals and Monastics in Motion, edited by James Kelly and Cormac Begadon (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2022), 222–244.
    • “New Models of Church Government,” in Innovation in Early Modern Catholic Theology, edited by Ulrich L. Lehner (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2021), 87–110.
    • “Was John Carroll an ‘Enlightened’ Catholic? Resituating the Archbishop of Baltimore as a ‘Third Party’ Prelate,” in Katholische Aufklärung in Europa und Nordamerika, edited by Jürgen Overhoff and Andreas Oberdorf (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2019), 165–82.

    Forthcoming Book Chapters

    • “The Popes and the Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge History of the Papacy, Vol. 1: The Popes and the Papacy, edited by Joëlle Rollo-Koster and Iben Forresberg-Schmidt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2023).
    • “The Catholic Enlightenment,” in T&T Clark Handbook of Modern Theology, edited by R. David Nelson and Philip G. Zeigler (London and New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, forthcoming 2024).
    • “Catholic Enlightenment from Catholicisme intransigeant to the Reception of Vatican II: Black Legend, Myth, or Historiographical Tool?” in Marco Barducci, ed. Debating Enlightenment. Scholarship, Historiography and the Transmission of Books and Ideas (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, forthcoming 2024).
    • “Introduction,” in Christopher M. Bellitto, ed., The Essential Vatican II: The Council for Tomorrow’s Church (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, forthcoming 2024).
    • “Catholicism and Enlightenment in the German-Speaking Lands,” in Nicholas Chong and Daniel K. L. Chua, eds. Rethinking Beethoven and the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024).
    • Co-authored with Richard T. Yoder, “An Introduction to Jansenism,” in Blanchard and Yoder, eds. From Port-Royal to Pistoia: An Anthology of Jansenist Sources in Translation (anticipated 2024).
    • “The Catholic Story,” in Alec Ryrie and Mark A. Lamport, eds., Entangling Web: The Fractious Story of Christianity in Europe, Series: Global Story of Christianity (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, forthcoming 2024).
    • “John Lingard’s Dislike of Newman: An Enlightened Cisalpine Confronts the Second Spring,” in Kenneth L. Parker, Christopher Cimorelli, and Elizabeth Huddleston, eds., Scholar, Sage, Saint: The Legacy of John Henry Newman (Catholic University of America Press and the National Institute for Newman Studies, anticipated 2025).

    Translations and Edited Selections with Introductions

    • “Documents from the Synod of Pistoia: A Jansenist Vision for Liturgy and Devotion,” in Blanchard and Yoder, eds. From Port-Royal to Pistoia: An Anthology of Jansenist Sources in Translation (forthcoming 2024).
    • “The Jansenist Church of Utrecht,” in Blanchard and Yoder, eds. From Port-Royal to Pistoia: An Anthology of Jansenist Sources in Translation (forthcoming 2024).
    • “The Fight Against Superstition: Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750),” (author of critical introduction and translator, with the assistance of Glauco Schettini), in Shaun Blanchard and Ulrich L. Lehner, Catholic Enlightenment: A Global Anthology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, August 2021), 21–37.
    • “British Catholicism as Reasonable and Patriotic Christianity: Joseph Berington (1743–1827),” (author of critical introduction and editor) in Shaun Blanchard and Ulrich L. Lehner, Catholic Enlightenment: A Global Anthology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, August 2021), 253–72.
    • “Catholicism and Democracy: John Carroll (1736–1815),” (author of critical introduction and editor), in Shaun Blanchard and Ulrich L. Lehner, Catholic Enlightenment: A Global Anthology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, August 2021), 273–90.

  • Journal articles and proceedings

    • “Settling Old Scores: Pastor Aeternus as the Final Defeat of Early Modern Opponents of Papalism,” Newman Studies Journal 17.1 (Summer 2020): 24–51.
    • “Balance and Imbalance: The Papacy and the Contested Legacies of the Vatican Councils,” Horizons 47.1 (June 2020): 25–32 (contribution to roundtable on 150th Anniversary of the First Vatican Council).
    • “Neither Cisalpine nor Ultramontane: John Carroll’s Ambivalent Relationship with English Catholicism, 1780–1800,” US Catholic Historian 36.3 (Summer 2018): 1–28.
    • “The Ghost of Pistoia: Evocations of Auctorem Fidei in the Debate over Episcopal Collegiality at Vatican II,” Theological Studies 79.1 (March 2018): 60–85.
    • “The Minority Report at Trent and the Vatican Councils: Dissenting Episcopal Voices as Positive Sources for Theological Reflection,” New Blackfriars 98 (March 2017): 147–156.
    • “Proto-Ecumenical’ Catholic Reform in Eighteenth Century Italy: Lodovico Muratori as a Forerunner of Vatican II,” Pro Ecclesia 25 (Winter 2016): 71–90.

  • Conference papers

    Invited presentations

    • “Conciliar Amnesia: A Vision for Synodality,” invited lecture at the University of Notre Dame (USA), August 30, 2023.
    • “Synodality and the Roots of Vatican II,” a conversation with Kristin Colberg, moderated by Kathy Sprows-Cummings, in the series “Synodality in Perspective: Traditions Past and Present,” co-sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute, the American Cusanus Society, and the Nova Forum. September 19, 2022.
    • “The Rise and Fall of the Counter-Enlightenment Narrative in the Catholic Church,” lecture in the Geschichte am Mittwoch (“History on Wednesday”) series at the University of Vienna, June 15, 2022.
    • “Charles Walmesley Between Enlightenment and Counter-Revolution,” invited lecture at a one-day seminar on Bishop Charles Walmesley at Douai Abbey, Reading, UK, April 28, 2022.
    • Response to Prof. Rebecca Messbarger’s presidential address on Pope Benedict XIV and enlightenment Catholicism at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) annual meeting in Baltimore, MD, March 31–April 2, 2022.
    • “Jansenism Matters, For Better or Worse,” invited lecture at the University of Notre Dame (USA), October 29, 2021.
    • “Re-Thinking Jansenism: Towards a More Nuanced Understanding of Complex and Misunderstood Reformist Phenomena,” invited lecture at the Patristics, Medieval, and Renaissance conference at Villanova University, October 15–17, 2021.
    • “Catholic Enlightenment: What is it Good For?” invited presentation and roundtable discussion for the Webinar panel “Debating Enlightenment,” hosted by the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), Durham University, July 6, 2021.
    • “German Speaking Catholicism in the Age of Beethoven,” invited essay for the online conference “Rethinking Beethoven and the Enlightenment,” hosted by Daniel Chua (Hong Kong University) and Nicholas Chong (Rutgers), June 21–23, 2021. In absentia (pre-circulated essay).
    • “The Enlightenment and Reformkatholizismus in German-speaking lands,” invited essay for a panel on Germany and the Enlightenment, Early Modern Conference at Durham University, July 8–10, 2020 (annual conference organized by the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), moved to Zoom due to the Coronavirus).
    • “The North Atlantic Catholic Enlightenment: America, Britain and Ireland,” seminar at Maynooth University, AHI Visiting Fellows Series, May 28, 2020. Postponed due to Coronavirus.
    • “Settling Old Scores: Pastor Aeternus as the Liquidation of Early Modern Opponents of Papalism,” invited lecture at the National Institute for Newman Studies (NINS) Spring Symposium on the First Vatican Council in Pittsburgh, PA, March 14–15, 2019.
    • “Reform from the Arno to the Rhine: The Synod of Pistoia and the German-Speaking Lands,” Invited presenter at “Jansenistische Netzwerke: Mäzene, Übersetzer und Drucker im Alten Reich, 1641–1790” (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, 19–21 October, 2018).
    • “An American Cisalpine: Archbishop Carroll as an Inheritor of English Catholic Reform,” invited presenter at the DGEJ-Jahrestagung 2017: “Katholische Aufklärung in Europa und Nordamerika” at Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 12–15 September 2017.
    • “A ‘Pistoian Infection’ in Eighteenth-Century England? Tracing the Connection between English Cisalpinism and Continental Catholic Reform,” invited lecture at the Ecclesiastical History seminar, Durham University, England, 1 December 2016.

    Other Conference Presentations and Academic Lectures

    • “The English Catholic Roots of Newman’s Religious World,” at the March 2023 National Institute for Newman Studies conference (Pittsburgh, PA) on “The Early Modern Roots of Newman’s Religious World.”
    • “Ghosts on the Council Floor: Vatican II and the Legacy of Modernism,” at the October 2022 National Institute for Newman Studies conference (Pittsburgh, PA) on “Newman and Modernism.”
    • “Conspiracy Theories and Ecclesial Polarization in Eighteenth-Century Catholicism: Lessons for Today,” paper presented on the panel “The Culture Wars and Catholic Modernity” at the annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association, New Orleans, LA, January 6–8, 2022.
    • “Lingard on Newman: Why the Greatest English Catholic Scholar of the First Half of 1800s Didn’t Like Newman,” paper presented at “John Henry Newman: Scholar, Sage, Saint,” Conference and Online Symposium from the National Institute for Newman Studies, Pittsburgh, PA, 20–22 September 2021.
    • “Mapping the Catholic Enlightenment in Britain and Ireland: A Political Movement?” paper to be presented at Early Modern British and Irish Catholicism conference, co-hosted by Durham and Notre Dame, at Ushaw College, Durham, July 14–16, 2020. Postponed due to Coronavirus.
    • “Proto-Ecumenism? Late Jansenist Historical Narratives and Irenicism Towards Protestants, ca. 1770–1800,” paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the European Academy of Religion, Bologna, June 22–25, 2020. Postponed due to Coronavirus.
    • “Was There a Jansenist Theology of the Laity? Reexamining the Late Phase of the Movement (1775–1800),” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association, New York, NY, January 3–5, 2020.
    • “Which Side of the Alps? Cisalpinism v. Ultramontanism in England (1780–1800),” paper presented at the Catholic Record Society conference in York, England, July 8–10, 2019.
    • “The Consequences of Early Modern Jesuit-Jansenist Conflicts for Global Catholicism,” paper presented at “Global History and Catholicism: An International Conference Sponsored by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism,” University of Notre Dame, South Bend IN, April 4–6, 2019.
    • “The Nature of Catholic Dissent: From Unigenitus (1713) to Humanae Vitae (1968),” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association, Chicago, IL, January 3–6, 2019.
    • “The Last Cisalpine? Resituating John Lingard (1771–1851) as a ‘Third Party’ Catholic,” Centre for Catholic Studies 10th Anniversary Celebratory Conference: “Catholic Theology in the Public Academy: Searching the Questions, Sounding the Depths,” 18–20 April 2018 at Durham University (UK).
    • “History, Church Reform, and the Interpretation of Vatican II,” Plenary Address at the Loyola-Marquette Graduate Theology Colloquium, Marquette University, 24 February 2018.
    • “The ‘General Obscuration’ of Catholic Truth: The Synod of Pistoia (1786) Between the Reformations,” paper presented at the Sixteenth Century Society Annual Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 26–29 October 2017.
    • “The ‘Fifth Vial’: Charles Walmesley’s Ultramontane Apocalypticism,” paper presented at “Early Modern Orders and Disorders: Religious Orders and British and Irish Catholicism” conference (co-hosted by Notre Dame and Durham), University of Notre Dame’s London Gateway, London, UK, 28–30 June 2017.
    • “Ricci’s Constantine: The Bishop of Pistoia’s Attempt to Battle Ultramontanism with Habsburg Power,” paper presented at the Ecclesiastical History Society conference, Magdalen College, Cambridge, 14 January 2017.
    • “The Minority Report: Listening to the ‘Echo’ of Dissenting Voices at Trent and the Vatican Councils,” paper presented at the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain conference, Alfreton, England, 7 September 2016.
    • “Are Newman’s Seven ‘Notes’ of Doctrinal Development of Any Practical Value?” paper presented at Lumen Christi Institute Newman conference, Merton College, Oxford, England, 14 July 2016.
    • “Saved Through the Church? Jacques Dupuis and Gavin D’Costa in Dialogue,” paper presented at the Engaging Particularities conference, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, 4 April 2016.
    • “The Ghost of Pistoia: Remembering and Forgetting Auctorem Fidei in the Debate over Episcopal Collegiality at Vatican II,” paper presented at the annual Regional American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature conference, Luther College, St. Paul, MN, 1 April 2016.
    • “An Examination of Lumen Gentium 16,” paper presented at the Ecclesiological Investigations conference, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., 21 May 2015.

  • In the media

    • “Vatican II: Angels and devils on our shoulders,” Catholic Herald (UK), April 2023.
    • “Vatican II’s Departure from the Anti-Modernist Paradigm,” Genealogies of Modernity, published online in two parts, 29 November 2022 and 2 December 2022.
    • "'This Sacred Council’: Sixty Years of Vatican II,” The Tablet (22 October 2022), 4–6.
    • “Consulting the Faithful: John Henry Newman’s Relevance for a Fully Catholic Synodality,” in Spiritan Horizons 19 (2022): 98–113.
    • “The Reform was Real: Continuity and Change at Vatican II,” in Commonweal 149.3 (March 2022): 20–26. [Named one of fifteen essays in Commonweal’s “Best of 2022”]
    • “Why Lingard Didn’t Like Newman,” Newman Review, 24 September 2021 (online journal of the National Institute for Newman Studies), 3600 words.
    • “Traditionis Custodes Was Never Merely About the Liturgy,” Church Life Journal (Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame), 2 August 2021, 4000 words.
    • “Was There a ‘Catholic Enlightenment?’: Rethinking Religion and the Age of Lights,” Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, 26 July 2021, 2000 words.
    • “Old Myths About the Age of Enlightenment That Die Hard,” Church Life Journal (Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame), 11 June 2021, 2100 words.
    • “Fr. John Lingard (1771–1851): Between Enlightened Catholicism and the Newmanian Second Spring,” Newman Review 8 January 2021 (online journal of the National Institute for Newman Studies), 4000 words.
    • “Communal Guilt and the Black Catholic Experience in America: An Interview with Fr. Josh Johnson,” Church Life Journal, (Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame), 7 October 2020, 5400 word interview.
    • “The Twists and Turns That Led to the First Vatican Council,” Church Life Journal (Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame), 1 July 2020, 6700 words.
    • “Is the Pope Still Infallible? Reflections on the 150th Anniversary of Vatican I’s Definition,” Reality (magazine of the Irish Redemptorists), Part One: May 2020, 12–17; Part Two: June 2020, 18–19.
    • “From Jansenism to Humanae Vitae: The Long History of Catholic Dissent,” Church Life Journal (Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame), 10 March 2020, 3900 words.
    • “Shaun Blanchard on Jansenism, Pistoia, and Catholic Historiography,” interview with Dr. Adam DeVille, Eastern Christian Books, 28 February 2020, 5500 words.
    • “Rioting Over the Virgin Mary’s Belt: Enlightenment, Reform, and the Religion of the People in Tuscany,” Age of Revolutions 11 December 2019, 2000 words.
    • “Are Jansenists Among Us?” Church Life Journal (Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame), 4 October 2019, 3300 words.
    • “A Quasi-Defense of Gallicanism,” Church Life Journal (Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame), 19 October 2018, 2000 words.
    • “Ancient Faith and Modern Ways,” (on the English Catholic Cisalpine movement), Catholic Herald, 4 August 2017, 26–27.
    • “A Catholic Observer in Rome,” (on an ecumenical conference with Anglicans and Episcopalians) Living Church, 31 October 2016.
    • “Third Party” Catholic Reformers of the Eighteenth-Century: Between Jansenists and the Zelanti,” The Regensburg Forum: History, Theology, and Philosophy in the Augustinian Tradition, 17 October 2016.
    • “Jansenism: A Brief Sketch of a Complex Phenomenon,” The Regensburg Forum: History, Theology, and Philosophy in the Augustinian Tradition, 6 September 2016.
    • “The Neglect of Catholic Theology From Westphalia (1648) to the Bastille (1789),” The Regensburg Forum: History, Theology, and Philosophy in the Augustinian Tradition, 18 August 2016.

  • Professional affiliations

    • American Catholic Historical Society
    • Austrian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

  • Other

    • Peer review work for Theological Studies, Irish Theological Quarterly, Peeters (Leuven), the Yearbook of the Austrian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Religions, and Routledge Press’ Seminar Studies in History series.
    • Associate Editor, Newman Studies Journal, 2021–2023.
    • Current member of University of Notre Dame Australia’s Higher Degree by Research (HDR) faculty committee (responsible for many duties involving the research of masters and PhD students).