Since fifty years the opening of Vatican II, the debate on the Church is
more alive than ever. The ecclesiology looks like an always open
construction site, as a kind of Sagrada Familia still being
built, where so many designers alter at will a project that the Council
had indicated in broad lines, fixing the principles rather than details.
What results is the lack of a shared model of the Church, which seems to
place -or perhaps I should say, that leaves space- a multiplication of
new ways of being, and therefore, understanding of the Church. The
phenomenon is not necessarily positive, and still is typical of a
transition time, which sees the coexistence of two or more models: one
that terminates, the others that impose with more or less consistency.
It is worth photographing this situation, not only offering a panorama
of possible new ways of being Church, but also trying to put the
question of their plausibility and their ability to meet the current
challenges of modernity.
The traditional model of Church
Before any approach to new models of Church, it is necessary to return
briefly the features pre-conciliar ecclesiology. The reasons are at
least three:
a) because it can measure the progress, breaking away from an
ecclesiological conception and an ecclesial practice that had governed
the Christian experience in the West for four centuries, from the
Catholic Reformation of Trent, if not for an entire millennium, from the
Gregorian Reform;
b) because that model is still the institutional framework of the
present Church, which has not erased the previous structures to replace
their own, but put its communion’s organizations on an ecclesial plot,
already well established;
c) because consisting fringes of the Church contemplate a return to that
model, judging the Council and his doctrine as a betrayal of Tradition.
To define that way of being Church we are speaking about pyramidal
model. This is a two-tier structure, which is based on the essential
role of the hierarchy, organized in a pyramid: at the top of the Pope,
who governs the whole Church as the universal Bishop, through his
officials, the Bishops, that make it present in the ecclesiastical
districts -the Dioceses- of the Roman Catholic Church, within which the
priests act, especially dedicated to the care of souls. So the faithful
should be achieved through a chain of transmission of the authority who
envelops all the people according to the same ecclesiastical discipline.
Alongside this carrier, there is another, that of religious Orders,
directly subject to the Holy See and regulated by the Institute of the
exemption, which contribute significantly to act on coetus fidelium,
especially on the categories of persons that not covered in the usual
care of parishes.
In this way, through a network of facilities in the area -parishes,
oratories, chapels, but also schools, colleges, houses of hospitality of
every kind- the Church played a role in all fields, which was not only
restricted to the religious aspect of life, but embrace all the needs
and accompanied the Christian from first to last day of life.
It soon becomes clear that this is a model of Church in which the number
of people dedicated to this ecclesial service is very high: this means
that the emphasis on the vocation to the priesthood and religious life
was very strong, so that the best forces of the Christian society chose
this state and so would ensure a significant presence in Christian
society. This could happen in a Christian society that, by conveying the
life patterns, indicated as significant a vocational choice that
undoubtedly involved sacrifices, but promised "hundredfold here on earth
and eternal life." In this model, the evangelization was the priests’
matter. The foundation of many institutions for the missions shows it
more than any theological argument.
The change in perspective of the Vatican
The end of societas cristiana has challenged this virtuous
circle, in which those choosing a state of consecration would shape a
Christian society which would be out others who would continue this
work. The Sixty-eight years is a decisive watershed, after which the
process of secularization has led to a drastic contraction of the inputs
in Seminaries and Houses of formation. Large structures just built to
accommodate crowds of vocations who did not ask the eternal life, but a
diploma as a tool to gain positions in society, are the sign of an
illusion that has left the field to a bitter disappointment, for a
glorious past that was ending. One can argue about the causes that led
to the end of a regime of Christendom. The traditionalist circles accuse
the Vatican II of having broken the thread of the Tradition, causing the
current crisis in the Church. In fact, without the Council, the Church
would have been even more unprepared for a traumatic event such as the
Sixty-eight years, which has shaken the social system to its
foundations, causing a radical change of mentality.
Rather, the Vatican II has offered the foundations of a renewed vision
of the Church, able to enter into dialogue with the contemporary world,
although we can not speak in the proper sense of a model of conciliar
Church: "ecclesiology of communion" is the formula expressed from the
1985 Synod of Bishops. Undoubtedly, however, the Vatican II marked the
end of the previous ecclesiology. This does not mean that he denied, but
that has taken on a broader horizon. If, in fact, the manuals/hand books
were talking of the visible Church, in opposition to the ideas of the
Reformation, Vatican II, with the famous analogy of the Church with the
Incarnate Word, reassembles the fracture.
The Council states that "the hierarchical society and the Mystical Body
of Christ, the visible meeting and spiritual community, the earthly
Church and the Church now in the possession of heavenly things, not be
considered as two realities, but as one complex reality, the resulting
of a human element and a divine element: the social body of believers
and the Spirit who gives life and incorporates" (LG 8).
If the manuals unilaterally emphasized the hierarchical size of the
Church, the Vatican II recovers the theology of the People of God,
affirming the primacy of the theological life of ministerial functions;
if the manuals insisted on the Church of the monarchy, concentrating all
reality of the Church in the Pope, as visible head, the Vatican II reads
the theology of primacy in the framework of episcopal collegiality (cf
LG III). Moreover, the assertion of the universal vocation to holiness
(cf LG V) ended to remove emphasis to the affirmation of religious life
as a state of evangelical perfection, forcing you to look for another
way -what exactly is the "foundational charism"- to explain this state
of life in the Church.
New ways of being Church
The chapter I said what on the theological level, was taken on a more
historical in Chapter II: The Church as Sacrament, in hindsight, is the
same People of God journeying through history toward the fulfillment of
the kingdom. As you know, LG is one of the most significant
turns of the Council, because it exceeds finally the pyramidal idea for
the Church. The radical change of perspective is not so much in some
alternative and ecclesiological proposal, but in the choice of placing
before the chapter on the hierarchy to the People of God. In this way
the common dignity of all the baptized is the first of the functions
that belong to the one hierarchy. This, more than any other speech, is
the innovation that makes mention of the participation of all the
baptized in the life and mission of the Church, as sharers in the
prophetic, priestly and kingly mission of Christ. The two chapters in
the minds of the Fathers, there were neither in discontinuities nor in
opposition. Unfortunately, immediately after the Council has imposed an
alternative reading, according to which an ecclesiology that it recalled
to the People of God must necessarily be anti-institutional,
anti-hierarchical, prophetic, charismatic, ultimately democratic. The
decision to transfer the contrast within the same Council documents led
to look with suspicion or sufficiency of the proposal Vatican II
ecclesiology. To break the deadlock or impasse, two routes have
been explored:
a) the identification of a founding principle, that interpret the rich
ecclesiology suggestions of Vatican II. In this direction goes the
ecclesiology of communion, proposed to the Synod of 1985. But it could
not by a conventional formula for developing a shared ecclesiology,
since the idea of
communion,
and this lends itself to many interpretations, to constitute the basis
and justification of diametrically opposed, yet legitimate, visions of
the Church;
b) an attempt to indicate possible ecclesiological models, scenarios, or
to recognize sceneries of the Church, or manners of being membership of
the Church community that leads to a corresponding concept of the
Church. These are two methods of reading widely practiced in
ecclesiology. On the first aspect, the most famous work is undoubtedly
that of Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (1974, 1987, 2002), in
which the North American theologian frames an ecclesial and complex life
of the Church in five models -institutional, communional, sacramental,
kerygmatic and deaconal- in which the author adds, in his last writings,
the model of the community of disciples. This is not yet of ways of
being Church, but rather of "visions", which depend on a basic principle
around which is organized around a possible system. On the other hand,
João Batista Libanius, in Scenarios of the Church (2002),
imagined in perspective four possible ways of being Church, identifiable
by the overriding principle that inspires them and who is also the
criterion of their internal organization: the Church of the
institution, the charismatic Church, the Church of the preaching, the
Church of the praxis of liberation.
A problem to solve
The second way says quite clearly that there is not yet a shared model
of the Church, or that can be glimpsed in brief a scenario for
overcoming the fragmentation of the ecclesial body in a myriad of
experiences often self. The issue is of fundamental importance for those
who want to question the Church's mission, in particular on her task of
evangelization. It would be illusory to claim to evangelization some
process and its own laws, independent of the ecclesial life: not only
every evangelizer is conditioned by his experience, but each model or
scenery configures a different model of ecclesial mission.
Moreover, it is quite clear that the proclamation of the Gospel is not a
time or a process in itself, and because the evangelizer is sent
by the Church and to that Church he returns, and because each
evangelization has a view to conversion aggregating to the Church. And
if the evangelization is the condition of the Church's future, her
effectiveness depends on the Church that expresses it. That is not
enough to focus on the processes of communication, but should strive to
develop a shared model of the Church, which has centered on the Word and
of this living, in the light and power of the Spirit.
This is possible provided a process of implementation of the Council,
which unfortunately is far from to say being concluded. This is the
challenge that Karl Rahner pointed out as an urgent forty years ago,
talking about The structural transformation of the Church as a task
and how chanche (1973). There were three questions that the great
theologian was formulating: Where do we stand? What should we do? As can
be thought of a Church of the future? These three questions are not only
very timely, but demand an urgent response, given the risk for the
Church to become an irrelevant subject in building the future of man;
worth the risk to expire every evangelism in proselytizing.
Dario Vitali
Pontificia Università Gregoriana
Via Lando Conti, 4
00049 Velletri (RM)