In sections 4 to 6, we will look at the emergence of the disjunction between the Church and the faithful after , at the reasons explaining it, and at a possible way forward. Since the popes are the leading players, this contribution will focus on the papal magisterium.
Since the popes and Rome play the leading roles, it is understandable that they receive most attention. Nevertheless, there are two sides involved: It is thus crucial to study the connections and the interactions between these two sides, namely, how the connections are forged or undone and why.
Authority relations change over time and sometimes they change quite drastically.
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These drastic changes are themselves the result of the processing of the major societal changes to which one is responding. This is also the case for the Catholic Church. After the French Revolution of , society was, notwithstanding the efforts at restoration, geared in new tracks — and so was the Church. The invention of the magisterium and the tight conjunction between the Church hierarchy and the faithful took place in the first modernity. The disjunction between them occurs in the second modernity. The teaching authority is linked to other aspects of the Church: To understand the issue of the magisterium, we thus need to look at the Church in its many dimensions.
Let us take the years after The Catholic Church is getting smaller. Dissent and threat of exit by the faithful have become a structural characteristic of church life. Consequently, the connections between the magisterium and the public also change. However, the erosion of the closed Catholic subcultures opens up, at the same time, new opportunities, foremost of which is a possible direct appeal to a worldwide public.
The pope and his chancellery — Rome — were key players in Western Christianity from early Christian times, and even more so in later times3. However, individual bishops and theologians were also equally active in an independent way until the French Revolution. Pronouncements by popes, often embroiled in political power games, were, at times, heavily criticised. As late as the 18th century, more than half of the German bishops 1 S.
Charles Curran and R. Paulist Press, b , Conjunctions and Disjunctions in Modernity 57 refused to support in their dioceses the papal condemnation of Febronianism in In the Middle Ages, the theologians of the major universities, in their capacity as experts in doctrine, considered it their duty to judge the orthodoxy of theological teachings. The magisters of the University of Paris, the major theological centre of the time, were, until the beginning of the 17th century, pre-eminent.
It was only after that the popes advanced to become the all- important instructors and directors of faith, thereby pushing the other instances into a subservient position. In this respect, and drawing on a long tradition of claims to papal supremacy and on the more recent resurgence of papal power and authority since the Congress of Vienna in the restoration of the Papal States and the conclusion of many concordats , the pontificate of Gregory XVI was decisive.
Confronted with the end of the Restoration era and the rise to power of liberalism in several countries, signalling in his eyes a potential return of the revolutionary period, Gregory XVI pursued a vigorous policy of papal empowerment and unity in the Church. To this end, he multiplied his interventions and concomitant claims to obedience in both theology6 and in politics.
The encyclical letter Commissum divinitus of 17 May , which again condemned liberalism, states: He wanted some people to be in charge and govern and others to be subject and obey. Therefore, the Church has, by its divine institution, the power of the magisterium to teach and define matters of 4 L. Paul Brand, , Figueiredo, The Magisterium-Theology Relationship: Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, , Teaching was regarded as an integral part of governance. Following a long tradition, he defined, at the same time, that only the Church, and not worldly powers, can legitimately wield the magisterium: This power of teaching and governing in matters of religion, given by Christ to His Spouse, belongs to the priests and bishops.
Christ established this system not only so that the Church would in no way belong to the civil government of the state, but also so that it could be totally free and not subject in the least to any earthly domination. Jesus Christ did not commit the sacred trust of the revealed doctrine to the worldly leaders, but to the apostles and their successors par.
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It is Church dogma that the pope, the successor of St. Peter, possesses not only primacy of honour but also primacy of authority and jurisdiction over the whole Church. Accordingly the bishops are subject to him par. In short, the basics of the ultramontane thinking with regard to the magisterium are here already presented.
In the decades afterwards, it will be expanded intellectually and institutionally. Indeed, starting with Gregory XVI and increasing much more after him, papal pronouncements were made on almost any subject. They were made frequently and the faithful paid great attention to them. Lent or Easter or as comments on papal pronouncements e. Conjunctions and Disjunctions in Modernity 59 The authority of the pope to make pronouncements with the right to be obeyed was, first of all, strengthened theologically.
They consciously took up selected theological ideas, concepts, and distinctions that were rumouring among theologians: The dogma of papal infallibility, which was promulgated at the First Vatican Council in , was very restrictive with regard to its use and was thus considered as constituting a form of the extra-ordinary magisterium. Yet, it legitimised the far more important, and far more amply used, ordinary magisterium. The encyclicals and other statements by the pope or approved by the pope addressing all the faithful, enjoy the status of the ordinary magisterium.
Though their theological status ranks lower, they were supposed to be no less obeyed. Alongside the scope and modalities of the ecclesia docens, the question of the reception of the teachings by the faithful also gained more attention in the 19th century. Pope Gregory was content to stress the duty to obey. But as soon as papal pronouncements began to inflate, more precision was needed. Both notions refer to a sort of spiritual instinct of the faithful in perceiving the religious truths of Christianity. Lacking unequivocal adherence in the past, the sense of the faithful was, among other things, invoked by Pius IX as a ground for the solemn definition and proclamation in of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
Gifts and Challenges for Contemporary Catholicism, ed. Ashgate, , Yet, not only encyclicals, but all utterances of the popes were now watched attentively throughout the Catholic world. In conclusion, we can say that both the practice of the papal teaching authority and the doctrine of the magisterium were only fully elaborated in the 19th century. The constellation would remain in place with minor alterations until the death of Pius XII in And why did the height of the magisterium fall so late in the first modernity?
There are, as mentioned in the first section, two sides to the question: With regard to the first side of the question, the rise in papal teaching authority was part of the much broader rise of the modern papacy as the daily leader of the World Church. At the First Vatican Council, next to papal infallibility, the supreme jurisdictional authority of the pope to govern and discipline the Church was explicitly confirmed.
Canon law was further elaborated, trimmed, and restyled towards decision making in Rome, culminating in the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law in Above all, Rome and the local churches became more tightly linked.
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At the beginning of the 19th century, the pope only appointed the bishops of the Papal States directly. A century later, almost half of the world episcopate was appointed by the pope. The system of nuncios, part papal legates to states and part supervisors of the local churches, was extended. The episcopal chancelleries 13 The two short but rich contributions by Congar, written in the s, remain the best historical accounts to date. Akveld, De Romeinse Curie. Valkhof Pers, , Conjunctions and Disjunctions in Modernity 61 and Roman congregations became more closely connected.
The organisation of the Church was thus greatly strengthened. It became a centralised organisation, with a pope at the apex who could reach down via the episcopate and the priests and religious to every Catholic on the ground. Only in the 19th century were the institutional conditions created that allowed the Church, and the pope in particular, to make authoritative pronouncements in an effective way. At the same time, the demand and drive for doctrinal statements was heightened as a corollary of the transition to a modern society.
There are two aspects here. A general reason is that modern society is more complex and that it changes fast. Hence, the necessity or, at least, the urge to make statements on new issues or to specify earlier statements increased greatly. This drive will become all the more urgent after A more specific facet is that Rome felt that the Church was fatally threatened by a derailing modern society.
The statements of the popes exhibit a pervasive sense that they are surrounded by evil forces and grave errors. Depravity exults; science is impudent; liberty, dissolute. The holiness of the sacred is despised; the majesty of divine worship is not only disapproved by evil men, but defiled and held up to ridicule. Hence sound doctrine is perverted and errors of all kinds spread boldly. The laws of the sacred, the rights, institutions, and discipline — none are safe from the audacity of those speaking evil par. The alliance between church and state was indeed broken up.
The Papal States would soon disappear as a political entity. Not only politics threatened to move towards independence or even antagonism. Threats were also growing, again in the eyes of the Church, in the realm of science e. The Church was thus mobilising its intellectual resources to warn the faithful and to counter what were perceived as lethal threats.
We now turn to the other and more astonishing side of the question: What made them agree with and take up the surge in doctrinal papal pronouncements? The most important explanation, it seems to me, has to do with the rising relevance of the Church for the faithful in the 19th and early 20th centuries: This increasing relevance was ideology-driven.
To ensure that these would be more than mere words and to prepare for the eventual re-conquest of modernity, multitudes of associations and organisations were, at the same time, founded in all sectors of life. Most of them, in particular, the more secular ones like political parties or socio-economic organisations, were founded and directed by lay Catholics, but the Church and the clerics were always heavily involved.
In fact, they were the true leaders of this Catholic world of organisations and movements. With so many central items of life in modern society shaped directly or indirectly by the Catholic Church, the faithful were inclined to lend a favourable ear to the leaders of their world. After all, the Catholic Church acted as the intermediary through which the legitimate fruits of modernity came within reach of the population at large.
Moreover, the Church still was, as in the past, an institution at the centre of society. They self-assuredly frequented the circles of the political, social, and cultural elite, from the parish to the national level. Church and clerics thus enjoyed a high prestige, which was conducive for a deferent attitude towards their authoritative statements. Ultramontane mass Catholicism between and was thus a time of intense and tight connections between the Church and its faithful. The reasons can be summarised in one sentence: And although the tensions were many — between liberal and ultramontane Catholics, between the classes — never before and never after was the conjunction between the Church and the faithful so strong as in the first modernity.
First, the popes and bishops continue to issue statements of all sorts. The popes, in particular, are omnipresent and have become even more visible than they were already. Editions du Cerf, Conjunctions and Disjunctions in Modernity 63 pronouncements in the form of written declarations motu proprio, apostolic constitution, encyclical, apostolic letter, apostolic exhortation remain in use. Let us take again encyclical letters as an example.
Encyclicals still constitute favourite papal teaching instruments, though it is clear that the number of encyclicals issued since John XXIII has declined. In addition to the older forms of written declarations, new forms of papal public utterances have made headway, which more than compensate for the decline of older forms. The popes now appear frequently on television.
They travel abroad for pastoral visits and use these occasions to give speeches. They give discourses at weekly general audiences in Rome. They give interviews and publish books. In short, they have become public figures. Every word they utter is screened. Second, after some hesitation, the teaching authorities demand obedience on the part of the faithful to no less of a degree than in the first modernity.
Initially, with the stiffening control in the s in mind, the Second Vatican Council gave more leeway to the faithful and theologians. As well, Paul VI wanted to refrain from excessive centralisation and from all-too-frequent imperative doctrinal declarations. A good example is his Octogesimo Adveniens of 14 May , which he deliberately called an apostolic letter and not an encyclical. It acknowledges the diversity of situations and leaves the particularities of decision making to the local Christian communities and the conscience of the believer par.
Nevertheless, Paul VI, confronted with growing polarisation and the spiral of radical progressive ideas, did not find a way forward for the magisterium. While many major documents saw the light in the s, this almost came to a standstill in the s. It condemned radical ecumenist ideas and the questioning of the infallibility of the Church and the magisterium. Under John Paul II, the hesitations gave way to a much more active and firm approach. John Paul II resumed the tradition of promulgating encyclicals and he did not hide that they were meant as authoritative teachings.
Nevertheless, we are far from a full return to the situation prior to If one wants to call this period a restoration, it is certainly only a partial restoration for which I can only give some tentative indications — the subject needs more thorough research. It seems to me that the rate and the scope of the major doctrinal statements have declined. The documents entailed more prescriptions and condemnations. The popes treated the subjects with more self-assurance and with more precision than is generally the case nowadays.
Prescribing a specific philosophical school neo- Thomism or a particular political strategy the ralliement of Catholics to the French Republic in , as Leo XIII did, is indeed past history. By the way, the protests against and the failure of the ralliement policy show that there were limits to the magisterium too, prior to To come back to the time after , the tone of the magisterial documents has changed as well. The phrasing is less harsh 24 and the style is, by and large, less imperative.
The encyclicals strive especially to come across as spiritual documents. Oxford University Press, ; Richard R. Gaillardetz, When the Magisterium Intervenes: Decisive for the fundamental change, however, is a third factor: Let us now turn to this side of the coin. Before , papal pronouncements were often hailed by the Catholic faithful as major landmarks on the way towards a Catholic society. In Louvain, a centre of international renown headed by the future Cardinal Mercier was set up in the following years. The encyclicals Rerum Novarum of and the sequel Quadragesimo Anno of had a similar lasting impact: The contrast with our time is striking.
The recent social encyclicals, for example, the Caritas in Veritate of Benedict XVI, received some press reactions, but all-in-all reaction is limited. What is more, they faded away in a murmur without any visible impact. The publication of Humanae Vitae a year later garnered few approvals and loads of disapprovals.
When, thereafter, a lively discussion over a magisterial document erupts, it usually means that it is strongly criticised. A good example is the flood of negative press over the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis of or over the Declaration from the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Dominus Iesus of Why did the faithful react so eagerly or, at least, so respectfully before and why does this change in and onwards?
I see three major shifts in the connections that link the Church and the faithful. Since these shifts are structural, a future restoration of authoritative bonds of the pretype is highly unlikely. Van Meerbeeck and A. While the 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed a rise in the functions the Church was directly and indirectly performing, most of these newly accrued functions were lost again after The Church is no longer the central wielding power of an extended Catholic world, pillar, or subculture.
It is no longer considered by most people to be a guiding force in their handling of political, social, and cultural affairs. The Church has become confined, more or less, to its religious sphere. The loss of functions on the political, socio-economic, cultural, and even moral levels leaves the Church only with religious binding potential. Second — and this is by far worse — there is an unmistakable loss in religious guidance potential too.
The Church has become less able to sensitise people for the world of God. This constitutes the real crisis of the Church. Many people have left the Church without feeling that they have lost something valuable in doing so! This is no longer the case. Of course, all things temporal have a temporary character. The problem nowadays, however, is the absence of new forms of religious offer with a similar impact on the daily lives of Catholics. Last but not least, there is a third structural factor behind the changing bonds between the Church and its following: The result is a complete power reversal: Consequently, the faithful do not feel themselves bound by Church pronouncements.
With less enforcement power, the Catholic Church has to learn how to propose, and how to seduce people with an interesting offer and an appealing teaching. Due to these structural shifts, which, in turn, are linked to structural changes in advanced modernity, the singular conjunction of the Church and the faithful present in the 19th and early 20th centuries has thus turned into a lasting disjunction. Accordingly, the Church hierarchy has lost the power it had built up in the 19th century to enforce its rulings and it has lost the authority of having the unquestionable right to be obeyed.
Conjunctions and Disjunctions in Modernity 67 pressure to uphold the former teacher-learner relationship, this has resulted not in more commitment, but, on the contrary, in more resistance and alienation on the part of the faithful and the public. However, they are both the end result of the presence or absence of a number of connections and, moreover, of different types of connections between the Church and the faithful.
Let us now focus, in a more systematic way, on these connections. I, therefore, turn to the realm of political sciences and, especially, to the analogous issue of the channels that link political parties to voters. After all, the Catholic Church is not the only organisation with difficulties in reaching and binding a following.
This has become a common problem for all major organisations in advanced modernity, for big corporations and banks, for trade unions, and, not in the least, for political parties. Political scientists have taken up this issue. The German-American political scientist Herbert Kitschelt29 has devised an analytical catalogue of the ways political parties in the West may connect to citizens. Kitschelt distinguishes between two fundamental classes of linkage types: Affective bonds can be created and reproduced in three ways: There are also three types of instrumental linkages: Let us apply this analytical scheme of six possible types of linkages to the Catholic Church and its relations with the faithful.
I start with the affective types of linkages. Nowadays, affective linkages through common traits are pertinent only in the case of Catholic ethnic migrants and their migrant parishes. In these cases, the shared culture provides an easy platform for the building up of connections — but hinders, at the same time, their integration in the indigenous churches. In the past, the Catholic Church was often invoked in 29 H. This was even true for encounters between civilisations, e. However, after , trait linkages are no longer pervasive in the West. A residual role is still performed, though dwindling, in a number of countries e.
Only in contested territories, like in Northern Ireland or in the former Yugoslavia, is it still a lively identity marker. Church identification by tradition was all-dominant in the past, but is, like in voting behaviour, declining in our age of volatility and choice. In the past, adherence to the Catholic Church was passed on from generation to generation, first of all within the family, second, through local or regional tradition, and, third, if possible, through the state. Once Catholicism had been established, there were thus few converts.
The new ideal in advanced modernity, however, according to which each individual has to lead a personal, authentic life, questions adherence by tradition and demands that adherence to the Catholic Church be a conscious, individual choice. The demand is no less for the offspring of Catholics. Here, family traditions are still playing a role, but only in so far as the Catholic Church is able to make a lasting impression in the lead up to the choice of the individual person. A lasting impression often fails and a great many born Catholics leave the Church.
On the other hand, an influx of converts becomes a possibility. Especially between and , identification with the Church was also enhanced through frequent collective mobilisations. Moreover, in times of conflict, the Catholic Church was able to raise the rank and file in great numbers cf. After , the forces of collective mobilisation and of the dualist narrative waned, but did not disappear.
The Catholic Church is still strong in collective mobilisations e. World Youth Days, papal voyages. The Catholic corporate narrative is still highly recognisable as well — and is retaining in conservative circles also a clearly dualistic nature — but without the former large-scale appeal.
Charismatic linkages are vital at the start of a religious movement. This was also the case with Christianity: Conjunctions and Disjunctions in Modernity 69 move away from the non-transferable qualities of personal charisma into the solid ground of charisma of the office. Personal charisma, joined to the office, was never dead though.
It became even more salient after From Pius IX onwards, the popes were known and revered throughout the Catholic world. Since then, the charismatic authority of popes is, in part, staged. It is bestowed even on popes with little personal charisma e. The combination of both personal and office charisma continues, however, to be potent.
John Paul II and now Francis are obvious examples. As is clear, affective bonds between the Church and the faithful were, and still are, though less than in the past, of major importance. Similar conclusions can be drawn for the instrumental class of linkage types. Clientelistic linkages were in the past very significant. The clergy were, at one time and up until , all-important power brokers. Nowadays, this is no longer the case. Where Catholic schools, hospitals, political parties, or interest organisations continued to exist, they had often already ceased for quite some time to function exclusively for Catholics.
Yet, in numerous instances, Catholic social organisations are still functioning as channels linking people to the Catholic world, albeit in cursory ways. In the West, also, smaller religious groups, such as migrant churches, provide club goods e. Moreover, in Western countries with few welfare state facilities, like the United States, so-called faith-based organisations have re-emerged as important civil carriers. In the past, the Catholic Church perceived itself as the institution par excellence offering universal social goods to society e.
Fix, Kirche Und Wohlfahrtsstaat. Lambertus, ; K. Princeton University Press, However, today, as a minority church, it can no longer offer these goods as valence goods in a credible way, since the claim of offering these social goods to all people presupposes an institution that is acting as a sacred canopy on behalf of society. Nevertheless, the promise and offer of universal goods has not lost importance.
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After all, the core of Christianity, i. But it has to be translated and made effective in order for people to want to engage in the Church in the expectation of living a good and holy life. Two crucial affective linking mechanisms, namely, common traits and adherence by tradition, were most salient even in the recent past but are no longer so.
Collective mobilisations and a corporate narrative retain some value but touch hearts and minds less so than in previous times. On the other hand, charismatic relations joined to the office of popes — and, to a far lesser extent, bishops — have gained in importance in modernity. Regarding instrumental linkages, the state of affairs is similar.
Clientelistic linkages have, except in migrant parishes and for marginalised people, disappeared. But, as religion has become a matter of personal choice and one framed in an ethics of authenticity, universal goods in general, including the promise of salvation, are now phrased in terms of personal fulfilment Taylor, If the Catholic Church wants to gain new relevance, it is here — guiding people towards contact with God in order to live a fulfilled life — that convincing ideas and programs in the form of spirituality, rituals, collective activities, social action, etc.
However, viewed from this perspective, it is rather odd to find that the Church is, in effect, raising the conditions for full participation in a number of rituals, thereby turning what could be universal goods into club goods. Conjunctions and Disjunctions in Modernity 71 Let us first look at the religious offer.
The Catholic Church in advanced modernity thus faces the challenge of elaborating, in line with the Catholic tradition, a new religious offer in such a way that it meets the cravings of contemporary people to lead a fulfilled life, bearing in mind that they can walk away at any moment. The elaboration of such a new, fitting religious offer is a huge task. It is, above all, a creative task and one that cannot simply be promulgated from on high because it has to build upon countless experiments, mostly from below, from which a small number of successful performances can be selected for fine-tuning and wider dissemination.
To be fair, there has been widespread innovation, even after the waves of innovation of the s had withered away World Youth Days, new movimenti, spirituality centres, etc. The really critical difficulty, though, is of another order: Will it be possible at all, given the absence of a Catholic state and sub- society and given the fact that secular goods nowadays can at most be provided peripherally, to attract major layers of the population with only a religious offer? After all, many seem to do well without religion or, at least, without demanding institutional religion.
With regard to the magisterium, however, a major stain becomes manifest: Wissink Vienna and Berlin: LIT Verlag, , Oxford University Press, , ; A. It is true that many later documents demonstrate a more positive attitude and present uplifting visions. Nevertheless, the negative interventions and imperative rulings remain frequent to this day, with the result that the Catholic Church in general and the magisterium in particular are, in the public mind — and also in the minds of many Catholics — nearly equated with ill dogmatism and insensitive condemnations.
Since the conditions of advanced modernity are such that the Church can no longer enforce its will, it will have to be more prudent with bans and rulings and it will need to focus its teaching on the intimate positive relation between Christianity and the fulfilment of life. It is on this latter relation that Catholic social teaching is welcomed by so many, and also by those outside the Church, and that the documents of the Second Vatican Council are still regarded as a source of inspiration. Only if the magisterium and the Church appear to be conducive for people to lead a fulfilled life can it hope to regain some degree of authority.
Vice versa, so long as the magisterium cannot shed its negative reputation, its teachings will not be received as inspiring. In this article, I explore the influence of the inability of the church to come to terms with both change and fallibility on these factors. Such metaphysical doctrines have been patterned in the image of unchanging structures of authority of the Church and its particular conception of the exercise of its moral and theological teaching role.
For more extended discussions of these issues, see Michael J. Lacey and Francis Oakley eds. Carroll However, I argue that, as the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI illustrates, change can be eminently sensible and even desirable. In adapting an abstract metaphysics for the purposes of thinking God and the church, the church has unnecessarily wedded itself to one approach to metaphysics that thinks of change negatively.
The importance of being able to think of both change and continuity in the context of the tradition of the church is that without this more rooted understanding tradition can be seen as either simply adherence to ancient customs and hence as having nothing to say to people of today or as remaining static and too dependent on the past to enable it to develop as new ideas gain general acceptance.
Since the Council these carefully nuanced and mutually conditioning statements have prompted what some have called a "Copernican revolution" in ecclesiology, a renewed interest in the local Churches whose communion is the whole Church. Attention has focused in particular on what makes the local Church local: The full substance of what makes the Church the Church is realized in these individual Churches, most visibly in eucharistic assemblies SC 42 and LG The diocese is defined theologically as "a portion of the People of God entrusted to a bishop to be shepherded by him with the assistance of the presbyterate, so that, loyal to their pastor and gathered by him through the Gospel and the Eucharist in the Holy Spirit, it constitutes a particular Church in which is truly present and active the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ" CD The terms "local" and "particular" Church are also used of organically linked groups of Churches, distinct "matrices of faith" within the unity of faith and structure, enjoying their own discipline, liturgical usages, and theological and spiritual patrimonies.
This Ecclesiarium localium in unum conspirans varietas is illustrated in the ancient patriarchates and the modern episcopal conferences LG To these considerations, which ground the full ecclesial reality of the communities of faith at all these particular levels, the Council added reflections that promote their genuinely local character. These communities must undertake the discernment of spirits which acknowledges and integrates what is true and good in their particular cultures, purifies what is not, and thus brings it about that Christ and the Church are not foreign to anyone or to any place AG 8 , that the community of the faithful, endowed with the cultural riches of its own nation, are deeply rooted in the people AG 15 , that they undertake a new intellectus fidei in terms of the philosophy and wisdom of the people AG 22 , that they live for God according to the honorable usages of their nation AG 15 , and that they participate in the local social and cultural life AG The Church becomes concretely catholic by becoming particular.
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And this is grounded in the Council's profound notion of catholicity as "the gift of the Lord himself by which the Catholic Church ceaselessly and effectively strives to restore all of humanity with all its goods under the headship of Christ and in the unity of the Holy Spirit. In virtue of this catholicity, the individual parts bring their own gifts to the other parts and to the whole Church so that the whole and each of the parts are strengthened by this mutual sharing and by the common effort to achieve a fullness in unity" LG The Council's teaching is finely balanced: Finally, in answering the question, "Where is the Church?
The Doctrinal Commission took pains to point out that the term "People of God" refers to all those who belong to the Church, clergy and laity alike, and that the chapter had been introduced in order to continue an exposition of what pertains to the whole body of believers before the Constitution addressed what differentiates and characterizes particular groups within the Church, that is, the hierarchy, the laity, and the religious. Still, what distinguishes Lumen gentium from the "hierarchology" that marked many a pre-conciliar treatise on the Church is the attention given to the place and role of the laity.
Going beyond a negative description of the laity as everyone except the clergy and the religious, Lumen gentium describes them as "Christian believers who, incorporated into Christ by baptism, constituted within the People of God, and in their own way sharing in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly office of Christ, have their own part to play in the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world" LG The Council was at pains to note "the common dignity of the Church's members that derives from their rebirth in Christ, the common grace of being God's children, the common call to perfection, the single salvation, the single hope, and the undivided charity.
In addition to acting through the ordained ministry and the sacraments the Spirit gives special gifts to the faithful, "from the reception of which, even the most ordinary ones, arises a right and duty to exercise them in the Church and in the world On all these sacramental and charismatic bases, the Council grounded a set of rights and duties for all Christians, which include the right to "receive in abundance the help of the spiritual goods of the Church," the right and at times the duty to express their views on Church matters, and the right to initiate activities in the service of the Church.
In addition, it stated the ability of the laity to engage in more immediate forms of cooperation in the apostolate of the hierarchy and to be appointed to some ecclesiastical offices LG 33, Such statements have prompted the spectacular increase in various activities, ministries, and associations of lay people that we have seen since the Council, one of the demonstrations of the Council's claim that "the Church is not truly established and does not fully live, nor is it a perfect sign of Christ, unless there is a genuine laity existing and working alongside the hierarchy" AG If such passages strongly affirm the dignity and role of all Christians, prior to any differentiations, it remains to define more precisely what distinguishes lay people.
Offering what the Doctrinal Commission called a "typological description" rather than an "ontological definition," the Council found this in their "secular character,"that is, in lives lived in the world, in "the ordinary circumstances of social and family life that, as it were, constitute the texture of their existence. They have "the principal role" in the effort undertaken "so that the world may be filled with the spirit of Christ and may more effectively reach its destiny in justice, in love, and in peace" LG 36; AA 7.
This emphasis on the laity as the chief presence and activity of the Church in the world moves us to the question of the mission of the Church. In Lumen gentium this theme is addressed theologically in terms of the Church as sacrament. The term is explained in the very first paragraph: This catholic unity of the People of God "prefigures and promotes universal peace" LG 13 ; the eschatological restoration of all things in Christ is already begun in the Church that is "the universal sacrament of salvation" LG By such statements one is reminded of Henri de Lubac's classic book, Catholicism , which not only helped restore the idea of the Church as sacrament but also pivoted around the notions of an original unity created by God, splintered by sin, and destined to be restored in Christ, a vision that de Lubac argued could overcome the idea that Christianity was a religion for the inner comforting of individuals alienated from the wider course of history.
With these claims the Council at once draws attention to what is most distinctive and constitutive about the Church as the "sign" because the effect of word and grace and urges its instrumental redemptive role in the world. It is this role which is developed most fully in Gaudium et spes , the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.
This text was written in some independence of the dogmatic constitutions of the Council and, at least until its final stages, by bishops and experts other than those who had concentrated their work on those other texts. For that reason, the ecclesiology of Gaudium et spes has at times been criticized for not integrating the more theological, spiritual, and liturgical vision set out elsewhere and for verging on what is considered to be a "merely sociological" notion of the Church. Since the Council there has even arisen a dispute, for example, as to whether Lumen gentium or Gaudium et spes should occupy the hermeneutical center of one's interpretation of the conciliar ecclesiology.
This dispute, I suggest, is itself symptomatic of the need to integrate the mission of the Church into one's ecclesiology from the beginning and not to leave it to a single chapter that tends to come late in one's treatise. As for Gaudium et spes itself, at two different places it insists that it is presupposing what has already been said elsewhere in the conciliar texts about the mystery of the Church as it now undertakes to discuss the presence and activity of the same Church in the modern world see GS 2, After the penultimate draft was criticized for an ambiguous notion of "the world," the text was revised to include a description that is at once anthropological and theological: But the Council was not undertaking a generic discussion of the relation between the Church and the world, but a specific pastoral treatment of the Church in the modern world.
That is why it offered throughout but also in summary form in GS 54, a description of certain features of the world today, among which can be mentioned the rapidity and depth of social and cultural transformations; the impact of the natural and social sciences and technology; modernization, industrialization, urbanization, mass media; a dynamic sense of nature; calls for greater freedom of self-realization and for human rights; the spread of democracy; the changed relationship between Church and State.
In all these developments, the Council says, "we are witnessing the birth of a new humanism in which man is defined before all else by his responsibility for his brothers and for history" GS Perhaps we might sum this up by saying that in Gaudium et spes the Council was addressing the relationship between the Church and the historic project of human self-responsibility and self-realization.
The pertinent sense of the word "world" is what human beings have made, are making, and will make by the use of their freedom; perhaps it is less the world as "the theatre of human history" than the world as the drama of human history. Underlying this is an expanded anthropology which goes beyond a merely psychological consideration, which is content to relate Gospel and grace to the drama of the individual's self-responsibility, to a fuller view which relates God's gifts, and the Church as their embodiment, to the larger drama of the collective and historical self-responsibility of mankind, a drama in which the Church participates in all its joy and hope, its grief and anguish, its greatness and its misery.
There is a powerful and programmatic statement in which the Council makes clear that the Church that participates in this historic drama is the same Church that has arisen from the gift of God: Proceeding from the love of the eternal Father, founded by Christ in time, and gathered into one by the Holy Spirit, the Church has a saving and eschatological purpose that can be fully attained only in the next life. But it exists now here on earth, composed of people who are members of the earthly city who are called to form the family of God's children already now in the history of the human race and to increase it continually until the Lord comes.
Made one in view of heavenly blessings and enriched by them, this family was by Christ "constituted and organized as a society in the present world" and "provided with the means of visible and social union. This compenetration of the earthly and the heavenly city can only be perceived by faith; indeed it remains the mystery of a human history which is always disturbed by sin until the full revelation of the splendor of the children of God. In pursuing its saving purpose, the Church not only communicates the divine life to people, it also casts its reflected light in some way over the whole world, especially by healing and elevating the dignity of the human person, by strengthening the cohesion of human society, and by endowing the daily activity of people with a deeper sense and meaning.
The Church thus believes that through each of its members and its whole community it can contribute much to make the human family and its history more human GS Because the drama that is human history is a drama ultimately defined theologically, as the effort, distorted by sin and enabled by grace, of God's human creatures to realize their full humanity in Christ, it is the duty of the Church "to examine the signs of the times and to interpret them in the light of the Gospel," that is, "to try to discern in the events, the needs, and the longings which it shares with other people of our age which of them are signs of the presence and purpose of God" GS 4, And it is this same linkage in the common human project that leads the Council to acknowledge that "whatever contributes to the development of the community of humanity on the level of family, culture, economic and social life, and national and international politics, by God's plan also contributes in no small measure to the community of the Church insofar as it depends on things outside itself" GS How to relate these historical efforts and their results to the Kingdom of God was a matter of some disagreement at Vatican II.
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