n. 2
febbraio 2012

 

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New ways of being Church

 

edited by
DARIO VITALI
 

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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)

 

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