Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II: Stumbling Blocks for Ecumenism, Interfaith Dialogue and Church-World Relations (Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue) 3031455398, 9783031455391

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Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II Stumbling Blocks for Ecumenism, Interfaith Dialogue and Church-World Relations

Edited by Peter De Mey · Judith Gruber

Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue Series Editor

Mark Chapman Ripon College University of Oxford Oxford, UK

Building on the important work of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network to promote ecumenical and inter-faith encounters and dialogue, the Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue series publishes scholarship on such engagement in relation to the past, present, and future. It gathers together a richly diverse array of voices in monographs and edited collections that speak to the challenges, aspirations, and elements of ecumenical and interfaith conversation. Through its publications, the series allows for the exploration of new ways, means, and methods of advancing the wider ecumenical cause with renewed energy for the twenty-first century.

Peter De Mey  •  Judith Gruber Editors

Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II Stumbling Blocks for Ecumenism, Interfaith Dialogue and Church-World Relations

Editors Peter De Mey Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies KU Leuven Leuven, Belgium

Judith Gruber Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies KU Leuven Leuven, Belgium

ISSN 2634-6591     ISSN 2634-6605 (electronic) Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue ISBN 978-3-031-45539-1    ISBN 978-3-031-45540-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Praise for Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II “More than sixty years since the beginning of the conciliar event, there are in the final documents of Vatican II “hard sayings” that sometimes surprise our ecumenical and interreligious sensibility, as well as our expectations for Church reform and church-world relations. Ignoring these sayings brings about no fruitful theological and ecclesial hermeneutics of Vatican II. The book Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II is very important and comes at a critical time because of this new phase in the hermeneutics of the conciliar teachings and of the renewed attention to the final documents of the Second Vatican Council prompted by new forms of traditionalism and integralism.” —Massimo Faggioli, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA “This excellent book fills a critical need in Vatican II scholarship by exploring passages from the council’s documents that pose “stumbling blocks” for believers and theologians today. While much attention has been focused on Vatican II’s legacy, these authors consider teachings which represent potential limits. Bringing together leading international scholars from a variety of specialties, these chapters offer rigorous historical examination and systematic reflection with an eye towards advancing dialogue. As the church continues to look to Vatican II to engage urgent theological and pastoral questions, the path ahead requires attention to these obstacles. We owe these authors a debt of gratitude for this original contribution that tackles “hard sayings” head on and thus helps ensure the council’s continuing significance.” —Kristin Colberg, College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, Collegeville, MN, USA “These timely reflections draw our attention to important aspects of the teaching of Vatican II that have been poorly received or that await a more adequate development in our contemporary context. Their implications weigh heavily for relations between the Catholic Church and other Christian communities, other religions, and in the dialectic between church and world. They have important consequences for the life of the church itself as it navigates the changing roles of the baptized faithful and ordained ministers, or of the pastoral teaching office and the conscience of each person. A welcome contribution.” —Catherine Clifford, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

“Within its positive vision for rejuvenating the Roman Catholic Church, Vatican II nevertheless had some “hard sayings” regarding its relationships to “others” in the world. With rigorous scholarship, this ecumenical collection of essays examines some of those ambiguities, tensions, and juxtapositions, and creatively shines light on possible paths forward towards embracing new perspectives on those issues, particularly in the light of the council’s broader, more nuanced vision, and the shifting contexts of 60 years of postconciliar reception. This book is a most welcome contribution to Vatican II studies.” —Ormond Rush, Australian Catholic University, Brisbane, Australia “This book offers ample proof of the diverse but rich ways in which Vatican II wanted to transform the Roman Catholic Church into a Church at the service of dialogue with other denominations, religions and the world. In a richly illustrated mosaic, the authors show that this transformation process continues to challenge all who care about Vatican II and its legacy. A high-level book invites all people of good will to keep the windows of conversion and renewal open, for God’s grace transcends and includes human beings’ attempts to search for an authentically lived truth. Deus semper maior est.” —Mathijs Lamberigts, KU Leuven, Belgium “The reception of Vatican II remains an ongoing and disputed task for the church. This volume brings together an impressive selection scholars to consider difficult questions that are often overlooked: Where does the council not say what we expect it to? What areas of ongoing discernment are necessary? How must theology develop to respond adequately to the council’s vision and its call to the church? Anyone involved in contemporary theology, especially questions of ecumenism, ecclesiology, and interfaith engagement would do well to sit with the questions raised here and think with the authors towards new answers.” —Jakob Karl Rinderknecht, University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, TX, USA

Contents

Introduction  1 Peter De Mey and Judith Gruber Part I Stumbling Blocks for Ecumenism   9  Triumphalist Temptations and the Sinfulness of the Church 11 Bradford E. Hinze  Roman Catholic Recognition of Ecclesiality Outside Its Boundaries: What Does It Mean? 31 Sandra Arenas More Than an Issue of Translation: The “defectus ordinis” in Unitatis Redintegratio 22 49 Peter De Mey  The Ecclesiological Legacy of Vatican II: A Response to Bradford E. Hinze, Sandra Arenas, and Peter De Mey 77 Miriam Haar

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Part II Stumbling Blocks for Interfaith Dialogue  97 Salvation Optimism and Its Limits: A Reading of Lumen Gentium 16 99 Ralph Martin Nostra Aetate 2: Between Dialogue and Proclamation113 Marianne Moyaert  Hard Sayings, New Questions for a Pilgrim Church: A Response to Ralph Martin and Marianne Moyaert139 Darren Dias Part III Stumbling Blocks for Church-World Relations 153 Opening to the World: The “Special Character” of the Laity155 Paul Lakeland “Concealing … more than revealing”: Gaudium et Spes 19 and the Sinfulness of the Church165 Judith Gruber “Downright Pelagian?”: Gaudium et Spes 17 and the Discussion on Who Is ‘in Possession’ of Conscience183 Jan Jans  Pilgrim Church in and for the World: Eschatological A Ecclesiology and the Legacy of Vatican II: A Response to Paul Lakeland, Judith Gruber, and Jan Jans193 Scott MacDougall Index209

Notes on Contributors

Sandra  Arenas  is Professor of Systematic Theology and dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies and Philosophy of the Catholic University of Temuco, Chile. Peter  De Mey  is Professor of Systematic Theology and vice-dean for International Relations of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium. Darren Dias, O.P., is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology and executive director of the Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto, ON, Canada.  

Judith Gruber  is Associate Research Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium. Miriam  Haar is pastor of the Evangelische Nikolai Gemeinde in Heilbronn, Germany. Bradford  E.  Hinze  is the Karl Rahner S.J.  Professor of Theology at Fordham University, New York, USA. Jan  Jans is a Roman Catholic theologian. He served as Associate Professor of Ethics, Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University, The Netherlands, until his retirement in 2020. Paul Lakeland  is a Roman Catholic theologian and, till his retirement in 2023, the Rev. Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J. Professor of Catholic Studies and Chair of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University, CT, USA. ix

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Scott MacDougall  is Associate Professor of Theology at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, California, USA. Ralph  Martin  is the director of Graduate Theology Programs in the New Evangelization, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, Michigan, USA. Marianne Moyaert  is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium, and Visiting Fellow of the Faculty of Religion and Theology, Beliefs and Practices, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Abbreviations

AAV AG AS CDF CELAM D&P DH DI DV EKD EKHN FCTC FR GS ITC LG NA NAB OE PCPCU RM RSV SPCU TAC TC UR WCC

Archivio Apostolico Vaticano Ad Gentes Acta Synodalia Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano Dialogue and Proclamation Dignitatis Humanae Dominus Iesus Dei Verbum Evangelische Kirche Deutschland Evangelische Kirche in Hesse und Nassau From Conflict to Communion Fides et Ratio Gaudium et Spes International Theological Commission Lumen Gentium Nostra Aetate New American Bible Orientalium Ecclesiarum Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity Redemptoris Missio Revised Standard Version Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity The Apostolicity of the Church Theological Commission Unitatis Redintegratio World Council of Churches xi

Introduction Peter De Mey and Judith Gruber

The Council ushered in what can only truly be described as a revolution for the church. But the work it began has yet to come to its full fruition. It has been a tumultuous fifty-plus years, since the Council, for the church and the world alike. The story of Vatican II remains unfinished. —(Gerard Mannion)

This book offers an original contribution to the interpretation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council that constitute the most authoritative doctrinal teaching within the Catholic Church. During the fiftieth anniversary of the Council (2012–2015) there was a great interest in Vatican II studies, with among others two books on this topic in Palgrave Macmillan’s own “Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue” series: Catholicism Opening to the World and Other Confessions: Vatican II and Its Impact, edited by Vladimir Latinovic, Gerard Mannion, and Jason Welle and published in 2020, and Changing the Church: Transformations of Christian Belief, Practice, and Life, edited by Mark D. Chapman and

P. De Mey (*) • J. Gruber Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_1

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Vladimir Latinovic and published in 2021. A new period of commemoration of the Second Vatican Council has just started, running from 2022 to 2025. In preparation of this period an important collection of chapters appeared in 2020 in The Cambridge Companion to Vatican II, edited by Richard R. Gaillardetz; and in 2023 in The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II, edited by Catherine Clifford and Massimo Faggioli. For our volume eight specialists of ecclesiology, comparative theology, intercultural theology, and theological ethics, who regularly refer to Vatican II in their teaching and research, have been asked to write a chapter on a selected line of Vatican II which is considered a “stumbling block” or a “hard saying” for believers and theologians today. The stumbling blocks have been selected from Lumen Gentium (3), Unitatis Redintegratio (2), Gaudium et Spes (2), and Nostra Aetate (1). Three types of stumbling blocks are being discussed: “Stumbling Blocks for Ecumenism,” “Stumbling Blocks for Interfaith Dialogue,” and “Stumbling Blocks for Church-World Relations.” Each scholar has been asked to give a survey of the complex redaction process of this line and to outline the difficulties it has posed to readers in the course of the reception history of the Council till today. This approach is unique in Vatican II scholarship and establishes the coherence of this volume. In each of the three sections that we will now introduce, another specialist in the field has been asked to respond to the chapters in the section.

1   Stumbling Blocks for Ecumenism In the opening chapter to this volume, “Triumphalist Temptations and the Sinfulness of the Church,” Bradford Hinze sheds light on the ambiguous paragraph 4 of Unitatis redintegratio regarding the possible triumphalist claim that all divinely revealed truth and all means of grace have been given to the Catholic Church and the affirmation that individual members of the Catholic Church can sin by not yielding to the Catholic Church’s mediation of revelation and grace. In the chapter, Hinze explores the tension around the objective holiness of the church and the belief that the church as an institution is sinful. From a magisterial approach, Hinze explains the emergence of the notion of social sin. John Paul II was the first pope to use the term social sin as the social effects of personal sin. His successor, Benedict XVI, did not follow John Paul II’s magisterial development. Although like John Paul II, Pope Francis emphasizes the holiness of the church jeopardized by personal sins, he identifies three problems:

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the misuse of power in the church, the ideological division within the people of God, and the role of the demonic that interrupts discernment. Consequently, Francis recognizes the existence of corrupt ecclesial cultures, structures, practices, and policies fed by the personal sin of church members. Therefore, these sinful ecclesial conditions confront the triumphalist temptations, calling the church members to a permanent examination of conscience. In “Roman Catholic Recognition of Ecclesiality Outside Its Boundaries: What Does It Mean?” Sandra Arenas studies the reception of the notion elementa ecclesiae within Catholic theology and the ecumenical movements, and the conciliar documents Lumen gentium and Unitatis redintegratio. From its Calvinist roots, the elementa ecclesiae trace the continuity of the Church of Christ within the ecclesiastical institutional developments. This theology impacts the drafting history of LG 8 including the notorious clause subsistit in and the redefinition of the Catholic Church’s attitude regarding the presence of the Church of Christ within other Churches and ecclesial communities. Hence, the conciliar reception of the elementa ecclesiae implied the recognition of the existence of ecclesiality outside the boundaries of the Catholic Church. Arenas remarks that the reception at the level of the Roman magisterium has been complicated. The Declaration Dominus Iesus (2000) and the Responsa ad quaestiones (2007) of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seem to lessen the ecumenical target of Vatican II. However, the author proposes to be involved in the conciliar elan, looking at and learning how other Christian communities are intending to be the Church of Christ. Only in this manner can the real effort of all Christian communities, including the Catholic Church, concretize the Church of Christ in salvation history. In “More than an Issue of Translation: The ‘Defectus Ordinis’ in Unitatis Redintegratio 22” Peter De Mey explores the drafting history of the term defectus ordinis (UR 22) and its contemporary ecumenical implications. His detailed drafting history sheds light on the Catholic concern about the Protestant theologies of the Eucharist. From a Catholic perspective, the main problem is the defectus regarding ordained ministry. The translation of defectus as “lack,” meaning the absence of the ordained ministry, also implies the fundamental difference between the Churches with ordained ministry and the ecclesial communities without it. However, the recent Lutheran-Catholic declarations point out a new translation of the term defectus that recalls the ecumenical dialogue efforts to recognize the possibility of communicatio in sacris. Although the Vatican seems to

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reinforce the fundamental difference between the Catholic and Protestant Eucharist, De Mey retrieves new theological conclusions coming from the ecumenical dialogue that tend to allow individual Christians to attend the Eucharist in each other’s community. In her response paper “The Ecclesiological Legacy of Vatican II: A Response to Bradford E.  Hinze, Sandra Arenas, and Peter De Mey,” Miriam Haar addresses these “hard sayings” that raise ecumenical issues surrounding triumphalist temptations and the question of the sinfulness of the church, the recognition of ecclesiality outside the Roman Catholic Church including the theology of the elementa ecclesiae and the subsistit in, and the understanding and the consequences of the defectus ordinis, especially regarding eucharistic hospitality and intercommunion. Despite the great ecumenical achievements of Vatican II, these issues still comprise key and divisive questions in ecumenical dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Churches of the Reformation. This response addresses these “stumbling blocks” from a Lutheran perspective, aiming at promoting ecumenical dialogue on these issues between the Catholic Church and the Churches of the Reformation, with a particular focus on Lutheran Churches. When exploring how ecumenical rapprochement in certain aspects might be possible, this chapter also reflects on the ecumenical potential of the synodal way in the Roman Catholic Church as well as on ecumenical proposals such as Together at the Lord’s Table (2019).

2   Stumbling Blocks for Interfaith Dialogue In the chapter “Salvation Optimism and Its Limits: A Reading of Lumen Gentium 16” Ralph Martin reflects on the Catholic call for “new evangelization” considering the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. Martin challenges the so-called culture of universalism in Catholicism, claiming that it renders theological aspects that are essential to interfaith dialogue secondary. The minimalization of these aspects, in Martin’s reading, makes the need for evangelization less urgent. To support his argument, Martin turns to the teaching of Vatican II, especially Lumen Gentium 16 and its final six sentences, which speak of the possibility of salvation for various categories of non-Christians. Based on his interpretation of LG 16, Martin advances the claim that Vatican II stands in continuity with the pre-conciliar soteriological vision of Roman Catholic tradition: a high level of implicit faith and a personal response to God’s

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grace are required for salvation to be realized. Martin concludes by saying that a link with the church is necessary for non-Christians to be saved. In the next chapter, “Nostra Aetate 2: Between Dialogue and Proclamation,” Marianne Moyaert engages with NA 2 to offer an alternative interpretation of John 14:6 in the popular passage from Vatican II’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions. Post-conciliar documents such as Dominus Iesus tended to interpret John 14:6 in NA 2 as a biblical text that reinforces a more exclusive understanding of Catholic identity in a paragraph that, otherwise, exhales dialogical openness toward other religions. Nevertheless, Moyaert proposes a different interpretation of John 14:6, which argues that the biblical text contains “pointers to a more dialogical understanding of Christian identity.” To this end, she shows how the reading of John 14:6 in light of Trinitarian theology, pneumatology, and a relational and incomplete understanding of truth goes beyond Christocentric exclusivism and allows for other religions to be seen as mediators of God’s salvific grace. The third and final chapter of this section, “Hard Sayings, New Questions for a Pilgrim Church: A Response to Ralph Martin and Marianne Moyaert,” is authored by Darren Dias, who offers a response to the contributions of Martin and Moyaert. Dias emphasizes that the questions raised by Martin and Moyaert show the challenges that the Catholic Church is expected to engage with in the post-conciliar era. Moreover, Dias is of the opinion that paying attention to the ecclesiology of Vatican II and its definition of the church as a pilgrim people inspires a new ecclesial self-understanding, in which relationships with other religions and faith traditions are constitutive elements of the Catholic Church’s identity and mission. A church on pilgrimage with other religions toward the eschatological future shapes an evolving Catholic identity that values and is defined by relationships. Dias claims that this new ecclesial self-­ understanding moves away from defensive and apologetic mentality, connecting the church with the universal presence of God’s grace.

3   Stumbling Blocks for Church-World Relations Reflecting on paragraph 31 of Lumen Gentium, Paul Lakeland, in his chapter “Opening to the World: The ‘Special Character’ of the Laity,” argues that the ambiguity of the document opens the door to updated interpretations of the common and ministerial priesthoods. For Lakeland, this ambiguity revolves around three key issues: (1) the Council’s assertion

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that the common priesthood of all believers and the ordained priesthood “differ essentially and not only in degree,” (2) the question of ontological change, and (3) what should be thought of as within the realm of the “secular.” In regard to the first issue, the Council fathers wished to differentiate between the two priesthoods without downplaying the role of ordination and without degrading the role and nature of the laity. But Lakeland wonders how it is logically possible for something to differ in both essence and degree and suggests that this lack of clarity could lead to reconsideration of the traditional doctrine that ordination enacts an ontological change. Lakeland also argues that, according to the Council’s formulation, an ontological change stemming from ordination would necessarily build on top of the primary ontological change that occurs with baptism and that this also stretches the bounds of logic. Finally, the whole church, including clergy, necessarily exists in the world and therefore within the secular, and so any claim that ordained priests are less secular or separated from the secular must be an illusion. Given these disconnects, Lakeland suggests that lay and ordained ministry are best understood as different ways of enacting the common priesthood, with ordained priests playing a supporting role to the secular evangelizing mission of the laity. Paragraph 19 of Gaudium et Spes does not only mark a shift in the church’s understanding of atheism, Judith Gruber argues in her contribution “‘Concealing … More than Revealing’: Gaudium et Spes 19 and the Sinfulness of the Church,” it reveals an ecclesiological shift from a triumphalist paradigm to a more humble and self-critical one. With the Council’s admission that the church’s members sometimes “conceal rather than reveal the authentic face of God,” the Council fathers acknowledge that the church is fundamentally grounded in history and contingent on the world and in that capacity has played a role in the development of atheism. Gruber points to the underlying issue of the church’s sinfulness at work here, which she argues can be read along the lines of the divergent “language games” seen in the two creation stories in Genesis. In Genesis 1, sinfulness is implied to be human persons’ failure to be like God, while in Genesis 2–3, it is the attempt to be like God which constitutes sin. Accordingly, the ecclesiological statement of GS 19 should be read with both theologies held in dialogical tension: eschatologically, the church hopes to live up to being the image of God, but historically, the church must avoid claiming that it is like God and instead maintain its difference from God and therefore its sinfulness. Gruber argues that the Council’s

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ecclesiology (followed by subsequent papal statements) that distinguishes between the church and its members, such that its members sin while the church retains perfect holiness, does not adequately theologize or account for historical ecclesial sinfulness. However, in a 2015 statement, Francis apologized for the sins of the church itself, perhaps signaling a further step in the Council’s ecclesial paradigm shift. In opposition to Josef Ratzinger’s claim that Gaudium et Spes’s portrayal of conscience is Pelagian, Jan Jans argues in his contribution “‘Downright Pelagian’? Gaudium et Spes 17 and the Discussion on Who Is ‘in Possession’ of Conscience” that the historical debate over the relationship between human freedom and grace is at the heart of the Council fathers’ rendering and others’ disagreement with them. Jans points to a preparatory text as evidencing the common pre-conciliar position on conscience: that the individual’s conscience should be a “herald” of the magisterium, which holds the correct interpretation of the moral order. Rather than hold to this more authoritarian stance, though, the Council fathers sought to affirm the freedom of each individual’s conscience as a matter of human dignity while maintaining a concern to avoid moral relativism. Jans supports the seriousness of this intention by pointing to the fact that John Paul II’s stated position on conscience, which aligned with the pre-­ conciliar notion even in 1988, did not find its way into magisterial documents. Instead, the understanding of conscience found in Gaudium et Spes and carried forward thereafter relies on a theological anthropology that is optimistic about the possibilities of human freedom and the gratuitousness of grace. Human dignity, then, necessitates the opportunity for persons to develop their conscience in freedom, though in a “dialectical unity” with duty and the authority of the magisterium. Scott MacDougall argues in his chapter “A Pilgrim Church in and for the World: Eschatological Ecclesiology and the Legacy of Vatican II: A Response to Paul Lakeland, Judith Gruber, and Jan Jans” that the “hard sayings” analyzed by each can be read as challenges “posed to the existing church by the envisioned church” of the Council. These lines from the Council documents are hard not only because their underlying criticism of the pre-conciliar Church is difficult to hear and admit but because of their multifaceted practical implications for the relationship between the church and the world, as demonstrated in the chapters in Part III. By way of clarifying some of the ambiguity raised in the church-world relationship, MacDougall points to chapter 7 of Lumen Gentium, which describes the church as a pilgrim community on an eschatological journey. Though not

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the only, or even primary, image of the church offered by Lumen Gentium, MacDougall argues that this eschatological paradigm should take precedence in contemporary ecclesiology. Such a church does not self-identify with the kingdom of God, but mediates eschatological hope of union with God to the world, while also being conditioned by and answerable to the world (as Gruber suggests it must be). In this paradigm, any trace of ordination as a “higher” calling is erased (as Lakeland also argues against), since all Christians are “oriented to the world…in love and service.” Similarly, we could see the mission of the pilgrim people as encompassing a development of conscience rather than a “possession” of conscience by the magisterium (as Jans points to), again directed toward eschatological hope while in deep relationship with the world. Excerpts from documents of the Second Vatican Council are from Vatican Council II: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations—The Basic Sixteen Documents, edited by Austin Flannery, OP, © 1996. Used with permission of Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota. We are thankful to Mark Chapman for having accepted to include this volume in the series “Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue” and to the late Gerard Mannion and Dale Irvin, past and present chair of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network for their encouragement. We thank Dr. Viorel Coman, Margot Leblanc, Danielle Northup, Dr. Taylor Ott, O’Meara Riley, Rolando Iberico Ruiz, and Jens Van Rompaey, students and colleagues from KU Leuven and Georgetown University, for their assistance in different stages of the editing process. Peter De Mey and Judith Gruber, KU Leuven

PART I

Stumbling Blocks for Ecumenism

Triumphalist Temptations and the Sinfulness of the Church Bradford E. Hinze

For although the Catholic Church has been endowed with all divinely revealed truth and with all means of grace, yet its members fail to live by them with all the fervor that they should. —(UR 4)

This passage from the Decree on Ecumenism has been selected as a stumbling block and hard saying left behind by the Second Vatican Council.1 Two questions identify the difficulties. First, is there a triumphalist temptation elicited by the claim that all divinely revealed truth and all means of grace have been given to the Catholic Church? And second, by asserting 1  Claude Soetens, “The Ecumenical Commitment of the Catholic Church,” in History of Vatican II, vol. 3, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A.  Komonchak (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis / Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 256–346.

B. E. Hinze (*) Department of Theology, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_2

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that individual members of the Catholic Church can sin by not yielding to the Catholic Church’s mediation of revelation and grace is the social sinfulness of the church in this mediation unacknowledged? How can the Catholic Church maintain that it has been endowed with and is the instrument for the communication of all divinely revealed truth and all means of grace without being susceptible to the criticism of triumphalism? The claim made by the text is based on the conviction that a divine gift has been bestowed and a divine promise given to the Catholic Church, which is composed of individual humans susceptible to sinfulness. The objective mediation of salvation through the teaching of revealed doctrine and the practice of divinely established sacraments is the necessary corollary for belief in the objective holiness of the Catholic Church. The holiness of the church as a collectivity, a corporate entity is based on God’s initiating and sustaining action that is carried on by the church and is maintained in its objective holiness and mediating action even if sullied and corrupted by sinful members. This is the bedrock of the traditional conviction about the objective holiness of the church and the rejection of the belief that the church as a collectivity and social structure, an institution, is sinful. This assertion of the objective holiness of the church seeks to affirm the effectiveness of the transcendent power of the Triune God at work in the objective mediation of revelation and the sacraments throughout the vicissitudes of history. Yet, it can also lend credence to triumphalism in the Catholic Church in relation to other Christian churches and communities, other religions, and other worldviews.

1   Wrestling with Triumphalist Temptations A year before the draft document on ecumenism was considered, during the initial discussions of the original schema On the Church, Bishop Émile-­ Joseph De Smedt of Bruges denounced the initial draft for its triumphalism, clericalism, and juridicism.2 These problems were significantly addressed, if not largely overcome, in the document that became the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. Building on that document, the Decree on Ecumenism provided a breakthrough in moving beyond an ecclesiology of polemics by promoting ecumenical dialogue and the 2  Giuseppe Ruggieri, “Beyond an Ecclesiology of Polemics: The Debate on the Church,” in History of Vatican II, vol. 2, 337.

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ecumenical movement, yet not without simultaneously holding on to the claim that “the Catholic Church has been endowed with all divinely revealed truth and with all means of grace” (UR 4). The teachings, policies, styles, and practices of John Paul II and Benedict XVI have sometimes been criticized for contributing to the revival of a certain post-conciliar triumphalism, clericalism, and centralization of authority and control. Vatican II’s doctrine of episcopal collegiality was challenged during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI by restrictions placed on the exercise of authority of the synod of bishops and episcopal conferences. The growing openness toward people of other faiths gave ground to an increasingly cautious, if not suspicious, posture toward other Christian churches, communions, and other religions. Early in his papacy Francis developed a critique of triumphalism in the church during his daily homilies, and based on those he shaped a deepening diagnosis of contributing factors in his speeches and official teachings. In these homilies Francis reflected on the temptation of triumphalism in the narratives of the disciples of Jesus and their pursuit of triumph and success and their failure to acknowledge and embrace the role of struggle and the cross in the life and death of Jesus and in their own lives too. Such an approach to the church denies the experience of martyrs and fosters a vision of a triumphant and successful church not one that embraces limitations and failure.3 Underlying such confidence in the triumph of the church is the conviction that the Catholic Church has received “all divinely revealed truth” and is fulfilling its mission by mediating “all means of grace” successfully, with good order and efficiency. Therein lies a stumbling block for many. In Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis offers an alternative to triumphalism: in ecumenical relations, “we can learn so much from one another,” such as “with our Orthodox brothers and sisters, we Catholics have the opportunity to learn more about the meaning of episcopal collegiality and the experience of synodality.”4 In what could be viewed as the antithesis 3  “Pope Francis: Triumphalism is a Temptation of Christians,” Vatican Radio Archive, April 12, 2013. http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2013/04/12/pope_francis_triumphalism_is_a_temptation_of_christians_/en1-682289 4  Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, 2013), no. 246. This notion of an ecumenical gift exchange corresponds to collaborative work of Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism, ed. Paul D.  Murray (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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and antidote to the hard saying we are considering, Francis draws the conclusion that “through an exchange of gifts, the Spirit can lead us ever more fully into truth and goodness.”5

2   Confronting the Sinfulness of the Church The council fathers at Vatican II acknowledged that the church is “at once holy and always in need of purification [and thus] follows the path of penance and renewal” (LG 8). The documents were clear: there are sinful individuals in the church, but the church as a collectivity is objectively holy. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sancrosanctum Concilium) acknowledged the social consequences of sin, but the category of social sin was explicitly rejected since it would undermine the personal character of sin (SC 109). However, in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), the recognition of the impact of personal sin on social circumstances, the social order, and the social sphere was conceded, which was a harbinger of more attention to this area of inquiry (GS 25).6 After the council, the question arose—notably among theologians and bishops in Latin America—whether any social entity, including the church, can be identified as sinful.7 The categories of sinful situations and subsequently social sin and structures of sin were used in documents prepared by the Latin American Bishops Conference (Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano, known as CELAM) influenced by their engagement with pastors, theologians, and people who were wrestling with the problems associated with poverty and structural injustice.8 Sinful situations, a situation of injustice and institutional violence, were categories used in the documents from the Second General Conference of CELAM held in Medellín in 1968, and later developed in terms of categories of social sin

 Ibid.  See Margaret Pfeil, “Doctrinal Implications of Magisterial Use of the Language of Social Sin, Louvain Studies 27 (2002): 132–152. 7  For my earlier analysis of the category social sin, see Bradford E.  Hinze, “Ecclesial Repentance and the Demands of Dialogue,” Theological Studies 61 (2000): 207–238. 8  Gustavo Gutiérrez treats social sin in A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, Revised edition, 1988), 102–103; and in relation to John Paul II, 226, n. 101. 5 6

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and structures of sin at their General Conferences in Puebla in 1979, in Santa Domingo in 1992, and in Aparecida in 2007.9 2.1   Pope John Paul II Informed by the discussions held at the 1983 synod of bishops, John Paul II issued the (first) post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Reconciliatio et paenitentia, in 1984. There he introduced the distinction and the interrelationship between personal sin and social sin. In the same year, a document was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as prefect, that addressed the topic of social sin and is critical of liberation theology.10 For John Paul II, social sin refers to the social effects of individual personal sin and embodies personal sin. Social sins are “the result of the accumulation and concentration of many personal sins” and are “rooted in personal sin, and thus always linked to the concrete acts of individuals.”11 John Paul II delineates three meanings of the category social sin: personal sins affect other individuals and communities because of human solidarity; some sins are directly against others and thus are a violation of love of neighbor and of justice, of freedom, of the common good; and social sin also pertains, by analogy, to sinful patterns of relationships between communities, groups, and peoples (such as, class struggle, ideological conflicts between groups within a nation or between nations or blocs of nations).

9  Second Conference of Latina American Bishops at Medellín, The Church in the PresentDay Transformation of Latin America in the Light of the Council, Justice, nos. 16–23, Peace, 1, nos. 1–7, esp. Peace, nos. 16) in The Gospel of Peace and Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Book, 1976), 445–476; Third Conference at Puebla in Puebla and Beyond, ed. John Eagleson and Philip Scharper, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), 123–285, 128 (nos. 28–30), 132 (no. 73), 191 (no. 487); and Fifth Conference at Aparecida, http://www. aecrc.org/documents/Aparecida-Concluding%20Document.pdf, see nos. 92 and 95. 10  See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation,” (1984), Section IV, at nos. 13, 14, 15. In 1987, the CDF revisited the subject of social sin citing John Paul II’s 1984 clarification of the personal and social character of structures and sin, “Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation,” nos. 74–75; also see comment by the International Theological Commission, “Penance and Reconciliation,” Origins 13 (12 Jan. 1984) no. 31, 516. 11  John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (December 2, 1984), no. 16.

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Subsequently, John Paul II returned to the topic of social sin in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987),12 in Centesimus Annus (1991),13 in Evangelium Vitae (1995),14 and in Ut Unum Sint (1995) where he said: Christian unity is possible, provided that we are humbly conscious of having sinned against unity and are convinced of our need for conversion. Not only personal sins must be forgiven and left behind, but also social sins, which is to say the sinful ‘structures’ themselves which have contributed and can still contribute to division and to the reinforcing of division.15

John Paul II thus sanctioned the use of the category of social sin and structures of sin in the area of the Catholic Church. His personalist and phenomenological approach to moral agency inform his concentration on personal sin, while acknowledging the social effects of sin and the social embodiment of sin in social structures and communities. Beginning the same year that Ut Unum Sint was issued, John Paul II occasionally began to call for ecclesial penance and renewal in preparation for the new millennium: the sons and daughters of the church have sinned, the church undertakes a collective examination of conscience, and the church communally prays for repentance for their sinful practices with Jews, Muslims, other Christians, and other religious bodies, the church’s role in religious wars, dictatorships, with indigenous peoples, the Inquisition, Integralism, slavery, racism, ethnic conflicts, and with women. This culminated in a dramatic liturgical event held on a Day of Pardon (March 12, 2000) during which the pope formally apologized for the church’s sins.16 Gregory Baum commented on Sollicitudo Rei Socialis in which John Paul II explicitly recognized structures of sin as institutional realities, but he was unable to recognize “the unconscious, nonvoluntary dimension of social sin—to the blindness produced in persons by the dominant culture, blindness that prevents them from recognizing the evil dimensions of their

 John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (December 30, 1987), nos. 36–40, at no. 36.  John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (May 1, 1991), no. 38. 14  John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (March 25, 1995), no. 24. 15  John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint (May 25, 1995), no. 34. 16  See the analysis of the sinful character of the church by Brian P. Flanagan, Stumbling in Holiness: Sin and Sanctity in the Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018). 12 13

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social reality.”17 Margaret Pfeil makes a similar point, “John Paul II is cognizant of the blinding effect of ideology and the almost automatic operation of economic and political institutions, but his awareness of this unconscious aspect of sin stands in tension with his strong emphasis on personal responsibility. In Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, this tension remains unresolved.”18 Pfeil aptly describes “the growing edge” of the process of doctrinal development during John Paul II’s pontificate, which “entails [clarifying] the relationship between personal responsibility for sin and the unconscious, indeliberate activity involved in the creation and maintenance of sinful systems, institutions, and structures.”19 2.2   Pope Benedict XVI Pope Benedict XVI did not follow John Paul II’s use of the categories of social sin and structures of sin in any of his encyclicals, an absence especially notably in Caritas in Veritate, even though he clearly acknowledges the need to advance social change at the systemic or structural level. This omission seems consistent with his long-standing critique of liberation theology.20 2.3   Pope Francis What about Pope Francis? How are we to understand his treatment of the sinfulness of the church? It is first helpful to recall two historical realities that establish a context for Francis’s interventions. During the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, unprecedented public attention was 17  Gregory Baum, “Structures of Sin,” in The Logic of Solidarity: Commentaries on Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical On Social Concern, ed. Gregory Baum and Robert Ellsberg (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989), 110–126, at 113. 18  Pfeil, “Magisterial Use of the Language of Social Sin,” 143. 19  Ibid., 152. 20  “Structures of sin” is used once by Pope Benedict XVI in his “Message for the Sixteenth World Day of the Sick,” (January 11, 2008), but he is quoting John Paul II. See http://vatican.va. In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Benedict speaks of “the presence of original sin in social conditions and in the structures of society,” http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html, nos. 34, 36, 42, and 68. For an analysis of Benedict’s views on original sin and structural sin, see Daniel J. Daly, “Structures of Virtue and Sin,” New Blackfriars 2 (2011): 341–357, at 350–352, and Daniel F.  Finn, “What is a Sinful Social Structure?” Theological Studies 77 (2016): 136–164, 139–142, 155.

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given to egregious practices of clergy sexual abuse of minors and the cover-up of these acts through a culture of silence by bishops. Moreover, during this period the corruption of the Roman Curia became particularly pronounced.21 Jorge Bergoglio was elected pope by the papal conclave in 2013 with a specific mandate to bring about the reform of the curia and to continue efforts to address the clergy sexual abuse scandal. It can be reasonably argued that in significant ways Francis is continuing the legacy of John Paul II by denouncing social structures of sin in society and in the church, but unlike John Paul II, Francis has rarely, if ever, used the terms social sin and structures of sin. On the other hand, Francis is clearly not like Benedict who avoided drawing attention to realities of social sin and structural sin in the church, even though Benedict devoted himself to devising bureaucratic reforms to address clergy sex abuse and curial corruption.22 Throughout his career as Auxiliary Bishop (1992–1997), Archbishop (1998–2013), and Cardinal (2001–2013), Jorge Bergoglio’s prophetic stance toward social sin in society and in the church most deeply reflects his formation in the tradition of the Conference of Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean. But what exactly is Francis’s approach to social sin in the church? It is my contention that Francis acknowledges the personal intentional source of sin in the church as defended by John Paul II, but he concedes unconscious and unintentional dimensions that are operative in the church’s social practices and structures. I wish to advance this argument by drawing attention to one particular genre he has used on a number of occasions to address the sinfulness in the church. On no less than three occasions during the first two years of his papacy he has called for an examination of conscience, which has surfaced sins that have social dimensions. On first glance, one could easily reach the judgment that he is focusing on the sinful character of individuals in the church, which coincides with his preferred category for speaking about the church as a “faithful holy people of God.” As a result, Francis’s position could be understood as entirely 21  Gianluigi Nuzzi, Ratzinger Was Afraid: The Secret Documents, the Money and the Scandals that Overwhelmed the Pope (Casaleggio Associati Kindle, 2013). John Thavis, The Vatican Diaries: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Power, Personalities and Politics at the Heart of the Catholic Church (New York: Viking, 2013). 22  This does not address the question whether Francis subscribes to Benedict’s position that structural sin is the result of original sin as Daniel Daly and Daniel Finn have analyzed, see n. 19, above.

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consistent with the position established by John Paul II. Like John Paul II, he emphasizes that the holiness of the church is jeopardized by personal sins, which have social effects, and are accumulated and embodied in social sin and social structures. Without denying the legitimacy of such an argument, I wish to consider whether Francis offers any distinctive way of approaching social and structural sin in the church, not only in terms of content (in his particular attention to clericalism, clerical infantilizing the laity, excessive curial centralization and corruption), but also to his underlying analysis of that nature of social sin that might contribute to a more developed doctrine of social sin in the church and civil society. The distinctive features in Francis’s contribution that I wish to wrestle with are his treatment of first, the misuse of power in the church, second, his view of ideology in relation to the sense of the people of God and reality, and third, the role of the demonic in his worldview. My assumption is that John Paul II, true to his personalist and phenomenological training and convictions, emphasized personal sin as based on individual intentional acts of the will. Any notion of social sin is derivative of the sinful choices of individuals. If this is an accurate description of John Paul II’s position, the question is whether the various formative factors in Francis’s life—particularly spiritual, theological, and social and ecclesial historical contexts and events—provide him with any transverse convictions to those of John Paul II. Particularly, I wish to suggest that in addition to John Paul II’s attention to the personal intentional source of sin, whether personal or social, Francis makes room for unconscious and unintentional dimensions of personal and social sin that are operative in social practices and policies, in modes of behavior and discourse, that do not find their source in intentionally sinful acts. I wish to weigh certain evidence and suggest that although one might argue that Francis’s position is entirely consistent with that of John Paul II, there is more to Francis’s treatment of the sinfulness of the Church than acknowledged by John Paul II in his writings. I will conclude by arguing that Francis’s call for structural reform in the church—as a corrective to clericalism, infantilizing the laity, curial centralization and corruption—provides a crucial difference from John Paul II and Benedict XVI. This reform agenda provides a central orientation for how Francis addresses the triumphalist temptation and the sinfulness of the church, even though his positions and practices on certain issues (and I particularly have in mind his treatment of gender identity and the role of women in the church) may not always live up to his reformist commitments.

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The primary evidence I wish to consider is provided by two different approaches to the examination of conscience that Pope Francis has developed, which are designed for two different audiences: one version is addressed to a wider audience composed of bishops, priests, pastoral workers, and implicitly the entire faithful people of God; a second version has a narrower audience comprised of curial officials. For both audiences he identifies three factors or sources that contribute to the sinfulness of the church. First, he identifies pathologies of power in ecclesial bureaucracies and in diocesan and parish settings; second, he treats the role of ideologies and particularly elites with their approach to knowledge and power; and third, he is always mindful of the influence of the devil, or evil spirit on individuals and groups. These three factors contribute to the subjugation of members of the church at every level, in every office and ministry, among all the faithful. The destructiveness of these three factors are not traceable or reducible to individual intentional acts and corporate decisions, but may be a part of the order of things that have been handed on in canon law, ritual behavior, bureaucratic practices, and spiritual disciplines. These modes of discourse and identity patterns are included for Francis in what amounts to an examination of conscience that includes an examination of half-consciousness and the unconscious in the purifying labor required for a change of heart and a change of structures. Let me point out in passing that Francis’s use of an examination of conscience is reminiscent of the treatment of deadly ideas, vices, or sins by Evagrius of Pontus, and John Cassian, as well as by Ignatius of Loyola and their heirs. Francis’s examinations are not oriented toward an otherworldly asceticism, but about surrendering to a dynamic field opened up by God’s mercy and God’s mission in the messiness of social reality in history in which everyone is called upon to participate. These examinations promote spiritual freedom, spontaneity, emotional availability, bodily presence in loving relationships with others, and a flexibility and experimental posture at the frontiers of society in the interest of mediating God’s mercy and justice. The first piece of evidence was provided four months after his election, on July 28, 2013, when Pope Francis addressed the leadership of the Latin American Bishops’s Conference with whom he had collaborated during the Fifth General Conference held at Aparecida. His message was ostensibly designed for these episcopal leaders, but no one doubted that a wider audience from all corners of the church and world was paying attention. He did not speak about social sin or structures of sin in the church, but

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about the need for reforming ecclesial structures in the interest of advancing the missionary character of discipleship in the church. This examen took the form of a series of questions. A number of them pertain to what could be called pitfalls of bureaucratization in the church: focusing more on administrative organization tasks, rather than pastoral engagement with the people of God as a whole; being more reactive to problems rather than proactive in pastoral planning; and on the need to develop more effective parish and diocesan pastoral councils, about which he said, “I believe on this score, we are far behind.”23 Several questions in this examination converge on issues pertaining to the relation of the lay faithful to priests and bishops, and I quote: Do we make the lay faithful sharers in the mission? As pastors, bishops and priests, are we conscious and convinced of the mission of the lay faithful and do we give them the freedom to continue discerning, in a way befitting their growth as disciples, the mission which the Lord has entrusted to them? Do we support them and accompany them, overcoming the temptation to manipulate them or infantilize them?24

He subsequently uses the category clericalism to name a central source of disease and corruption in the church. The core problem of clericalism is the infantilizing of the laity, not promoting their own discernment, decision-­making, and leadership. In other writings he explicitly identifies clericalism with spiritual worldliness, the category he adapts from Henri de Lubac’s The Splendor of the Church, and ecclesiastical narcissism, both formulas used to describe a church turned in on itself, in terms of moral and juridical rigorism, focusing too much on liturgical rubrics at the expense of the church’s prayer and bureaucratic efficiency.25 His views are clarified by two interviews he conducted as Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, one in 2010 and another in 2011. In 2010, he speaks of “A church that limits herself to administering parish work, that lives enclosed within a community, experiences what someone in prison does: physical and mental atrophy.” The church becomes sick when it is turned in on itself, is self-referential, narcissistic, and fails to reach out 23  Pope Francis, “Address to the Leadership of the Episcopal Conferences of Latin America during the General Coordination Meeting,” 7/28/2013; http//w2.vatican.va. 24  Ibid. 25  Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956), 377–378.

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in missionary discipleship. In a 2011 interview, he describes clericalism as a contagious disease that is passed from clergy to laypeople. In his own words, “We priests tend to clericalize the laity. We do not realize it, but it is as if we infect them with our own disease. And the laity—not all, but many—ask us on their knees to clericalize them, because it is more comfortable to be an altar server than the protagonist of a lay path. We cannot fall into that trap—it is a sinful complicity.”26 He returns to this disease in his 2013 address to the CELAM leaders: “Clericalism is also a temptation very present in Latin America. Curiously, in the majority of cases, it has to do with sinful complicity: the priest clericalizes the lay person and the lay person kindly asks to be clericalized, because deep down it is easier. The phenomenon of clericalism explains, in part, the lack of maturity and Christian freedom in some of the Latin American laity.” To repeat his formulation: priests and bishops “manipulate” and “infantilize” the laity, and he challenges everyone “to overcome clericalism and to increase lay responsibility.”27 Another major temptation is associated with an ideology, when a particular theory, idea, or program that is championed by an elitist group and confused with the saving Gospel message. This ideological use of elitist power operates as an “antiseptic” hermeneutic developed for the poor and marginalized but fails to develop a pastoral approach and social strategy with a listening receptivity to the sense of the faith of the people of God and attentively gazing upon reality with the eyes of discipleship.28 A third factor is Pope Francis’s attention to the demonic, the evil spirit. “The decision for missionary discipleship will encounter temptation. It is important to know where the evil spirit is afoot in order to aid our discernment. It is not a matter of chasing after demons, but simply one of 26  Roger Landry, “Pope Francis and the Reform of the Laity,” National Catholic Register, posted 4/11/13; http://www.ncregister.com/site/print_article/37127/ accessed 5/09/15. 27  Pope Francis’s view of the clericalization of the laity, I suggest, should be associated with infantilizing, and is different from John Paul II’s remark in Christifideles Laici, no. 23 on the confusion of clerical functions and lay functions in the church. 28  Austen Ivereigh traces Bergoglio’s treatment of ideology back to the early 1970s when Bergoglio was influenced by the “teología del pueblo” developed by Lucio Gera, Rafael Tello, and Jesuit Juan Carlos Scannone as an alternative to liberation theology, which profoundly shaped his work beginning with his years as provincial (1973–1979); see Austen Ivereigh, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014), 111, 115–116, 121–122, 183–184.

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clear-sightedness and evangelical astuteness.”29 “The more closely we are joined to God, the more we are united among ourselves, since the Spirit of God unites and the spirit of evil divides.”30 In a homily delivered on April 11, 2014, Pope Francis made the point that “Satan exists in our present century and we must learn from the Gospel how to fight against his temptations … The life of every Christian is a constant battle against evil just as Jesus during his life had to struggle against the devil and his many temptations … [W]hoever wants to follow Jesus must be aware of this reality.”31 A second illustration of Pope Francis’s use of the examen is provided in Evangelii Gaudium. Once again, he does not speak explicitly of the sinfulness of the church, but he calls for an examination of conscience that identifies temptations faced by pastoral workers (nos. 36–109). He returns to the related problems of clericalism and spiritual worldliness. “In some cases, … lay persons have not been given the formation needed to take on important responsibilities [and] in other [cases], … in their particular Churches room has not been made for them to speak and to act, due to an excessive clericalism which keeps them away from decision-making” (no. 102). Here he repeats his association of clericalism with spiritual worldliness manifested in various forms of ecclesiastical narcissism that focuses on internal church matters, rather than reaching out to the poor, the marginalized, and those in need of healing and justice.32 Francis also includes a spectrum of temptations faced by pastoral workers depending on their ambitions, temperaments, theological proclivities, and pastoral life

 Pope Francis, Address to CELAM Leadership, 28 July 2013.  Pope Francis delineates a list of vices following in the tradition of Evagrius in his Christmas message, “The Roman Curia and the Body of Christ,” December 22, 2014. http://w2.vatican.va; in his 2015 Christmas message he treats virtues necessary for curial officials, in 2016 he develops twelve guidelines for curial reform; and in 2017 he shifts from addressing the curia ad intra to discussing the curia’s work ad extra, with the nations, particular churches, Oriental Churches, ecumenical dialogue, Judaism, Islam, and other religions. Our focus here is on his 2014 address. 31  Susy Hodges, Vatican Radio, “Pope Francis: Satan exists in the twenty-first century and how we can fight him,” http://en.radiovaticana.va/storico/2014/04/11/pope_francis_ satan_exists_in_the_21st_century_and_how_we_can_fight/en1–789915 accessed 7/12/18. Francis mentions the devil five times in Gaudete et Exsultate (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2018), nos. 117, 140, 158, 160, 165, and cites a statement by Paul VI in his General Audience, November 15, 1972 in no. 161 in footnote 121. 32  Evangelii Gaudium, nos. 93–97. 29 30

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experiences.33 He often repeats one refrain: all Christian disciples need to be realists. The final, and significantly different, examination of conscience developed by Pope Francis was delivered on December 22, 2014, on the occasion of his Christmas Greeting to the Roman Curia. In keeping with the seasonal celebration of the incarnation, he ponders the identity of the church as the body of Christ. He indicates that in some ways the curia is like the body of Christ, diverse members and functions joined through the Spirit, Christ and body making up the Christus totus. He then sharpens his focus on the church and the curia as one body; the oneness of the church requires that members strive for unity. “The more closely we are joined to God, the more we are united among ourselves, since the Spirit of God unites and the spirit of evil divides.” He then shifts his attention to disease in the body. The Curia, “like any body, like any human body, … is also exposed to diseases, malfunctioning, infirmity.” He chooses to identify some of “the probable …, more common ‘curial diseases’” which threaten the Curia’s vitality and effectiveness of service.34 He names fifteen curial diseases. Like the previous list, many of these diseases can be associated with personal ambitions, temperaments, theological proclivities, and pastoral life experiences of those in the curia. I wish to focus only on the first and the last category. The first is (1) the “disease of thinking we are ‘immortal’, ‘immune’ or downright ‘indispensable,’ neglecting the need for regular check-ups” or what could be described as accountability. This manifests a “pathology of power, … a superiority complex, from a narcissism which passionately gazes at its own image and does not see the image of God on the face of others, especially

33  The list includes: those too concerned about their personal freedom and relaxation; some suffer paralysis and are slothful (acedia) because they have unrealistic projects, lack patience, or are timid; certain people become “sourpusses”—complainers and disillusioned pessimists; others risk individualistic isolation; spiritual worldliness is an umbrella category that covers various tendencies such as Gnostic elitism or Pelagian rigorism; and he ends with envy or pride that contributes to aggressive competition rather than collaboration. 34  Pope Francis, “The Roman Curia and the Body of Christ.”

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the weakest and those most in need.”35 This particular formulation could be associated with a particular species of clericalism and spiritual worldliness, a kind of pathology associated with the exercise of power and authority, a posited superiority or sovereignty in relation to those outside the center, those in a local church, in a national church, and in the global south. Curial centralization is the specific form of clericalism here identified. Francis closes with (15) “the disease of worldly profit, of forms of self-exhibition, [which] turns his service into power, and his power into a commodity in order to gain worldly profit or even greater power.”36 The list begins and ends with power and greed.37 Francis’s formula is not far removed from John Paul II’s expression in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis Among the actions and attitudes opposed to the will of God, the good of neighbor and the “structures” created by them, two are very typical: on the one hand, the all-consuming desire for profit, and on the other, the thirst for power, with the intention of imposing one's will upon others. In order to characterize better each of these attitudes, one can add the expression: “at any price.” In other words, we are faced with the absolutizing of human attitudes with all its possible consequences.38

35  The list continues: (2) the “Martha complex”—“excessive busy-ness;” (3) “mental and spiritual ‘petrification’ reflected in the loss of “interior serenity, alertness and daring” by “stiff-necked paper pushers;” (4) perfectionist bureaucratic planners; (5) those with poor coordination, who fail to form fellowship and teamwork among members; (6) “spiritual Alzheimer’s disease” among those who lose touch with one’s own graced history; (7) rivalry and vainglory; (8) existential schizophrenia, hypocrisy—more dedicated to details of work rather than reality and concrete people; (9) gossiping, grumbling and back-biting; (10) idolizing superiors; (11) indifference toward others; (12) lugubrious face—glum, dour, melancholy, arrogance, show of severity, sterile pessimism; (13) hoarding material goods; (14) the formation of a closed circle, a clique, that enslaves members, becomes a cancer and threatens to scandalize. Pope Francis, “The Roman Curia and the Body of Christ.” 36  Ibid. 37  The pope acknowledges that he is speaking of these diseases threaten the Roman Curia, but these temptations are “naturally a danger for each Christian and for every curia, community, congregation, parish and ecclesial movement; and they can strike at the individual and the community levels.” Ibid. 38  Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (December 30, 1987), no. 37.

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2.4   Comparing Francis and John Paul II As close as Francis’s position seems to John Paul II’s position, I wish to ask whether Pope Francis’s treatment exceeds what we have discovered in the writing of Pope John Paul II. No modern pope has devoted so much attention to diagnosing corruption or pathologies associated with clericalism and ecclesiastical centralization and papal and curial sovereignty. He may not use the categories social sin and structures of sin, but he has identified the social effects of personal sin, the embodiment of personal sins in ecclesial structures, and we could also use the language of John Paul II and speak about these, analogously, as social sins. But is it possible that Francis’s various approaches to the examen are not simply deploying John Paul II’s analysis of the three dimensions of social sin that ultimately are derivative of personal sin, which have their basis in intentional acts of a free subject? I wish to suggest that Francis is in fact bringing into focus factors that certainly corrupt individuals, but also cultures, ecclesial structures, practices, and policies. Let us consider the three more closely. First, while John Paul II acknowledged in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis the thirst for power and profit as typical sinful actions and attitudes that influence imperialism, ideology, and class struggle, Francis has given far more attention to the pathologies of power in the church at work in the culture and practices of the curia, bishops, and clergy that restrains the development of freedom and development of individuals in the church and in the local church and through episcopal collegiality.39 Second, he frequently uses the category of ideology as an elitist mode of social analysis that provides a partial or distorted vision and discourse that is imposed on pastoral planning rather than informed by engagement with the people of God and reality. The third factor pertains to his recurrent mention of the power of the demonic, which he speaks of as the evil spirit and the devil that threatens not only individuals but also the church and society. Pope Francis’s references to the demonic provide perhaps the clearest indication that his understanding of the misuse of power and distorted ideology, and in fact, all of the sinful dynamics at work in the institution of the church, cannot be reduced to personal sin, as articulated by John Paul II, or as reducible to the derivative impact of original sin on structures of  John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, no. 37.

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sin as in Pope Benedict. His references to the devil and the evil spirit in framing his examinations of conscience and in other related addresses allude to or imply the treatment of the demonic in the New Testament and in classics of Eastern and Western spirituality. Consider the role of the demonic in the gospel traditions, especially when Jesus is driven out into the wilderness to combat the devil that makes a claim on Jesus’s identity, his self-understanding, and his mission, all in the interest of self-­ aggrandizement at the expense of others. Jesus is likewise portrayed in the synoptic traditions as an exorcist, who wrestles with demonic powers that have destroyed the psyches, bodies, and social bonds of individuals and communities. The role of the demonic in Athanasius’s Life of Anthony has a profound impact on Evagrius of Pontus in his refashioning of Stoic anthropology that informs his approach to the role of the devil and evil thoughts and deeds. Evagrius’s strategy of talking back to devils provides a spiritual discipline for confronting these spiritual powers that make a distorting claim on one’s identity and way of life.40 In Ignatius of Loyola, attention to evil spirits as the enemy of our human nature has a central place in his approach to the daily examen and the discernment of spirits. For Christians, the role of the demonic in the Roman Empire and in society was acknowledged as a central part of the spiritual warfare that every Christian must face. Pope Francis’s engagement with this tradition merits consideration. In fact, beyond such diabolical discourse, there are numerous psychological and critical social theories that attest to the role of the unconscious and opaque influences on identity, social relations, and power dynamics. Gregory Baum was one person who acknowledged the role of unconscious in matters of social sin raised by the treatment of conscientization in the Medellín conclusions from CELAM. More recently, post-­ structuralist theorists like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler draw attention to the influence of destructive powers that distort identities and social behavior.41 Pope Francis’s use of the language of the demonic provides a  On Athanasius and Evagrius of Pontus, see Bradford E. Hinze, “Talking Back, Acting Up: Wrestling with Spirits in Social Bodies,” Interdisciplinary and Religio-Cultural Discourses on a Spirit-Filled World: Loosing the Spirits, ed. Kirsteen Kim, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen and Amos Yong (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 155–170. 41  Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon, 1977); idem., “Two Lectures,” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 78–108, idem., “The Subject and Power,” in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 208–226; Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power. Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). 40

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venue for theologians to consider background theories capable of informing how such powers are generated or transmitted or contested. 42 Pope Francis’s call for an examination of conscience provides in fact an examination of consciousness and the unconscious where opaque forces, not entirely derivative of and within the control of intentionality or will power or rationality, are at work. His treatment of pathologies of power, ideologies, and the demonic introduces such forces into our understanding of personal sin and social, structural sin. These categories exceed the domain of the intentional subjects. Numerous critical theories—philosophical, psychological, and social— are not in principle antithetical to the pope’s evangelical concerns about the pathologies of power, ideological elites, and the demonic. To maintain that these categories introduce dark forces and dynamics in the self and society that are half-conscious or unconscious, that can work behind the scene or behind the back of an individual or community is not to say that they cannot be engaged, contested, and resisted at the level of personal or collective consciousness and contestation. Accordingly, I believe that Pope Francis offers resources for a doctrine of social sin that exceed those developed by Pope John Paul II.43 For Pope Francis any discernment of spirits at work in these dynamics will inevitably include conflict and struggle, but that conflict and struggle should be negotiated at the intersection of personal engagement with the sense of the faith of the people of God and depth of reality. But this discernment must be conducted in a way that does not disdain and disrespect ways of thinking and analysis that might raise questions about commonsense bias. Bernard Lonergan spoke about the threat of bias and 42  In his essay on social sin, Daniel Finn acknowledges that some might prefer to approach these kinds of issues from a New Testament perspective in terms of cosmic powers, the demonic, and the devil. But he confesses, “yet for all the truth captured by this ‘mythic’ language, it is far more helpful in prophetic denunciations of systematic evil than in ethical analysis of it.” (Finn, “What is a Sinful Social Structure?”, 163, n. 101). Here is my dilemma: like Finn I don’t want to be a devil’s advocate calling for introducing this kind of discourse into the center of these matters. On the other hand, without subscribing to a naïve and uncritical approach in these matters, theologians must acknowledge that the pernicious dynamics and realities operative in situations of institutional, structural, and communal sin are deeply intertwined with traditional discourse and practices associated with the demonic and the powers. 43  See my treatment of Francis on destructive powers in civil society in Bradford E. Hinze, “Decolonizing Everyday Practices: Sites of Struggle in Church and Society,” CTSA Proceedings 71 (2016): 46–61.

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particularly about general bias that resists using critical theory in the interests of determining the genuine good and common good and emerging insights into genuine values and the truth of reality.44

3   Conclusion In closing, Pope Francis is dramatically confronting triumphalist temptations and the sinfulness of the church by calling for consciousness raising and holding people accountable through the use of the examination of conscience. But this will be woefully insufficient if it is not combined with the reform of ecclesial structures and practices. Time will tell whether the reform efforts initiated by Francis will result in a purging of structures of sin in the church that are associated with triumphalism, papal and curial sovereignty, centralization, clericalism, and ideological elitism as an effective means for wrestling with demonic forces.

44  For example, the concerns raised by gender theory and Pope Francis’s disparaging comments on such theory merit closer scrutiny. See Cristina L. H. Traina, “Whose Sensus? Which Fidelium? Justice and Gender in a Global Church,” in Learning from All the Faithful: A Contemporary Theology of the Sensus Fidei, eds. Bradford E. Hinze, Peter C. Phan (Eugene, OR: Cascade Press, 2016), 155–169.

Roman Catholic Recognition of Ecclesiality Outside Its Boundaries: What Does It Mean? Sandra Arenas

Moreover, some, even very many, of the most significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church: the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements. All of these, which come from Christ and lead back to him, belong by right to the one Church of Christ. —(UR 3) This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found out-side its visible confines. Since these are gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity. —(LG 8)

S. Arenas (*) Facultad Ciencias Religiosas y Filosofía, Universidad Católica de Temuco, Temuco, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_3

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This chapter intends to be a systematic account on the conciliar acknowledgment of ecclesiality outside the Roman Catholic Church’s frontiers. The Second Vatican Council faced the issue of the ecclesial status of the Reformed Communities through the recognition of the presence of ecclesiality in the structures of those communities, which had indeed determined the core of the conciliar ecclesiology of membership. How was that possible? Through the reception of the notion of elementa ecclesiae, the council took a step forward in its consideration of the classic ecclesiological issue of membership in the church, manifesting a clear and remarkable ecumenical openness. This notion was present from the very beginning of the conciliar discussions, although the discussions themselves did not begin in the first period of the conciliar event (October, 1962). Indeed, because of the nature of the Second Vatican Council, the preparatory work formed a crucial part of its further development and certainly provided the bases upon which our issue was brought up, discussed, established, and developed. Where do we find this? In 1964, the Council promulgated two documents that constitute, each in their respective ways, landmark steps for the evolution of ecclesiology. Expressed in these two interconnected documents—the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium n° 8 and the Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio n° 3—is a doctrine that was previously unheard of in Catholic magisterial documents, namely, the theology of the “elements of the church”. In LG 8 the delicate point of the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Christ as a whole is addressed. The Church of Christ subsists in the world of today in its institutional fullness in the Roman Catholic Church, although “elements of the church” are acknowledged in other churches and ecclesial communities. Both phrases touch upon the core of the matter: the ecclesiological debate on the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Christ, as well as the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the other churches or ecclesial communities. The issue of redefining the frontiers has been addressed by the two documents, indicating, in our opinion, that the doctrine has both systematic theological value and a pastoral and practical role to play in the daily practice of ecumenical dialogue. In order to come to a genuine understanding of the conciliar statements, we need to look at the complex processes that led to it. In this chapter, we will consider the results of a previous study of the origins of

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the doctrinal concept of the elementa ecclesiae,1 which traced it up to its conciliar promulgation, and also show how it continued to generate post-­ conciliar discussions. The first thing to be considered is that the notion itself was novel for the Catholic magisterium and entered into it from the margins of the twentieth-century ecumenical movement, which was indebted to the discourse of certain Protestant circles. This reveals a complex and historical process of reception where a double shift occurred that involved a historical evolution as well as a systematic one. In the first case, we notice a doctrine originally locked within the confines of sixteenth-century Reformation theology gradually transgressing its borders and eventually emerging in the thought of early twentieth-­ century ecumenical circles. Along with it comes the systematic shift, which reveals a doctrine moving from the periphery of Roman Catholic theological undercurrents and making its way to the level of official council teaching, i.e., to the center of Roman Catholic ecclesiology. In order to outline the core issue of the subject, we wish to explain this double movement a bit further, from Reformed to ecumenical thought and from the periphery to the center. It seems best to do this by revisiting the distinct phases of the movement.

1   From Reformed to Ecumenical Thought: The Historical Evolution In the very first place, we should state that the notion of elementa ecclesiae has its most ancient roots in the sixteenth-century Calvinist notion of vestigia ecclesiae. Indeed, Calvin referred to “traces of the church” left in the papist church, as well as genuine vestigia still present in organized society.2 Among the crucial implications of this sixteenth-century Calvinist position was the conviction that there is no interruption in the existence of the church: in spite of the deviations and faults of ecclesial ministers, an underlying and non-fractured continuity is acknowledged. Presenting this 1  Cf. Sandra Arenas, Fading Frontiers? A Historical-Theological Investigation into the Notion of ‘Elementa Ecclesiae’. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 321 (Leuven: Peeters, 2021). 2  As for the reception of the notion of elementa ecclesiae, see Arenas, “Merely Quantifiable Realities? The ‘Vestigia Ecclesiae’ in the Thought of Calvin and its twentieth century Reception,” in John Calvin’s Ecclesiology. Ecumenical Perspectives, ed. Gerard Mannion and Eduardus Van der Borght (London: T&T Clark, 2011), pp. 69–89.

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remote background to twentieth-century ecumenical debates is crucial because the concept will eventually enter Vatican II with clear references to the Calvinist theory of the vestigia ecclesiae. Secondly, we should pay careful attention to the reception of the notion of vestigia ecclesiae in twentieth-century ecumenical milieus; while in its sixteenth-century origins, the notion carried mostly negative connotations, the concept of a recognition understood as “remains of the true Church of Christ” in ecclesial bodies other than one’s own began to be well received in twentieth-­century ecumenical milieus. While originating in a context of ecclesial communities departing from one another, the notion of vestigia ecclesiae now served ecumenical purposes and was used by theologians striving toward Christian unity as a way of recognizing ecclesial value in each and every Christian body. Precisely in this pre-conciliar era of the movements, Catholic ecclesiology renewed itself at the periphery. Official Roman Catholic magisterial teaching tended to propose a reductive understanding of the ecclesial character of Reformed communities by stressing its imperfections. All the while, some Roman Catholic theologians involved in the emerging ecumenical movement were developing an ecclesiology of membership and moved away from the prevailing juridical definition of the church. The reception of theological discourses that were being developed outside of Roman Catholic theology now constituted a turning point in Roman Catholic ecclesiological reflection. A crucial step in this regard was the adoption of the “old” and negatively connotated Calvinist notion of the vestigia, translated in terms of elementa ecclesiae. The latter notion eventually found its way into both Roman Catholic theological milieus and official ecumenical documents. The main contribution came from the French Yves Congar, who was the first Catholic theologian to accurately reflect upon the theme of vestigia and elementa ecclesiae. His insights strongly influenced subsequent theological contributions. He developed his insights later on, especially on the occasion of a private ecumenical meeting in 1949 held at the Istina Dominican Centre in Paris. By seriously taking his contribution into account at that meeting, a common language was found that focused upon the concept of vestigia ecclesiae. Exactly two years later, Protestant and Catholic ecumenists met again at Présinge, and one of the main presentations was given by Congar. It focused on the subject of vestigia ecclesiae, and this paper would later on be published as “A propos des ‘Vestigia ecclesiae’ ”. After the Council the

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Dominican would take up the issue again while reflecting on the ecclesiological status of the non-Catholic Christian communities, formulating a contribution to the issue that would be published in 1977 as “Le développement de l’évaluation ecclésiologique des églises non-catholiques: un bilan”. All of this could only occur thanks to the increasing number of ecumenically inspired encounters and unofficial meetings that prepared for the reception of the notion at the Council. In 1949, a private meeting at the Dominican Centre in Paris took place. Ten Roman Catholic theologians were present, along with ten other theologians of various Christian denominations, representing the interests of the World Council of Churches (WCC). Among the Catholics were Jérôme Hamer and Yves Congar.3 On this occasion the Dominican Congar was the one to point to the necessity of addressing the issue of the notes of the true church and to discuss the way it subsists in any particular Christian group.4 Thereafter, and not quite surprisingly, a common language focused upon the concept of vestigia ecclesiae. In his Memoirs, the first secretary of the World Council of Churches, Wilhelm Visser ’t Hooft, states that the subject of vestigia ecclesiae was actually fully discussed, leading to a recognition of the traces of the church present in every Christian church. According to him, Father Jean Daniélou said that the common task of those present was “to arrive at a dynamic reception of the vestigia ecclesiae, for these traces of the church could be developed and lead to greater agreement”.5 The meeting had an immediate positive reception within Roman Catholic and ecumenical circles. After the foundation of the WCC, the ecumenical council officially received the category of vestigia ecclesiae during the meeting of the Central Committee, which took place in Toronto in 1950.6 One year later, and in the wake of the private 1949 Istina meeting, another encounter between Roman Catholic and Protestants took place,  Cf. Wilhelm Adolph Visser’t Hooft, Memoirs (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1987), 320.  Cf. Visser’t Hooft, Genesis and Formation of the World Council of Churches (Geneva: WCC, 1982), 74. 5  Visser’t Hooft, Memoirs, 320. 6  “The member Churches of the World Council recognize in other Churches elements of the true Church. They consider that this mutual recognition obliges them to enter into a serious conversation with each other in the hope that these elements of truth will lead to the recognition of the full truth and unity based on the full truth”. Cf. WCC, Minutes and Report of the Third Meeting of the Central Committee (Toronto: July 9–15, 1950), IV, 5. 3 4

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this time in Présinge, Switzerland. The meeting was called vestigia ecclesiae and was discreetly prepared for the discussion of the content of the declaration Ecclesia catholica. To be sure, in December 1949, the Holy Office issued an instruction known as Ecclesia catholica,7 which was addressed to local bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. The instruction officially opened the doors to ecumenism and therefore allowed Roman Catholic theologians to take part in ecumenical initiatives, which will later have important consequences for the official reception of the ecclesiology of elementa ecclesiae in both Roman Catholic theology and magisterial teaching, up to and including the Council, as well as in ecumenical circles and events. Back to Présinge, the topic of vestigia ecclesiae was taken up again at the invitation of L’Institut de Bossey by ecumenically committed Catholic scholars in November 1951. The discussion especially explored the ecumenical possibilities that a dynamic reception of the sixteenth-century category of vestigia ecclesiae would have. The conviction that the centrality of baptism would help to better comprehend the meaning of vestigia compelled the organizers to propose a study on le baptême d’eau starting “par ‘potasser’ la controverse baptismale”. The meeting succeeded in bringing together WCC representatives and Catholic ecclesiologists committed to ecumenical affairs.8 However, the Benedictine monk from Chevetogne, Clément Lialine, seemed to be dissatisfied with the way the issue of vestigia was treated at the Présinge meeting. In line with Congar, he had hoped that the mysterious reality of the church in its visible and historic 7  Cf. AAS 42 (1950): 142–147. This Instruction constitutes the most important official document in this regard, Cf. Gustave Thils, Histoire doctrinale du mouvement œcuménique. Nouvelle edition. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 8 (Louvain: Peeters, 1963), 298–299. A commentary in Christophe-Jean Dumont, “L’Instruction du Saint-Office au sujet du mouvement œcuménique,” Vers l’unité chrétienne 22 (Avril, 1950): 2–8. The instruction had been published on March 1, 1950. Cf. Dumont, “La Conférence Catholique Internationale pour les Questions Œcuméniques,” Vers l’unité chrétienne (janvier 1961): 18–20. 8  From the Catholic side, the Dominicans Dumont, Congar, and Jérôme Hamer, Dom Olivier Rousseau of Chevetogne, Frans Thijssen, and Mgr. Charles Journet. Among the non-­ Catholics, WCC representatives were Visser’t Hooft, Jean Bosc, Oliver Tomkins, Hendrik Kraemer, Suzanne de Dietrich, Paul Evdokimov, and Max Thurian. See Report rencontre de Présinge, a report in French and Dutch (24 typed pages plus two introductory pages) preserved in the Fonds Johannes Willebrands Chevetogne (FWCh), 32–54. The report includes Dumont’s questionnaire as a guide for the discussion as well as Congar’s contribution. Cf. Visser’t Hooft, Memoirs, 320.

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constitution would have been more strongly recognized and emphasized by the non-Catholics upon receiving the insights during the Evanston WC meeting in 1954.9 Nevertheless, the impression was that they had apparently used the concept of vestigia without taking its history into much consideration, as well as the ambiguous theological content. This assembly approached the concept of elementa in line with the “Toronto Statement”. The Evanston assembly then stated that: the member churches “possess certain constitutive elements” of the unique church of Christ which are visibly manifested, being: the Word of God, the sacraments—especially baptism and Eucharist—and the episcopate as a historic reality in the life and structure of the church.10

Having left the concept of vestigia, they approached the elementa in a way similar to that of the first stage of the Protestant theologians: the preaching of the Word, the teaching of Scriptures, and the administration of the sacraments. The WCC built up the ecumenical movement based on these elements or traces, elements which are not constitutive realities as fonts of the church but, rather, elements which in the simple fact of their existence were conferring a certain authenticity and legitimacy because those traces are followed.11 It took more than two years for Gustave Thils to dare to develop new insights on the issue and to bring insights from the tradition, facing them in a new way, after all these hesitations. All those private meetings as well as the green light for ecumenism given by Ecclesia catholica led in the 9  Cf. Correspondance Dom Clément Lialine (1948–1952), le 14 mars 1952 [2 pages], in the Fonds Istina, Archives dominicaines de la Province de France, Paris. 10  The Evanston Report. The Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches. 1954, ed. W.A. Visser ’t Hooft (London: SCM Press, 1955), 79, 93–94. 11  The 2006 common statement of the Lutheran Catholic Commission on Unity refers to the importance of Luther’s recognition of these marks of the church: “Luther himself rarely spoke of the ‘apostolic church’. But he understood the reality that we designate the church’s apostolicity as continuity in proclaiming the same message as the apostles and as continuity in practicing baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the office of the keys, the call to ministry, public gathering for worship in praise and confession of faith, and the bearing of the cross as Christ’s disciples. These are the marks of the church by which one can recognize it, since they are the means by which the Holy Spirit creates faith and the church. Among these marks, the gospel message, however, is the decisive criterion of continuity in practice with the apostolic church.” The Apostolicity of the Church. Study Document of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2006), § 95, p. 51.

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Catholic Church to the foundation of the Conférence Catholique pour les Questions Œcuméniques (CCQŒ) in 1952. From its very foundation the issue of vestigia ecclesiae was seen as a way to come to a better understanding of the nature of the non-Catholic Christian communities. Actually, the constitutive session was marked by an intervention by Yves Congar. Congar asked that greater attention be given to the presence of elements of the church, the so-called vestigia ecclesiae, beyond the visible boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church. Congar also paid attention to the category of votum ecclesiae by stressing that this category might be applied to the ecumenical movement given that it had developed since the beginning of the twentieth century outside the Catholic Church, although he still considered that the major factor unifying the people of God was Sacred Scripture. When concluding the foundational meeting, Johannes Willebrands took Congar’s contribution seriously into account by stating that Catholic theologians with a clear ecumenical sensitivity recognized “la grande utilité d’un approfondissement d’une théologie des ‘vestigia ecclesiae’ subsistant dans les communions dissidents”.12 Bringing up and summarizing the previous discussions and contributions on the subject, he saw the theological category of vestigia ecclesiae as possessing a great potential in view of promoting the unity of the church. It was seen as an opportunity to rethink the relationship of the non-Catholic Christian communities to the Church of Christ.

2  The Conciliar Reception Just at the time when the Second Vatican Council was announced, in 1959, the CCQŒ issued a note where our subject was once again discussed and viewed as contributing to a better understanding and treatment of the nature of non-Catholic Christian communities. That Note will later on be quoted by the Dutch Catholic Bishops during the antepreparatory phase of the Council, precisely to bring the subject of vestigia-­ elementa ecclesiae to the Conciliar discussions. As a general framework, the notion of elementa ecclesiae was not a new idea introduced in the course of the conciliar debate, and it was never itself an object of serious objection among Catholic bishops and periti. During 12  FWCh, Msgr. Willebrands, Conférence Catholique pour les Questions Œcuméniques. Réunie à Fribourg du 11 au 13 aout 1952. Conclusions sur les rapports et discussions.

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the antepreparatory phase it was present in the vota of some bishops, and it was received, therefore, in a very early stage of the conciliar discussions. The reference to the elements of the church found in non-Catholic Christian communities also remained in the schema received by the bishops, which was re-elaborated and developed in the course of the council. We can safely state that only four Dutch bishops had explicitly used the notion of vestigia and elementa ecclesiae in an ecclesiological-ecumenical context at this stage. The reason is provided by the bishops themselves. 13 They were quite clear in admitting their debt to the “Note on Restoration of Christian Unity on the Occasion of the Coming Council”, dated 15 June 1959,14 which had been sent to them by Willebrands.15 As mentioned above, the Note was a culminating point of the ecumenical and ecclesiological developments gained in the course of the previous decades. The Note contained a sort of well-constructed Catholic summary of the matter of the reunification of Christians. Among other issues regarding membership, the Note recognized the value of baptism as the distinctive mark of Christians and communion as the basis of the notion of the church. These were singled out as theological points that are crucial for any agreement. As we have seen, including with regard to baptism, the document also spoke in plural about les valeurs spirituelles chrétiennes authentiques that are common and recognizable among all Christian communities. In line with this, bishops Alfrink (Utrecht), Nierman (Groningen), Moors (Roermond), and Jansen (Rotterdam) raised the point of the existence of valeurs, vestiges of the church among all Christians.16 After this first appearance, there was a reception of the notion of vestigia/elementa ecclesiae during the preparatory phase through the schemata prepared by the Theological Commission (TC) and the Secretariat 13  For the influence of the Dutch bishops in the council see Jan Jacobs, “Les ‘vota’ des évêques néerlandais pour le concile,” in À la veille du concile vatican II. Vota et réactions en Europe et dans le catholicisme oriental, ed. Mathijs Lamberigts and Claude Soetens (Leuven: Peeters, 1992), 98–110. 14   “Note du Comité directeur de la ‘Conférence Catholique pour les Questions Œcuméniques’ sur la restauration de l’unité chrétienne à l’ocassion du prochain Concile. 15 June 1959,” in Fonds Dumont, n° 440, at 9. Useful materials to reconstruct the redaction of the Nota are kept in the Fonds Johannes Willebrands CSVII (FW) 34. 15  Cf. Leo Declerck (ed.), Inventaire des archives personnelles du Cardinal J. Willebrands, secrétaire (1960–1969) et président du Secrétariat pour l’unité des chrétiens, archevêque d’Utrecht (1975–1983). Instrumenta Theologica, 35 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 59. 16  Jacobs, “Les ‘vota’ des évêques Néerlandais pour le concile,” 108.

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for Promoting Christian Unity (SPCU), as well as in crucial individual contributions made by some prominent theologians members of the TC’s subcommissions De Ecclesia and De Oecumenismo and of the SPCU’s subcommissions “De christianorum acatholicorum ordine ad ecclesiam” and “De oecumenismo catholico et de opere conversionis”. That reception was due to the implication of some protagonists of the above-mentioned ecumenical encounters at the Council itself, as the doctrine of vestigia/elementa ecclesiae by the end of 1961 was already well established. For instance, Yves Congar prepared a twelve-page Nota, in May 1961, as an attempt to respond to a question raised on the nature of membership. In Part Five, on the dissident communities, Congar followed his own insights and developed the subject by affirming that among the Christian dissidents we can find vestigia ecclesiae that are to be considered as the condition of possibility for claiming a presence of ecclesiality among their structures.17 Congar argues for such a presence of ecclesiality outside the boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church by using the notion of vestigia ecclesiae, which he himself had—in his 1937 work as well as in latter ones—used interchangeably and even thereafter replaced with the term elementa ecclesiae.18 He remains, however, consistent with his own ecclesiological views by affirming the existence of different degrees or forms by which those separated communities conserve these vestigia in themselves and are actually capable of visibly displaying them. Congar stated that, at that time, the recognition of different degrees of ecclesiality had,

17  “Sine ulla vel minima approbatione Dissidentiae, possumus determinare gradus et modos secundum quos a communione dissidentes illegitime conservant aliquid, plus vel minus, De ecclesiali Sacramento vel, ut haud raro hodie dicitur, aliqua vestigia ecclesiae praebent.” KU Leuven, Center for the Study of the Second Vatican Council, Fonds Philips n° 123, 10 [emphasis added]. 18  Yves Congar, Chrétiens désunis. Principes d’un “œcuménisme” catholique. Unam Sanctam 1 (Paris: Cerf, 1937) 300–301 and “Le développement de l’évaluation ecclésiologique des églises non-catholiques: un bilan,” in Unitatis Redintegratio, 1964–1974: The Impact of the Decree on Ecumenism, ed. Gellért J.  Békés & Vilmos Vajta (Rome: Editrice Anselmiana, 1977), 63–64.

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theologically speaking, reached a point of agreement.19 Precisely because of that, according to the Dominican, it should not be difficult to accept the category of vestigia ecclesiae as a condition for such ecclesiological discourse. During the conciliar debate itself the notion of the elements becomes a constant factor and is received, rather significantly, in the two above-­ mentioned places (LG 8, UR 3), both developed simultaneously and shed light on one another; LG 8 cannot be properly understood without UR 3 and vice versa. The intertextuality of conciliar documents is a factor to be taken seriously when attempting to grasp the meaning of such phrases. Failing to do so results in reductive interpretations that risk failing to do justice to the intentions of the council Fathers. That said, the entire debate on how to interpret the statement that the Church of Christ subsists in the Roman Catholic Church cannot be approached properly without a diligent study of the notion of the elements of the Church, as represented in both aforementioned council texts. From the beginning of 1962, the concept of elementa ecclesiae appeared in the chapter De Oecumenismo, which was part of the official document on the Church prepared by the Theological Commission. The text drafted by Johannes Witte S.J. on January 18, 1962, uses vestigia, elementa, dona, and bona interchangeably to describe the same reality. 20 The notion was interchangeably used with vestigia for quite some time up until the latter term was seriously questioned over its apparent “Calvinist” content. The Council Fathers then decided to take the notion of vestigia away but left elementa and its content to express the realities at stake. From a historical and philological perspective, it was noticed that since the notion of vestigia comes from sixteenth-century Reformation theology, and specifically from John Calvin’s ecclesiology21 (used by him to describe the papacy as a leftover institutional ruin or wreckage of the 19  He quotes “Bainvel, de membris inchoativis; Billot and Guibert, De ecclesia Christi; Liège, de visibili vel invisibili coniunctione.” He may be referring to Jean Vincent Bainvel (1858–1937), who wrote the important book Is There Salvation Outside of the Church? [translated in English by Joseph L. Weidenhan] (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1923); Louis Billot (1846–1931), a French Jesuit theologian who wrote Tractatus de Ecclesia Christi (Roma: Apud Aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1921) and Josephus de Guibert and his famous book De Christi Ecclesia: Breve Schema in Auditorum Usum (Roma: Apud Aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1928). 20  AAV, Conc. Vat. II, b. 746 (200) 18/1/62. 21  Cf. Institutio IV, 2, 11; CR 30, 775–776.

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church), it would be better to avoid using the same category to acknowledge the presence of ecclesiality among non-Catholic communities.22 The understanding of Catholic ecumenism was also redefined by the use of the notion of elements of the Church through the remarkable contribution of the Belgian theologian Gustave Thils. On the one hand, baptism provides a sacramental framework for the ecumenical encounters, and on the other hand, all of the interior Christian realities, values, and elements that belong to the mystery of the church are, in a way, actualized in the ecumenical encounters. This would mean that the church presents itself in a better and perfect fashion when all of the Christian churches are together. All Christian communities are partial realizations of the church and are oriented to communion precisely because they are not static, material realities. The elementa ecclesiae present in them, however, are living spiritual values. By the end of the pre-conciliar phase the multiple synonyms used before disappeared in favor of the notion of bona spiritualia. This expression was equated to elementa ecclesiae by the Council Fathers. Those bona spiritualia belong to and point toward the vera Ecclesia and shed light on the issue of “imperfect” or communion in different degrees. To that extent, a striking point should be observed here. While in the course of the debate, article eight of the schema De Ecclesia will undergo various modifications; these changes will only be made in the clause concerning the identification and relationship between the Catholic Church and the Church of Christ. It is in that spot that refinement was felt needed, while the phrase on the elementa will not be object of further discussion. Apparently, this was regarded as a well-established and sufficiently nuanced ecclesiological-ecumenical statement, and it is the flipside of the coin that was adapted to fit with the implications of the doctrine of the elementa. In this regard, the conciliar debate in October 1963 on the schema De Ecclesia is of importance. In this context, among the most relevant interventions in order to reach a correct understanding of the evolution of the subsistit clause, both generically and theologically significant, is the one by

22  Cf. AAV, Conc. Vat. II, b. 749 (216), Marcelli-Mariae Dubois, at 3. On the same place he quoted Baum to propose another category to describe the same realities: “Gregory Baum, in ‘L’unité chrétienne, d’après la doctrine des Papes de León XIII à Pie XII’, Cerf 1961, melius loquitur (pp. 66–86) de ‘patrimonio divino’ nostrorum fratrum separatorum.”

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bishop van Dodewaard. On 2 October 1963, van Dodewaard23 proposed to avoid the full identification of the Roman Catholic Church with the Church of Christ in order to dismiss the remaining theological inconsistency that somewhat downsized the ecumenical openness of the p ­ aragraph. Hence, the “medium universale salutis” or the Church of Christ, according to van Dodewaard, should be considered as “found” (invenitur) in the Ecclesia catholica. Thus, van Dodewaard proposed to delete the verb esse from the text. Together with his complaint of inconsistency, van Dodewaard also sought to refine the subsequent clause of our text, by speaking of “elementa plura veritatis et sanctificationis”, instead of merely referring to “elementa plura sanctificationis”. This epistemological widening of the notion of the elements does not come as a surprise when remembering van Dodewaard’s allies that have been mentioned earlier on in our story: the Dutch bishops Jansen and Moors, who had already brought the notion of the elementa ecclesiae into the pre-conciliar arena and had equated the concept to what they described as elementa veritatis. It refers to constitutive realities, where the very constitution of the Church is at stake and tied to the degree of “realization” of the universal Church of Christ. On this short account, we must add that all those developments went hand in hand with the insertion of the subsistit clause. The part of the sentence devoted to the elements of sanctification has now been expanded in the sense that the inclusion of the epistemological aspect has now been carried out, and the elements, which had been defined as elements of sanctity “and truth”, are found (inveniantur) outside the boundaries of the church. That is part of the genealogy of LG 8, not without interest, because it leads us to another look at the Relatio offered to explain the changes made to the text. Such reports are quite relevant for theological interpreters of Council documents and help reach a correct reading of the conciliar text. The accompanying Relatio for the 1964 schema De Ecclesia now motivated the use of subsistit in by pointing to the ecumenical awareness expressed by the notion of the elementa plura sanctificationis et veritatis. It renders clear that using inveniri twice would have been awkward, thus the wording subsistit was accepted. For the sake of consistency, so the Theological Commission argued, it reformulated the former clause ut 23  J. van Dodewaard (1913–1966) was a Dutch Catholic theologian, who became auxiliary bishop in 1958 and thereafter bishop of Haarlem from 1960 until his death. During the Council he was a member of the Theological Commission. As a professor of exegesis in the Warmond seminar he was a colleague of Willebrands.

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expressio melius concordet cum affirmatio de elementis ecclesialibus quae alibi adsunt.24 This explanation is crucial for a correct understanding of the subsistit clause, which is often detached from its broader context. Yet, the Relatio refers precisely to the necessity of interconnecting the question of the boundaries and the relationship between the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church on the one hand, with the ecumenically motivated use of the notion of the elementa ecclesiae. To a certain extent, the subsistit clause was subordinated to what follows, thus expressing the intention of the Council Fathers to properly safeguard their recognition of the existence of ecclesiality outside the boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church. That said, the subsistit clause cannot possibly be taken to signify an exclusivist position, nor can it be understood to describe the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Christ in terms of exhaustivity.

3  The Systematic Evolution: Two Post-conciliar Case Studies In the final section of this chapter I briefly exemplify the systematic evolution through two cases of “magisterial reception” during the post-­ conciliar period. Given the fact that the doctrine of the elements has been “promoted” to the level of the conciliar magisterium, what then are the implications of our understanding of the doctrine of the elements of the church for the interpretation of post-conciliar teaching? Facing this question offers us a glance at the post-conciliar modus recipiendi of the notion in twenty-first-­ century magisterial documents, especially Dominus Iesus and the 2007 Responsa regarding the nature of the church. Dominus Iesus is a declaration issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the unicity and salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the church. The declaration, signed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on 6 August 2000, came as a reaction to various theological interpretations of Vatican II’s ecclesiology. In various instances the declaration explicitly 24  Acta Synodalia III/I, 177. This has also been pointed in P. Bianchi, “Elementa ecclesiologica in constitutione conciliari ‘Lumen gentium’ Cap. I et natura iuris canonici,” in Periodica de re morali, canonica, liturgica 72 (1983): 13–51, at 34. The author, however, nowhere draws a parallel with Unitatis Redintegratio and therefore misses out on the important link between the two locations where the council adopts the notion of the elements.

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refers to Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio. Moreover, the matter of interpreting the notorious subsistit in plays a pivotal role. Underlining that Vatican II has never altered the Catholic doctrine on the matter, the document sought to explain the precise meaning of the identification of the Roman Catholic Church with the Church of Christ, an undertaking which has significant implications for defining the ecclesial character of the other Christian communities. Dominus Iesus triggered many reactions and rejections among scholars for over six years.25 DI 16 interprets Lumen Gentium’s subsistit in clause as a way to harmonize two doctrinal statements: “Verbis ‘subsistit in’ Concilium Vaticanum II duas voluit doctrinales affirmationes invicem componere: altera ex parte, Christi Ecclesiam, non  obstantibus christianorum divisionibus, solummodo in Ecclesia Catholica plene exsistere pergere; ex altera vero inveniri extra eius compaginem elementa plura sanctificationis et veritatis.”26 It is specifically in this paragraph that the declaration explicitly refers to the two conciliar statements we have studied. It is striking that Dominus Iesus begins by granting the elementa sanctificationis et veritatis a relatively “low” ecclesial status by stressing that they derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Roman Catholic Church. Next, the declaration touches upon the question of belonging/not belonging in a twofold way, acknowledging that churches that are not in perfect communion with the Catholic Church but are united by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist can rightly be considered particular churches. The affirmation that the Church of Christ “solummodo in Ecclesia catholica plene exsistere pergere” is a central statement through which Dominus Iesus offers an interpretation of the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Christ—defined by Lumen Gentium in terms of subsistence—as meaning “continues to exist fully” in the Roman Catholic Church. The affirmation in DI 16 tends toward claiming that there exists only one subsistence of the true church and implies the claim that the Council did anywhere affirm that outside the frontiers of the Catholic Church were to be found only elementa ecclesiae. This restrictive “tantummodo” is not found in the full 25  A compilation of critical Catholic reactions in the Journal of the Pontifical Academy of Theology. It was compiled by the—at that time—Secretary of the CDF Angelo Amato, “Dominus Iesus. Recezione e problematiche. Una prima rassegna,” in Pontificia Academica Theologica 1 (2001): 79–114. 26  DI 16 [emphasis added].

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text of DI 16 and 17, but it is present in footnote 56, a reference that quotes the 1985 Notification on Leonardo Boff’s book Church, Charisma and Power by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.27 In 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—at that time led by Cardinal Levada—reacted with another and a very concise document in which the old literary genre of Responsa ad quaestiones de aliquibus sententiis ad doctrinam de ecclesia pertinentibus was used. This second document was of a more restricted nature and sought to explain five particular questions raised regarding the interpretation of LG 8. Again, over the last years the latter document gave way to broad discussion, mainly on the hermeneutics of Vatican II.28 The questions listed were the following: (1) why did the council adopt subsistit instead of est; (2) what is the meaning of subsistit; (3) why did the Council apply the title of “Church” only to the Eastern communities, excluding the Reformed ones (4–5). The opening question was of a more general nature and tackled the matter of the (dis)continuity of the Council’s doctrinal statements. Striking citations can be offered from this concise document. For instance, in note 4 it affirms that the Council “exprimere voluit identitatem Ecclesiae Christi et Ecclesiae Catholicae”. While this opens further questions, the third response made clear what the line of interpretation was, affirming that in the Council “usus vocabuli retinentis [subsistit in] plenam identitatem Ecclesiae Christi et Ecclesiae Catholicae doctrinam De ecclesia non immutat”. This is a very strong statement that qualifies the identity of the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church in terms of plenitude. At this juncture the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith appeared to take the standpoint of Dominus Iesus even further by claiming the very exhaustive kind of identity that some council Fathers were steering away from.

 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 77 (1985): 756–762.  Peter De Mey, “Eine katholische Reaktion auf ‘Antworten auf Fragen zu einigen Aspekten der Lehre von der Kirche’ der römisch-katholischen Kongregation für die Glaubenslehre,” Ökumenische Rundschau 56 (2007): 567–571; Jared Wicks, “Questions and Answers on the New Responses of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” Ecumenical Trends 36 (2007): 2–8 and “Not so-fully Church,” in The Christian Century 21/124 (2007): 9–11; Gérard Remy, “L’Église du Christ et les Églises. Réflexions sur un document romain,” in Nouvelle revue théologique 130 (2008): 594–609; Marcel Sarot, “Degrees of Catholicity. Another Mark of Roman Arrogance?,” in The Catholic Church and Modernity in Europe, ed. Pancratius Cornelis Beentjes (Münster: LIT, 2008), 165–174. 27 28

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4  Concluding Remarks: Some Further Implications for Ecumenism While the notion of the elements moves from the margins of Catholic teaching to its center, this evolution went hand in hand with the “decentering” of Catholic ecclesiology, which took place at the heart, or the center, that is, in reference to the magisterial level. The notion of the elements of the church plays a key role in such a decentering of ecclesiology, albeit gradually. In the earliest phase of the doctrine’s development, the elements were not described in terms of “general” ecclesiastical values or as values belonging to the Church of Christ but rather as Roman Catholic values. At stake was the recognition of the self in the other and not that of a valorization of otherness as such. This eventually changed in the course of the debates. Indeed, it was precisely through the loosening of the bonds between the Church of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church that the possibility of “objectifying” criteria to measure the ecclesial qualities of an ecclesial body emerged. Otherwise stated, the Church of Christ, reflecting the “catholic” unity and fullness in the etymological sense of the word, was proposed as the ultimate criteria, and all churches and ecclesial communities—including the Roman Catholic Church—are to be continually confronted with it in order to determine their authenticity. The latter point is an evolution that was only reached in Catholicism during the Council, and it proved to be of central importance, since the Catholic Church is to be put under the same scrutiny as the other churches. It is only in a second movement that it be acknowledged as manifesting the fullness of ecclesial life in its visible and invisible constitution. Another implication of this decentered ecclesiology is the fact that other churches and communities are not in the first place measured against the Roman Catholic Church but to the Church of Christ. From this perspective, they are seen and recognized as containing elements of the church. Nowhere do the council documents state that the other churches and ecclesial communities contain “elements of the Roman Catholic Church”. The post-conciliar theological debate has especially focused on the question of the frontiers of the Roman Catholic Church through a profound and, more often than not, hotheaded debate on the implications of the notorious subsistit in clause in LG 8. Here we should note that the Council left the issue of identifying the Roman Catholic Church with the Church of Christ open. This historical fact certainly gives impulse to the theological work that has helped the discussion to develop. In fact, on thinking and rethinking on the subject, I notice that the contemporary

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debate on the hermeneutics of the Council tends to isolate the subsistit in clause and is in its attempt to opt either for the continuity or for the discontinuity position of a sterile nature. By re-integrating the much-debated verb into the broader context of LG 8, one becomes attentive to the continuity and discontinuity of conciliar ecclesiology. The evolution that we have underlined in this chapter reveals a gradual evolution and demonstrates how conciliar teaching did not fall out of the sky, so to speak. At the same time a real novelty is emerging here, since official magisterial teaching had picked up concepts and ideas that were previously foreign to it. Thus, one might speak of the various layers in Catholic ecclesiological discourse. Many of the theologians and scholars involved in the discourse have played their role in helping to integrate what was present in Catholic thought below the radar, being picked up in official discourse now, and thus becoming “magisterialized”. To that extent, the same conciliar doctrines are in continuity with the past. Thus, a nuanced hermeneutical approach is required and should also be applied in Vatican II studies in general. For this decentering of ecclesiology, the distinction between what is de facto and what is de iure might be useful. De iure the Roman Catholic Church says that she is the historic manifestation of the Church of Christ because she has to do so; de facto however, she does recognize the presence of ecclesiality beyond her boundaries because she also has to do so. This distinction helps us to deal with the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church on the one hand and, on the other, the full possession of them. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church might claim to possess de facto the fullness of these elements, from a quantitative approach, i.e. the hierarchy. Nonetheless, she cannot claim to possess the fullness of these ecclesial elements in a qualitative manner. From this viewpoint, she should constantly be involved in a kind of learning process, looking at how other Christian communities are intending to be the Church of Christ. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church could take a look and learn from the way the Orthodox churches understand the hierarchy. In so doing, she could eventually “complete” what might be deficiently developed in her own ecclesial tradition. We are bound to notice that the debate is ongoing. As it has taken the study and efforts of many devoted theologians inside and outside of Roman Catholicism, the Council doctrines constitute a giant step in the evolution of ecumenism. As such these doctrines, and a fortiori the doctrine of the elements, can help in the joint effort of the churches to concretely realize the vitality of the one true church in human and, of course, salvation history.

More Than an Issue of Translation: The “defectus ordinis” in Unitatis Redintegratio 22 Peter De Mey

Although the ecclesial communities separated from us lack the fullness of unity with us which flows from baptism, and although we believe they have not preserved the proper reality of the eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Orders, nevertheless when they commemorate the Lord’s death and resurrection in the Holy Supper, they profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ and await his coming in glory. For these reasons, the doctrine about the Lord’s Supper, about the other sacraments, worship, and ministry in the Church, should form subjects of dialogue. (UR 22)

P. De Mey (*) Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_4

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1   By Way of Introduction: From UR 8 to UR 22 This chapter will focus on the interpretation of a notoriously difficult line in UR 22 explaining both what Catholics are able to appreciate in the Protestant Eucharist and which aspects remain difficult for them. The line forms part of chapter three of the Decree on Ecumenism, a chapter describing the relations of the Catholic Church with both “the eastern churches” and the “separated churches and ecclesial communities in the west.” The first chapter of the decree contains the principles which Catholic specialists in ecumenism should take into account when soon after the Council they would start to become fully engaged in the ecumenical dialogues with these churches. It is followed by a chapter on the practice of ecumenism. Among the most commented lines in the second chapter are undoubtedly the lines from UR 8 dealing with communicatio in sacris, sharing in the sacramental life of other churches. The Council decided to only determine the general principles and to leave the concrete application of these principles to the local bishop.1 The text runs as follows: Yet worship in common (communicatio in sacris) is not to be considered as a means to be used indiscriminately for the restoration of unity among Christians. There are two main principles upon which the practice of such common worship depends: first, that of the unity of the Church which ought to be expressed; and second, that of the sharing in the means of grace. The expression of unity very generally forbids common worship. Grace to be obtained sometimes commends it. (UR 8)

Many Roman Catholic ecumenists would argue that as of now the first condition is not yet fulfilled, because there exists a fundamental difference between, on one hand, the Catholic and Orthodox model of unity, and, on the other hand, the Protestant one. This is, among others, the position which the current president of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch, has continued to defend since assuming his office in 2009. In the 2010 opening address of the biennial plenary 1  One gets a good overview of the redaction history of UR 8 by reading the following chapter, written by the French Augustinian Tavard, who as a peritus of the Secretariat for Christian Unity played an important role in drafting these lines. Cf. George H.  Tavard, “Praying Together: Communicatio in sacris in the Decree on Ecumenism,” in Vatican II: By Those Who Were There, ed. Alberic Stacpoole (Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press, 1986), 202–219.

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meeting of this Council, he contrasted the Protestant model of ecclesial communion, which “is a matter of pulpit and altar communion between churches with remaining different confessional traditions,” with the Catholic model of unity, for whom “the goal of ecumenism is visible unity in the communion of faith, sacraments and ecclesial ministry.”2 Many Lutherans had hoped that the 1999 Common Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification would be followed by a restoration of the communion between both churches. Once there is an agreement on those doctrinal points that are believed to be really essential for the faith—justification and sacraments—it is in their opinion possible to restore (Eucharistic) communion. For the Catholic Church, as this first principle explains, all major doctrinal difficulties need to be removed in the dialogue, before the regained unity can be celebrated in the common celebration of the Eucharist. The Council fathers, however, were also aware that in the Eucharist, Christ himself is present and gives himself and, therefore, the church does not have the right to close the way to this divine offer of grace completely. Hence the second principle of the teaching on communicatio in sacris states that “Grace to be obtained sometimes commends it.”3 After the Council, the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity explained in its 1967 Directory Concerning Ecumenical Matters: Part One that a Catholic priest should not refuse Eucharistic communion and the sacraments of 2  Kurt Cardinal Koch, “Progress in the Ecumenical Journey: The State of Ecumenism Today. Prolusio to the Plenary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, November 15, 2010,” Information Service 135 (2010), pp. 75–93, p. 81. Cf. Peter De Mey, “The Commemoration of the Reformation as the Starting Point for a Joint Declaration on Church, Eucharist and Ministry?,” Ecclesiology: the Journal for Ministry, Mission and Unity 14 (2018), 32–50, p. 34. 3  I deem it not impossible that Pope Francis alludes to this principle in Evangelii Gaudium, § 47: “The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open. One concrete sign of such openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door. There are other doors that should not be closed either. Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason. This is especially true of the sacrament which is itself “the door”: baptism. The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to consider with prudence and boldness. Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.”

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penance and anointing of the sick to non-Catholic Christians who are not having access to an ordained minister of their own confession “in danger of death or in urgent need (during persecution, in prisons).” Except in the case of Orthodox Christians, it is, however, necessary to verify whether they share the same understanding of the Eucharist.4 In their 1973 document On Admitting Other Christians to Eucharistic Communion in the Catholic Church, the Secretariat widened this possibility to situations of “grave spiritual necessity.”5 The 1993 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism contains a section on mixed marriages, in which it is mentioned that the diocesan bishop “may permit the celebration of the Eucharist for a just cause,” whereas “Eucharistic sharing can only be exceptional.”6 In 2018 the commission for ecumenism of the German bishops’ conference prepared a pastoral document (Orientierungshilfe) which was meant to assist couples living in an interdenominational marriage to form their conscience on the question of sharing in the Catholic Eucharist more regularly. The document was accepted by the plenary commission and after some interaction with Rome eventually 4  Secretariat for Christian Unity, Directory Concerning Ecumenical Matters: Part One,” § 55, in Vatican Council II. The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents. New Revised Edition, ed. Austin Flannery (Collegeville: Liturgical Press), 2014, p. 499. 5  Secretariat for Christian Unity, On Admitting Other Christians to Eucharistic Communion in the Catholic Church, 1 June 1972, ibid., p. 559: “Christians may find themselves in grave spiritual necessity and with no chance of recourse to their own community.” 6  Cf. http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/documenti/testo-in-­ inglese.html, §§ 159–160. For Thomas P. Rausch S.J., “Occasional Eucharistic Hospitality: Revisiting the Question,” Theological Studies 74 (2013), 399–419, permitting a couple in an interchurch marriage to receive Communion “in exceptional cases” already is a “generous” interpretation of Catholic teaching. Ibid., p. 414 and 418. For many German Catholic theologians Eucharistic hospitality should in a more general way be granted to such couples. Cf. already Heinrich Fries and Karl Rahner, Unity of the Churches: An Actual Possibility (Philadelphia: Fortress; New York/Ramsey: Paulist Press, 1985), p. 134: “Can it not be that in certain ecumenical groups that have been growing in faith for years, or among the confessionally mixed marriage partners who do not consider their fellowship to be the misfortune of a mixed marriage but an ecumenical opportunity and obligation, there already exists that community in faith—even with regard to the real presence of Christ in the sacrament—which is considered to be the precondition for eucharistic hospitality?” Or Otto Hermann Pesch, Katholische Dogmatik aus ökumenischen Erfahrung. Band 2: Die Geschichte Gottes mit den Menschen (Ostfildern: Grünewald, 2010), 602: “Verantwortbar ist Gemeinschaft beim Herrenmahl in der bewusst gelebten konfessionsverschiedenen Ehe und bei besonderen Gelegenheiten in interkonfessionellen Arbeitskreisen und bei seriös zusammenarbeitenden Gemeinden, zum Beispiel in ökumenischen Gemeindezentren.”

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published.7 If “in an interdenominational marriage the non-participation in the Eucharist by the Protestant wife or Protestant husband is perceived as exclusion,” then this is in the opinion of the bishops’ conference to be seen as a “grave spiritual need.”8 At the end of their document the bishops conclude: “All those in interdenominational marriages who, after having carefully examined their consciences in a spiritual conversation with their pastor/priest or another individual appointed to provide pastoral care, conclude that they affirm the faith of the Catholic Church, and must end a situation of ‘grave spiritual need’ by satisfying their longing for the Eucharist, may join the Lord’s Table in order to receive Holy Communion.”9 In Chap. 3 the general principles of UR 8 are applied in a different way to ecumenical relations with the Orthodox and with the Protestants. Before focusing on UR 22 in the next section of this chapter, it is interesting to be aware of what UR 15 has to say on communicatio in sacris with the Orthodox: These Churches, although separated from us, yet possess true sacraments, above all—by apostolic succession—the priesthood and the Eucharist whereby they are still joined to us in closest intimacy. Therefore some worship in common (communicatio in sacris), given suitable circumstances and the approval of Church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged.10 (UR 15)

7  Deutsche Bischofskonferenz, Mit Christus gehen  – die Einheit auf der Spur: Konfessionsverbindliche Ehen und gemeinsame Teilnahme an der Eucharistie (20 Februar 2018). We quote from the English working translation of this document—Walking with Christ – Tracing Unity: Interdenominational Marriages and Sharing in the Eucharist—which together with the subsequent exchange of letters between the German episcopal conference and Rome can be consulted here: https://www.dbk.de/themen/oekumene. As is explained in § 51 the document explicitly avoids the derogatory term “mixed marriages”. 8  Ibid., § 24–27. 9  Ibid., § 56. 10  The goal of the first part of chapter three was to enable fruitful ecumenical relations with these churches after the Council. Cf. Peter De Mey, “Preparing the Ground for Fruitful Dialogue with the Orthodox: An Important Motivation of the Ecumenical ‘Avant-garde’ during the Redaction History of Lumen Gentium, Orientalium Ecclesiarum and Unitatis Redintegratio,” in Le souci de toutes les Églises. Hommage à Joseph Famerée. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 314, ed. Benoît Bourgine (Leuven: Peeters, 2020), 57–85.

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The Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches Orientalium Ecclesiarum for its part is only interested in relations with individual Orthodox and Oriental Christians, and only in a very careful way opens the door toward communicatio in sacris: A mutual sharing in sacred things (communicatio in sacris), which runs counter to the unity of the Church, or which involves formal adhesion to error or the danger of aberration in the faith, of scandal and of indifferentism, is forbidden by the law of God. However, with regard to our Eastern brethren, pastoral experience shows that various circumstances affecting individuals can and ought to be taken into account, where the unity of the Church is not harmed nor are there dangers to be guarded against, but where the need of salvation and the spiritual good of souls are prime considerations. (OE 26) … In view of the principles just noted, Eastern Christians who are separated in good faith from the Catholic Church, if they are rightly disposed and make such request of their own accord, may be given the Sacraments of Penance, the Eucharist and the Anointing of the Sick. (OE 27)

2   Key Moments in the Redaction History of UR 22 2.1   Adding a Section on Relations with the Protestants in Order to Save the Draft on Ecumenism of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity The only document on ecumenism discussed in aula during the first session of the Council was the one prepared by the Oriental Commission.11 This commission was only interested in describing the relations of Eastern Catholics with individual Orthodox and Oriental Christians, and, therefore, this document was not enthusiastically received. At the end of the discussion in aula, it was decided that a mixed commission consisting of representatives from the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, the Oriental Commission, and the Theological Commission had to prepare a new draft during the intersession. The periti of the newly created Oriental Section of the Secretariat, the French Dominican Christophe-Jean Dumont and the Benedictine monk of Chevetogne Emmanuel Lanne, had drafted a chapter dealing with the relations with the Orthodox 11  See Schema decreti de Ecclesiae unitate ‘Ut omnes unum sint’, in Acta Synodalia [henceforth: AS] I/3, 528–545.

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Christians (De Ecclesiarum Orientalium peculiaris consideratio) that was meant to become the third chapter of the Decree on Ecumenism. It was discussed by the mixed commission on February 28, 1963. The draft was rejected by the representatives of the Oriental Commission, and especially by their Ukrainian Catholic secretary Welykyi. In their opinion the Council had not rejected the schema prepared by the Oriental Commission, but had only asked to revise it. They discontinued the collaboration with the Secretariat and focused on their own schema De Ecclesiis Orientalibus, of which the final part—entitled De unione christianorum Orientalium—dealt with similar questions. The Secretariat for its part saw it as their task to write their own chapter on Orthodox-Catholic relations. They offered two arguments. Without such a chapter it would seem that the Council made no distinction between Orthodox and Protestants, which would make the dialogue with the Orthodox world after the Council very difficult if not impossible. They were also convinced that both commissions had a different orientation, the Oriental Commission wanting to protect the rights of the Eastern Catholics and the Secretariat being established to promote Christian unity.12 At the start of the meeting of the Coordinating Commission on March 27, 1963, the prefect of the Oriental Commission, Cardinal Cicognani, made a plea to remove the third chapter of the draft on ecumenism because of the existing overlap with the Decree on the Oriental Churches. On March 29 the decision was made that the third chapter could only be maintained if a section on the Protestants would be added. The text of the Secretariat was prepared in three days, and on April 5, after the return of Willebrands, it was approved in a meeting of representatives of the Secretariat and the Oriental Commission under the leadership of Cardinal Cicognani. On April 22 the schema was approved by the Pope. The new section starts with a paragraph describing the “Peculiar condition of these communities” and then paragraphs focusing on “Their confession of Christ,” “Their zeal for the sacred books,” “The sacrament of baptism,” and “Life with Christ.” The paragraph on baptism stated at the 12  See for a detailed description of the difficult preparation of a revised Decree on Ecumenism during the first intersession Peter De Mey, “The Difficult Cooperation between the Secretariat for Christian Unity and the Oriental Commission in the Preparation of De Oecumenismo: December 1962–November 1963,” in ‘Res opportunae nostrae aetatis’. Studies on Vatican II Offered to M.  Lamberigts Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensum, 317, ed. Dries Bosschaert & Johan Leemans (Leuven: Peeters, 2020), 245–275.

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end that the communion among Christians who through their baptism have been incorporated into Christ tends to be completed in full Eucharistic communion. I quote from the English translation made on behalf of the observers: Baptism therefore constitutes the sacramental bond existing between all those who have received this sacrament of regeneration. But baptism, per se, is only a beginning or introduction, which is wholly directed towards the further acquisition of the fullness of life in Christ. And thus baptism requires a complete profession of faith, also a complete incorporation in the plan of salvation, as Christ himself has willed it, and finally an entire and complete insertion in Eucharistic communion.13

2.2   Reactions by Periti, Bishops, and Observers on the Second Part of Chapter Three During the plenary meeting of the Secretariat for Christian Unity from May 13–18, 1963, the members and consultants were able to share their reactions on the part of the decree that had been written without their input. Frans Thijssen deplored that the text still contained expressions that seemed to define the position of the Protestants from a position of superiority. Maurice Bévenot S.J. already proposed some ameliorations to the final lines.14 Simultaneously with the discussion of the new draft on ecumenism during the second session of the Council, the observers were invited to express their comments orally, during two of the weekly meetings with the Secretariat, but also in writing. The Reformed observer Robert McAfee Brown wrote: Throughout the description of the Protestants there is a studied lack of reference to the Lord’s Supper. If one is going to describe Protestantism, its confession of Christ, its “zeal for the Sacred Books” and so forth, such a description surely must include the central attention that is given to the Eucharist. The unity of Word and Sacrament is central to classical

 “Draft of Decree on Ecumenism,” WCC Archives, 4201.3.2.  “De oecumenismo, 14.05.1963,” 11 pp. AAV, Conc. Vat. II, b. 1432.

13 14

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Protestantism. I would think some mention of this could be made without necessarily prejudging the whole sticky problem of “validity.”15

During the third session the addition of a new paragraph on the Lord’s Supper will be motivated in the Relatio with a reference to interventions made by three Council fathers during the second session. The bishop of Crema, Franco Costa, mentioned in his written comments that most Protestants still commemorate the Lord’s Supper and that what they have maintained of the Eucharistic mystery sometimes comes close of an affirmation of the real presence of Christ.16 Archbishop Lorenz Jaeger from Paderborn had asked to say something about the fact that Lutherans and even more so Anglicans confess the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and had developed a praiseworthy Eucharistic piety. While being satisfied that the decree mentioned the presence of salvific elements with non-­ Christians, he hoped that they would not only be ascribed to individuals but even to their communities, also in the case of “Anglicans and many other Protestants.” Even if they lack “the full reality of the Eucharist, these communities show us “Eucharistic signs” and have “the genuine intention to announce the Lord’s death till he comes again.”17 The Relatio also mentions the written proposal submitted by the bishop of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Victor Joseph Reed, in the name of 5 more American bishops, to improve §§ 19–21, so that “the words of the Council would correspond more accurately to the current mindset of the Protestants.”18 2.3   The Elaboration of a Paragraph on the Protestant Eucharist During the Second Intersession In February 1964 a subcommission of the Secretariat reread all written and oral interventions by the Council fathers on the second part of chapter three and proposed some amendments to the text. The Relatio of father 15  Robert McAfee Brown, “Comments on De Oecumenismo,” UC Louvain, Fonds Moeller, n° 01950, p. 3. Cf. also Oscar Cullman, “Remarques sur le schéma De Oecumenismo,” UC Louvain, Fonds Moeller, n° 01951, p. 3: “Ne faudrait-il pas mentionner quand même nos services de Sainte-Cène?” Cf. Peter De Mey, “Non-Catholic Observers at Vatican II,” in The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II, ed. Catherine E.  Clifford & Massimo Faggioli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 475–492. 16  AS II/5, 782. 17  AS II/6, 313, oral intervention on 29.11.1963. 18  AS II/6, 394.

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Michalon dated February 24, 1964, contained a proposal for some additional lines on the Eucharist, that was meant to facilitate the discussion during the plenary meeting of the Secretariat. These lines should mention “the intention [of the Protestant Eucharist] to announce the death of the Lord till he comes, with the desire to participate in the full communion with Christ.”19 Interestingly the noun “defectus” is still missing, but Michalon wrote in a concessive subordinate clause that “they lack (deficiat eorum) the full unity with us which follows from baptism.” In the main clause three qualities of the Protestant celebration of the Lord’s Supper are mentioned which will remain in place in the final version of the text: this celebration “takes place in memory of Christ’s death and resurrection”; “they profess that it signifies the fullness of a life in communion with Christ” (the draft sent to the Council fathers will leave out the “fullness” and only speaks about “life in communion with Christ”), and “they expect his glorious coming.”20 During the plenary meeting of the Secretariat, another subordinate clause starting with “quamvis” was added. On March 4 a version was proposed, stating that these ecclesial communities “have not maintained the sacramental reality of the Eucharist (sacramentalem realitatem Ecclesiae), especially because of the absence of the ministerial priesthood. (propter defectum sacerdotii ministerialis).” This was still changed in the final version of March 7. Now the text speaks about not preserving “the full reality 19  “De Capite III. Pars II”, 24.2.1964, p. 5: “Illae communitates ecclesiales, quamvis eis deficiat eorum integra nobiscum unitas ex baptismate profluens, cum Sanctam Coenam celebrant, mortis et resurrectionis Domini memoriam facientes, plenitudinem vitae in Christi communione significare profitntur, atque gloriosum Eius adventum exspectant. Quapropter doctrine circa Coenam Domini, Cultum et Ecclesiae ministeria obiectum dialogi constituat oportet.” See AAV, Conc. Vat. II, b. 1433. This text has, according to “De Sacramento Baptismate et de Sacramento Eucharistiae”, ibid., been prepared on 15.2.1964 during a meeting of three periti: Gregory Baum, Pierre Michalon and Charles Moeller. 20  Ibid. Msgr. Willebrands, the secretary of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, had already in his allocution to the very first assembly of the Catholic Conference on Ecumenical Questions, which had taken place in Fribourg in 1952, enumerated the positive qualities that have been preserved in the Protestant Eucharist. Cf. Johannes Willebrands, Introduction à la conférence catholique œcuménique de Fribourg (Archives Willebrands Chevetogne, dossier 5), p. 3: “Les protestants ont conservé la commémoration de la Cène à laquelle ils n’attribuent plus le caractère du sacrifice et dans laquelle beaucoup entre eux nient la realis presentia. Mais ils reconnaissent en elle un instrument de salut et de l’union le plus intime avec le Christ.” For more background on this important association of Catholic ecumenists, see De Mey & Saretta Marotta, “The Catholic Conference for Ecumenical Questions,” in A History of the Desire for Christian Unity, Volume 2, ed. Luca Ferracci (Leiden: Brill, 2024) [forthcoming].

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of the Eucharist” (plenam realitatem) and about defects in “the ministerial priesthood” (propter sacramenti ordinis defectum). 2.4   Further Changes of the Paragraph as a Result of the Secretariat’s Response to the Modi Submitted During the Third Session In the Fall of ʼ64 the experts of the Secretariat had to respond to a number of written reactions to the new draft which some Council fathers had submitted in writing before the start of the third session and then through the format of submitting modi. Three interventions had proposed to remove the new paragraph on the Eucharist entirely. The secretary of the Congregation for the Religious, Archbishop Paul Philippe deemed this necessary because believers could be confused when reading that Protestants have not maintained “the complete reality of the Eucharist.” Does the text speak here about the fruits of the sacrament (res sacramenti) and thus about their incomplete communion with the Catholic Church, or does it falsely suggest that the sacrament of the Eucharist had been partially preserved with them?21 According to the Secretariat, however, the goal of the entire paragraph was to state that further dialogue on the Eucharist and those administering it remained necessary.22 In response to other modi23 the Secretariat refused to remove the word “especially” (praesertim) in the phrase “especially because the sacrament 21  AS III/2, p. 872. Philippe even quoted Edward Schillebeeckx, Le Christ sacrament de la rencontre de Dieu, Paris, Cerf, 1960, p. 234, in his intervention: “La cène ‘évangélique’, bien que n’étant pas un sacrement valide, même partiellement, est une expression quasi-­sacramentelle d’un désire eucharistique explicite, qui, en outre, aspire implicitement aux fruits véritables de l’eucharistie catholique.” 22  AS III/7, p. 694: “Omissio textus contra intentionem totius paragraphi esset, quia dialogus de Eucharistiae Sacramento ad principaliora puncta pertinet. Neque negari potest fratres separatos in cultu Sacrae Coenae revera memoriam mortis et resurrectionis Domini facere.” 23  The official report of the subcommission which had studied the submissions of the Council fathers in the Acta Synodalia does not reveal the names of those making the request. On the basis of preparatory documents that have been saved a.o. in the personal archive of the Belgian bishop De Smedt, a member of the Secretariat, we know that these requests had been made by archbishop Pietro Palazzini of the Roman Curia, the apostolic nuncio to Germany, archbishop Corrado Bafile, and the bishop of Segni, Luigi Maria Carli. Cf. Fund De Smedt, Archives Vatican II, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, n° 1296.

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of orders is lacking” for the following reasons. “Other reasons could be brought forward” why the ecclesial communities in the West have not maintained the full reality of the Eucharist, and the word also allows for exceptions, as in the case of the Old Catholics.24 The 152 Council fathers25 wondered whether these communities had not lost the reality of the Eucharist altogether and therefore had asked to remove the word “full” in “full reality.” In the words of one of the “protestants”: “Something is real or not real and we are not aware of any semi-real Eucharist. If many bishops don’t understand this word, how could the people understand it? It is a source of confusion. ‘Plena’ would only apply to the Anglicans.”26 Because the Secretariat wanted to avoid that a lot of Council fathers would vote against the entire decree, it was decided to change the passage further in two respects. They did not agree, however, with a blunt dismissal of the reality of the Protestant Eucharist: “The greatest part of the Protestants believe in some form of presence of Christ in the Eucharist,” but it is expressed in a different way than in Catholic theology.27 The proposal of one Council father to add the word “credamus” was accepted, and the deficiencies are now said to have an impact on “the full reality of the Mystery of the Eucharist.”28 Pierre Michalon, the same peritus who had been in charge in earlier revisions of this paragraph, explained in his report in preparation of the plenary meeting of the Secretariat that the insertion of “credamus,” which occurs in three more places in the first chapter of the decree, was also a way to counter the objection that the Council had 24  AS III/7, p. 695: “Dicendum est “praesertim”, quia possunt etiam aliae rationes afferri”; “Vox “praesertim” exceptionem etiam admittit.” 25  This was asked by several groups of Council fathers, e.g. by the bishop of Sigüenza Luis Alonso Muñoyerro in the name of 11 Council fathers, by the archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Rufini Jiao Santos in the name of 96 Council fathers, by the archbishop of Tunja, Ángel María Ocampo Berrio S.J. in the name of 12 Council fathers, by archbishop Casimiro Morcillo González in the name of 7 Council fathers and several others. 26  AS III/7, p.  696: “Realitas vel est vel non est nec scimus aliquam semirealem Eucharistiam. Si multi ex episcopis non intelligunt verbum istud, quomodo populus intelligere potest? Est fons confusionis. ‘Plena’ valet tantum pro anglicanis.” 27  AS III/7, p. 696: “In genere responderi potest, maiorem partem Protestantium credere in aliquam praesentiam Christi in Eucharistia, quod patet tum ex doctrina Reformatorum et ex recentioribus theologis protestantibus, tum etiam ex eorum vita spirituali et liturgica. Alio modo tamen ac catholici theologi protestantes se exprimunt.” 28  Ibid.: “Sic tollitur omne periculum ambiguitatis relate ad praesentiam realem Christi in Sacramento Eucharistiae. Textus integer sic legitur: ‘quamvis credamus illas, praesertim propter Sacramenti Ordinis defectum, plenam realitatem Mysterii eucharistici non servasse’.”

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transgressed its own intention not to make an attempt to describe the theological understanding of particular points of doctrine by the Protestants.29 Now we only share “our” Catholic assessment of the Protestant celebration of the Lord’s Supper.30 2.5   The Papal Intervention During the “Black Week” and Its Reception by the Observers Why is it stated in the very final version of the text that the Catholic Church believes it cannot recognize in the Protestant Eucharist “the authentic and full substance of the Eucharistic mystery”? This is the result of one of the well-known changes which Pope Paul VI himself had proposed after the discussion of the modi of the Council fathers had been concluded. One week before the Decree on Ecumenism would be promulgated, the Pope had asked to see the list of approved modifications and then asked his personal theologian, the Italian Dominican Mario Ciappi, who was theologically closer to the so-called minority, to propose some further modifications. A few days later the right hand of Cardinal Bea, Msgr. Willebrands, received a document on which the Pope had indicated in blue which modifications he did support and in red which modifications in his opinion better could not be inserted in the final version of the decree. The protagonists of the Secretariat were aware of a huge

 Cf. UR 19: “But since these Churches and ecclesial communities differ considerably not only from us, but also among themselves, due to their different origins and convictions in doctrine and spiritual life, the task of describing them adequately is extremely difficult; we do not propose to do it here.” 30  Cf. ‘Relatio super modos a subcommissione propositos circa capitis III partem II’, 24.10.64, as found in AAV, Conc. Vat. II, b. 1435: “Nam in n° 19, p. 22, 34–35 exprimitur propositum Ecclesias et Communates ecclesiales a nobis seiunctas non describendi. In hoc autem n° 22, de facto profertur aliqua descriptio et iudicium quoddam de illis, scilicet circa plenam Eucharistiae realitatem non servatam. Esset melius affirmare nos, secundam fidem nostram, credere hanc plenam realitatem apud illas non adesse.” The modus approved by Michalon had been submitted by bishop Gérard-Maurice-Eugène Huyghe, the bishop of Arras, who was a Sulpician like himself. 29

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difficulty:31 if the desire of the Pope was not met, the decree maybe would not be promulgated; if the list of the Pope would be accepted entirely, at the moment of the final vote, many Council fathers would perhaps express their dissatisfaction with a negative vote. A compromise was found in accepting modifications which were mostly stylistic in nature. Whereas the draft available at the start of the session expressed its doubts whether the ecclesial communities in the West have preserved “the full reality of the Eucharist” (plenam realitatem Eucharistiae), Ciappi now proposes to speak about “the authentic and full truth of the Eucharistic mystery” (genuinam et integram veritatem Mysterii Eucharistici). The document of Ciappi also gives the rationale for the proposed change, which, according to the Italian Church historian Mauro Velato, almost seems to derive from a contemporary handbook of apologetics: “Generally, the Protestants deny the real presence” and one can doubt whether they would recognize that the Eucharist is “a true sacrifice, appropriately called a propitiatory one.”32 Willebrands objected against the terminology of truth and by way of comprise accepted the modification of Ciappi after substituting “realitatem” to “veritatem”. The Pope, however, continued to raise difficulties, now because “realitatem” would be poor Latin. A specialist in ecclesiastical Latin had to be called to help who confirmed this and proposed “substantiam” instead. 31  As appears from the Council diary of Msgr. Willebrands, the first reaction of Cardinal Bea was very harsh. He believed the Pope could not ignore the decision taken by the Council by approving the modi. “When he does not like particular expressions, he has to swallow them. [“Er muss Sie einfach schlucken.”]” After the end of the session, Cardinal Bea would defend the papal intervention in response to a critical letter by the German Lutheran observer Edmund Schlink: “Die Veränderungen im Oekumenismus-Schema konnten nicht früher gemacht worden als sie gemacht worden: denn das Schema ist erst am 21.XI (Freitag) verteilt worden. Der Hl. Vater hat es vielleicht einen Tag vorher gehabt, konnte es aber sicher nicht sofort genauer durchsehen. Anderseits hat er das Recht, seine Wünsche geltend zu machen, da ER est ist, die die Dekrete definitiv approbieren muss (entsprechend der Konzilsordnung). … Dass die Schemata so spät verteilt wurden, lag nur daran, dass unser Sekretariat mit der Überarbeitung nicht früher fertig sein konnte. Hier handelt es sich also absolut nicht um “kuriale Maschinationen”, sondern um objective Schwierigkeiten.” Letter Bea-Schlink 24.12.1964, Fund Schlink, n° 1665, as quoted in Mauro Velati, “L’ecumenismo al concilio: Paolo VI e l’approvazione di Unitatis redintegratio,” in Cristianesimo nella Storia 27 (2005), 427–476, p. 461. 32  Ibid., p. 456 in reference to Willebrands, “Ultimi emendamenti: Storia delle vicende dal 14 al 20 novembre 1964,” AAV, Conc. Vat. II, b. 1435, fasc. 6, p. 6: “I Protestanti, generalmente, negano la presenza reale e nessuno di esse ammetti che l’Eucarestia sia sacrificio vero e propria, anche propiziatorio.”

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On November 19, 1964, the Council fathers not only learnt that the Decree on Religious Liberty would not be promulgated during the Third Session, but also received the list of papal modifications for the first time. In the afternoon, during the final meeting with the observers, meant to study the Council’s draft on mission, the Lutheran exegete and guest of the Council, Oscar Cullmann, expressed his concern about the papal intervention, but Willebrands was able to convince them of their sincere intentions, as becomes clear from the following passage in the diary of the representative of the International Congregationalist Council, Reformed theologian Douglas Horton: Bishop Willebrands’ reply left us with wet eyes. He too was sorry that the change had been made. (…) In the midst of the present strained circumstances, in which misunderstandings could so easily develop, he hoped that we would look past the temporary setbacks to the great gains that had already been established in the field of ecumenicity and which were registered in many paragraphs of the schema; and then, still speaking in French in response to Dr. Cullmann, he said the equivalent for “Don’t give up us!” This became suddenly a moment of rededication. We observers saw, as by a flash of light, where the knife cut deepest—in the red flesh of the Secretariat. These men, dedicated to church unity, had unexpectedly had their plans scotched by brethren of their own household.33

After reading the proofs of the Decree on Ecumenism, the Pope made known a last time to Willebrands that he would still welcome three final small modifications of the text, including the substitution of “veritatem” to “substantiam,” which Willebrands refused. Since the Pope this time left the final choice to Willebrands, the term “substantiam” remained unchanged. In his commentary on Unitatis Redintegratio Jochen Hilberath notes the affinity of “substance” to “transubstantiation” and of “reality” to “real presence.” In his opinion, the Council fathers were aware that in most Protestant churches the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist

33  Douglas Horton, Vatican Diary 1964: A Protestant Observes the Third Session of Vatican Council II, Philadelphia, PA—Boston, MA, United Church Press, 1965, p. 187.

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was recognized, while the doctrine of transubstantiation was rejected.34 For the Lutheran observer Edmund Schlink, however, the conclusion of the Catholic Church is simply wrong in view of the Lutheran understanding of the real presence.35 2.6   Other Elements and Passages Shedding Light on the Interpretation of the Word “Defectus” In order to find out how to interpret the precise meaning of the word “defectus,” it is necessary to study the Relatio justifying the new addition to the second part of Chapter III, which states that they “had to point to an essential deficiency (deficientiam essentialem) in the celebration of the Eucharist with the communities in the West.”36 A Relatio explains why the redaction commission found a change of words necessary and how the Council fathers had to understand these words. They based their votes not 34  Jochen Hilberath, “Theologischer Kommentar zum Dekret über den Ökumenismus Unitatis redintegratio,” in Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil, ed. Peter Hünermann und Jochen Hilberath (Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder, 2005), p. 189: “Während realitas eine zu schnelle Assoziation zu Realpräsenz fordert, lässt substantia an transsubstantion denken.” Cf. Johannes Feiner, “Commentary on the Decree on Ecumenism,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler 5 vols. (New York: Herder & Herder, 1968), vol. II, p. 154: “The expression points to the fact that in the Protestant Lord’s Supper the specific sacramental presence of Christ which is described in the Catholic Church by the dogma of the Real Presence of Christ and of Transubstantiation is not brought about.” 35  Edmund Schlink, “Das Dekret über den Oekumenismus”, in George A. Lindbeck (ed.), Dialog unterwegs: Eine evangelische Bestandsaufnahme zum Konzil (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965), 197–235, p. 225: “Was soll die Kirche der lutherischen Reformation von den Freundlichkeiten in den Aussagen über die Reformationskirchen halten, wenn ihr dort gleichzeitig bestritten wird, im Abendmahl Christi Leib und Blut zu empfangen? Mit welchem Recht urteilt das Konzil, daβ hier ‘die ursprüngliche und vollständige Wirklichkeit (substantia) des eucharistischen Mysteriums nicht gewahrt ist’ (22), wenngleich die evangelisch-­lutherische Kirche die wahre und substantiale Präsenz des Leibes und Blutes Christi im Abendmahl bekennt?” For a detailed analysis of the 46th report on the Council by Schlink, see Margarethe Hopf, Ein Osservatore Romano für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland: Der Konzilsbeobachter Edmund Schlink im Spannungsfeld der Interessen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht—Brill, 2022), 280–292. 36  AS III/2, p. 344 (part of the ‘Relatio circa rationem qua schema elaboratum est’): “Quia plures Patres aliquam mentionem facere volunt de Eucharistia, novum incisum compositum est in quo, post deficientiam essentialem in Eucharistiae celebratione apud Communitates occidentiales enuntiatam, indicatur voluntas earum significandi plenam cum Christo communionem nec non annuntiandi mortem Domini donec veniat.”

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only on the letter of the text but also on the interpretation provided by these Relationes. I find it very important that the Relatio speaks about “an essential deficiency” in the Protestant Eucharist, even if of course this “essential deficiency” can still be the absence of the ordained ministry.37 While working on UR 22, the Secretariat for Christian Unity may also have been aware of decisions they had taken in the redaction of other lines of the decree. The new version that was discussed during the second session had dealt in the second paragraph of the opening chapter with the relations of the separated brethren to the Catholic Church.38 It was said that “the separated churches and communities themselves are by no means stripped of significance and weight in the mystery of salvation.” In a written intervention, the bishop of Chiapas, Samuel Ruiz García, had complained that the text presented the separations that had occurred in history almost as the result of “a natural phenomenon” for which both sides had to be blamed.39 The auxiliary bishop of Valencia, Rafael González Moralejo reminded the Council in his speech on November 26, 1963, about the indefectibility of the church.40 The Secretariat felt bound to listen to such remarks and decided to insert the subordinate clause “though we believe they suffer from the defects already mentioned.”41 In the Spring of 1964, one thus has inserted twice the word “defectus” in texts dealing with the churches and ecclesial communities issued from the Reformation. Also in UR 3, however, it is unclear whether “defectus illas” refers to imperfections or elements that are lacking. 37  Willebrands, an important eye-witness of the work within the Secretariat, explains the deficiencies in greater detail in a private note from November 17, 1964. See Quelques explications au sujet du Schema Decreti De Oecumenismo (AAV, Conc. Vat. II, b. 1435, fasc. 6): “Les mots ‘propter Sacramentum ordinis defectum’ indiquent clairement ce qui manque. Ces mots sont même assez durs pour les protestants. Sans aucune doute, les protestants ont conservé quelque chose. Dans la célébration du culte, ils accomplissent le rite extérieur du ‘memoriale Domini’ et à cette occasion ils font une communion spirituelle dans leur prière et expriment l’attente du Seigneur. Beaucoup d’entre eux croient à la présence réelle, bien que leur doctrine ne soit pas claire et bien que cette réalité ne soit pas présente, précisément, ‘propter defectum Sacramentum Ordinis’. Ils n’ont pas conservé la pleine réalité du Mystère de l’Eucharistie, mais il en ont conservé quelques éléments.” 38  After the insertion of a Foreword in the second intersession, this paragraph will become UR 3. 39  AS II/5, p. 812. 40  AS II/6, p. 58. 41  The final line in UR 3 thus reads: “Proinde ipsae ecclesiae et communicates seiunctae, etsi defectus illas pati credimus, nequaquam in mysterio salutis significatione et pondere exutae sunt.”

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For some Council fathers, this modification in UR 3 was not enough. Four fathers wanted to use stronger words than “defectus”; non-Catholic readers had to be reminded that they lacked “necessary means for salvation.” By not saying this one could give the false impression that one could find salvation outside the Catholic Church. The formulation had to be aligned to the clear statement that was found a few lines later: “For it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help towards salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained” (UR 3). For the members of the Secretariat, however, it was enough that the necessity of “the communion with the Catholic Church in order to obtain the grace of Christ and salvation” was mentioned once in the same context. Because their previous addition was believed to be theologically correct the modus was not accepted.42 In response to the request to emphasize that members of such churches and ecclesial communities due to the presence of such “defectus” run the risk to lose eternal life, the Secretariat patiently explained that the key message of this section should focus on what these communities have in common with us in view of salvation and that some Catholics even run a greater danger in this regard.43 The comparison between this line of UR 3 and UR 22 is, however, also useful in another sense. Just as in a number of other places in the Decree on Ecumenism, the Council speaks about “separated churches and communities” here, because it wants to stress the significance for the salvation of their members of them all. UR 22 only speaks about “the ecclesial communities separated from us.” According to Jérôme Hamer, who was acting as a peritus for the Secretariat during the Council, the Council only saw “defectus ordinis” with the Protestant communities, not with the Old Catholic Church. It also wanted to avoid having to explain how there can still exist “Churches, in the theological sense of the term, where the sacrament of Holy Orders is lacking.”44 42  AS III/7, p. 35: “Cum neque discrepantia cum contextu neque error in texto nostro detegi queat, non est ratio mutandi eum. Necessitas communionis cum Ecclesia catholica ad gratiam Christi salutem obtinendam sufficienter indicatur in toto contextu.” 43  AS III/7, p. 36: “In hac pericope agitur de mediis, quae aliis nobiscum communia sunt et ad salutem conducunt, non de defectibus aliarum communitatum describendis. Ceteroquin catholici quoquo non eximuntur ab omni periculo, praesertim quia ab iis plus exigitur; quibus plus datum est.” 44  Jérôme Hamer, “Il Vaticano II e i ministeri della comunità protestanti”, in L’ecclesiología dal Vaticano I al Vaticano II, ed. Facoltà teologicà interregionale Milano (Brescia: Editrice La Scuola, 1973, 225–237, p. 230): “… se cioè ci siano Chiese, nel senso teologico del termine, là dove manca il sacramento dell’Ordine.”

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In the draft of the Decree on Ecumenism that was discussed during the second session, n° 19, the introduction of the second part of chapter three, ended as follows: “But on account of the diversity of their origin, their doctrine and spiritual life, those Communities still differ among themselves in no small ways; yet one must not forget that even in parts of the West there are Communities that also rejoice in the means of salvation deriving from a valid priesthood.” The Secretariat decided, as mentioned in the Relatio accompanying the next draft, to accept the objections of two council fathers, the secretary of the Congregation for the Religious, Archbishop Paul Philippe, and bishop Paul Yoshigoro Taguchi of Osaka, Japan, who both were wondering whether these lines could not be applied to the priesthood of the Anglicans and thus were not better removed. Yoshigoro made the suggestion to add a reference to the bull Apostolicae Curae of Pope Leo XIII in footnote and provide its right explanation, not wanting to exclude, however, that the draft “did not deal directly with the validity of ordinations but with some special form of continuity that is at work in the priesthood of the Anglican Church.”45 During the same debate on the Decree on Ecumenism, the bishop of Port Elizabeth, South-­ Africa, Ernest Arthur Green, for his part had pleaded to reopen the discussion on the validity of the Anglican orders. He was aware that many Catholics would claim that the issue found its “final solution” in Apostolicae Curae, but should one not “consider the new ecumenical situation of today, in which a dialogue could take place as never before from Church to Church?”46 In light of the attention to Apostolicae Curae in the debate on UR 19, it is remarkable that the final version of UR 22 quotes the exact words of Apostolicae Curae when writing its line on “defectus ordinis” without adding a reference to this document in footnote.47 A lot of 45  See AS III/3, p. 733 for Philippe’s written intervention and AS II/5, p. 909 for the oral intervention of Yoshigoro on 20.11.1963. 46  See AS II/6, p. 341 for his oral intervention on 2.12.1963. 47  Cf. AAS 29 (1896–97), 193–203: “Quod enim apud Anglos, aliquanto postquam ab unitatis christianae centro abscessum est, novus plane ritus ordinibus sacris conferendis, sub rege Eduardo VI, fuit publice inductus; defecisse idcirco verum Ordinis sacramentum, quale Christus instituit, simulque hierarchicam successionem, iam tenuit communis sententia, quam non semel Ecclesiae acta et constans disciplina firmarunt.” Also according to Angelo Maffeis, “sullo sfondo dell’affermazione conciliare circa il defectus sacramenti ordinis si può probabilmente riconoscere il giudizio sugli ordini anglicani formulato da Leone XIII nella lettera apostolica Apostolicae curae (1896).” Cf. Commentario ai documenti del Vaticano II a cura di Serena Noceti – Roberto Repole. 3. Orientalium Ecclesiarum – Unitatis Redintegratio (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 2019), p. 407.

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Council fathers may have voted in favor of the decree because they recognized this terminology.48

3  The Wirkungsgeschichte of This Line: More Than an Issue of Translation In the last encyclical by Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia (2003), words of praise for the progress made in the ecumenical dialogue go hand in hand with a repetition of UR 22, including a questionable translation of defectus ordinis: The Catholic Church’s teaching on the relationship between priestly ministry and the Eucharist and her teaching on the Eucharistic Sacrifice have both been the subject in recent decades of a fruitful dialogue in the area of ecumenism. We must give thanks to the Blessed Trinity for the significant progress and convergence achieved in this regard, which lead us to hope one day for a full sharing of faith. Nonetheless, the observations of the Council concerning the Ecclesial Communities which arose in the West from the sixteenth century onwards and are separated from the Catholic Church remain fully pertinent: “The Ecclesial Communities separated from us lack that fullness of unity with us which should flow from Baptism, and we believe that especially because of the lack of the sacrament of Orders they have not preserved the genuine and total reality of the Eucharistic mystery. Nevertheless, when they commemorate the Lord’s death and resurrection in the Holy Supper, they profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ and they await his coming in glory.” (§ 30)

The comments by Lutheran theologian Theo Dieter on this passage seem most pertinent: “How do both statements fit together? One should

48   Cf. Hilberath, “Theologischer Kommentar zum Dekret über den Ökumenismus Unitatis redintegratio,” p.  190: “Es spricht vieles dafür, dass die in den offiziellen bzw. offiziösen Textausgaben gebrauchte Übersetzung „Fehlen“ eher die Auffassung der Konzilsväter wiedergibt.”

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not praise the fruitfulness of the dialogues, when they have not entailed a change in the situation, according to the judgment of the magisterium.”49 The Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church (2007) aggravated matters. In response to the question, “Why do the texts of the Council and those of the Magisterium since the Council not use the title of ‘Church’ with regard to those Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century?” the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated: According to Catholic doctrine, these Communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called “Churches” in the proper sense.50

One has the impression that the Latin word “defectus” has been deliberately translated as “absence” in all available translations of this document as are found on the Vatican website.

49   Theodor Dieter, “40 Jahre Unitatis redintegratio: Aufbruch und Grenzen”, in Materialdienst des Konfessionskundlichen Instituts Bensheim 55 (2004): 108: “Gleichwohl zitiert der Papst in seiner Enzyklika “Ecclesia de Eucharistia” (2003) die erwähnte Stelle aus dem Dekret und versieht sie mit der Bemerkung, diese “Beobachtung” bleibe “zur Zeit” “vollkommen zutreffend”, und dies, obwohl er zuvor festgestellt hat, die Probleme Priesteramt und Eucharistie und eucharistisches Opfer seien “in den letzten Jahrzehnten Gegenstand des fruchtbaren Dialogs gewesen”, und obwohl er “der Allerheiligsten Dreifaltigkeit für bedeutsame Fortschritte und Annäherungen dankt, die uns auf eine Zukunft in voller Glaubensgemeinschaft hoffen lassen” (Nr. 30). Wie soll beides zusammen passen? Man braucht Dialoge nicht als fruchtbar zu loben, wenn sie nach dem Urteil des Lehramts keine Veränderung der Lage mit sich gebracht haben.” 50  Cf. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_ cfaith_doc_20070629_responsa-­quaestiones_en.html. Cardinal Walter Kasper continues, however, to defend a different reading of the conciliar teaching. Cf. Ulrich Wilckens & Walter Kasper, Weckruf Ökumene: was die Einheit der Christen voranbringt (Freiburg-Basel-­ Wien: Herder, 2017), 41: “Das II. Vatikanische Konzil spricht bei den evangelischen Kirchen von einem defectus ordinis. Damit ist nach der vorherrschenden Auslegung des Konzils nicht das vollständige Fehlen gemeint, sondern in Mangel des vollen Zeichens der Apostolizität im Sinn der apostolischen Sukzession im Bischofsamt.”

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Yet, in 2004, The U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue had unambiguously stated the following in its important statement on ecclesiology The Church as Koinonia of Salvation: Ecumenical understanding would be furthered if in official Roman Catholic documents Vatican II’s reference to defectus in the sacrament of Order among “ecclesial communities” were translated by such words as “defect” or “deficiency.” Translations of defectus as “lack” misleadingly imply the simple absence of the reality of ordination. Translation as “defect” or “deficiency” would be consistent with the sort of real but imperfect recognition of ministries proposed above.51

In the Declaration on the Way: Church, Ministry, and Eucharist (2015), which is the work of a mixed study group of Lutherans and Roman Catholics in the US, this negative reaction against defective interpretations of the defectus ordinis is repeated: “This perception of a defectus, when understood as ‘lack’ or ‘absence,’ clearly stands in the way of recognition of Lutheran ordained ministry.”52 In a plenary lecture pronounced at the annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America in June 2007, the then still Lutheran theologian Michael Root stated that we should cherish the ambiguity of the terminology in the Council documents, but also stop interpreting defectus as lack or absence: The implications of the judgment embodied in the translation of defectus are difficult to overestimate. If in a certain “ecclesial community” there is a defective sacrament of order, one could then conclude that in that community there is a real but defective realization of the one special priesthood, the one office of ministry of the one church. Such a recognition both opens up paths to real, but limited forms of common life in the present, and opens up paths to the repair of that defect in the future. If in an ecclesial community, the sacrament of order is simply absent, however, then the conclusion would 51  Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue in the United States, The Church as Koinonia of Salvation: Its Structures and Ministries (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, 2005), § 108. I appreciate that the same recommendation has been repeated in Kurt Kardinal Koch, “Auf dem Weg zur Kirchengemeinschaft. Welche Chance hat eine gemeinsame Erklärung zu Kirche, Eucharistie und Amt?,” in Catholica 69 (2015), 77–94, at 85 n. 21: “Bei einer adäquateren Übersetzung ist freilich nicht vom ‚Fehlen des Weihesakramentes‘, sondern von einem ‘Mangel’ die Rede.” 52  Ibid., 93.

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seem to follow (and is apparently drawn by official Catholic teaching) that the special priesthood constituted by that sacrament is also absent.53

4  Should the Defectus Ordinis Statement of UR 22 Not Be Revisited in Light of 60 Years of Ecumenical Dialogues? One has to ask, in the light of the growing recognition by a number of Protestant Churches of the necessity of some form of episcopal ministry, whether there is still reason to refuse Eucharistic communion with them? Is it necessary to require of other churches to subscribe to the same theology of ordained ministry as is taught in the Roman Catholic Church? Is not also in these issues a “differentiated consensus” necessary?54 The document Reformation 1517–2017: Ecumenical Perspectives (2014), prepared by the Ökumenische Arbeitskreis evangelischer und katholischer Theologen (ÖAK) under the direction of Dorothea Sattler and Volker Leppin, said it very sharply: After all the efforts towards convergence in the past few decades, it seems increasingly unbearable that Protestant and Catholic Christians cannot celebrate the Eucharist together. Ecumenical discussion on this subject have made it clear that it is not a different understanding of the Eucharist which is preventing the joint celebration, but rather the differences in the understanding of churches and ministry—subject of controversy since the 16th century—that are standing in the way.55

53  Michael Root, “Bishops, Ministry, and Unity of the Church in Ecumenical Dialogue: Deadlock, Breakthrough, or Both?,” in Catholic Theological Society of America Proceedings 62 (2007): 19–35, at 30. 54  In 2017 Communion in Growth: Declaration on the Church, Eucharist, and Ministry. A Report from the Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue Commission for Finland (Helsinki: Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland—Catholic Church in Finland, 2017), came to the following conclusion: “It seems that the Second Vatican Council’s understanding of the ordained ministry as lacking the fullness of a sacramental sign (defectus sacramenti ordinis) can also be questioned on the basis of the differentiated consensus we have attained. It therefore seems plausible to suggest that the Catholic Church might eventually re-evaluate her understanding of the Lutheran ministry in the light of the results of this dialogue. This would be a significant further step towards full communion” (§ 305). 55  Reformation 1517–2017: Ökumenische Perspektiven. Für den Ökumenischen Arbeitskreis evangelische rund katholischer Theologen herausgegeben von Dorothea Sattler und Volker Leppin (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder & Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 110.

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In September 2019 the ÖAK launched the proposal Together at the Table of the Lord.56 According to this group of theologians sufficient ecumenical progress has been made between Catholics and Protestants so that individual Christians from both sides can be allowed to attend the Eucharist in each other’s community. They especially wanted to alleviate the pain of couples belonging to different churches, who no longer accept that the theological difficulties brought forward by specialists prevent them from “expressing their common Christian conviction by celebrating the Holy Communion/Eucharist together.” According to the theologians of this group their cry should be interpreted as an expression of the sensus fidelium. Moreover, a lot of ecumenical progress has been made between Catholics and Protestants in recent decades: we recognize each other’s baptism; the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification implies the recognition that Catholics and Protestants have remained faithful to the apostolic tradition; for both traditions ordination is a “divine vocation and institution” and they also recognize the need for a “supra-regional episkopé.” The remaining differences pertain not so much to the understanding of the Eucharist but to the problems one partner has with the validity of the Protestant ordinations. The authors of the text deplore that the apostolic succession seems to have become the sole criterion for some Catholics and would hope that one day the leaders of our churches would be ready to make a “spiritual judgement of the valency of ministries.” With a clear criticism of those holding on to an unbridgeable difference between the Catholic and the Protestant model of unity, the authors also wonder “to what extent church communion necessitates agreement on all the questions of the order of ministry.” Since there was a lot of liturgical diversity in the celebrations of the Christian communities in the apostolic times, it should be allowed to Catholics and Protestants to occasionally celebrate the Eucharist in another tradition. This will even help them knowing the other tradition better, as already the Decree on Ecumenism had asked for. This document was followed by a remarkable set of exchanges between the local Church and Rome on this matter. Since Rome was afraid that the German bishops’ conference would allow mutual sharing of the Eucharist during the Ökumenische Kirchentag in Frankfurt, the head of the 56  Cf. Gemeinsam am Tisch des Herrn/Together at the Lord’s Table. Ein Votum des Ökumenischen Arbeitskreises evangelischer und katholischer Theologen (Freiburg: Herder / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020).

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Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith expressed his concerns in September 2020 in a private letter to the chair of this bishops’ conference, bishop Georg Bätzing, accompanied by the doctrinal remarks that were the result of an investigation by this congregation.57 In a different debate Pope Francis had felt obliged to write a letter to the German Catholics in June 2019 reminding them that participation in a synodal process requires a sensus Ecclesiae.58 The core theological problem for the CDF is the way the document dealt with the relationship between the Eucharist and the church: “The repeated thesis that Christ is the sole host of the Eucharist and it is not up to the Church to determine criteria for admission seems to establish a separation between Christ and the Church, which cannot be accepted by Catholic theology since Christ has entrusted the Church in a special way with the sacramental mediation.”59 For the CDF such problems are better not discussed at local level, and if this ever would become the position of the Catholic Church it would imply the end of the Orthodox-Catholic theological dialogue. The clash between Catholic ecumenism in Rome and Germany has continued since then. Soon after the publication of the CDF document, Cardinal Koch, the head of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, welcomed this initiative,60 whereas the responsible bishop for ecumenism within the German bishops’ conference, Gerhard Feige deplored that “once again dogmatic and canonical walls are being raised. How long does one actually want to proceed in this way without ecumenism degenerating into a glass bead game without consequences?”61 In December 2020 the Ökumenische Arbeitskreis published a lengthy critique of the Roman 57  https://www.katholisch.de/ar tikel/27140-dbk-ver oef fentlicht-vatikanschreiben-zu-mahlgemeinschafts-votum. 58  Schreiben von Papst Franziskus an das pilgernde Volk Gottes in Deutschland. This letter was published on the symbolic date of 29 June 2019 in response to the joint plan of the German bishops’ conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics to engage in a synodal process. Cf. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/de/letters/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20190629_lettera-fedeligermania.html. 59  This reaction, however, seems to neglect the second principle of UR 8 a bit: “… Grace to be obtained sometimes commends it.” 60  https://www.herder.de/hk/kirche/kardinal-kurt-koch-zur-entscheidung-derglaubenskongregation-nach-diesem-spruch-aus-­­r om-koennen-deutschlands-bischoefenicht-zur-tagesordnung-uebergehen/. 61  Norbert Zonker, “Dogmatische und kirchenrechtliche Mauern werden höher gezogen,” https://www.domradio.de/themen/%C3%B6kumene/2020-10-27/dogmatische-undkirchenrechtliche-mauern-werden-hoeher-gezogen-oekumene-bischof-­feige-zum-streit-um.

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document.62 Unfortunately not for the first time ecumenists need to deplore that a Vatican document judges an ecumenical document exclusively on the basis of its own doctrinal tradition. Apparently the attention to the role of the Spirit in their document wasn’t worth any comment from Rome. One wonders why Rome continues to see episcopal succession as an indispensable condition for the mutual recognition of ministries without taking contemporary studies into account that offer a much richer account of apostolicity. The letter by Cardinal Koch to the Protestant co-chair of the group, Volker Leppin, from February 2021 forms a sad climax in this non-­ dialogue between Rome and Germany in ecumenicis.63 Koch blamed the Protestant partner to have been dishonest when speaking about the rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants in both Eucharist and ministry. Rome cannot allow Catholics to participate in a Protestant Eucharist as long as there are member churches of EKD that allow non-­ baptized to receive communion or non-ordained ministers to exceptionally preside Holy Supper. When criticizing “the discrepancies between the so-called ecumenical consensus and the actual reality in the Protestant churches,” however, the Cardinal had better realized that the same is often true in the Catholic Church as well. One can only conclude from this difficult conversation that, if local ecumenical dialogues continue to seek ways to counter the conviction that the Grundverschiedenheit between Catholics and Protestants is unbridgeable, the Vatican, however, seems to reinforce the fundamental difference.

5  Conclusion The complex phrase in UR 22 praising the qualities of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in Protestant communities while also expressing its deficiencies according to Catholic belief was added to the Decree on Ecumenism after the second session of the Second Vatican Council. An 62  https://www.katholisch.de/artikel/28468-oekumenischer-ak-veroeffentlichtkritik-an-glaubenskongregation. 63  http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-­ occidentale/luterani/other-documents-and-events/open-letter-cardinal-koch0.html The letter has been published, together with an overview of the history of the debate, as “Open Letter from Cardinal Kurt Koch to Professor Dr Volker Leppin (8 February 2021),” in Acta Oecumenica. Information Service of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Rome, 2021, n° 3, 250–255.

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important goal of this chapter is to reconstruct the redaction history of this phrase by making use of archival sources and by paying attention to other relevant passages in the decree (UR 3 and UR 19). Many Council fathers will have been aware that the famous words “propter sacramenti ordinis defectum” repeat the Catholic Church’s teaching on Anglican orders in Apostolicae Curae and, therefore, have interpreted “defectus” as absence. The official Relatio prepared by the Secretariat for Christian Unity, however, explicitly speaks about “deficiencies.” If the post-conciliar magisterium sometimes continues to translate “defectus” as absence, several dialogue commissions and theologians have urged in their statements to cease translating the word as “absence.” The problem at stake, however, is more than an issue of translation. In their reflections on UR 8 (“communicatio in sacris”) and UR 22, the episcopal conference of Germany has encouraged couples living in an interdenominational marriage in an Orientierungshilfe (2018) to discern whether a more regular access to Holy Communion is not necessary for them to solve a grave spiritual need. In the statement Together at the Table of the Lord (2019) prepared by a group of German Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians, it is argued that in light of the ecumenical progress made during last decades, individual Christians from both sides can be allowed to attend the Eucharist in each other’s community. If local ecumenical dialogues continue to seek ways to counter the conviction that the Grundverschiedenheit between Catholics and Protestants is unbridgeable, the Vatican, however, seems to reinforce the fundamental difference.

The Ecclesiological Legacy of Vatican II: A Response to Bradford E. Hinze, Sandra Arenas, and Peter De Mey Miriam Haar

The three preceding papers clearly articulate “hard sayings” that have been left behind by the Second Vatican Council: triumphalist temptations and the question of the sinfulness of the church, the recognition of ecclesiality outside the Roman Catholic Church, and the understanding and the consequences of the “defectus ordinis”. These issues comprise key and divisive questions in ecumenical dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Churches of the Reformation. These points, which remain today as stumbling blocks in ecumenical dialogue, could only be progressed because of the achievements of the Second Vatican Council. These points of disagreement should therefore not obscure the fact that the

M. Haar (*) Konfessionskundliches Institut Bensheim/Institute for Ecumenical Studies and Research, Bensheim, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_5

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Council fathers accomplished great ecumenical achievements in Unitatis Redintegratio and Lumen Gentium. The task of this response is to address these “hard sayings” from a Lutheran perspective. In doing so, this response aims at promoting ecumenical dialogue on these issues between the Roman Catholic Church and the Churches of the Reformation, with a particular focus on Lutheran Churches.1

1   Triumphalist Temptations and the Sinfulness of the Church Bradford E. Hinze firstly explores “hard sayings” expressed in UR 4. The Decree on Ecumenism provides a breakthrough in moving beyond an ecclesiology of polemics by promoting ecumenical dialogue and ecumenism, but not without simultaneously holding onto the claim that “the Catholic Church has been endowed with all divinely revealed truth and with all means of grace” (UR 4). The stumbling block of this passage is best expressed in the conviction that the Catholic Church has received “all divinely revealed truth” and is fulfilling its mission by mediating “all means of grace” successfully with good order and efficiency.2 Hinze asks whether there would be a triumphalist temptation in the claim that “all divinely revealed truth” and “all means of grace” had been bestowed on the Roman Catholic Church. From the perspective of other churches, such a claim can be understood as entailing triumphalist tendencies. Yet, in Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis offers an alternative to triumphalism when stating that in ecumenical relations “we can learn so much from one another” and that “[t]hrough an exchange of gifts, the Spirit can lead us ever more fully into truth and goodness”.3 In what could be viewed as an antithesis to this claim, Francis draws the conclusion that “through 1  Accordingly, this chapter does not deal with issues that represent “hard sayings” in relation to Orthodox Churches, as these would be different issues. This would go beyond the scope of this response. 2  Cf. Bradford E. Hinze, “Triumphalist Temptations and the Sinfulness of the Church”, in this volume, section 1. 3  See Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, apostolic exhortation on the proclamation of the gospel in today’s world (Vatican, 2013), http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_ exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium. html, 246.

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an exchange of gifts, the Spirit can lead us ever more fully into truth and goodness”. Acknowledgments such as this have the potential to start paving the way toward an antidote to triumphalism. In the second part of his paper Hinze addresses the sinfulness of the Church. According to LG 8, the church is “at once holy and always in need of purification [and thus] follows the path of penance and renewal”. Hinze points out that the documents were clear: there are sinful individuals in the church, but the church as a collective is objectively holy. These statements were met with severe criticism, for example, from Kristen E. Skydsgaard, Professor for Systematic Theology at the University of Copenhagen, who represented the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) at all four sessions of the Council. Skydsgaard considered this as “trivialisation of history” which has serious ecclesiological consequences. According to Skydsgaard, the Constitution on the Church ignores the sin of the church. He stresses that “[t]he history of the Church is also a hidden, dark and incomprehensible history. In the Church, too, there is a dimension of guilt, of apostasy and of God’s wrath, which affects his people.”4 The Council speaks of “weaknesses and shadows”, but Skydsgaard asked why the Council was “afraid to speak openly and honestly about the sin of the church”.5 Martin Luther opposed the tradition of his church.6 In Disputatio de potestate concilii Luther claimed that a synod of bishops, a council, and even the Pope could err. He emphasized that a synod of bishops and a council could err although they are bound to the confession, even if their work is based on the invocation of the Holy Spirit. They could err as other people can err in their public ministry as well as in private matters. The fact

4  Cf. “Skydsgaard hält diese ‘Verharmlosung der Geschichte’ für ekklesiologisch folgenschwer. Die Kirchenkonstitution blende die Sünde der Kirche aus. ‘Auch die Geschichte der Kirche ist eine verborgene, dunkle und unbegreifliche Geschichte. Auch in der Kirche gibt es eine Dimension der Schuld, des Abfalls und des Zornes Gottes, der sein Volk trifft. […] Zwar wird von Schwächen und Schatten gesprochen. Warum aber hat man Angst, hier ganz offen und ehrlich von der Sünde der Kirche zu reden?’” (Margarethe Hopf, “Dialog unterwegs— Stimmen evangelischer Beobachter zur dritten Session des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils (1964),” Una Sancta 69, no. 2 (2014): 115). 5  Cf. Ibidem, 115. 6   Cf. Martin Schloemann, “Luther und die Ekklesiologie: ‘Von den Konziliis und Kirchen’”, Lutherjahrbuch 52 (1985): 278–282.

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that decisions have been taken by the majority of the members of the synod, would be no guarantee for the truthfulness of these decisions.7 For the Protestant Churches that emerged from the Reformation, the Church is a creatura verbi, created by the Word of God. Faith recognizes the invisible Church of Jesus Christ as present in the diversity of churches wherever fundamental acts of the proclamation of the Gospel in Word and Sacrament are present. The Church as a creatura verbi cannot simply be equated with one of the historical churches or with them as a whole. The Church is, on the one hand, the object of faith, while, on the other hand, it is simultaneously a visible community that can be experienced in the multitude of historical forms. The visible church in the form of today’s church has the mission to bear witness to its original nature in its shape and life. According to the insight of the Reformers, it is of fundamental importance to distinguish the work of God and the work of people in the life of the church. The shape of our churches today, their orders, their expressions, all of this is not sacred, but historically changeable, provisional, and fallible.8 Thus, from a Lutheran perspective, it is challenging to understand how magisterial documents understand the church as “the people of God”, but still differentiate between the church and its members when referring to sin, which in biblical understanding is understood as fundamental difference of humans from God.9 Hinze suggests that the growing realization of the sinfulness of the Church as a sinful social structure has raised the specter, and, at times, the 7   Cf. Martin Luther, “Disputatio de potestate concilii,” (Lateinisch-deutsche Studienausgabe Bd. 3: Die Kirche und ihre Ämter), ed. G. Wartenberg & M. Beyer (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2009), 683: “Eine Bischofsversammlung bzw. ein Konzil können […] irren, so wie andere Menschen, sei es in einem öffentlichen Amt, sei es privat.” Cf. Harding Meyer, “Autorität und Synodalität nach evangelischem Verständnis,” Autorität und Synodalität. Eine interdisziplinäre und interkonfessionelle Umschau nach ökumenischen Chancen und ekklesiologischen Desideraten, ed. Christoph Böttigheimer & Johannes Hofman (Frankfurt a. M.: Verlag Otto Lembeck 2008), 359. 8  Cf. Gunther Wenz, “Von der Kirche. Grundzüge der Ekklesiologie im Anschluß an die Confessio Augustana,” in Lutherische Identität. Studien zum Erbe der Wittenberger Reformation Band 2, ed. Gunther Wenz (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus GmbH, 2002), 287–355. 9  Cf. Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), Sünde, Schuld und Vergebung aus Sicht evangelischer Anthropologie. Ein Grundlagentext des Rates der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2020), https://www.ekd.de/ekd_de/ ds_doc/suende_schuld_EVA_2020.pdf.

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menacing presence, of triumphalism in the Catholic Church. He accentuates Pope Francis’s contribution to the doctrine of the sinfulness of the church: Francis’s prophetic posture toward social sin in society, his call for an ongoing examination of conscience, and for reforming ecclesial structures to overcome problems of triumphalism associated with centralization and clericalism. Francis’s reform agenda provides a central orientation for how he addresses the triumphalist temptation and the sinfulness of the church. That his multi-level reform agenda is motivated by advancing a missionary spirit is ecumenically promising because mission is at the heart of the church.10 The relation of “church and sin” is also a contentious issue in multilateral dialogue. The basic difference in understanding the relation between church and sin is well expressed in the Faith & Order document The Church. Towards a Common Vision11 which states: As a pilgrim community the Church contends with the reality of sin. Ecumenical dialogue has shown that there are deep, commonly-held convictions behind what have sometimes been seen as conflicting views concerning the relation between the Church’s holiness and human sin. There are significant differences in the way in which Christians articulate these common convictions. For some, their tradition affirms that the Church is sinless since, being the body of the sinless Christ, it cannot sin. Others consider that it is appropriate to refer to the Church as sinning, since sin may become systemic so as to affect the institution of the Church itself and, although sin is in contradiction to the true identity of the Church, it is nonetheless real. The different ways in which various communities understand sin itself, whether primarily as moral imperfection or primarily as a break in relationship, as well as whether and how sin may be systemic, can also have an impact upon this question.12 10  Cf. also the change of title from “purpose” to “mission” in the development of the discussion on ecumenical ecclesiology within the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. When receiving the responses from the churches to The Nature and Purpose of the Church: A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement. Faith and Order Paper 181 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1998), one clear request was to intensify and strengthen the issue of mission. The importance of this aspect was underlined by a change in title, corresponding to the change in content which was then published as The Nature and Mission of the Church: A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement. Faith and Order Paper, 198 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2005). 11  The Church. Towards a Common Vision. Faith and Order Paper, 214 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2013). 12  Ibid., § 35.

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Although the Catholic Church and the Churches of the Reformation still find themselves on different sides of the debate,13 Francis’s contribution and his reform agenda foster ecumenical rapprochement in these questions. From a Lutheran perspective, the “synodal process”14 in the Roman Catholic Church is to be welcomed as this process aims at strengthening the idea of representation of the faithful which might lead to countering authoritarianism and triumphalism. Yet, the “Synodaler Weg” (“Synodal Pathway”) of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany received severe criticism from the Curia, especially from Cardinal Ladaria (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) and Cardinal Ouellet (Dicastery for Bishops).15 However, even this very progressive form of the worldwide synodal process does not include a fundamental discussion of the role of office of the

13  Cf. the responses of various Lutheran Churches and the Roman Catholic Church in Churches Respond to The Church. Towards a Common Vision, Vol. 1, Faith and Order Paper 231 and Vol. 2, Faith and Order Paper 232 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2021); and Georgios D. Martzelos, “The Theme of Sin in Relation to the Church as Such,” in Common Threads. Key Themes from Responses to The Church. Towards a Common Vision. Faith and Order Paper, 233 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2021), 200–213. 14  Cf. the official aim: “The aim of this synodal process is not to provide a temporary or one-time experience of synodality, but rather to provide an opportunity for the entire People of God to discern together how to move forward on the path towards being a more synodal Church in the long-term” (https://www.synod.va/en/what-is-the-synod-21-24/ about.html). 15  Cf. Wortlaut: Kardinal Ladaria zum Synodalen Weg, 18.12.2022 (https://www.vaticannews.va/de/vatikan/news/2022-11/wortlaut-ladaria-kardinal-deutsch-bischofskonferenzsynodal-weg.html). Cf. Wortlaut: Kardinal Quellet zum Synodalen Weg, 18.11.2022 (https://www.vaticannews.va/de/vatikan/news/2022-11/wortlaut-ouellet-synodalerweg-deutsch-kirche-bischoefe-kurie.html). Cf. Ludwig Ring-Eifel, “Vatikan veröffentlicht scharfe Kritik am Synodalen Weg,” KNA aktuell 227 (24. November 2022): 47. Cf. also the introductory speech of bishop Bätzing, chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference on 18.11.2022: https://www.dbk.de/fileadmin/redaktion/diverse_downloads/ presse_2022/2022-186b-Ad-limina-Interdikasterielles-Treffen-Einfuehrung-Bi.Baetzing.pdf.

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ordained ministry.16 The synodal process does not necessarily directly lead to ecumenical rapprochement between the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Churches, but it might indirectly lead to better ecumenical cooperation in everyday ecumenism when a less hierarchical organizational culture is established and lay people, especially women, are given more responsibility.

2  Ecclesiality Outside Its Boundaries The second paper by Sandra Arenas addresses the “Roman Catholic recognition of ecclesiality outside its boundaries”. Her focus is on UR 3 and LG 8: the theology of the “elements of the church” as expressed in these two interconnected documents and the famous phrase of the “subsistit in”. She explains the “hard saying” left behind by Vatican II when outlining that the Church of Christ subsists in the world of today in its institutional fullness in the Roman Catholic Church, although “elements of the church” are acknowledged in other churches and ecclesial communities. This touches upon the core of the matter which is still today the ecclesiological debate on the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Christ, as well as the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the other churches or ecclesial communities.17 She asks the crucial question: “What does the Roman Catholic recognition of ecclesiality outside its boundaries actually mean?” When exploring this question, Arenas carefully traces the complex development of the doctrinal concept of the “elementa ecclesiae” and shows the double shift that occurred, which involved a historical evolution as well as a systematic one, from the sixteenth-century Calvinist notion of 16  Cf. the evaluation of the “Synodal Process” of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany by the Lutheran theologian Johannes Wischmeyer, observer of the EKD (Evangelical Church in Germany [Lutheran/Reformed/United]) of the “Synodal Way”: “Obgleich das sakramentale Weiheamt, vor allem der Priester und Bischöfe, erkennbar im Zentrum der verhandelten Problemkonstellationen steht—Machtmissbrauch und sexualisierte Gewalt, Klerikalismus, Frauenfeindlichkeit und Exklusion alternativer Lebensformen—, bleibt vor allem die grundsätzliche Diskussion der Amtsfrage ausgeklammert. Das sakramentale Kirchenverständnis bleibt vorausgesetzt. Dass ein Gremium neuen Typs wie der ‘Synodale Weg’, das ‘ Laien’ einschließt, Anteil gewinnen sollte an der Repräsentanz der Kirche und an ihrem Lehramt, wird über Umwege insinuiert, aber nicht selbstbewusst behauptet” (https:// zeitzeichen.net/node/9550). 17  Cf. in this volume: Sandra Arenas, “Roman Catholic Recognition of Ecclesiality outside Its Boundaries. What Does It Mean?”, introduction.

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the vestigia ecclesiae to the reception of this notion in twentieth-century ecumenical milieus and the conciliar reception.18 It is enlightening to see how the notion of the vestigia ecclesiae has its roots in the Reformed tradition and stems from a historical context of church splits, yet then developed into a concept that has the potential to foster ecumenical rapprochement. The Council Fathers decided to take the notion of ­“vestigia” away, but used “elementa” because the term “vestigia” had been seriously questioned over its apparent Calvinist content. Although some Protestant observers at the Second Vatican Council were critical of the doctrine of “the elements of the church”, it must be remembered that the idea of the vestigia ecclesia came, as Arenas illustrates, from Reformed theology. Interestingly, the phrase on the elementa was not an object of further discussion, but changes were made in the clause concerning the identification and relationship between the Catholic Church and the Church of Christ.19 From a Lutheran perspective, it cannot be overstated how highly valuable it is that in the Second Vatican Council the Roman Catholic Church did not limit the Church of Christ to itself in an exclusive way, but that it introduced the doctrine of the “elements of the church” and the “subsistit in” clause, and thus recognized ecclesiality outside its boundaries. It is noteworthy that official magisterial teaching picked up concepts and ideas that were previously foreign to it and unheard of in Catholic magisterial documents. Pope John Paul II extended the idea of UR 3 further when he taught that “the one Church of Christ is effectively present (literally: has a praesentia efficiens) in them”.20 Still, the “stumbling block” remains: UR 3 closes with a frank and honest statement that, notwithstanding all of these positive affirmations, from the point of view of the Catholic faith, other communities, in varying degrees according to the condition of each one, lack something of the unity and means of salvation which Christ intended for his church.

 Ibid.  Cf. the development of article eight of the schema De Ecclesia (Arenas, ibid., section 2) and the epistemological widening of the notion of the elements (Arenas, ibid.). 20  Geoffrey Wainwright, “Unitatis Redintegratio in a Protestant Perspective,” Pro Ecclesia 15 (2006): 172–173. Cf. also William Henn, “At the heart of Unitatis Redintegratio. Unity in diversity,” Gregorianum 88 (2007): 336. 18 19

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UR 3 mentions a list of “elements of the church”: “the written word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, and visible elements”. From a Lutheran perspective, one must ask whether these “objectifying” criteria which have been introduced to measure the ecclesial qualities of an ecclesial body are really “objective”. Although the first few criteria especially express some basic characteristics of Christian ecclesiology, the phrase “visible elements” might imply certain Roman Catholic characteristics of understanding the church. The Lutheran Confessio Augustana VII also mentions “criteria” and “assess” the “presence” of the church when it says: “The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered”21 (CA VII). Having “‘objectifying’ criteria” to measure the ecclesial qualities of an ecclesial body is definitely a landmark in ecclesiological development.22 Yet, the “objectifying” criteria to measure the ecclesial qualities of an ecclesial body are not neutral, as each ecclesial body tends to measure others with its own criteria. Therefore, many questions remain, such as: how to deal with the fact that churches have different criteria of “measuring” ecclesiality? When is an “element of the church” sufficiently present in a church in order to be acknowledged as actually “being present”? How much diversity can exist regarding the understanding and expression of the elementa ecclesiae? With the doctrine of the “elements of the church” a possibility emerged that makes it possible for the Roman Catholic Church to measure the ecclesial qualities of an ecclesial body, but what else is needed in order to recognize an ecclesial body as a church?

21  Confessio Augustana VII: “Also they teach that one holy Church is to continue forever. The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered. And to the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. Nor is it necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies, instituted by men, should be everywhere alike. As Paul says: One faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, etc. Eph. 4, 5. 6.” (“The Augsburg Confession [1530],” in The Book of Concord. The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 43). 22   Cf. the development of finding criteria for apostolicity, in The Lutheran World Federation/Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), The Apostolicity of the Church. Study Document of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity (Minneapolis, MN: Lutheran University Press, 2006).

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Does the introduction of a list of “elements of the church” not run the danger of leading to a very formal ecclesiology? An ecclesiology that thinks quantitatively, that is very structural, and that might lead to a box-ticking exercise when measuring the ecclesiality of other churches. Thus, by measuring ecclesial quality, do we not run the danger of becoming not “faith-­ checkers” as Pope Francis said,23 but rather “ecclesiality checkers”? Arenas points out very clearly that Vatican II speaks of the elements of the Church of Christ, and that it is the Church of Christ that reflects the “catholic” unity and fullness in the etymological sense of the word, and that all churches and ecclesial communities are measured against the Church of Christ in order to determine their authenticity, including the Roman Catholic Church.24 Yet, there is still debate about the characteristics of the “Church of Christ”. Similarly, when LG 8 describes the elementa ecclesiae as “forces impelling toward catholic unity”, the question remains what exactly must be agreed upon in order to reach catholic unity and what unity, or even visible unity, entails. In light of these open questions, the distinction Arenas introduces between what is de facto and what is de iure is very helpful, because it fosters ecumenical rapprochement.25 This distinction is also useful regarding the interpretation of the “subsistit in” as proposed by Dominus Iesus (2000) and the Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church (2007). Arenas suggests that the Roman Catholic Church should “constantly be involved in a kind of learning process, looking at how other Christian communities are intending to be the Church of Christ”.26 While this should be done by all churches, Roman Catholic theologians and church leaders do intentionally take up this task during the synodal process when

 Cf. https://catholicherald.co.uk/gods-plan-is-to-unite-all-humanity-says-pope/.  Arenas, “Roman Catholic Recognition,” 47–48. 25  Ibid., 48: “For this de-centering of ecclesiology, the distinction between what is de facto and what is de iure might be useful. De iure the Roman Catholic Church says that she is the historic manifestation of the Church of Christ, that is because she has to do so; de facto however, she does recognise the presence of ecclesiality beyond her boundaries, because she also has to do so.” 26  Ibid., 48. 23 24

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learning from other Christian traditions about various ways of expressing synodality.27

3   The Debate on the “Defectus Ordinis” in Unitatis Redintegratio 22 The stumbling blocks mentioned by Arenas are closely linked to those Peter De Mey discusses in his paper: the first issue, “communicatio in sacris”, and the second issue, which is at the heart of the question of intercommunion, the “defectus ordinis”.28 The challenging points which are used to argue why receiving Holy Communion for Catholics and Protestants in each other’s churches is not permissible are found in UR 22 which states that the ecclesial communities which are separated from the Catholic Church “have not retained the authentic and full reality of the Eucharistic mystery, especially because the sacrament of order is lacking”. De Mey skillfully describes the development of the draft on ecumenism, especially the redaction history of UR 22, including the parts on the Protestants, illustrating that the focus was first on “its confession of Christ, its zeal for the Sacred Books”,29 but that the mentioning of the Holy Supper was missing. From a Lutheran point of view, the latter is surprising as Confessio Augustana emphasizes the unity of Word and Sacrament. During the third session a new paragraph on the Lord’s Supper was added (cf. the Relatio). By describing carefully how the noun “defectus” came into the text, how the phrase about the assessment of the validity of the Protestant Eucharist has developed during the Council, and how it is related to the lack of the sacrament of orders, De Mey gives insights into

27  Cf. examples for the efforts to learn from the Orthodox tradition (International Ecumenical Conference “Listening to the East”—Synodality in Oriental Orthodox Church Traditions, Pontifical University St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome, Nov 25–26, 2022 (https:// www.pro-oriente.at/termine/international-conference-synodality-oriental-traditions)) or from the Anglican tradition on synodality (Symposium on Synodality, Centro Pro Unione and Anglican Centre in Rome, 14.10.2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPd6gLSDBo); cf. also Miriam Haar, “Synodalität in den anglikanischen Kirchen: Gegenseitige Bereicherung,” Herder Korrespondenz 4 (2022): 30–32. 28  Cf. De Mey, “More than an Issue of Translation: The ‘defectus ordinis’ in Unitatis Redintegratio 22”, in this volume, 50–54. 29  Ibid., 55. See also the criticism of the Reformed observer Robert McAfee Brown, ibid., n. 15.

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the course of the debate at the Council which might open possible avenues for ecumenical rapprochement.30 The very final version of the text which states that the Catholic Church believes it cannot recognize in the Protestant Eucharist “the authentic and full substance of the Eucharistic ministry” was met with criticism by the Protestant theologian Edmund Schlink, who was observer for the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) at the Council, as he was convinced that the conclusion of the Catholic Church was wrong in view of the Lutheran understanding of the real presence.31 From a Lutheran point of view, it is of crucial importance how the term “defectus” which was inserted twice in UR 3 and UR 22 regarding the celebration of the Eucharist can be interpreted. De Mey points out very clearly the questionable translation of defectus ordinis as “lack” and as “absence” as in the translations of the 2007 document Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church which are available on the Vatican website.32 He illustrates that, however, the problem at stake is more than an issue of translation. However, if the “defectus” is translated as “defect” or “deficiency” as suggested by the US Lutheran–Roman Catholic agreed statement The Church as Koinonia of Salvation: Its Structures and Ministries (2004),33 this translation can further ecumenical dialogue on the ordained ministry. Part of the Wirkungsgeschichte of the phrase “defectus ordinis” can be found in ecumenical dialogue: a lot has happened in ecumenical relations since these famous lines from UR 22 were issued. Although it is impossible to discuss all developments in Roman Catholic–Lutheran dialogue on this matter, I would like to highlight three recent international dialogues because they contribute significantly to the question that is at the heart of the debate on the ordained ministry and encourage churches to build on the achievements of these dialogues, as well as one national dialogue in Germany.  Ibid., 55–68.  Cf. Margarethe Hopf, Ein Osservatore Romano für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland: Der Konzilsbeobachter Edmund Schlink im Spannungsfeld der Interessen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht—Brill, 2022), 280–292. 32  Cf. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_ cfaith_doc_20070629_responsa-quaestiones_en.html. 33  Randall R.  Lee & Jeffrey Gros, FSC (eds.), The Church as Koinonia of Salvation: Its Structures and Ministries (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2005). 30 31

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In the document The Apostolicity of the Church (TAC)34 from 2006 the Lutheran–Roman Catholic Commission on Unity reached a differentiated consensus on apostolicity. The most divisive issues among the remaining differences relate to “Apostolic Succession and Ordained Ministry” (Part 3). TAC states: “At issue is apostolic succession in episcopal office”.35 Future dialogue must explore whether TAC provides enough common ground for a differentiated consensus on ministry, especially on the episcopal ministry.36 In the paragraphs on “Differences in understanding the ministry”,37 the document of the International Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue From Conflict to Communion (2013) outlines the remaining differences regarding “The episcopacy”,38 “Priesthood”,39 “Fullness of sacramental sign”,40 and “Worldwide ministry”.41 This document repeats the same phrases that TAC had already quoted from the 2004 US dialogue The Church as Koinonia of Salvation. They all  state  that “[f]or Catholics, Lutheran ordinations lack a fullness of sacramental sign” and continue with the same quote that in Catholic doctrine, “the practice and doctrine of apostolic succession in the episcopate is, together with the threefold ministry, part of the complete structure of the church. This succession is realized in a corporate manner as bishops are taken into the college of 34  The Lutheran World Federation/Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, The Apostolicity of the Church. Study Document of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity (Minneapolis, MN: Lutheran University Press, 2006). 35  TAC, § 283. 36  Cf. Gerard Kelly, “Episkope: A Recent Study of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue in Australia,” One in Christ 44 (2010). Cf. the discussion in Walter Kasper, Harvesting the Fruits: Basic Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue (London/New York: Continuum, 2009). And the reactions to Kasper, e.g., by Jared Wicks (cf. Jared Wicks, “Harvesting the Fruits: Taking Stock of Catholic-Reformation Dialogues and Charting New Directions,” Ecumenical Trends 39 (2010): 149–152.) and William Rusch (cf. William G. Rusch, “A Lutheran’s Perspective on Harvesting the Fruits” in Reception of the Harvest Project of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Ecumenical Trends 40, Special Issue (2011): 4–5.) 37  The Lutheran World Federation/The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, From Conflict to Communion. Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017. Report of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt/Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2013) (FCTC), §§ 187–192. 38  Ibid., §§ 187–189. 39  Ibid., § 190. 40  Ibid., § 191. 41  Ibid., § 192.

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Catholic bishops and thereby have the power to ordain. Therefore, it is also Catholic doctrine that in Lutheran churches the sacramental sign of ordination is not fully present because those who ordain do not act in communion with the Catholic episcopal college. Therefore, the Second Vatican Council speaks of a defectus sacramenti ordinis (UR 22) in these churches”.42 Thus, despite the progress that has been made, the International Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue continues to repeat the very same phrase of Vatican II, the “defectus sacramenti ordinis (UR 22)”, which is translated as “lack” into English but described as “not fully present” in the same paragraph. Yet, From Conflict to Communion states at the end of its chapter on “Ministry”43: “In dialogue it has often been noted that the relationship of bishops and presbyters at the beginning of the sixteenth century was not understood as it was later by the Second Vatican Council. Presbyteral ordination at the time of the Reformation should therefore be considered with reference to the conditions of that period. It is also significant that the tasks of Catholic and Lutheran officeholders have broadly corresponded to one another.”44 Given these difficulties the most recent report of the Fifth Phase of the Lutheran–Roman Catholic Commission on Unity “Baptism and Growth in Communion”45 (2022) takes a different approach and proposes an entirely new paradigm for understanding church. The document which was prepared for over seven years was studied and received by the LWF’s governing Council in 2019, while the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith have expressed concerns and described the report as “an open-ended study document not yet ready for reception”. It is thus the first document in over fifty years of Lutheran–Catholic dialogue that was not “approved” by the Vatican. There was a very critical commentary written on the Catholic side46 to  Ibid., § 191.  Ibid., §§ 61–71. 44  Ibid., § 71. 45  The Lutheran World Federation/The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Baptism and Growth in Communion. Report of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, 2022, https://www.lutheranworld.org/news/lutheran-catholic-report-baptismand-growth-communion. 46  Wolfgang Klausnitzer, Commentary on the Catholic-Lutheran Study Document “Baptism and Growth in Communion”, http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-occidentale/luterani/dialogo/documenti-di-dialogo/de1.html. 42 43

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which the Joint Commission wrote a very powerful response. Curiously, because of this tension, it might become one of the most read and studied documents of the Joint Commission history. De Mey closes his article with a highly relevant question: “Should the Defectus ordinis Statement of UR 22 not be Revisited in the Light of 60 Years of Ecumenical Dialogues?”47 I would encourage and welcome such an undertaking. When doing so, it might be helpful to pay attention to proposals from theologians such as Otto-Herrmann Pesch (Roman Catholic) or Gunther Wenz (Lutheran). Pesch states that “[i]f a church has a regional ministry that—in order to demonstrate the catholicity of the church—exercises episkopé and ordination, then, an ‘episcopal constitution’ is given in principle. In that case, the Roman Catholic Church can recognize such kind of ministry also in a non-Catholic Church without hesitation, even if this is a church borne out of the Reformation. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church can recognize this church as Church in the proper sense.”48 Similarly, Wenz proposes that it should be possible to reach a differentiated consensus on the relation of the presbyterate and the episcopate. This would impact the traditional controversies on historical succession which then no longer would be a hindrance for Eucharistic hospitality.49 A recent ecumenical document that draws practical consequences from such kind of theological insights is the proposal Together at the Lord’s

 De Mey, “More than an Issue of Translation,” 71.  Translation by M. Haar, cf. Otto-Herrmann Pesch, “Hermeneutik des Ämterwandels? Kleine Ausarbeitung einer Frage”, in Kirche in ökumenischer Perspektive. Festschrift für Walter Kasper zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Peter Walter & Klaus Krämer (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2003), 417–438, at 434: “Wenn in der—einer—Kirche ein übergemeindliches Amt und darüber hinaus zur Demonstration der Katholizität der Kirche Lehrüberwachung und Ordination vornimmt, dann ist ‘bischöfliche Verfassung’ ihrem Grundsinn nach gegeben. Und dann kann die römisch-katholische Kirche ohne Bedenken ein solches Amt auch in einer nicht-katholischen Kirche, also in einer Kirche der Reformation anerkennen und damit diese Kirche als ‘Kirche im eigentlichen Sinne’.” Cf. also the three volumes Das kirchliche Amt in apostolischer Nachfolge. I. Grundlagen und Grundfragen, ed. Theodor Schneider and Gunther Wenz (2004), and II. Ursprünge und Wandlungen (2006) and III. Verständigung und Differenzen, ed. Dorothea Sattler and Gunther Wenz (Freiburg: Herder/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), 2008. 49  Cf. Gunther Wenz, “Evangelische Katholizität. Ökumenische Implikationen reformatorischer Ekklesiologie,” Una Sancta 69 (2014): 98–109, especially 100–101. 47 48

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table.50 It was prepared by the Joint Working Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians (ÖAK) in Germany under the direction of Dorothea Sattler (Roman Catholic) und Volker Leppin and published in September 2019.51 The document argues that sufficient ecumenical progress has been made between Catholics and Protestants so that individual Christians from both sides can be admitted to receive Eucharist in each other’s Church. The proposal was very much welcomed by Catholics and Protestants in Germany and supported from church leaders and Christians on both sides alike.52 Yet, the text received criticism from the Vatican which sparked an intense debate between various offices and representatives of the Vatican and the German Bishops’ Conference as De Mey describes. After the reaction from ÖAK (6 January 2021),53 Cardinal Koch sent an open letter to

50  Cf. Gemeinsam am Tisch des Herrn/Together at the Lord’s table. Ein Votum des Ökumenischen Arbeitskreises evangelischer und katholischer Theologen (Freiburg: Herder/ Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020). Cf. also previous work on the question of Eucharistic hospitality: Cf. thesis 7.3 of the manifest Abendmahlsgemeinschaft ist möglich. Thesen zur Eucharistischen Gastfreundschaft published in 2003 by the Centre d’Etudes Œcuméniques de Strasbourg, the Institut für Ökumenische Forschung in Tübingen and the Konfessionskundliches Institut (Bensheim): “Trotz weiter bestehender Gegensätze in der Amtsfrage ist heute eine Annäherung im Grundsätzlichen erreicht, die eucharistische Gastfreundschaft ermöglicht.” See also Jochen Hilberath, Jetzt ist die Zeit: Ungeduldige ökumenische Zwischenrufe (Ostfildern: Matthias Grünewald, 2010), 196–199. 51  The ÖAK is not only a group of academic theologians with academic leadership; its two co-chairs are always bishops/church leaders: Dr. h.c. Hans-Christian Schad, former church president of the Protestant Church of Palatine, and bishop Georg Bätzing, bishop of Limburg and chairperson of the German Bishops’ Conference. 52  Cf., e.g., https://bistumlimburg.de/beitrag/gemeinsam-am-tisch-des-herrn/; https://konfessionskundliches-institut.de/allgemein/stellungnahme-zum-text-gemeinsam-am-tisch-des-herrn/. Cf. also the Statement of the Council of the EKD on Together at the Lord’s table: “Stellungnahme des Rates der EKD zum Votum des Ökumenischen Arbeitskreises ‘Gemeinsam am Tisch des Herrnʼ”, cf. https://www.ekd.de/stellungnahmerat-ekd-votum-oeak-53856.htm https://www.ekd.de/wechselseitige-abendmahlsteilnahme-evangelisch-katholisch-49580.htm; https://www.ekhn.de/aktuell/detailmagazin/ news/oekumenischer-arbeitskreis-stellt-neue-studie-zum-abendmahl-vor.html; https:// www.zentrum-oekumene.de/fileadmin/redaktion/Kirchen_und_internationale_ G e m e i n d e n / H i n f % C 3 % B C h r u n g _ z u m _ Te x t _ G e m e i n s a m _ a m _ T i s c h _ d e s _ Herrn%E2%80%9C.pdf. 53  Cf. https://www.uni-muenster.de/imperia/md/content/fb2/zentraleseiten/aktuelles/stellungnahme.oakzula.6.1.2021.pdf.

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Leppin (8 February 2021).54 In this letter Koch blamed the Protestants for having been dishonest as, for example, according to their website, the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau (EKHN), a member Church of the EKD, admits non-baptized to the Holy Communion which calls the supposed link between baptism and Eucharist into question. In reaction to this, the EKHN has quickly added a statement on their website (on 10 February 2021) referring to the “Lebensordnung der EKHN” and pointing out that participation in the Holy Communion normally requires baptism and being a member of the Protestant Church or of another Church with which they share pulpit and table fellowship. As it is Jesus Christ himself who invites to the table, the EKHN tries to explain why it is possible that in individual cases for pastoral reasons Holy Communion can be administered to unbaptized people.55 The EKHN stresses that this is not a legally binding admission of the unbaptized, but a willingness not to exclude them from the Holy Communion in exceptional cases. In this controversy, Koch rightly points to open questions regarding the practice of celebrating Holy Communion in Protestant Churches, yet, in my opinion these open questions as such do not undermine the basic ecumenical consensus that has been reached in Together at the Lord’s table.56 His letter gives the impression that he underestimates the urgency for such a step in Germany, but also the impact of the large numbers of interconfessional marriages and families in Germany on the ecclesial life of both churches. The debate also shows that Protestant Churches in Germany should learn to explain their doctrinal reasoning better and should not only have their own members and secular people in mind when taking decisions but consider the ecumenical implications of their decisions even more than before. The awareness must grow that ecumenical progress requires learning and metanoia also from the Protestant side. Ecumenism is “costly”

54  Cf. http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/news/2021/202102-08-open-letter-cardinal-koch.html. 55  Cf. https://www.ekhn.de/glaube/gottesdienst/abendmahl.html. Cf. the reaction of the Protestant Church of Hesse and Nassau to Cardinal Koch’s criticism: https://www. evangelisch.de/inhalte/182589/16-02-2021/abendmahls-debatte-landeskirche-hessennassau-weist-kritik-zurueck. 56  Cf. the interview with Dr. h.c. Christian Schad, the former church president of the Protestant Church of Palatine and Protestant chairperson of the ÖAK: https://www.kirchenbote-online.de/artikel/detailansicht/news/gemeinsam-am-tisch-des-herrn.

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not only “kostbar” (costly in the sense of precious), but “es kostet auch” (costly in the sense of painful).57 In Together at the Lord’s table, the authors wonder to what extent church communion necessitates agreement on all the questions of the order of ministry. This question has been asked again and again in Lutheran—Roman Catholic dialogue. In the background lies the different understanding of unity and the differences regarding the criteria what unity requires. The very basic ecumenical question is still: how much agreement is necessary for Eucharistic hospitality? What does it mean when different from the satis est in the Confessio Augustana, for Catholics “all major doctrinal differences need to be removed in the dialogue, before the regained unity can be celebrated sacramentally in the common celebration of the Eucharist”?58 What differences are to be regarded as “major doctrinal differences”? Certainly, “major doctrinal differences” cannot man all doctrinal differences. De Mey also mentions the different understandings of unity and refers to Cardinal Koch’s understanding of Christian unity.59 Although Koch contrasts the Protestant model of ecclesial communion with the Catholic model of unity, one needs to remember that despite the Leuenberg model of church fellowship which Koch has in mind when referring to the Protestant model of ecclesial communion, the international Lutheran– Roman Catholic dialogue has described its ultimate goal as “visible unity” for decades.60 In From Conflict to Communion (2013), where the 57  Cf. the first report “Costly Unity” (1993) of the Costly Studies which was jointly prepared by the Commission on Faith and Order and the Programme Unit III Justice, Peace and Creation of the WCC (Koinonia and Justice, Peace and Creation: Costly Unity). Presentations and Reports from the Word Council of Churches’ Consultation in Ronde, Denmark, February 1993 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1993). 58  Cf. Peter De Mey, “More than an Issue of Translation,” p. 51. 59  Koch’s view of Christian unity is also expressed in the presentation that was delivered on his behalf at the Lambeth Conference in August 2022, cf. “What Unity do we Christians Seek? Reflections on the goal of the ecumenical movement from a Catholic perspective. Statement at the plenary on ‘Christian Unity’ at the Lambeth Conference, 4 August 2022” (http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/cardinal-koch/2022/saluts%2 D%2Dmessages%2D%2Dautres/address-at-lambeth-conference.html). 60  Cf. e.g. The Lutheran World Federation/The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, “Church and Justification: Understanding the Church in the Light of the Doctrine of Justification,” 1993, in Growth in Agreement II (Geneva/Grand Rapids, MI: WCC Publications/Eerdmans, 2000), 885.

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Lutheran–Roman Catholic Commission on Unity has identified five ecumenical imperatives, the third imperative asks both Catholics and Lutherans to commit themselves again to seek “visible unity”, and it calls them to elaborate together what it means to seek “visible unity” in concrete steps and to strive repeatedly toward this goal.61 In preparation for the third Ökumenischer Kirchentag in Frankfurt in May 2021 the Catholic and the Protestant “Stadtdekane” (dean/superintendent) of Frankfurt jointly published an excellent response to Cardinal Koch with the title “Vertrauen ist besser. Eine Antwort aus Frankfurt an Kardinal Koch”,62 replying to all his objections against Eucharistic hospitality. They conclude that trust has also grown among the leaders of the churches to such an extent that we can participate mutually in the Eucharist and Holy Communion, and they express their determination to offer Eucharistic hospitality to each other. Unfortunately, because of Covid the Ecumenical Church Convention took place mainly online, so the “test case” for the practical application of the ÖAK proposal did not occur in the way it had been enthusiastically anticipated by many Catholic and Protestant Christians in Germany. If the proposal of Together at the Lord’s table is not implemented soon, there is the great danger that this document will have a similar fate as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. Theological ecumenical dialogue will become even more irrelevant and Christians in both churches “will vote with their feet”.

4   Conclusion The stumbling blocks left behind by Vatican II regarding the triumphalist temptations and the question of the sinfulness of the church, the recognition of ecclesiality outside the Roman Catholic Church, and the understanding and the consequences of the “defectus ordinis” are still “hard sayings” in the relation between the Roman Catholic Church and the Churches of the Reformation. Yet, these concepts developed at Vatican II have made it possible to be able to ask this kind of difficult questions in the first place. As this response has tried to illustrate in some aspects ecumenical rapprochement is possible, but this also requires learning from the Protestant side.  Cf. FCTC, § 88.  Cf. https://bistumlimburg.de/beitrag/vertrauen-ist-besser-antwort-aus-frankfurtan-kardinal-koch-1/. 61

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PART II

Stumbling Blocks for Interfaith Dialogue

Salvation Optimism and Its Limits: A Reading of Lumen Gentium 16 Ralph Martin

But very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, have exchanged the truth of God for a lie and served the world rather than the Creator (cf. Rom. 1:21 and 25). Or else, living and dying in this world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair. Hence to procure the glory of God and the salvation of all these, the Church, mindful of the Lord’s command, ‘preach the Gospel to every creature’ (Mk. 16:16) takes zealous care to foster the missions. (LG 16)

1   The New Consensus on the Possibility of Salvation Being clear about what Vatican II actually teaches about the possibility of salvation outside its visible bounds of the church is important for both interfaith dialogue as well as for evangelization. It appears though that we are increasingly living in the midst of a “culture of universalism,” even

R. Martin (*) New Evangelization, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_6

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within the church, a culture which blurs issues that should be essential to interfaith dialogue and which seriously undermines the urgency to evangelize. John Sachs. S.J., in a lengthy article on universal salvation that appeared in Theological Studies, expresses what he claims is the current Catholic theological consensus. We have seen that there is a clear consensus among Catholic theologians today in their treatment of the notion of apocatastasis and the problem of hell. … It may not be said that even one person is already or will in fact be damned. All that may and must be believed is that the salvation of the world is a reality already begun and established in Christ. Such a faith expresses itself most consistently in the hope that because of the gracious love of God whose power far surpasses human sin, all men and women will in fact freely and finally surrender to God in love and be saved … I have tried to show that the presumption that human freedom entails a capacity to reject God definitively and eternally seems questionable.1

Sachs cites Rahner and Balthasar as contributing to what he claims is the new consensus. And while neither Rahner, Balthasar, nor Sachs formally teach universalism, the questions they raise about whether it is really possible for human freedom to finally reject God have contributed to an atmosphere of universalism. If I were to describe how many Catholics today think about the issue of the likelihood of those who are not explicitly Christians being saved, I would describe it like this: Wide is the gate and easy the way that leads to salvation and many there are who are entering by it. Narrow the gate and difficult the way that leads to hell and few there are who are taking that way.

The difficulty with this prevailing mentality is that it is the exact opposite of what Jesus teaches about our situation. Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Mt 7:13-14) RSV 1  John R.  Sachs, “Current Eschatology: Universal Salvation and the Problem of Hell,” Theological Studies 52 (1991): 252–253.

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Or the parallel text in Luke: Someone asked him, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” He answered them, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough. After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door, then will you stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ He will say to you in reply, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ And you will say, ‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’ Then he will say to you, ‘I do not know where (you) are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!’” (Lk 13:23-30) NAB

The traditional interpretation of this text is that it means what it says; that many are heading to destruction and comparatively fewer are heading to salvation. Some modern commentators, uncomfortable with the traditional interpretation, look for alternate interpretations. The attempts to neutralize the text are well described by Ben F.  Myer.2 Of the various attempts he identifies, he thinks only one has any merit, that is, to try to ascertain the underlying Aramaic which does not have the clarity that the Greek has when referring to the many and the few. As the International Theological Commission pointed out in its document on eschatology, however, the Greek of the New Testament is no less inspired than the Hebrew of the Old Testament: “Looking at matters from another perspective it cannot be supposed that Hebrew categories alone were the instrument of divine revelation. God has spoken ‘in many and varied ways’ (Heb 1:1). The books of Sacred Scripture in which inspiration is expressed in Greek words and cultural concepts must be considered as enjoying no less authority than those which were written in Hebrew or Aramaic.”3 The Greek words for many and few are not ambiguous in their meaning. Attempts to get behind the Greek to the Aramaic, while of interest, cannot replace our close attention to the inspired Greek text. John P. Meier thinks it is important to see Mt 7:13-14 as part of the whole concluding discourse to the Sermon on the Mount with a strong eschatological framework that underlines the seriousness of Jesus’ 2  Cf. Ben F.  Myer, “Many (= All) are Called, but Few (= Not All) Are Chosen,” New Testament Studies 36 (1990): 89–97. 3  “Some Current Questions in Eschatology,” in International Theological Commission, vol. II, Texts and Documents 1986–2007, ed. Michael Sharkey and Thomas Weinandy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 72.

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teaching being followed in light of the impending judgment and separation of those who are on very different paths. He sees Matthew as using “antithetical parallelism” contrasting the two gates, the two ways, sheep and wolves, two types of trees, two foundations, as describing two types of disciples who despite external similarities live totally different lives before God. The current mixture in the church will be revealed and separated at the final judgment (LG 14 transmits the same teaching). Meier points out that the future tense used in these parables of judgment is important to note. They show that the words of Jesus are not empty threats. The judgment will happen and will happen in accordance with the criteria that Jesus mercifully reveals to us.4 While Meier sees this text as referring to those who are actually members of the church, the situation of those not explicitly members of the church is even more challenging. As Peter puts it: “For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? And if the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinner appear?” (1 Pt 4: 17-18). Daniel J. Harrington concludes: “The scene is a warning to the audience that to enter the kingdom is hard and only a few do so.”5 He thinks this meaning is confirmed and deepened when we consider the larger section of which Mt: 7:13-14 is a part. Harrington, as do other commentators, points out the very similar message in a second set of Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 13: 1-52. These are not isolated texts. The whole message of the New Testament is that one does not enter the kingdom by drifting along with the prevailing culture, the “broad way” of Mt 7:13-14. There are those who choose the way that leads to life and others that choose the way that leads to death, those who choose the blessing and those who choose the curse (Deut 30:15-20). We see the difference between the wise and the foolish (Sir 21:11-28), between those who serve God and those who refuse to serve him, between those who fear the Lord and trust in him and those who wickedly defy him and trust in themselves (Mal 3:16-21), between those who believe and those who refuse to believe, between those who truly know the Father and those who do not, between those who grieve 4  John P. Meier, Matthew: A Biblical-Theological Commentary. New Testament Message, 3, ed. Wilfrid Harrington, Donald Senior (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1980), 72–75. 5  Daniel J.  Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew. Sacra Pagina Series, 1, ed. Daniel J. Harrington (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1991), 108–111.

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and quench the Spirit and those who do not, between those who worship the one God in Spirit and truth and those who have exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worship the creature, between the city of God and the city of man, between those who love the brethren and those who do not, between the good and the wicked. There are those who are “vessels of mercy” and those who are “vessels of wrath” (Rom 9:22-23), those for whom Christ is the “cornerstone chosen and precious” and those for whom he is a stumbling stone and scandal (1 Pt 2:6-8). There are those who eagerly await the return of the Lord and cry out “Come Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20), and there are those who cry out to the mountains “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand before it?” (Rev 6:16-17). This separation was signaled on the hill of Calvary when one thief humbly turned to Christ with faith, hope, and love, and the other thief bitterly mocked and blasphemed him (Lk 23:32-43). St. Thomas Aquinas, ST III, q. 46, a. 11, comments on the significance of this separation of the human race that was manifested at the crucifixion itself, citing Chrysostom, Jerome, Pope Leo, Augustine, Hilary, and Bede. Thomas’ citation of Augustine will give a sense of these patristic commentaries: “‘The very cross, if thou mark it well, was a judgment-seat: for the judge being set in the midst, the one who believed was delivered, the other who mocked Him was condemned. Already He has signified what He shall do to the quick and the dead, some He will set on His right, others on His left hand’ (Augustine, Jo. vii. 36). This separation which exists even now is finalized and the eternal reward and punishment appropriate to each individual is carried out definitively on the great Day of Judgment.”

2   The Teaching of Vatican II in Lumen Gentium 16 Despite the clarity and ubiquity of the “two ways” theme in both the Old and New Testaments, the question must be addressed: But what does Vatican II teach about this? The primary text from Vatican II that most thoroughly and authoritatively deals with this question is LG 16. There are two other Vatican II texts that deal with this question that should be noted: AG 7 and GS 22. Since Lumen Gentium as a Constitution is considered the “keystone” of

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the documents of Vatican II, and other documents often explicitly ground their teaching by referencing it, we will focus, in this short article, only on the LG 16 text, since Ad Gentes explicitly relates its teaching to the theological framework of Lumen Gentium and GS 22 specifically cites LG 16 as a basis for its teaching. LG 16 is only ten sentences long. The first four sentences explain how “those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways.” The Jews, Muslims, and “those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God” are specifically mentioned. The “relatedness” is clearly a non-salvific relatedness. A footnote cites Aquinas’s teaching on the “potential” for membership in the church that exists in every human being (ST III. Q. 8, a. 3, ad 1) as grounding for this “relatedness.”6 Because of the restraints of this chapter, we will focus on the last six sentences that treat of how salvation for various categories of non-Christians might be possible, and the difficulties in fulfilling these conditions. Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience7—those too may achieve eternal salvation. Nor shall divine providence deny the assistance necessary for salvation to those who, without any fault of theirs, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God, and who, not without grace, strive to lead a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is considered by the Church to be a preparation for the Gospel8 and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life. 6  See also the doctoral dissertation of Caroline Farey, A Metaphysical Investigation of the Anthropological Implications of the Phrase: “Ipse enim, Filius Dei, incarnatione sua cum omni homine quodammodo se univit” (For, by his incarnation, he, the Son of God has in a certain way united himself with each man—Gaudium et spes, 22). PhD diss., Pontificia Universitas Lateranensis, 2008. 7   The following footnote is inserted here as part of the Council text: Cfr. Epist. S.S.C.S. Officii ad Archiep. Boston.: Denz. 3869-72. The reference to the Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston, which offers doctrinal clarifications on the issues raised by Fr. Leonard Feeney in his strict interpretation of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Sallus, provides important insight to the proper understanding of the text as we will see. 8  The following footnote is inserted here by the Council Fathers as backing for this text: “See Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio Evangelica, I, 1: PG 21, 28 AB.” Joseph Ratzinger, “La mission d’après les autres textes conciliaires,” in Vatican II. L’activité missionnaire de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1967), 129, note 11, indicates that this reference to Eusebius does not really support the point being made, but, of course, the point can be supported in other

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We will designate the above three sentences of LG 16 as LG 16b. The Council here is teaching that under certain very specific conditions salvation is possible for non-Christians. What are these conditions? That non-Christians not be culpable for their ignorance of the Gospel. That non-Christians seek God with a sincere heart. That non-Christians try to live their life in conformity with what they know of God’s will. This is commonly spoken of as following the natural law or the light of conscience. It is important to note, as the Council does, in order to avoid a Pelagian interpretation, that this is possible only because people are “moved by grace.” That non-Christians welcome or receive whatever “good or truth” they live amid—referring possibly to elements of their non-Christian religions or cultures which may refract to some degree that light that enlightens every man (Jn 1:9). These positive elements are intended to be “preparation for the Gospel.” One could understand this to mean either a preparation for the actual hearing of the Gospel or preparation for, perhaps, some communication of God by interior illumination. There is a very important doctrinal clarification contained in the footnote in this section that references the Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston,9 which, issued in 1949, gave an important ruling on

ways. “The reason for this allusion is not very clear, since in this work Eusebius, in treating of the non-Christian religions has another emphasis than our text: Eusebius underlines the aberrations of the pagan myths and the insufficiency of Greek philosophy; he shows that Christians are right in neglecting these in order to turn to the sacred writings of the Hebrews which constitute the true ‘preparation for the gospel.’” (La raison de cette allusion n’est pas très claire, car dans cet ouvrage l’orientation d’Eusèbe, par rapport aux religions non chrétiennes, est tout autre que dans notre texte: Eusèbe signale les égarements des mythes païens et l’insuffisance de la philosophie grecque; il montre que les chrétiens voint juste en les négligeant pour se tourner vers les livres saints des Hébreux qui constituent la véritable ‘préparation évangélique’.) The Sources Chrétiennes translation of this text, La Préparation Évangélique: Livre I, trans. Jean Sirinelli et Édouard des Places (Paris: Cerf, 1974), 97–105, shows that Eusebius, in the chapter cited, only mentions the non-Christian religions and philosophies as being in dire need of conversion. He speaks of them as representing a piety that is “lying and aberrant,” (mensongère et aberrante) and cites the Scripture that speaks of “exterminating all the gods of the nations” and making them “prostrate before Him.” 9  The entire text of the letter in its original Latin along with an English translation was first published in The American Ecclesiastical Review in October 1952. Vol. CXXVII, 307-315. It is also available in Neuner/Dupuis, 854-857, and DS 3866-3872.

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Fr. Leonard Feeney’s strict interpretation of the theological axiom Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus.10 The Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston sums up this long doctrinal development and makes some very important clarifications about the kind of “implicit” faith or “unconscious” desire or longing that are needed to be considered salvific, the kind of response to grace that is necessary.11 The Letter make clear that a rather “high level” of implicit desire is required for the possibility of salvation to be realized. But it must not be thought that any kind of desire of entering the Church suffices that one may be saved. It is necessary that the desire by which one is 10  There are many fine treatments of the history of the interpretation of this axiom, most of which are largely in agreement on how the church’s current understanding of this axiom historically developed. Maurice Eminyan, The Theology of Salvation (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1960); Francis Sullivan, Salvation Outside the Church: Tracing the History of the Catholic Response (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2002); Karl Rahner, “Membership of the Church According to the Teaching of Pius XII’s Encyclical ‘Mystici Corporis Christi’,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 2 (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1963): 1–88; Avery Dulles, “The Church as Locus of Salvation,” in ed. John M. McDermott, The Theology of John Paul II: A Collection of Essays and Studies (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1993), 169–187; Jean Guy Pagé, Qui est L’Église ? vol. III, L’Église, Peuple de Dieu (Montréal: Les Editions Bellarmin, 1979); Gerard Philips, L’Église et son mystère au IIe Concile du Vatican : Histoire, texte et commentaire de la Constitution Lumen Gentium, vol. I (Paris : Desclée, 1967); G.  Thils, “Ceux qui n’ont pas reçu l’Evangile,” in L’Eglise de Vatican II, ed. Guilherme Barauna (Paris : Cerf, 1966), 669–680; Kevin McNamara, “The People of God,” in ed. Kevin McNamara, Vatican II: The Constitution on the Church: A Theological and Pastoral Commentary (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1968), 142–146; Aloys Grillmeier, “The People of God,” trans. Kevin Smyth, in Vorgrimler, Commentary, vol. I, 169–175; Bernard Sesboué, Hors de l’Église pas de salut: Histoire d’une formule et problèmes d’interprétation (Paris : Desclée, 2004); and the International Theological Commission’s document “Christianity and the World Religions,” in International Theological Commission, vol. II, Texts and Documents 1986–2007, ed. Michael Sharkey and Thomas Weinandy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 168–170. An excellent doctoral dissertation also exists which very thoroughly explores the history of the development of this doctrine: Richard A. Marzheuser, “The Votum Ecclesiae and the Necessity of the Church: An Examination of Lumen gentium of the Second Vatican Council (STD dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1988). 11  See Charles Morerod, The Church, 108–109, for a contemporary description of “implicit desire,” based on the teaching of Aquinas: “Implicit desire is possible—in the line of St. Thomas—because the articles of faith are included in some most basic truths (God’s existence and his providence [ST IIa IIae, q.1, a.7] ), and thus someone may desire implicitly baptism by being firmly attached to the more elementary truths that he already knows [ST IIa IIae, q.2, a.5].”

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related to the Church be animated by perfect charity.12 Nor can an implicit desire produce its effect unless a person has supernatural faith: “For he who comes to God must believe that God exists and is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Heb. 11: 6). The Council of Trent declares (Session VI, chap. 8): “Faith is the beginning of man’s salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God and attain to the fellowship of His children.” (DS 1532)

Since supernatural faith and charity are necessary for salvation, it is clear that not just any metaphysical or vague acknowledgment of God or “religion” or “morality” is sufficient in itself for salvation. Some kind of personal response to grace that involves a surrender in obedience to God who reveals himself, with an accompanying measure of the conforming of one’s life (charity) to his will as he makes it known and as he gives grace to live in harmony with it, and persevere in it to the end, is essential for salvation. This would necessarily bring with it an invisible link to the church.13 To casually jump from the possibility of people being saved without hearing the gospel, under certain specific conditions, to the presumption that almost everyone is probably saved, is not warranted by the text of LG 16b and the theological and doctrinal tradition of the church within which it explicitly situates itself. Still less is it warranted by the scriptural foundations of our faith that are specifically cited in the last three sentences of LG 16, which we will designate LGc and to which we will now turn.

12  Morerod, The Church, 138, drawing on the teaching of St. Thomas and Cardinal Journet points out that genuine supernatural charity actually brings a certain visibility with it, evidencing some of the fruits of life in Christ and the church, even when these are not explicitly known. “Whoever accepts the divine invitation starts belonging to the Church, and that membership is not totally invisible because the behavior of the person changes: the body of the Church starts being present. This Thomistic ecclesiology makes it possible to understand what is meant by “No salvation outside the Church”: “to be in the Church” and “to be saved” mean the same thing, because to be in the Church means to be under the salvific influence of the Head of the Church, that is, Jesus Christ.” 13  There are many fine studies that analyze in detail the teaching of St. Thomas on church membership and salvation. The collection of essays edited by Anthony D. Lee, Vatican II: The Theological Dimension (Washington D.C.: The Thomist Press, 1963) has several chapters devoted to this topic. The essay by Colman O’Neil, “St Thomas on Membership in the Church,” 88–140, is directly on the topic and the articles by Egan and Sauras are also of interest. A more recent treatment of St. Thomas and this issue is that of Charles Morerod, “John Paul II’s Ecclesiology and St. Thomas Aquinas” in ed. Michael Dauphinais & Matthew Levering, John Paul II & St. Thomas Aquinas (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2006), 45–73.

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Many commentators mention only the second part of the teaching of LG 16 that we are considering (LGb) about the possibility under certain conditions of people who have never heard the Gospel being saved, ignoring the doctrinal specifications of the important footnote, and either briefly mentioning or more often, completely ignoring the third part of the teaching, the last three sentences of LG 16, which points out that very often these conditions are not met.14 Karl Rahner, when claiming support in the teaching of Vatican II for his theory of the “anonymous Christian” and the “salvation optimism” he claims is perhaps the major contribution of Vatican II, only mentions LG 16b and ignores the difficult obstacles noted in LG 16c.15 But very often (Flannery translation of at saepius),16 deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, have exchanged the truth of God for a lie and served the world rather than the Creator (cf. Rom. 1:21, 25). Or else, living and dying in this world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair. Hence to procure the glory of God and the salvation of

14  Josephine Lombardi, The Universal Salvific Will of God in Official Documents of the Roman Catholic Church (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellon Press, 2007), 79–80, in the book based on her doctoral dissertation, briefly mentions the full text of LG 16 once, but leaves out the critical phrase “very often” and substitutes for it her minimizing paraphrase “some.” She refers repeatedly to the teaching of LG 16b (more than a dozen times) to reinforce her argument for a development of the Council teaching in the direction that she points out Jacques Dupuis and Paul Knitter have taken, but never averts to or comments on the significant “third part,” the LG 16c teaching. 15  See Karl Rahner, “Anonymous Christians,” in Theological Investigations vol. 6 of 23, trans. Karl-H and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1969), 397–398. 16  The Walter Abbott translation that appeared in 1966 translates the Latin phrase as “but rather often.” The commonly used Flannery translation of the Council documents translates the Latin at saepius as “very often.” Other English translations use “but often.” See e.g. the translation of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the precursor of the National Council of Catholic Bishops; contained in: The Sixteen Documents of Vatican II Introductions by Douglas G.  Bushman (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1999). The Vatican website translation which is available in Appendix I also uses “but often.” The English translation (by Clarence Gallagher) of Lumen Gentium in Norman Tanner’s two volume collection of the Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990) uses “more often, however.” The French translation of the text that Congar collaborated on translates at saepius as “mais trop souvent.” L’Église de Vatican II, Tome I, Texte Latin et Traduction, P.-Th. Camelot (Paris: Cerf, 1966). The Vatican website French translation uses “bien souvent.” The Italian translation on the Vatican website is “ma molto spesso.” The Spanish translation on the Vatican website is “pero con mucha frecuencia.”

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all these, the Church, mindful of the Lord’s command, ‘preach the Gospel to every creature’ (Mk. 16:16) takes zealous care to foster the missions.

In other words, even though it is possible under certain very specific conditions for people who have never heard the Gospel to be saved, the environment in which such people live is not a “neutral” environment. It is the environment of original and actual sin, personal and social, that is so tellingly described in Romans 1—the whole chapter needs to be considered when understanding what the Council intends by the short citation given—and which more and more is coming to characterize even the environments of previously Christian cultures and civilizations. It is an environment of hostility to God, culpable suppression of the truth, rationalization and justification of abominable behaviors, and the disintegration of personal identity and relational cohesion. It is an environment in which as the societal supports for respect for God and his Law are stripped away, it becomes more and more an environment in which “demonic lies” can be infiltrated into the lives of many, even many within the church, through “plausible liars,” and the destruction of human lives and relationships becomes manifest in an unrestrained lawlessness.17 It may also be helpful to say something about the reception of LG 16 in authoritative documents of the Roman Catholic magisterium. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) cites LG 16 as the authority for its teaching on the theological points that pertain to the salvation of those who have not heard the gospel. The treatment is straightforward and includes each of the three main units of LG 16. Numbers 761, 839, 841-844, 847, 1260, and 1281 of the Catechism all cite LG 16. There is though one unfortunate mistranslation of a key text which significantly changes the meaning of the original Latin. In § 1281 of the 1994 edition of the Catechism, the following English translation is given: “Those who died for the faith, those who are catechumens, and all those who, without knowing of the Church but acting under the inspiration of grace, seek God sincerely and strive to fulfill his will, are saved even if they have not been baptized (cf. LG 16).” The official Latin text though is this: “Qui mortem propter fidem patiuntur, catechumeni et omnes homines qui, sub gratiae impulsu, quin Ecclesiam cognoscant, Deum sincere quaerunt et Eius voluntatem implere conantur, salvari possunt, etiamsi Baptismum non receperint” (§ 1281).  See 1 Tim 4:1-2; 2 Pet 2:1-22; 2 Pet 3:1-4; 2 Thes 2:3-10.

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The key phrase “salvari possunt” should be translated as “may be saved” or “can be saved” not as “are saved.” This is how the phrase is translated in the leading English translations of LG 16 and also how it is translated in other places where it appears in the Catechism. The jump from possibility to certainty about the salvation of people in this situation, common as it is, is not warranted by the text. This mistake was corrected in the 1997 edition of the Catechism but the mistranslation is still present in the English text published on the official Vatican website. The 1992 French edition also mistranslates the text and has “sont sauvés” rather than “peuvent être sauvés.” The French translation on the Vatican website is now correct. According to Norman Tanner, LG is the Council document most frequently cited in the CCC.18

3   Conclusion LG 16 as it locates its teaching firmly within the biblical world view of Romans 1, and the doctrinal tradition of the church, shows how appropriate a “hermeneutic of continuity” is in the interpretation of this important text. Closely read, LG 16 reaffirms the basic biblical and doctrinal tradition that make of evangelization not simply an “enrichment” for those who are already for the most part “anonymously Christian,” or an “extra” for those who won’t ultimately be able to resist the offer of salvation anyway, no matter what they do, but an urgent responsibility concerning the salvation of many.19 Those many who are loved by God and for whom Christ died, who have not responded in faith and charity to the light that 18  Norman Tanner, The Church and the World: Gaudium et Spes, Inter Mirifica (New York: Paulist Press, 2005), 64–65. 19  See Morerod, The Church, 84: “God’s gift can be received only with God’s help. It is possible to refuse it, and such a choice is the main point of our present life. Anyone who would refuse to be with God would in fact diminish his own humanity by restricting to finite goods the desire of a heart made for the infinite. If such an attitude is persistent, it can lead to hell.” Morerod, The Church, 122–124, also makes the important point that when it is a question of responding to Revelation from God, to accept part but not all of what is being revealed, is to engage in a radical form of disobedience and the construction of one’s own religion. He cites Aquinas (ST IIa IIae, q.5, a.3) as foundation for this view and concludes: “Aquinas says that if we refuse one article of faith on the basis of our own judgment, it means that our own judgment and not divine revelation is also the reason why we accept other articles of faith. It is a way of making up our own religion, a religion human and not revealed. Of course, Thomas adds that divine revelation is received through the teaching of the Church.”

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God has given them but have “exchanged the truth for the lie,” culpably suppressing the truth, and have been given over to “foolish thinking” and destructive behavior, desperately need to be called to repentance and faith, for the sake of their salvation. As Joseph Fitzmyer, in his commentary on Romans, puts it: Paul regards this futility of thinking and misguided conduct as manifestations of the wrath of God, not provocations of it. He realizes that only the apocalyptic light of the gospel can penetrate such darkness.20

The “new evangelization,” if it is to be successful, must embody a doctrinal clarity that a careful reading of LG 16 can provide. Interfaith dialogue if it is to be based on truth and real respect must not hide what Vatican II teaches about the salvation of non-Christians.

20  Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 283. Emphasis is mine.

Nostra Aetate 2: Between Dialogue and Proclamation Marianne Moyaert

The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, the precepts and doctrines which, although differing in many ways from her own teaching, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men. Yet she proclaims and is in duty bound to proclaim without fail, Christ who is the way, the truth and the life (Jn. 14:6). In him, in whom God reconciled all things to himself (2 Cor. 5:18-19), men find the fulness of their religious life. —(NA2) The Church, therefore, urges her sons to enter with prudence and charity into discussion and collaboration with members of other religions. Let Christians, while witnessing to their own faith and way of life, acknowledge, preserve and encourage the spiritual and moral truths found among non-Christians, also their social life and culture. —(NA 2)

M. Moyaert (*) Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_7

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Among Catholic theologians dedicated to the cause of interreligious dialogue, this is one of the more—if not the most—popular passages from the Second Vatican Council. It expresses appreciation for other religious traditions, rather than focusing on what they lack. The language used is positive rather than negative, affirmative rather than judgmental.1 The passage even summons the church to “acknowledge, preserve and encourage the spiritual and moral truths found among non-Christians.” Ecclesiologist Francis Sullivan rightly remarks that “one would search in vain for any statement of the magisterium prior to Vatican II that affirmed that one could find elements of goodness and truth among non-­ Christians…,”2 which, moreover “often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men” (NA 2). Whether one interprets this passage in a minimalist or maximalist way,3 it is a passage that exhales openness toward other religions. That was, moreover, also the intention of the council fathers. By pointing to the positive values found in the other religions, they sought to put an end to the negative prejudices of the past and to establish friendly relations with those of other faiths, opening up a space for dialogue.4 This positive theological discourse, however, is interrupted rather abruptly with the proclamation that, “Christ … is the way, the truth and the life (Jn. 14:6). In him, in whom God reconciled all things to Godself (2 Cor. 5:18-19), men find the fulness of their religious life.” John 14:6 seems to counter-balance the call for openness by reaffirming the particularity of the Christ-event and by emphasizing that Christ, the Son of God, is the only way to salvation.5 Already during the council, the fathers were concerned that the plea for interreligious dialogue and collaboration could give some the wrong idea, as if dialogical openness would make proclamation superfluous. NA 2 therefore makes it clear that “[the church] proclaims and is in duty bound to proclaim without fail, Christ.” 1  This tallies with the general tone of the Council. Not a single anathema was pronounced in contrast to e.g. Trent or Vatican I 2  Francis Sullivan, “Vatican II on the Salvation of Other Religions,” in After Vatican II: Trajectories and Hermeneutics, ed. James Heft and John O’Malley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 68–95, 76. 3  Gavin D’Costa, Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), chapter 1. 4  Jacques Dupuis, Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2002), 61. 5  See NA 2, D&P 1, 62, 67 (referring to NA 2), RM 38, DI 2, 5, 22.

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John 14:6 seems to function as an affirmation of Christian identity and as a reaffirmation of the church as a proclamatory institution. As a consequence, the impression can arise that proclamation is the privileged expression of Christian identity. The connection between Christian identity and dialogue, on the other hand, seems less strong. If dialogue expresses openness to the other, then proclamation affirms Christian identity. What is more, because of the way this paragraph is framed, it also seems that dialogue may actually amplify the risk of weakening Christian identity, hence the need to counterbalance dialogue (openness) with proclamation (Christian identity as rooted in a high Christology). As I will show below, some post-conciliar documents (Dominus Iesus especially) have tended to read Nostra Aetate and John 14:6 along these lines: proclamation takes precedence over dialogue and counterbalances dialogue when it runs the risk of leading to relativism. It is as if the optimistic, appreciative, dialogical and open spirit of Nostra Aetate needs to be cautioned against, curtailed and corrected. In this article, I argue that this is not the only way to read John 14:6, nor is it the only way to interpret the relation between dialogue (openness) and proclamation (identity). Both dialogue and proclamation are expressive of Christian identity, and both hark back to God’s mission in the world. To make this point, I focus on what is often seen as the heart of the ‘problem’ (i.e. John 14:6). I will dispute the unilateral alliance between John 14:6, identity and proclamation, and I intend to show that John 14:6 with its high Christology actually contains pointers to a less exclusive and more dialogical understanding of Christian identity. Indeed, John 14:6 can be read as a theological justification for dialogue as part of Christian identity. To further develop this argument, I will place my exegetical reflections in my understanding of the broader conciliar theology. In the end, I hope to soften the hard passage of NA 2.

1   Nostra Aetate 2: Some Theological Considerations I begin my theological exposition by going to the heart of this difficult passage. The quotation from the Gospel according to John: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” How are we to think of this verse that is so often used to argue that the only proper Christian attitude toward those of other faiths is that of exclusivism?

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1.1   John 14:6: A First Reading At first sight, John 14:6, which is a part of Christ’s farewell discourse (13:1-17:26) does not seem to leave much room for interpretation.6 The evangelist uses the definite article with each of the nouns: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Jesus is portrayed as the embodiment of the ultimate truth and the only road leading to salvation. The possibility of there being other ways that lead to the Father is excluded. This exclusivist tendency is reinforced by the Greek word οὐδείς, which means ‘no one’. It would seem that whoever wants to reach the Father has to go via the Son, and there are no exceptions to this. Third, John 14:6 belongs to the so-­ called ἐγώ εἰμι-sayings, a group of sayings all starting with the words ‘I am.’7 The fact that the ‘I am’ sayings imitate divine speech from the Old Testament8 enhances the high Christology of John’s Gospel, which revolves around the incarnational relation between the Father and the Son.9 The Son reflects the nature of the Father, and in Christ, God the Father is present in a very historical, real, and palpable manner. As Harold Carl puts it, “the solidarity of their relationship in terms of being and nature is indicated here.”10 As a consequence, whoever sees Christ sees the Father (John 14:9), and no one will come to the Father except through Jesus (John 14:6). This explains why exclusivist theologians often

6  I am indebted to Drs. Laura Tack and Anthony Nguyen Cao Sieu, S.J. for providing me some of the exegetical insights related to this passage. See Laura Tack, John 14:6 in Light of Jewish-Christian Dialogue. Sharing Truth on the Way to Life. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament. 2. Reihe, 557 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021); Anthony Nguyen Cao Sieu, SJ, John 14:6 and the Uniqueness of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, Loyola School of Theology, 2013. 7  In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of himself as ‘the light of the world’, ‘the bread of life’, ‘the gate to the sheepfold and the good shepherd’, ‘the true vine’, ‘the resurrection and the life’, and ‘the way, the truth, and the life’. 8  Scholars see a connection between the ‘I am’ Sayings and the ‘I-am’ statements of Yahweh as pronounced in Exod. 3 and Isaiah 43. David Mark Ball especially argues that the Old Testament, and especially Isaiah, functions as the background for the ‘I am’ Sayings in John. David M. Ball, “I Am” in John’s Gospel. Literary Function, Background and Theological Implications (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). 9  Frederick Bruce, The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 299. 10  Harold Carl, “Relational Language in John 14-16. Implications for the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Global Journal of Classical Theology 2 n°1 (Dec 1999); online access: http://phc. edu/gj_carlpap.php.

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reference this passage to support their position.11 It is remarkable, therefore, to find precisely this quotation in a document that is otherwise associated with an inclusivist theology of religions.12 Leaving aside theological considerations, this verse functions as an identity-claim that expresses in quite a firm way one of the core Christological beliefs of the Catholic tradition and reaffirms the church’s commitment to proclamation. In post-conciliar documents too, John 14:6 often figures to emphasize a christocentric theology and to enhance Christian identity, certainly when that identity is perceived as being threatened by relativism and indifferentism.13 A cluster of ideas thus emerges connecting John 14:6, Christian identity, and proclamation to offset (too much) dialogical openness. This point is corroborated especially by the way the later document Dominus Iesus uses John 14:6.14 Issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in 2000, Dominus Iesus is a document that strongly reacts against the risk of relativism and has as a goal precisely to reaffirm Christian uniqueness and to emphasize that the primary missionary task of the church is that of proclamation.15 What is more, this document adds to the general impression that John 14:6 expresses a rather exclusivist Christology, being associated with such notions as the uniqueness, finality, and fullness of God’s revelation in

11  See e.g. Hendrik Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (London: Edinburgh House, 1938), 106. 12  On theologies of religions, see Marianne Moyaert, Fragile Identities: Towards a Theology of Interreligious Hospitality (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2011). 13  Emery de Gaál, The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 14  Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Dominus Iesus: on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, August 6, 2000 Online access: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_ dominus-iesus_en.html. 15  See Statement of Pope John Paul II at Recitation of the Angelus, 1 October 2000. “With the declaration Dominus Iesus—Jesus is Lord—approved by me in a special way at the height of the Jubilee Year, I wanted to invite all Christians to renew their fidelity to him in joy and faith and to bear unanimous witness that the Son, both today and tomorrow, is ‘the way, the truth and the life’ (Jn 14:6) Our confession of Christ as the only son, through whom we ourselves see the Father’s face (cf Jn 14:8), is not arrogance that disdains other religions, but joyful gratitude that Christ has revealed himself to us without any merit on our part. (…) The document clarifies essential elements, which do not hinder dialogue but show its bases, because a dialogue without foundations would be destined to degenerate into empty wordiness.”

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Christ.16 Any dialogue needs to take these firm beliefs as its basis, because these beliefs belong to the core of Christian identity. Only when Christian identity is upheld, does dialogue become a possibility. Let me cite the relevant passages from this document to make this point: Continuing in this line of thought, the Church’s proclamation of Jesus Christ, “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6), today also makes use of the practice of inter-religious dialogue. Such dialogue certainly does not replace, but rather accompanies the missio ad gentes, directed toward that “mystery of unity”, from which “it follows that all men and women who are saved share, though differently, in the same mystery of salvation in Jesus Christ through his Spirit”. (§ 2)

Also, in the fifth paragraph of Dominus Iesus, the emphasis is on Christ, as revealing the fullness of truth: As a remedy for this relativistic mentality, which is becoming ever more common, it is necessary above all to reassert the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Jesus Christ. In fact, it must be firmly believed that, in the mystery of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6), the full revelation of divine truth is given. (§ 5)

In paragraph 22, John 14:6 reappears one more time: If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation. … One understands then that, following the Lord’s command (cf. Mt 28:19-20) and as a requirement of her love for all people, the Church “proclaims and is in duty bound to proclaim without fail, Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life (Jn 14:6). In him, in whom God reconciled all things to himself (cf. 2 Cor 5:18-19), men find the fullness of their religious life”.

In all three passages, John 14:6 plays a key role in enhancing Christian self-understanding in terms of proclamation, rather than in terms of dialogue. The emphasis clearly is on Jesus as the fullness of truth. This is 16  For an in-depth analysis of Dominus Iesus see Sic et Non: Encountering Dominus Iesus, ed. Stephen J. Pope and Charles Hefling (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002).

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reinvigorated by the preceding claim that it must be firmly believed that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and that objectively speaking the other religions are in a deficient situation. The truth revealed in Christ must be affirmed. Christ is presented as the climax of salvation and revelation history, and the church, as missionary institute. Implicitly, the church does give the impression that dialogue entails a risk of loss of Christian identity and that this risk needs to be counteracted by a firm Christological claim. John 14:6, understood as a massive Christological claim, seems perfect for the job. 1.2   John 14:6: A Second Reading There are some fundamental theological problems related to this reading of John 14:6 and the way it is applied as a warrant of Christian identity, e.g. in Dominus Iesus.17 First of all, it would seem that John 14:6 contributes to some sort of Christo-centrism that may even result in Christo-­ monism, focusing solely on the Son Incarnate, at the cost of the Father and the Spirit. The Trinitarian dimension of Christian identity remains under-thematized. This is all the more remarkable since John’s Gospel actually contains the material out of which the doctrine of the Trinity would later grow.18 As we shall see below, the relational language used by John applies not only to the relation between Father and Son, but also to the Son and the Spirit. In this regard, I agree with Gavin d’Costa, according to whom “John’s dramatic cast is fully Trinitarian,” and we will have to further explore what that means for the exclusivist reading of John 14:6.19 Furthermore, the impression is given that the church already has access to the fullness and definitiveness of the revelation in Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. The eschatological dimension of Christian identity stays underemphasized. Thirdly, this Johannine passage, as it is being used in Dominus Iesus, reinforces the discontinuity between 17  Anthony Kinwale, “A Timely Reaffirmation and Clarification of Vatican II,” in Sic et Non. Encountering Dominus Jesus, ed. Stephen J. Pope and Charles Hefling (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), 169–178, at 169: “To judge by most comments (…) the impression is registered that the fundamental thrust of the declaration represents what has often been referred to as a ‘restorationist agenda’ and an antithesis of the openness demonstrated by the Church at the Second Vatican Council.” 18  Carl, “Relational Language in John 14-16.” 19  Gavin D’Costa, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity. Faith Meets Faiths Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), 121.

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Christianity and other religions, with little attention to the continuity that likewise exists between them. The fullness of divine truth in Christ is compared to the void of divine truth in other religions.20 The question is whether this reading—and the concerns it raises—really does justice to John and his theology. Is John 14:6 properly understood as evidence for an exclusivist Christological theology? Does good theology align John 14:6 one-sidedly with proclamation? How does this passage relate to John 1:9, to which NA 2 also alludes?21 I think there are good reasons to suggest that this Johannine passage does allow for and even invites a more complex interpretation, one that will enable us to overcome some of the theological perils alluded to above. To develop a second and alternative reading of John 14:6, I will connect this specific Johannine quotation to other passages from the Gospel of John. First of all, contrary to a Christo-monist reading, which one-sidedly focuses on Christ as the Savior of mankind and disregards the role of the Father22 and the Spirit, exegetes point out that the Gospel of John already contains the beginnings of a Trinitarian framework (even though it is preliminary and not yet systematically developed). Though John develops a high Christology and emphasizes the close and special relation between Father and Son, the Father is always greater than the Son (see John 14:28). In this regard, it is illuminating to read John 14:6 in light of another passage from the Gospel according to John, which is similar, though slightly different: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:44). This is clearly an illustration of God’s universal will of salvation. As biblical scholar Helmut Gollwitzer emphasizes, going to the Father is not only dependent on the person of Jesus, but is, according to John, made possible by the Father himself who draws the people to Jesus, by seeking them and by offering

20  William B. Burrows, Jacques Dupuis Faces the Inquisition: Two Essays by Jacques Dupuis on Dominus Jesus and on the Investigation of his Work (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 69. 21  “The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world.” For the importance of this verse, see Gerald O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 15. 22  “Israel and the Church: Fulfillment Beyond Supersessionism?”, with Didier Pollefeyt, in Never Revoked: Nostra Aetate as Ongoing Challenge for Jewish-Christian Dialogue, ed. Marianne Moyaert and Didier Pollefeyt (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 159–183, at 160.

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His gracious gift of salvation, in various and mysterious ways.23 One could also say that no one comes to the Father unless he is drawn.24 Here, God the Father is clearly presented as the one who seeks people and attracts them to Himself via Jesus. This is a theological insight that is moreover also repeated in John 6:65: “And he said, ‘Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.’” As Frederick Bruner puts it, God the Father is presented here as “the Subject-Seeker of true worshipers.”25 Drawing people to Christ is the Father’s work and his initiative. The question then becomes: how does God, who wants all to be saved, draw people to Godself? Here it is important to turn to the role of the Spirit, who is so central to John’s Gospel. Indeed, John not only mentions the Father and the Son, but also the Spirit. What is interesting is that John calls the Spirit another Paraclete (allon paraklhton), i.e. another helper or counselor. By using this terminology another Paraclete, John seems to imply that the work of the Paraclete at least resembles that of Jesus.26 That also becomes clear when we look at the tasks the Spirit takes on. First of all, it is said that the Spirit will “live with [the disciples] and will be in [them]” (John 14:17). This indwelling evokes the mutual indwelling of Father and Son and enables the disciples to participate in the Father’s loving relationship with the Son. Thus, they can become part of the ‘Trinitarian drama of love’. The disciples, in turn, are called to reenact this love in their Christian practice. As Gavin D’Costa explains: “The theme of the perichoretic indwelling of the disciples is predicated upon the indwelling of the Son and Father introduced right at the very beginning of the Gospel (John 1:1,18), such that the Spirit’s indwelling the disciples can be enacted in their keeping the commandment of love—learning to love as Jesus had loved.”27 Jesus

23  Helmut Gollwitzer, “Auβer Christus kein Heil? (Johannes 14,6)”, in Antijudaismus im Neuen Testament? Exegetische und systematische Beiträge, ed. W. Paul Eckert et al. (München: Kaiser, 1967), 180. 24  John 6:44 is one of the key passages in theological debates about efficacious grace and predestination. See Wim François, “Efficacious Grace and Predestination in the Bible Commentaries of Estius, Jansenius and Fromondus,” Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte 159 (2014): 116–143. 25  Frederick Bruner, The Gospel of John. A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 263. 26  Carl, “Relational Language in John 14-16.” 27  D’Costa, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity, 121.

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promises to send the Spirit also to remember Jesus (John 16:4),28 and She will help in the process of growing in understanding, because there is still so much that is unclear. Indeed, resembling what is said about Jesus as being the Truth, the paraclete is called the Spirit of Truth who reveals all truth (John 16:3). According to Harold Carl, “as the Holy Spirit witnesses to Jesus and continues his ministry, in his character, he is the Spirit of truth.”29 Even if revelation reached its climax in the incarnation, and reached its fullness in that sense, not all is said and done. That is why in the Gospel of John, Jesus says: I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you. (John 16:12–15)

But moreover, the Spirit will also enable the ministry of Jesus’s disciples in the world. The Spirit will bear witness to Jesus, and the disciples, following this example, will likewise be witnesses (John 15:26-27). Secondly, John calls Jesus ‘the way, the truth and the life’. Above, I explained how this passage may be read in an exclusivist way. Here, I want to show that there is more to these three terms. Indeed, these three terms play a central role in Johannine theology and carry a lot of symbolic weight. At the risk of oversimplification, let me mention a few thoughts for consideration. John first of all has a relational understanding of truth (in contrast to a propositional understanding of truth, which demands consent). It is relational, because the truth to which John alludes and to which Jesus testifies throughout his earthly mission is the truth of his authentic and unique relationship with the Father. It is also relational because one gains access to this truth by following Jesus’s way and doing as He did and keeping the commandment of love. The truth revealed by Jesus Christ asks for a human response in faith. As Stanley Porter explains, “the gospel emphasizes that the way that people respond to Jesus is the way 28  Paul N. Anderson, “The Origin and Development of the Johannine Egō Eimi Sayings in Cognitive-Critical Perspective,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 9 (2011): 139–206, at 199. 29  Carl, “Relational Language in John 14-16.”

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that they respond to God and his truth. If people are obedient and truly do the truth by following Jesus, then they are demonstrating acceptance of and obedience to God.”30 John’s usage of the notion life is specific too. Here the emphasis is soteriological, pointing to the eternal life in the World yet to come. This notion refers to the hoped-for liberation or salvation that is the ultimate goal of God’s sending His Son. The Father has life in Himself and has given this life to His Son. The Son has come in turn to become the source of life for all of humanity. He promises men and women the gift of eternal life, which is a promise of participation in God’s inner love: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). As Didier Pollefeyt and Philip Cunningham explain, “Christians believe that life in relationship with God allows human beings to share to some extent in the network of God’s ‘internal’ loving relationality. Christians believe that they taste ‘eternal life’. […] In Johannine terms eternal life is a sharing in the love-relationship between the Father and the Son in the Spirit. It is a love-life that transcends human death.”31 Nevertheless, the fullness of the gift of life will be relished in the eschaton. What is inchoately given and experienced now will be realized in the time to come. “The believers still wait for that day, because—life in eternity will give something that we cannot have here: a glimpse of Christ’s true glory in the heavenly realm from which he came (Jn 17:24).”32 The third term— the way—is actually named first in the passage under scrutiny, and as the dominant term of this verse, it carries relatively more weight.33 Biblical scholar Laura Tack explains the importance of this verse, and the metaphor of the way as follows: V. 6b invites the reader not see Jesus as a door that brings us from one moment to the next—After taking just one step at the most—into the 30  Stanley E. Porter, John, His Gospel and Jesus: In Pursuit of the Johannine Voice (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 197. 31  Philip A. Cunningham & Didier Pollefeyt, “The Triune One, the Incarnate Logos and Israel’s Covenantal Life,” in Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today. New Explorations of Theological Interrelationships, ed. Philip A.  Cunningham et  al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 183–201, at 194–195. 32  Hans-Georg Link, “―Life,” The New International Dictionary of NT Theology vol. 2, ed. Colin Brown (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1976), 476–724, at 482. 33  See e.g. Ignace de la Potterie, “Je suis la Voie, la Vérité et la Vie’ (Jn 14,6),” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 88 (1966): 907–942; Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John. Vol. 2 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966–1970), 621–628; Rudolf Schnackenburg, Das Johannesevangelium. Teil 3 (Freiburg: Herder, 1965–1984), 72.

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Father’s house. However, the verse encourages the reader to see Jesus as someone who stretches himself out in time to bring the disciples closer to the Father’s house gradually. After all, while the door rather punctually refers to one moment in time, the way stands for linear time, time spun-out. Seeing Jesus as the way also means that the reader does not see him as the destination of the road. The Father is the destination, while Jesus is the road that stretches out in time and space towards the destination. V. 6b further invites the reader to see Jesus as the way in which he is the truth and the life. … [T]he truth in the Fourth gospel [is] referring to the loving union between the Father and the Son. The way expresses that relational unity metaphorically in a way that makes it clear that the relationship between the Father and the Son is not locked within itself. The relationship is not represented as an intimate bond but as an accessible path. That path makes the relationship between the Father and the Son accessible to others.34

The emphasis is on the process and the journey that needs to be traveled, and this journey is about sharing in the life and the truth embodied in Jesus. In his encyclical Veritatis Splendor § 19, John Paul II writes the following: just as the people of Israel followed God who led them through the desert towards the Promised Land (cf. Ex 13:21), so every disciple must follow Jesus, towards whom he is drawn by the Father himself (cf. Jn 6:44). This is not a matter only of disposing oneself to hear a teaching and obediently accepting a commandment. More radically, it involves holding fast to the very person of Jesus, partaking of his life and his destiny, sharing in his free and loving obedience to the will of the Father. By responding in faith and following the one who is Incarnate Wisdom, the disciple of Jesus truly becomes a disciple of God. (cf. Jn 6:45)35

Thirdly, John 14:6 is not only associated with a certain form of Christological exclusivism—it is sometimes also associated with a form of ecclesiological triumphalism or ecclesio-centrism, as if the church possesses the fullness of truth.36 In this regard, it is worthwhile to consider the  Tack, John 14:6, 425–426.  Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Veritatis Splendor, August 6, 1993; online access: http:// w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_ veritatis-splendor.html. 36   For the term ‘ecclesiocentrism’, see e.g. Burrows, Jacques Dupuis Faces the Inquisition, 154. 34 35

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way John depicts the apostles in the preceding chapter. The followers of Jesus who have been with Him seem to lack comprehension of Christ and His calling (which is why Jesus sent them the Paraclete, see above). Either they do not fully understand His mission, or they do not grasp the symbolic meaning of His words; indeed, one misunderstanding follows another.37 At times, this lack of understanding is due to a faulty world-view (e.g. the prevalent view of a one-dimensional messianic theocracy). In other instances, they fail to perceive the spiritual underpinnings of Jesus’ language (e.g. “I am the bread of heaven” 6:32-24). They also fail to grasp the somewhat cryptic use of typological language (e.g. “tear down this temple, and I will rebuild it in three days” 2:19). On other occasions, they demonstrate a fundamentally flawed understanding of scripture altogether, as is the case with their misunderstanding of the Messiah’s origin (7:27). In yet another place, John records that the crowd failed to grasp Jesus’ use of a figure of speech referring to himself as the Shepherd (10:1-7). Lastly, not even the highly educated and accomplished rabbinic crowd was immune to misconstruing Jesus’ words (3:9-11).38

The apostles have lived with Him, shared meals and discussed ideas; they have seen Him in action, and still they do not get who He is and what He intends. Tack explains that John makes use of the literary device of misunderstanding to further clarify Jesus’s message and mission (both to his followers and to his later readers).39 However, while making use of this literary device, John also counters any ecclesiological triumphalism. According to Tack, John seems to be saying that the followers of Jesus do not have the fullness of truth, they are still struggling to make sense of Jesus’s 37  Donald Carson, “Understanding Misunderstanding in the Fourth Gospel.” Tyndale Bulletin 33 (1982): 59-91; Edwin Reynolds, “The Role of Misunderstanding in the Gospel of John,” Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 9/1–2 (1998): 150–159, 150. John uses a variety of literary devices to convey his theology of Jesus; irony, ethical dualism and misunderstanding. About the latter, Edwin Reynolds says: “One literary device which has not been as broadly noted is John’s use of a technique in which Jesus is misunderstood by His hearers, frequently through the use of words or phrases which can be understood in more than one way, or on more than one level. Jesus speaks at a spiritual level, while His hearers hear Him on a literal or natural level, resulting in misunderstanding.” 38  Jeff Scott Kennedy, Misunderstanding Jesus: Did the Disciples Misunderstand Jesus’ Message and Mission? 2-3. Online access March 8, 2016: www.biblicaltheology.co m/ Research/Kennedy JS01.pdf. 39  See Tack, John 14:6, 414–416.

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mission and in order to do that, they need help (from another Paraclete). Simon Peter, for example, does not understand that Jesus is not a master as other masters, who seek to be served by others, but rather a master unlike others, seeking to serve. Thomas too admits that he does not know the place where Jesus is going (John 14:4), to which Jesus responds by saying, “I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.” Philip, who has been listening too, responds to Jesus by asking, “Lord, show us the Father.” Jesus’s response makes clear that Philip has not understood him either. I do not want to go into further details here, suffice it to say that the followers of Jesus have not yet come to the fullness of understanding, even though their lived experience of Jesus must have been very strong. There is still so much they are unable to grasp, and this too is an insight emphasized by John. To my mind, this asks for ecclesial humility and the recognition that the church, too, is still trying to make sense of what it means to be followers of the Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life. I wonder whether this does not tally with the image of a pilgrimage church as depicted in Gaudium et Spes and in Lumen Gentium.40 Let me try to place these considerations in a theological framework.

2  A Further Theological Exploration The above-developed exegetical reflections nuance and correct the seemingly natural alliance between John 14:6 and an exclusivist Christology. I have pointed out that this verse, certainly when placed in a larger Johannine 40  “All the members must be formed in his likeness, until Christ be formed in them (cf. Gal 4:19). For this reason we, who have been made like to him, who have died with him and risen with him, are taken up into the mysteries of his life, until we reign together with him (cf. Phil 3:21; 2 Tim 2:11; Eph 2:6; Col 2:12, etc.). On earth, still as pilgrims in a strange land, following in trial and in oppression the paths he trod, we are associated with his sufferings as the body with its head, suffering with him, that with him we may be glorified (cf. Rom 8:17). LG 7.” “The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Nothing that is genuinely hu-man fails to find an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of men, of men who, united in Christ and guided by the holy Spirit, press onwards towards the kingdom of the Father and are bearers of a message of salvation intended for all men. That is why Christians cherish a feeling of deep solidarity with the human race and its history. GS 1.” Online access: http://www.vatican.va/ archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_ gaudium-et-spes_en.html.

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framework, is much more complex and nuanced than one would expect. Clearly this verse underscores strong Christological claims and reinforces Christian identity; however, it also contains pointers toward openness and humility. The Christocentric focus of John 14:6 needs to be placed in a Trinitarian perspective. Moreover, building on the work of exegetical scholars, I have pointed out that the truth, according to John, is relational as is the eternal soteriological life that Jesus promises and embodies. Drawing upon Tack’s work, I have highlighted the symbolic significance of the metaphor of the way, which points to a journey stretched out in time and space that still needs to be completed. Last but not least, John recognizes not only that the followers of Jesus do not completely understand his earthly mission (which means there is no reason for any kind of ecclesial triumphalism), but also that with the Spirit as Helper, the truth continues to be revealed, and Jesus’s followers are further and further guided into that truth. The fullness of truth revealed in Christ is complemented with a notion of incompleteness and eschatological expectation. In what follows I will further develop these exegetical reflections theologically, paving the way for my core claim that both dialogue and proclamation find their theological raison d’être in God’s mission, which is marked by a superabundance of love and a continuum of truth. 2.1   John 6:44 and the Superabundance of Divine Love and Grace In Nostra Aetate John 14:6 is cited to reaffirm Christian identity and the ecclesial task of proclamation. In what follows I want to emphasize how dialogue too is an expression of what it means to be a Christian in a context of diversity. The above-developed exegetical reflections seem to corroborate this contention. Indeed, reading John 14:6 together with John 6:44 (two very similar Johannine verses) focuses the attention first and foremost on God’s sovereign initiative in drawing people to Godself. God sending His Son to dwell among human beings is the ultimate expression of God’s exuberant love and concern for all people and God’s unrelenting efforts to make Godself and God’s salvific plans known. God is constantly inclining the human heart toward faith in Christ, and God’s efforts to pour out God’s grace are unrelenting. A logic of superabundance seems to be at the root of God’s mission in this world (missio Dei), and this logic of superabundance runs like a thread through different

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conciliar documents.41  As God sets out to reconcile everyone with Godself, the Council too intended to bring reconciliation (with other Christian communities, other religious communities, the world at large) rather than judgment. God’s generous reaching out to human beings is to my mind a current thread throughout many conciliar documents.42 Consider, for example, the opening paragraph from the decree Ad Gentes, the Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church: This plan flows from “fountain-like love,” the love of God the Father. As the principle without principle from whom the Son is generated and from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds through the Son, God in his great and merciful kindness freely creates us and moreover, graciously calls us to share in his life and glory. He generously pours out, and never ceases to pour out, his divine goodness, so that he who is creator of all things might at last become “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28), thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our happiness. (AG 2)

Similarly, we can see how Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, says that God manifests Godself in words and deeds, unceasingly extending Himself to all people.43 In essence, God communicates Godself (sese revelavit) and thereby invites (and does not impose, decree, or require!) people to enter into a relationship with him and thus to come to share in the divine nature (DV 2). God wants us to enter into dialogue with Him, so that by knowing Him we may discover who we truly are. God’s mission in the world is in that sense dialogical and 41  The notion of missio Dei has a long history, going back to Augustine and later to Aquinas, who referred to God’s Mission in the world. The framing of the mission in Trinitarian terms is attributed to Karl Barth and Karl Hartenstein. However, in more recent church history, the 1952 International Missionary Council conference in Willingen (1952) notably added to the importance of this notion, especially in missionary circles. See Thomas Kemper, “The missio Dei in Contemporary Context,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 38 (2014): 188-190. Though this notion is more often associated with Protestantism and the World Council of Churches, during the Second Vatican Council, the notion of missio Dei was picked up and developed in Ad Gentes. As Bevans and Schroeder explain, according to Ad Gentes, “the Church is in mission because it has been graciously caught up in the missio Dei, the very mission of God in creation, redemption and continuing sanctification.” In Stephan Bevans & Roger Schroeder, Constants in Context: Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004), 288. 42  I further develop this in Marianne Moyaert, “Dei Verbum, Nostra Aetate and Interfaith Dialogue,” Louvain Studies 39 (2015–2016): 43–62. 43  Ibid.

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conversational. According to Dei Verbum, God’s motivation to do so becomes evident in the fact that God reveals Godself out of love for human beings, addressing them as a friend: “By this revelation, then, the invisible God (cf. Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17), from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends (cf. Ex. 33:11; Jn. 15; 14-15), and moves among them (cf. Bar. 3:38), in order to invite and receive them into his own company” (DV 2). This dynamic of superabundant love is the impulse of God’s mission in the world at large; his plan of salvation includes everyone. Thus, God not only reveals Godself, but also graciously offers the gift of salvation to all human beings, as the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (§ 16) argues. God seeks all people and tries to accommodate them where they are, according to the needs and opportunities of their concrete historical-cultural and socio-religious context. Those of other faiths are also included in this plan of salvation. In a similar vein, we can refer to Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, which affirms this divine logic of superabundance and explains that those belonging to other traditions can receive this gift of salvation. How this happens is not made explicit. The conciliar fathers seemed fine with speaking about God working in mysterious ways. All this holds true not for Christians only but also for all men of good will in whose hearts grace is active invisibly. For since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery. (GS 22)

Though the council fathers are not explicit about how grace is channeled to those of other faiths, we can first of all assume that God through the Spirit is preparing the hearts of individual human beings. The Spirit continues Jesus’s work of inviting all to participate in the life of God. “De fait, Dieu attire les hommes, lorsqu’il les instruit directement et intérieurement, afin qu’ils le reconnaissent de tout leur cœur.”44 However, beyond the gift of salvation being offered to individuals, there are also good reasons to affirm that God makes use of the religions of the world to channel His gracious gift. Affirming this corresponds to Catholic thinking, 44  F-M. Braun, Jean le théologien : Sa théologie—le mystère de Jésus-Christ (Paris : J. Gabalda, 1966), 176.

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according to which grace always needs sacramental mediation and embodiment. There is no direct access to the divine—God conveys Godself in historical, material, palpable, and visible media. From this perspective we can also read LG 17, where it is said that in an act of divine self-­ communication, God is sowing “the good in the heart and mind of human beings or in the participation and cultures of peoples.”45 The truth and goodness that can be found in these religions are a divine gift of grace, which means that at least to a certain extent religions function as “conduits of God’s saving action.”46 In a similar way, Nostra Aetate affirms, “The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions.” One could argue that these religious and cultural elements cannot be discarded, finding their origins in God’s desire to reach out to all human beings; they are the result of God’s gracious generosity. Put differently, the religions, at least to some degree, play a positive role in the dispensation of divine grace. In later documents such as Redemptoris Missio (§ 28) and Dialogue and Proclamation, we even read that it is “in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions … that the members of other religions correspond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation” (D&P 29). A certain mediation of God’s grace may be attributed to these religions. That would also explain why Nostra Aetate refers to these religions as preparatio evangelica, in acknowledgment of their positive purpose in God’s plan of salvation.47 It makes sense, moreover, to assume that if it is the will of God to make Godself known to all people and to extend His gift of salvation to them, that God’s will does not remain “fruitless and ineffectual.” Karl Rahner’s reflections on Christianity and the non-Christian Religions are relevant, and I quote him at length: It is … impossible to think that this offer of supernatural, divinizing grace made to all men on account of the universal salvific purpose of God, should in general (prescinding from the relatively few exceptions) remain ineffective in most case on account of the personal guilt of the individual. For, as far as the Gospel is concerned, we have no really conclusive reason for thinking so pessimistically of men. On the other hand, … however little we can 45  Kristin Colberg, “The Omnipresence of Grace: Between Ad Gentes and Nostra Aetate 50 Years Later,” Missiology 42 (2014): 181–194, at 184. 46  “Paul Knitter Responds to Gavin D’Costa and Daniel Strange,” in Only One Way?, ed. Gavin D’Costa, Paul Knitter and Daniel Strange (London: SCM, 2011), 153–166, at 157. 47  D’Costa, Vatican II: Catholic Doctrine on Jews and Muslims, 61.

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say with certitude about the final lot of an individual inside or outside the officially constituted Christian religion, we have every reason to think optimistically—i.e., truly hopefully and confidently in a Christian sense—of God who has certainly the last word and who has revealed to us that he has spoken his powerful word of reconciliation and forgiveness into the world. … We have every right to suppose that grace has not only been offered even outside the Christian Church … but also that, in a great many cases at least, grace gains in the victory in man’s free acceptance of it, this being again the result of grace.48

To say that the Trinitarian God makes use of the religions of the world to channel His gracious gift of salvation and to draw people to Godself is not the same as saying that the non-Christian religions are salvific as such. First of all, religion does not save; God offers His salvation while making use of what ‘crosses His path’. The movement is from God to human beings in their concrete context (trans-descendance), preparing their hearts to receive Him. Secondly, whether or not these religions in effect produce grace depends upon the disposition of those at the receiving end and upon their response (trans-ascendance). Commenting on John 14:6 along the similar lines, Israel Selvanayagam says the following: On the whole, what we see here are both our movement towards the Father’s dwelling places and the Father’s and Jesus’ movement towards us to make a dwelling place in us. Therefore, instead of visualising a one-way traffic to ‘heaven’ we are asked to participate in the relational movement of God forth and back in and through His Son Jesus Christ. Being one with God and Christ here and now is part of this participation which helps us to understand the will of God today and to be ready even to risk our life keeping in mind our final dwelling with him.49

Dominus Iesus would later remark that “one cannot attribute to these, however, a divine origin or an ex opere operato salvific efficacy, which is 48  Karl Rahner, “Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions,” in John Hick & Brian Hebblethwaite, Christianity and Other Religions: Selected Readings, Revised edition (Oxford: OneWorld Publications, 2001), 19–38, at 28. Originally published in German as Karl Rahner, “Das Christentum und die nichtchristlichen Religionen”, in Schriften zur Theologie. Bd. V: Neuere Schriften (Benzinger Verlag: Einsiedeln, Zürich-Köln, 1962), 137. 49  Israel Selvanayagam, “Re-reading John 14:6 in the Context of Two Recent Events in the United Kingdom,” Current Dialogue 40 (2002); online access 12.12.2014: http://wcccoe.org/wcc/what/interreligious/cd40-08.html.

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proper to the Christian sacraments” (§21). This passage is meant as a caveat against those who would claim that all religions are equal paths of salvation in comparison to the church and its sacramental life. Of course, to argue that God seeks all people and tries to accommodate them where they are, according to the needs and opportunities of their concrete contexts, does not mean the same as saying that the other religions (or some elements of these traditions) are necessarily effective channels of salvation. But then again, that is also not the case with Christian sacraments, which also require a human response of faith. The sacraments are not magic; they can only be effective if one understands and accepts them in faith. Again, at stake is a relational and conversational dynamic of invitation and response. As Jacques Dupuis rightfully explains: What faith professes is that in the celebration of the sacraments instituted by, or founded on, Jesus Christ, members of the Christian community come into contact, in a sacramental manner—that is through the signs—with the divine mystery of salvation realized in him. Whether these signs efficaciously produce grace in the celebrating members, depends on their personal dispositions. In a similar manner, the reception of divine grace among members of other religions necessarily depends on their personal dispositions, that is on their readiness to open themselves to the gratuitous gift of divine grace. Whether in Christianity or outside it, God does not, and cannot, force on people, against their personal will, a share in his own divine life. At this level of reception of divine grace, there is no difference then between Christians and others. The difference is in the way grace is being offered in one case and the other.50

This quotation from Dupuis brings us to my next point, namely that of the continuum that exists between Christianity and other religions. 2.2   A Continuum of Truth As mentioned previously, John 14:6 is usually cited as an identity-claim and a re-affirmation of the finality, uniqueness, and fullness of the divine truth revealed in Christ. This manner of citation implies a discontinuity between Christianity and other religions. As I pointed out, not only does John uphold a relational understanding of truth (clustered together with way and life), but the evangelist also seems to recognize that the early  Burrows, Jacques Dupuis Faces the Inquisition, 64.

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followers of Christ had not yet reached the fullness of truth. This is to my mind in line with Catholic tradition, certainly as it further developed during and after Vatican II in response to such contemporary challenges as religious pluralism. According to Dei Verbum, God’s self-revelation reached its fullness in the Christ-event,51 which is the ultimate expression of God’s involvement with and love for humanity. So great is the love of God for all people that He became one of them—which is, par excellence, the expression of divine solidarity with humanity. Christ, God’s only begotten Son, is the perfect embodiment of the Word of God (DV 4). Whoever sees Christ sees the Father (John 14:9); in him, God is present in a very historical, real, and palpable manner, and God makes His plan of salvation explicit in an incomparable way. It is in this sense that God’s revelation in Christ is ‘final’ and of ‘unsurpassable quality.’52 This is also central in the first reading of John 14:6, as it is quoted in Dominus Iesus. However, the fact that God’s salvific activity can never be conceived of apart from the Christ-event does not mean that God’s salvific activity is limited to the divine incarnation. As the same evangelist John argues, we do have to bear in mind, that “the Father is greater than I am” (14:28). From a Trinitarian perspective, we should mention that the Christ-event does not exhaust the power of the Word. The divine Logos was sowing his Seeds among peoples and their traditions before the coming of Christ and continues to do so to this day. The Spirit too has Her role to play in salvation history (John 14:26). Pope John Paul II highlighted this especially in Dominum et Vivificantem § 53: We need to go farther back, to embrace the whole of the action of the Holy Spirit even before Christ. … The Second Vatican Council, centered primarily on the theme of the Church, reminds us of the Holy Spirit’s activity also ‘outside the visible body of the Church’… since Christ died for all, and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe

51  Cf. Heb.1:1-2. “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.” 52  Cf. St. John of the Cross: “For, in giving us, as he did, his Son, who is his one and only Word, he spoke to us once and for all, in this single Word, and he has no occasion to speak further” (The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk. 2, c. 22).

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that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this Paschal Mystery.53

Thus, God offers his gracious gift of salvation to all human beings, before and after the Christological event of the Incarnation. Unlike any Christocentric theology, and contrary to the notion that revelation has come to an end in Christ, I agree with Michael Barnes that “the revelation of the Word of God, spoken definitively in Jesus Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit, bringing to fruition the ‘seeds of the Word’ in creation, represent together a single continuous action of God in the World.”54 What is more, affirming the completion of the revelation in Christ does not mean that all else is clear, too. Especially within the scope of human finitude, Catholic tradition upholds that the deeper meaning of God’s self-­ revelation has not been yet fully grasped by the tradition. The church may have received the full truth in Christ; this, however, does not mean that the church has also fully understood the full extent of this truth.55 Moreover, Dei Verbum holds that an overemphasis on the perfection of God’s revelation in Christ might lead to an under-emphasis on “the glorious manifestation of our Lord, Jesus Christ” in the eschaton (DV 4). Until the moment of Christ’s coming in glory, the church must be aware that it sees things in a mirror, dimly (1 Cor 13:12). This is reaffirmed in Pope John Paul II’s 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio, which affirms that “every truth attained is but a step towards that fullness of truth which will appear with the final Revelation of God” (FR 2). Our knowledge of the mystery of the revelation of God is “always fragmentary and impaired by

53  Pope John Paul II, “Dominum et Vivificantem: On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World,” 53, May 18, 1986; online access: www.vatican.va/edocs/ ENG0142/_PG.HTM. 54  Michael Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions. Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 45. 55  Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, “Dialogue and Proclamation: Reflection and Orientations on Interreligious Dialogue and the Proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” 1991, § 49: “Moreover, the fullness of truth received in Jesus Christ does not give individual Christians the guarantee that they have grasped that truth fully. In the last analysis truth is not a thing we possess, but a person by whom we must allow ourselves to be possessed. This is an unending process.” Cf. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/ interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_19051991_dialogue-and-proclamatio_en.html.

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the limits of our understanding.”56 Since, arriving at “all truth” is an eschatological event, theologians (and Christians, certainly those involved in dialogue) should recognize the transcendence of the ultimate Truth, which can never be “fully grasped or mastered.”57

3  Conclusion: Returning to Nostra Aetate I began this article by drawing attention to the hard saying in NA 2, where a commitment to dialogue is juxtaposed with a commitment to proclamation. As I explained, this juxtaposition seems to be framed as a conflict between openness and identity, with John 14:6 as the privileged expression of the latter. Dominus Iesus, which is concerned primarily with reaffirming Christian identity, gladly makes use of John 14:6 and its Christological claim, even to the extent of subsuming dialogue to proclamation. Even though this trajectory is made possible by NA 2, another theological approach is possible, one which, building on John 14:6 and Johannine theology, sees both dialogue and proclamation as expressive of a Christian identity which is rooted God’s mission in this world. Here, I am in basic agreement with Kristin Colberg, who argues that the “sense that God’s love is overwhelming, unconditional, and present throughout the whole world does not permit a view that certain men and women fall outside of that love, nor does it tolerate the idea that divine love can be kept for oneself and not shared with others. On the contrary, this love impels Christians to engage in missionary activity and it demands a rigorous engagement in interreligious dialogue.”58 If we truly recognize (as Nostra Aetate urges us to do) that there are elements of truth and goodness in other traditions, and that these elements spring from God’s exuberant love and His mission in the world, then the challenge is to discover what those elements of truth are and how they can enrich and deepen our (mutual) understanding of God’s selfrevelation. This calls for interreligious dialogue, an interaction, moreover,

56  “Fides et ratio: Encyclical Letter on the Relationship between Faith and Reason” § 13, online access: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/doc uments/ hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html. 57  International Theological Commission (ITC), Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria, published March 8, 2012, § 86; online access: http://www.vatican.va/roman_ curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_doc_20111129_teologia-oggi_en.html. 58  Colberg, “The Omnipresence of Grace,” 191.

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that is not contrary to John 14:6, but is in continuity with this passage. As comparative theologian Francis Clooney explains: All that is true and holy in the religions can be affirmed by Catholics, since those religions “by no means rarely reflect the radiance of that Truth which enlightens all people.” Then we hear, not as a counterbalancing gesture toward evangelization, but rather as justification for this great openness, the reference to John 14.6: “Truly she announces, and ever must announce Christ ‘the way, the truth, and the life.’” That is: wherever people are on the way, wherever there is truth, wherever there is life, there Christ is.59

From this perspective, John 14:6 does not affirm Christian identity as distinguished from dialogue, rather John 14:6 incites dialogue as part of Christian identity. In this spirit, Pope John Paul II could insist, when he visited Madras, India: “By dialogue we let God be present in our midst, for as we open ourselves to one another, we open ourselves to God” (1986).60 This dialogical perspective is also affirmed in Ad Gentes, which expresses the hope that Catholics “through sincere and patient dialogue they themselves might learn of the riches which a generous God has distributed among the nations” (AG 11). Listening and learning from other religious traditions in and through dialogue is a way to respond to God’s gracious gifts, which are not limited to those who already try to follow Christ. It is sometimes asked if this interreligious dialogue would allow for a real reciprocal learning, considering the fact that the church also teaches that in Christ, revelation and salvation history has reached its climax and that in Christ people experience the fullness of religious life. As I explained above, the fact that Christians claim to have received the fullness of truth in Christ does not mean that they fully understand or even fully possess that truth. If the disciples of Jesus, who lived in His presence during His earthly life, did not fully understand Jesus’s message and even often misunderstood Him, the same holds true for Christ-followers today. There is no room to boast. What is more, the fullness of truth will only be revealed in the eschaton. A certain humility is requested. On top of that, the Spirit 59  Francis Clooney, “How Nostra Aetate Opened Our Way to the Study of Hinduism,” a volume from the Catholic University of America conference on the 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate. 60  Quoted in Francis Clooney, “The Church’s Irreversible Openness: Nostra Aetate at 50,” America: The National Catholic Review, October 27, 2015.

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blows where It wills, and other religions contain elements of truth and grace that may challenge and interrupt the church in her self-­understanding. The church has much to receive from the world at large, and from other religions and cultures more specifically. We are on a journey, and on that journey, we will encounter others. In line with the Johannine theology pondered above, and in line with what is called the continuum of truth, the following passage from Dialogue and Proclamation is important to consider: The fullness of truth received in Jesus Christ does not give individual Christians the guarantee that they have grasped that truth fully. In the last analysis truth is not a thing we possess, but a person by whom we must allow ourselves to be possessed. This is an unending process. While keeping their identity intact, Christians must be prepared to learn and to receive from and through others the positive values of their traditions. Through dialogue they may be moved to give up ingrained prejudices, to revise preconceived ideas, and even sometimes to allow the understanding of their faith to be purified. (§ 54)

To recognize that those who belong to other religious traditions can receive God’s gracious gift of salvation, and that they may “be saved by Christ apart from the ordinary means which he has established,” does not mean that interreligious dialogue now replaces proclamation. Proclamation, too, belongs to the heart of the church’s calling in this world and is likewise rooted in God’s mission (RM 55). If God reaches out to all, so too must the church, and embracing that task entails proclamation. Put differently, proclaiming the gospel, which begins with witnessing in deeds (and words) to the good news and living an authentic and truthful Christian life, grows naturally from the gift of faith that the church has received from God in Christ. This gift is not a secret the church must protect and keep for itself; rather, it brings a tremendous responsibility to announce the good news.61 But there is another reason the council gives for proclamation. Even if Nostra Aetate acknowledges that there are elements of truth and goodness in other religions, and even urges the church to recognize, preserve, and promote these elements, at the same time, the council also says that “whatever goodness is found in the minds and hearts of men, or in the particular  O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions, 166.

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customs and cultures of peoples…” needs to be “purified, raised to a higher level and reaches its perfection, for the glory of God…” (AG 9). This need for purification, healing, and perfection can also be found in LG 17, because as NA 2 also states, it is in explicit faith in Christ that people find the fullness of religious life. Together these passages affirm that between the other religions and Christianity there is both continuity and discontinuity;62 when the church proclaims the gospel, she so does not from scratch, but rather can build on what God has already brought to these other believers.63 To conclude, both dialogue and proclamation spring from the same divine logic of superabundance which is the driving force behind God’s mission in the world (as expressed in John 14:6 when read together with John 6:44). Through dialogue and proclamation, the church participates in the missio Dei, which is one of dialoguing with and of bringing the good news to all human beings. Dialogue and proclamation are two different though interconnected ecclesial responses to the divine desire to make God known and to make present and concrete His salvific intentions for the world. Proclamation is the sharing of the good news which the church has received from God in Christ (even though she does not yet completely grasp its full extent), and dialogue is one specific opportunity for the church to search for those elements of truth and goodness of which Nostra Aetate speaks by listening to and learning from other religions.

 Gerald O’Collins, “Implementing ‘Nostra Aetate,” Gregorianum 87 (4):714–726; 725.  Stephen Bevans and Roger P.  Schneider, Prophetic Dialogue: Reflections on Christian Mission Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011), 152. 62 63

Hard Sayings, New Questions for a Pilgrim Church: A Response to Ralph Martin and Marianne Moyaert Darren Dias

The Church on earth is by its very nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, it has its origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit. —(AG 2)

Each of the two preceding essays examines the meaning of the theological claims of specific texts of the Second Vatican Council and how these claims affect (or not) ecclesial self-understanding and relations with non-­Christian religions. In different ways, each author grapples with the evolving sense of mission and identity of a religious community and the role and value of other religions in its self-understanding and self-constitution. I will begin my response to these fine essays by highlighting what I believe are their

D. Dias (*) Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_8

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most salient features. I will then argue that developments in the nexus of questions related to these ‘hard sayings’ not only make them a challenge in the post-conciliar era but illustrate the new ecclesial self-understanding captured in the definition of the church as a pilgrim people. Ralph Martin in his essay, “Salvation Optimism and its Limits: A Reading of Lumen Gentium 16,” affirms the importance of religious claims as they contribute to ecclesial identity and mission. Martin argues that universalist theories of salvation “casually jump from the possibility of people being saved without hearing the Gospel, under certain specific conditions, to the presumption that almost everyone is probably saved.”1 According to Martin, this jump is not warranted scripturally2 or doctrinally. The result of holding an unwarranted universalist view of salvation is not only a question of incorrect belief but a failure to realize the evangelizing mission of the church. Such a result is problematic indeed for a church that professes itself missionary by its very nature. The essay by Marianne Moyaert poses similar questions to those of Martin: does the affirmation in NA 2 of the truth and holiness in other religions “diminish the church’s commitment to missionary outreach”?3 How are proclamation (understood as the “sharing of the good news” of Jesus Christ) and dialogue (understood as the opportunity to “search for those elements of truth and goodness…by listening and learning from other religions”) to be understood as constitutive elements of the church’s mission today?4 Are dialogue and proclamation in competition? Must dialogue give way to proclamation, or vice versa? If so, can dialogue partners ever be assured of an authentic dialogue amongst equals? In contrast to Martin’s interpretation of LG 16 as restricting salvation, Moyaert places NA 2 within “the broader conciliar theology…characterized by a divine logic of superabundance.”5 The superabundance refers to God’s generous  See the chapter of Ralph Martin in this volume, 99–111.  Martin uses Matthew 7:13-14 and Luke 12:23-30 in his essay as interpretative lenses for understanding Lumen Gentium 16, but there is no reference to the text in the document. Even so, Matthew 7:13-14 seems to have more to do with ethical choosing and living, following as it does upon the heels of the Golden Rule. Further, for Luke salvation is not about heaven and hell as much as it is about healing and integration into community. For Luke, in Jesus’ healing, salvation has begun, See James Dunn, New Testament Theology (Nashville: Abington Press, 2009). 3  See the chapter by Marianne Moyaert in this volume, 113–138. 4  Ibid., 138. 5  Ibid. 1 2

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and gratuitous self-gift in the twofold mission of the Word and Spirit. The logic is an invitation to dialogue and proclamation, as Moyaert demonstrates in her interpretation of John 14:6 referred to in Nostra Aetate 2. Unlike Martin, who is wary that an optimistic and uncritical view of salvation may erode the evangelical mission to preach the Gospel, Moyaert resists the temptation to place dialogue and proclamation in completion, as they are merely a bifurcation of the church’s unitary mission that has its source in the missio Dei, the historical witness of God’s superabundant love in the mission of the Word and Spirit. LG 1 affirms that mission is essential to the nature and being of the church and AG 2 makes clear that its ecclesial missionary nature is derived from the twofold mission of the Word and Spirit. All creation is the gift of God’s “fountain-like love” (AG 2) that spills out of God from the Father, through the Son and Spirit, into the world. God creates and calls creation to share in the divine life, ceaselessly pouring out God’s own “divine goodness” to God’s glory and for the benefit of humankind that “had been scattered were gathered together” (AG 2). Humanity is constituted by the genuine diversity and difference that reflect the constitution of the Triune God and, simultaneously, call humanity to an eschatological unity in the one God. In every era and age the mission to witness to God’s superabundant and overflowing love takes on different forms and practices. In the apostolic and post-apostolic eras the community of believers conceived its mission as bearing witness to the kerygma and prophetically challenging the world to conversion. After the era of Constantine and throughout the Middle Ages the mission was to impose the lordship of Jesus politically, culturally and socially in what was known as Christendom.6 In the colonial era, mission meant (trans)planting the European church and its structures into non-Christian and non-European cultures and lands. This self-understanding of the missionary nature of the church continued into the twentieth century.7 The adage that outside the church there 6  Michael Amaladoss “The Trinity on Mission,” in ‘Mission Is a Must’: Intercultural Theology and the Mission of the Church, ed. Frans Wijsen and Peter Nissen (New York: Rodopi, 1994), 99–100. 7  A significant shift occurs at the time of Vatican II. Bernard Lonergan calls it a shift from classicism to historical mindedness. Karl Rahner refers to it as an epochal shift from a Eurocentric church to a world-church. See Bernard J. F. Lonergan, “The Transition from a Classicist World-View to Historical Mindedness,” in Second Collection, ed. William Ryan and Bernard Tyrrell (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996) 1 and Karl Rahner, “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II,” Theological Studies 40 (1979): 721.

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was no salvation justified missionary practices from the Middle Ages through the colonial era. However, the conciliar claim that the church’s nature and mission derive from its participation in the divine mission is that “the doctrine of the Trinity replaces soteriology and ecclesiology as the course of reflection on mission.”8 The church’s mission is no longer a question of bringing people into the church for the benefit of their salvation and the glory of the church, but a deeper question of how God manages salvation through the dual missions for the Spirit and the Word. For a first time in the conciliar history of the church, the Second Vatican Council affirmed positive elements in non-Christian religions in acknowledging in NA 2 that truth and holiness exist outside of the Christian dispensation.9 Conciliar texts comment positively on non-Christian religions placing members of other religions within the perspective of God’s universal gift of grace and offer of salvation. The documents emphasize the relatedness of human and religious families due to a common divine origin and destiny. The revealing and saving presence of the Word is mediated in history through God’s universal offer of grace.10 While the Council positively affirms God’s offer of salvation to all peoples, how God manages this economy is left ambiguous.11 The conciliar texts, however, evidence Trinitarian elements that affirm God’s superabundant love and universal invitation to participate in that love. This gives direction to any reflection on salvation. A first element is God’s free act of creation that impregnates all creation with the grace of the Holy Spirit and the light of the Word. Second, God’s grace is providentially active outside of the historical body of Christ. It is grace that “heals” and “elevates” various elements of religions toward their eschatological fulfillment in “God’s glory” (AG 9). Third, Gaudium et Spes states, “we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” (GS 22) through Christ, who died for all, and who through the fullness of his humanity makes all humankind partakers in his own destiny, which is at the same time the destiny of all.  Amaladoss, “The Trinity on Mission,” 100.  Gerald O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 84. 10  Ibid., 82–83. 11  Gavin D’Costa, Vatican II, Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) 112. 8 9

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In an expansive and optimistic theology of salvation, LG 16, citing 1 Timothy 2:4, says that “the Saviour wills all men to be saved” and that “the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator.” God is present in the lives of non-Christians through the act of creation that gives divine “life and breath and all things” to all. Even those who do not know Christ or the Gospel are gifted with the providential grace to seek God and to “try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience” (LG 16).12 This optimistic theology of salvation does not deny the possibility of non-salvation—that is, of damnation or hell. However, salvation and damnation are not two equal options: salvation has been made more probable because of the gift of God’s saving love in the Word and the Spirit. As Moyaert indicates in her reading of Rahner, God’s will to save is not “fruitless and ineffectual” but is historically realizable.13 The last three sentences of LG 16 speak of those who choose evil and are “exposed to ultimate despair,” and so raises the real possibility of non-­ salvation and hell. This is a reminder that the universal gift of God’s grace and offer of salvation affirmed in LG 16 does not diminish this possibility. But the “religious symbol of hell,” argues Anthony Kelly , has a transcendent value that should not be flattened to an “empirical historical form of reprobation.”14 One result of flattening out this rich religious symbol is that hell is no longer really an eschatological possibility for all but only for the “dreadful ‘other’ (…) within the world and its history.”15 This has had serious effects for historical exclusion and hatred of the religiously other and makes reconciliation a challenge in their wake. LG 16 and NA 2 invite the church to counter the forces of evil, working together with other religions for dialogue, peace and reconciliation as constitutive of their mission today. Doctrinally, hell is a symbol for self-destruction, self-enclosure, the refusal to be in relationship. Religions can be counter signs to the evils of

12  Although the text does not treat revelation explicitly, O’Collins raises the question of the relationship of salvation to revelation. If God is made known to non-Christians, then this is an act of divine self-communication, since one cannot find God without God’s previous call. O’Collins astutely points out that varying interpretations of LG 16 “lapse” into debates around the relationship of nature/supernature. See O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions, 74–78. 13  Moyaert, “Nostra Aetate 2: Between Dialogue and Proclamation,” 130. 14  Anthony Kelly, Eschatology and Hope (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2006) 140. 15  Ibid.

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loneliness, isolation, exclusion and division based on religion, culture, economics, language, race, gender, or sexual identity. The issues and questions raised in the two essays are embedded in a nexus of contemporary questions. The questions of mission and identity, proclamation and dialogue reflect deeper theological issues around eschatological hope and the relationship between nature, revelation and grace. These specific ‘hard sayings’ in LG 7 and 9 and NA 2 are part of larger discussions on Christianity’s relationship to Judaism, other religions and wider culture and society. There is little evidence to suggest that these ‘hard sayings’ presented the Council Fathers with particular difficulties in a way that other specific formulae did.16 The challenge of these sayings must be contextualized within the ongoing theological and doctrinal developments and the new orientations, theologies and practices they engender and the newer issues and questions stemming from them. Furthermore, some questions that were more open have been sufficiently answered since the Council, thus helping to answer other questions in the nexus.

1   Some Developments Since the Council: Two Examples There is significant and ongoing development in the church’s relationship with, and subsequent teaching on, other religions. This is most evident in the church’s relationship to Judaism, its most important historical and theological relationship. Three examples suffice to illustrate the church’s evolving understanding of this relationship that bear consideration in the interpretation of LG 9 and 16. In 1980 Pope John Paul II affirmed that God’s covenant with the Jews has “never been revoked.”17 Thus, God’s promises to the Jewish people have not been abrogated or supplanted by the Jesus Christ event. How then is the new covenant to be understood in relation to the previous that abides? In 1998 the Vatican issued a document entitled We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah in which, among 16  For example, the term “subsists in” in LG 8 or DV 9 “Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other.” elicited far more debate than the ‘hard saying’ treated in these essays. 17  John Paul II, Address to Representatives of the West German Jewish Community, November 17, 1980, 3, accessible at: http://www.catholicsforisrael.com/articles/jewish-christian-­ relations/235-john-paul-ii-address-to-west-german-jewish-community-reps (accessed February 22, 2016).

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other things, the church admitted that the Shoah took place in the heart of Christian Europe and that erroneous Christian anti-Jewish interpretations of the New Testament paved the way for the anti-Semitism that made Jewish persecution possible.18 In this document the church assumes co-­ responsibility for remembering the Holocaust and vigilance for language and practices that support the ongoing scourge of anti-Semitism. Last, in 2015 the Pontifical Council for Religious Relations with the Jews while encouraging Christians to witness to their faith affirmed “the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission directed toward the Jews.”19 The church does not have a mission, understood as conversion to Christianity, to the Jews. Instead, the enduring value of Judaism as constitutive of the people of God is affirmed. How this affirmation affects the relationship, dialogues, theologies and practices of the two communities is yet to be ascertained. A second example of significant development is seen in John Paul II’s interpretation of the universal presence of the Holy Spirit. John Paul II, rooted in the salvific optimism of the Second Vatican Council, writes in his encyclical Dominu et Vivificantem: We need to go further back, to embrace the whole of the action of the Holy Spirit even before Christ-from the beginning, throughout the world, and especially in the economy of the Old Covenant. For this action has been exercised, in every place and at every time, indeed in every individual, according to the eternal plan of salvation, whereby this action was to be closely linked with the mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption, which in its turn exercised its influence on those who believed in the future coming of Christ.20

18  Pontifical Council for Religious Relations with the Jews, We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah 5, accessible at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_16031998_shoah_en.html (accessed February 22, 2016). 19  Pontifical Council for Religious Relations with the Jews, The Gifts and Calling of God Are Irrevocable,” 40 accessible at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/relations-jews-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20151210_ebraismo-nostra-­aetate_ en.html (accessed April 2, 2017). 20  John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem 53 (1986), accessible at: http://w2.vatican.va/ content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_18051986_dominum-et-­ vivificantem.html (accessed February 22, 2016).

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In Redemptoris Missio John Paul II goes further, saying: “The Spirit’s presence and activity affect not only the individuals but also society and history, peoples, cultures and religions.”21 John Paul II is unambiguous that efforts of people of non-Christian religions who seek ultimate truth and goodness as well as the religions themselves are not solely human initiatives or constructs but have their origin in the missions of the Word and the Spirit. The Spirit is the superabundant love that abounds throughout cultures and religions, that draws people out of isolation and breaks down barriers between God and humanity and among humans—including those barriers that religious communities are tempted to maintain or erect.

2   Resourcing the Council Chapter 2 (nos. 9–17) of Lumen Gentium is entitled “The People of God.” This chapter develops the notion of the church as “people of God” and of the “ordering or relation” of non-Christians to the “people of God.”22 The “people of God” is constituted by God’s grace and call to salvation. It includes in its constitutive self-understanding relationships to “those who have not yet received the Gospel” (LG 16): Jews, Muslims, honest seekers of God, and even those who do not recognize the existence of God. Further, the “people of God” introduces an eschatological dimension that understands redemption not as something already achieved in a past event but as a future accomplishment. According to Yves Congar, those who “know” and “serve” God are indeed God’s people. Thus, the “people of God” must be understood within a history of salvation broader than the Judeo-Christian dispensation since all are called to be of the “new people of God” (LG 13).23 For Congar, this universal call to salvation is an “objective bond” that justifies Karl Rahner’s extension of the term “people of God” to include all humanity.24 Before the Council, the Catholic Church equated itself with its visible institutional and juridical structure. This perfect society hovered above the 21  John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio 26 (1990) available at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/ john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_07121990_redemptoris-missio.html (accessed April 2, 2017). 22  Yves Congar, “The People of God,” in Vatican II: An Interfaith Appraisal. International Theological Conference. University of Notre Dame March 20–26, 1966, ed. John H.  Miller (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 197–207, at 204. 23  Ibid., 201. 24  Ibid., 204.

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world, above human history and society. The church already met the conditions necessary for salvation, and thus was self-sufficient and independent from wider society and culture. As the “people of God,” however, the church is “for and from the world’s grace” and not separate or above it.25 Without erasing the visible, institutional and juridical aspect of the church, Karl Rahner claims that the church is a “proto-sacrament” of God’s universal salvific will. Thus, the “people of God” precedes the visible and concrete Christian church. And this church is a historical “sign and promise of the ‘grace of anonymous Christianity.’”26 Edward Vacek describes this promise “as not so much that the world will be converted into herself [the church], but rather that grace is powerfully at work everywhere.”27 Lumen Gentium moves away from a juridical notion of church as institution and perfect society to one that understands itself as a calling of all people into communion, into some relationship with one another, by the power of God’s grace given everywhere. The strongly eschatological dimension of the “people of God” in Lumen Gentium is captured in the language of “pilgrim church.”28 This church consists of citizens of both the earthly city and the heavenly city of Jerusalem (LG 48). Lumen Gentium refers to the nature of the pilgrim church as a sign of real though imperfect sanctity of “the final age of the world is with us (cf. 1 Cor. 10:11) and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way; it is even now anticipated in a certain real way” (LG 48). The pilgrim church anticipates its eschatological fullness in the current and “in-between” times since God’s definitive in-breaking into history in the Jesus Christ event and his return in glory. The pilgrim church is a community on the move in the in-between times of the Reign of God established in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and its fulfillment in the age to come. Unlike the static pre-conciliar conception of the church that hovered above history and culture, a pilgrim church is realized in history and culture and conscious of the myriad of meanings and values that inform those cultures. It does not expect new cultural contexts to adapt to it, but adapts to new contexts and situations as required by human

25  Edward Vacek, S.J., “Developments Within Rahner’s Theology,” Irish Theological Quarterly, 42 (1975): 36–49. 26  Ibid., 42. 27  Ibid. 28  References to the “pilgrim church” can be found in: DV 7, LG 7, 21, 48, 50.

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historicity.29 This adaptability is found in the co-constituting principle of the church, the Holy Spirit that provides it with “the indefinite adaptability which the historicity of man [sic] requires.”30 The pilgrim church stalks the Spirit that “fills the entire space-time universe.”31 The pilgrim church wards against the still prevalent and mistaken notion that it is constituted by Christ alone resulting in an overly institutional, hierarchical, juridical and, finally, static conception of church.32 The people of God journey together because of the universal gift of grace and call to salvation that bonds and relates “the human race” (GS 45). In his encyclical Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis describes the pilgrim relationship in this way: “We must never forget that we are pilgrims journeying alongside one another. This means that we must have sincere trust in our fellow pilgrims, putting aside all suspicion or mistrust, and turn our gaze to what we are seeing: the radiant peace of God’s face.”33 People of other faith traditions are fellow pilgrims, and Francis entreats us to build relationships of trust together.34 The salvation that is made available to us and that we seek is not a static concept dependent upon a knowledge-content and cognitive act but comes through pilgrimage, the dynamic movement into a new state of being-in-love with God and the humankind imaging the love of the persons of the Triune God in God’s self and for the world. The pilgrim church as a sign and sacrament of the people of God re-­ conceived itself by re-conceiving its relationships with other Christians, other religious believers, people of good will and civil society. This church roots itself in human history and society, instead of hovering above it. These new historical and concrete relationships, particularly the church’s  Dennis M.  Doyle, The Church Emerging from Vatican II; Popular Approach to Contemporary Catholicism (Mystic: Twenty-Third Publications, 1992), 210. 30  Frederick E Crowe, S.J., “Son and Spirit: Tension in the Divine Missions?,” in Appropriating the Lonergan Idea, ed. Michael Vertin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006) 305. 31  Frederick E. Crowe, S.J., “A Threefold Kenosis of the Son of God,” in Appropriating the Lonergan Idea, ed. Michael Vertin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006) 323. 32  Yves M.  J. Congar, The Word and the Spirit, tran. David Smith (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986) 62. 33  Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, § 244, accessible at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-­ap_20131124_ evangelii-­gaudium.html (accessed April 2, 2017) 34  Ibid., §§ 250–254. 29

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relationship to non-Christian religions, mark not only a “paradigm shift” but also a concomitant “feeling of a destruction of Catholic identity … often stronger than the sense of construction.”35 The church’s identity is no longer conceived of as deriving from a single, historical source, Jesus Christ, but also from the Holy Spirit and the myriad of relationships united in the Holy Spirit. Amin Maalouf argues that identity is constituted by many elements configured in a certain way and a specific time. While many elements are derived vertically or historically, from what is handed on by our ancestors, elements that are drawn horizontally from our current and contemporary relationships are even more powerful and effective in shaping identity.36 In times of transition, change and threat, there is often a tendency to invoke the significant vertical elements.

3  Identity and Mission for a Pilgrim People of God The pilgrim church has no fixed borders but instead crosses borders from one place to another, into new and unknown territory. Medieval pilgrimages were fraught with danger: poor roadways, exposure to the elements and bandits. Journeys today are no less fraught with anxiety: threats of terrorism, security measures and the possibility of being turned back at borders. Pilgrims, though often strangers, depend on one another for mutual companionship: they share their vulnerability, walking together on the journey. Pilgrims anticipate the completion of the journey and when it is over revel in one another’s joy. A pilgrim church is “identified not by its boundaries but at them, in ongoing engagement with the various communities and cultures surrounding and interpreting it … the church is a ‘hybrid formation’, constantly constructing and reconstructing its concrete identity across time through its own odd way of putting to use the very cultural materials available to everyone else.”37

35  Norbert Greinacher, “Catholic Identity in the Third Epoch of Church History: The Second Vatican Council and its Consequences for the Theology and Practice of the Catholic Church,” Catholic Identity, ed. James Provost and Knut Walf in Concilium 5 (1994) 9. 36  Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996) 102. 37  Brad East, “An Undefensive Presence: the Mission and Identity of the Church in Kathryn Tanner and John Howard Yoder,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 68 (2015) 327–344, at 330.

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A church on pilgrimage with other religious believers invites new practices and postures that reflect an evolving identity-in-relationship. The triune nature and mission of the pilgrim church calls for an “undefensive” posture. Brad East, drawing from the thought of John Yoder and Kathryn Tanner, suggests this posture is “constitutive of the church’s identity on theological grounds, rooted as it is in the church’s calling by the Triune God.”38 The inflections of an undefensive church are attitudinal in its relationship with the wider culture; epistemic in its witness to truth; moral in its relations with others; constitutional in its identity.39 In the logic of superabundance that Moyaert refers to, the Triune God’s generous self-­ giving and receiving that constitutes the divine persons is extended into world history: “God gives ever more abundantly out of God’s inexhaustible plenitude … whose gifts are not competitive or privately owned but common, mutually beneficial, universally efficacious and inclusive.”40 The church as sign and sacrament of this love witnesses to, in word and deed, the superabundance of God’s grace present in and shared by the religions of the world. This undefensive posture is not one of timidity or self-effacement in the loss of a stable identity but a “self-confidence” that comes with the knowledge of being constituted by the Holy Spirit and her gifts.41 It is to be confident in an identity that began with God’s outpouring of love manifest in the Jesus Christ event and will be under constant evolution until the end times. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit that empowers the church to move away from a defensive posture, one that has its borders shorn up. It is connecting itself with the universal presence of grace.

4  Conclusion Moyaert and Martin point to the reality that world religions are related to one another in some way or another, and these relationships have the potential to be positive and productive. In the post-conciliar era, the church, perhaps surprisingly, affirms its relationships with other religions as constitutive elements in its self-understanding and mission. These  Ibid., 328.  Ibid., 340. 40  Ibid., 329. 41  Congar, The Word and the Spirit, 60. 38 39

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relationships are constitutive because they are rooted in the Triune God who creates and calls creation to union and communion with God’s self and with one another. As these relationships develop, the nexus of questions regarding the ways which the Triune God sanctifies and saves also develops. The ‘hard sayings’ that emerge from the conciliar texts reveal a church growing into its evolving mission and identity as a pilgrim people of God.

PART III

Stumbling Blocks for Church-World Relations

Opening to the World: The “Special Character” of the Laity Paul Lakeland

Their secular character is proper and peculiar to the laity. (LG 31) Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are none the less ordered one to another; each in its own proper way shares in the one priesthood of Christ. (LG 10)

While my task here is to consider the already much-discussed LG 31 on the secular character as “proper and peculiar to the laity,” I have also placed at the head of this page an earlier passage, from the chapter on the People of God, which sets out to distinguish between the hierarchical or ministerial priesthood, on the one hand, and the common priesthood of all the faithful, on the other. My effort to make more sense of the discussion of lay secularity will depend to some degree on the juxtaposition of the two priesthoods in LG 10. The thesis I intend to defend is: in the

P. Lakeland (*) Center for Catholic Studies, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_9

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absence of any clarity of thought about either the laity qua laity or the relationship of the two priesthoods, the Council—perhaps unwittingly— leaves open the door to understanding both lay and ordained ministries as callings within the common priesthood to specific roles in the evangelical mission of the church. One might think of subtitling these brief remarks, “[H]ow many ontological changes can one person stand?” If it is baptism that makes us a new creation, a priestly people, a people set apart, then what further ontological change is necessary or even possible? As we shall see later, there is a lot of sensible theological reflection going into examining the cogency of the concept of substantial ontological change, but not all of it is ready to abandon “ontological” understandings entirely.

1   The Secularity of All the Faithful in Gaudium et Spes It is a striking fact that although it is in LG that the “secular character” of the laity is fully considered, in GS—where the opening to the world is far more central to the document as a whole—the incidence of use of the term “laity” is far less frequent. It is as if GS has correctly divined both the uncertainty of LG on the topic of the laity and the theological problems involved in identifying laypersons, as opposed to the whole church, having secularity as their defining characteristic. So, as Giovanni Magnani has pointed out in a lengthy essay to which I am greatly indebted,1 the Council fathers deliberating on GS preferred to refer simply to “Christians” or “members of the Christian faithful,” until, that is, GS 43. Having forcefully made the point that the whole of the Christian community must “discharge” and not “shirk” their earthly responsibilities, they go on to say that “[i]t is to the laity, though not exclusively to them, that secular duties and activity properly belong.” This is quite similar to LG 31, where the text states that “their secular character is proper and peculiar to the laity,” though it is not quite the same thing to write of the functions of lay apostolicity as it is to suggest something about their essential nature, if indeed this is what LG 3 is doing. The Council is clear that there are certainly moments when “[a]lthough those in Holy Orders may sometimes be engaged in secular activities, or even practice a secular profession, yet by 1  Giovanni Magnani, “Does the So-Called Theology of the Laity Possess a Theological Status?” in Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, Twenty-Five Years After, ed. René Latourelle (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988), Vol. 1, 568–633.

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reason of their particular vocation, they are principally and expressly ordained to the sacred ministry.” “But by reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will.”2 We need to reflect a little more on the implications of the phrase from GS quoted above, “though not exclusively to them,” coupling it perhaps with the parallel assertion that “the laity can be called in different ways to more immediate cooperation in the apostolate of the hierarchy” (LG 33). It is difficult at times to avoid feeling that although in the conciliar text this statement is placed in the context of a high valuation of lay apostolicity, in practice in the church the impression is often given that lay cooperation in “the apostolate of the hierarchy” amounts to filling in when no priest is available, insofar as possible. So, for example, a Vatican Instruction issued to address some of these issues admits that in extraordinary circumstances lay people may preach, but never in a Eucharistic context. Another good example of this attitude can be seen in the practice of laypeople distributing communion. While this has become standard procedure in many places including across the United States, the official position of Church documents is that this ministry is always “extraordinary” and to be reserved for cases of real necessity.3 Looking at the larger issue, we seem to be being asked to accept that the ontological change that occurs in baptism does nothing to us except (a) include us in the People of God and (b) give us the secular world as our “proper” area of concern. The further ontological change that is traditionally understood to take place in ordination removes the ordained from the secular world as their “proper” concern, while leaving them the possibility that they may be called on to perform secular responsibilities. Lay people can also, in exceptional circumstances, be asked to do “priestly” work. Is the word “ontological” being asked to do too much or too little? At one and the same time it creates a sacred/secular divide between the work of the laity and the clergy and, if we take the word “ontological” at all seriously, their very being, while being quite leaky in exceptional circumstances. Additionally, the whole conciliar discussion seems to see  LG 31.  See “Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-­ Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priests.” Publication No. 5-268 (Washington D.C.: US Catholic Conference, 1998). A fuller discussion of this issue can be found in Lakeland, The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church (New York and London: Continuum, 2003) at 127–131. 2 3

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the central responsibility of the ordained, that for which the ontological change occurred, to be the sacramental action and not the leadership of the local community that makes presidency at the Eucharist appropriate, “proper” to the ordained even, and perhaps, valid. The extensive use of the term “secular” makes quite clear that the bishops do not understand secularity to be something negative, though they might think differently for secularism. Indeed, in GS 44 they go on to make the quite breathtaking break with any negative evaluation of the secular world by insisting that “the Church is not unaware how much it has profited from the history and development of mankind.” Consequently, it is particularly unlikely that by assigning “the secular” as the proper realm of the laity they were in any way suggesting a subordinate role for lay apostolic activity. At the same time, one does need to ask if the designation of secularity as the special characteristic of the laity leaves the ordained in a somewhat odd position. Are they not also secular? Since they live in the world, in many respects live just as the world lives, and share the hopes and concerns and joys and griefs of the laity, one would think so. Indeed, in the English language the designation for ordained clergy who are not members of religious orders is precisely that; they are “secular” priests.4 Presumably, this means that they live in the world not that they necessarily share all of is values. But, if some of those values are materialistic or hedonistic then they are just as surely prohibited to lay Catholics whose special characteristic it is to be secular. By the same token, those aspects of secularity that are neutral or laudable and which therefore are the special characteristics of the laity must to some degree also form the way of life of the secular clergy.

2   The Secular Character of the Laity in LG 31 “Their secular character is proper and peculiar to the laity” (LG 31). What exactly does this mean? “[P]roper and peculiar” evidently does not intend a rigid distinction from the ordained since the text immediately goes on to say that “those in Holy Orders may sometimes be engaged in secular activities, or even practice a secular profession.” Moreover, “the laity can be called in different ways to more immediate cooperation in the apostolate 4  If we took the distinction between secular and regular clergy a little more seriously, recognizing that the latter explicitly take vows structuring their way of life, both clericalism and the bugbear of mandatory celibacy for the secular clergy might be more easily addressed.

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of the hierarchy” (LG 33). Both the ministerial priesthood and the common priesthood are described as “vocations.” The laity’s work in the sanctification of the secular world is referred to as “their own particular duties” and “their special task” (LG 31), and “this very diversity of graces, of ministries and of works gathers the sons of God into one” (LG 32). Both the language here and the conciliar discussions that led to it provide clear evidence that the bishops shied away from a formal definition of the laity or the “lay state.” The usual inclination to explain laity negatively as neither ordained nor religious is on the whole absent from the conciliar texts. Moreover, once you have affirmed the common priesthood of all the baptized, a priesthood that the ministerial priesthood does not replace but is rather built upon and, indeed, for the sake of which it exists, you really are left with little option but to describe the different roles of the two priesthoods rather than try to define their essential differences or their “natures.” Both priesthoods have roles within the liturgical assembly, though the ministerial priesthood exercises functions of leadership of the community of faith and presidency at the Eucharist that are not assigned to the non-ordained. And both priesthoods have roles in the work of evangelization, though that of the clergy is primarily and properly in support of the common priesthood whose essential function is to lead the work of spreading the good news in the secular world.

3   Distinguishing Between the Ministerial and Common Priesthoods in LG 10 The council fathers found their way quite rapidly to the conviction that the universal or common priesthood of all the faithful was the basis for understanding the unity of the People of God, but were equally sure that they wished to distinguish between the ministerial and common priesthoods. The stress on the common priesthood (the term eventually preferred) is clear from the beginning of chapter II of LG: “[T]he baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated to be a spiritual house and a holy priesthood” (LG 10). Immediately after this follows the observation that they “differ essentially and not only in degree” (licet essentia et non gradu tantum differant). Borrowing and

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adapting this phrase from Pius XII,5 they clearly intend both to distinguish and to relate the two priesthoods—“each of them in its own way shares in the one priesthood of Christ.” However, the distinction and relationship discussed here in section 10 relates primarily to their respective liturgical roles: The ministerial priest, by the sacred power that he has, forms and rules the priestly people; in the person of Christ he effects the eucharistic sacrifice and offers it to God in the name of all the people. The faithful indeed, by virtue of their royal priesthood, participate in the offering of the Eucharist. They exercise that priesthood, too, by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, abnegation and active charity. (LG 10)

The consideration of the specific character of lay apostolic activity awaits Chap. 4. The reluctance to attempt a definition of the laity follows clearly from the recognition that all the faithful—including the ministerial priesthood—share in the common priesthood. One can certainly define the two priesthoods, and this is what is attempted in LG 10. But the effort is not successful, perhaps for the usual reasons that political considerations and the need to compromise result in a clever but ambiguous formulation. On the one hand, more conservative voices were unhappy with any language that seemed to reduce the significance of ordination. From another perspective represented by an unsuccessful intervention of German and Scandinavian bishops, the suggestion was made to remove the word “tantum” from the language relating the two priesthoods, so that it would have read “differ essentially and not in degree.” But the final compromise—the two priesthoods “differ essentially and not only in degree”— creates more problems than it solves. Does “differ essentially and not only in degree” mean they differ in both essence and degree, or does it mean that they differ in essence rather than in degree? If the latter, why did the bishops not accept the German/ Scandinavian suggestion to drop the word “only”? If the former, isn’t this 5  “At quaecumque est huius honorifici tituli et rei vera plenaque significatio, firmiter tenendum est, commune hoc omnium christifidelium, altum utique et arcanum, sacerdotium non gradu tantum, sed etiam essentia differre a sacerdotio proprie vereque dicto, quod positum est in potestate perpetrandi, cum persona Summi Sacerdotis Christi geratur, ipsius Christi sacrificium” (http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/04z/z_1954-11-­02__SS_Pius_ XII__Allocutio._Magnificate_Dominum_mecum__LT.pdf.html).

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illogical? How can something differ from something else both in essence and in degree? But isn’t this what Pius XII clearly said when he wrote non gradu tantum, sed etiam essentia (not only in degree but also in essence)? So is LG repeating Pius XII or subtly correcting him? Or fudging it because they know the two are different but related and they have no idea how to express the relation without ending up suggesting that ordained ministry is a function of service within the community?6

4  A Final Attempt to Cut the Gordian Knot of the Relationship Between the Common Priesthood and the Ministerial Priesthood All this brings us back to LG 31. In commenting on the preliminary schema for LG the Theological Commission was quite clear that the text is not attempting “metaphysical definition” but rather is describing functions. The official report on the final text identifies LG 31 as offering a “typological description” rather than an “ontological definition” of the laity.7 In LG 31 the laity are identified in Melvin Michalski’s words as “the Church’s members in a profane world, not the Church’s profane or secular members.”8 All are sacred, all are part of the faithful, the People of God, and some have particular “vocations” that others do not have. Lay Christians are neither Christians of second rank nor priests of second rank. This is the force of the insistence on the essential difference between the two priesthoods. The ordained priest is not more priest than the baptized Christian, but is called to a ministry of leadership within the community of the faithful. In baptism we become a new creation, and it is this ontological change that makes us members of the common priesthood. If ordained ministry is understood ontologically, then it seems to imply a second change built 6  Rhetorically, of course, this passage is not controversial. But given the intensity of discussion that marked conciliar texts in general, the subtle reworking of the papal precedent, and the unsuccessful intervention intended to remove the word “only” from the text, the logical and theological problems need to be recognized. 7  Joseph A. Komonchak, “Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion,” in History of Vatican II. Vol. IV: Church as Communion: Third Period and Intersession, September 1964–September 1965, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), 1–94, at 45. 8  Melvin Michalski, The Relationship Between the Universal Priesthood of the Baptized and the Ministerial Priesthood of the Ordained in Vatican II and in Subsequent Theology (Lewiston/ Queenston/Lampeter: Mellen, 1996), at 14.

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upon the first change but without eliminating the first change. I do not think this is possible and I see nothing in LG that removes the confusion. Might it be that the work of individuals like Richard Gaillardetz and Edward Hahnenberg, arguing that ordination confers a change in relationship to the community of faith, could help cut the Gordian knot? But only if they resist talking in terms of a relational ontology. Hahnenberg suggests that “the ontological change symbolized and effected by ordination is to be understood relationally.”9 Gaillardetz argues that the alternative to substance ontology “need not be a rejection of ontology itself; it can be, rather, a shift to a ‘relational ontology’ in which attention is drawn not to the isolated individual, but to the person-in-relation.”10 I confess that I fail to understand either of these two positions. Relational change is not ontological and the ambiguity of LG 10 and 31 makes room for the consideration of relationality without ontology. Indeed, if the Council fathers thought they were identifying the vocation of the laity as a typological description, why is this not also the case when they write of the vocation of the ministerial priesthood? And to suggest relational change without ontological change is not so very far from settling for the understanding of ordained ministry as one calling among others within the common priesthood. It may in the end be that the problem lies in the whole concept of secularity. A theology of grace is going to accept that the Holy Spirit’s activity suffuses the entire world and is not restricted to the communities of the faithful. Once we say this, we can see immediately that the “secular” world is the entire world and that there is no such thing as a sacred realm that is not always already part of the secular world. There are, of course, ways in which the secular world in general or secular individuals can become hostile to the very idea of the sacred though that hostility is usually to some element within the world that is perceived to be inimical to human flourishing. So, the new atheists reject the church and traditional religion in the name of healthy human living. But, what does it mean to say that the proper realm of activity for the laity is the secular, as if the ordained are not  Edward P.  Hahnenberg, Ministries: A Relational Approach (Chestnut Ridge, NY: Crossroad), 2003, at 95. 10  Richard R. Gaillardetz, “The Ecclesiological Foundations of Ministry Within an Ordered Community,” in Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood: Theologies of Lay and Ordained Ministry, ed. Susan K. Wood (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 26–51, at 40. 9

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also just as involved in the secular? Yes, you can be “ordained to sacred things,” but in this life these sacred things exist within the secular world. Show me a sacred realm in this life that is not within the secular world and I will show you a chimera. Once we recognize that the secular world is the whole world, we see immediately that lay “priestly” activity is the whole of apostolic activity since there is no apostolate that is not exercised in the world, even that of contemplative monasteries who, indeed, often understand their role as praying for the world. The role of the ordained can then come to be seen rightly as leaders and animators of the community of faith, which in its prayer and liturgy reaches out to God and to the world, mediating between the two as any good priest must do. In a phrase I have used a number of times before, and by which I mean no disrespect, the ordained are “support staff” in the apostolic activity of the church which is conducted by the whole priestly people in virtue of their baptism. How wrongheaded in this light does clericalism seem? Is it a sign of poor theology and perhaps of insecurity? It may be, nevertheless, that this truth was not in the minds of the council fathers when they declared the secular to be the realm of lay activity, even of lay nature. Once we dichotomize sacred and secular we are on the primrose path to the calamitous situation in which 1% of the church is concerned with “the sacred” as its proper realm while the remaining 99% are “secular.” If we look at the designation of the laity as “secular” in the light of the council’s insistence that laypeople possess the priesthood of Christ, though differing in essence and degree from that of ordained priesthood, it is readily apparent that serious theological issues must arise. If the secular world is somehow not sacred, then we can see the laity as apostolic infiltrators of the secular world in the name of the sacred. But, if they too are secular, they are then short of some very schizoid conceptualization of the lay state. How on earth can they be priestly? If, on the other hand, as the conciliar texts make clear, the laity do indeed share in the one priesthood of Christ but their special characteristic is their secularity, then how on earth can we oppose secular to sacred? The truth of the matter must surely lie in the direction of overcoming this dichotomy. The whole of the secular is filled with God’s grace, is thus sacred, and while human fallibility makes it possible for the gift of grace to be abandoned and a narrowed and purely “natural” vision of the world to be embraced, this is a distortion of God’s creative will. The priesthood of all the baptized, which includes the

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ordained, is ordered to healing the world of its failure to appreciate the grace of God, however that might be understood in different times and places. The ordained have a special role in this process. But may it not be, in the end, that to declare the two priesthoods to be different in essence and not only in degree could mean that the essential difference of the ordained is to serve the apostolicity of the whole church in which activity the ordained engage in a lesser degree than do the laity?

“Concealing … more than revealing”: Gaudium et Spes 19 and the Sinfulness of the Church Judith Gruber Without doubt those who wilfully try to drive God from their heart and to avoid all questions about religion, not following the biddings of their conscience, are not free from blame. But believers themselves often share some responsibility for this situation. For atheism, taken as a whole, is not present in the mind of man from the start (Atheismus, integre consideratus, non est quid originarium). It springs from various causes, among which must be included a critical reaction against religions and, in some places, against the Christian religion in particular. Believers can thus have more than a little to do with the rise of atheism. To the extent that they are careless about their instruction in the faith, or present its teaching falsely, or even fail in their religious, moral, or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than to reveal the true nature of God and of religion. (GS 19)

GS 19 is a ‘hard saying’ for the self-understanding of the church. The statement that “believers … conceal rather than to reveal the true nature of God” is not only a statement about atheism. Rather, it is also a profoundly J. Gruber (*) Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_10

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ecclesiological statement. In GS 19, the Council makes a strong statement about the essence and mission of the church. This climactic sentence of GS 19, I argue, encapsulates the ecclesiological paradigm shift of Vatican II. Its reception in the ecclesiologies after the Council, therefore, is a litmus test for the reception of the ecclesiological re-orientation which the Council strived to perform,1 replacing a militantly triumphant ecclesiology with a more humble self-understanding of the church. I will develop my argument in two steps. I will first show the three ways in which GS 19 relates to this conciliar paradigm shift. It first outlines why the church had to reform, it outlines how the Council performed this reform, and it outlines the ecclesiological outcome of this reform. In a second step, I will recontextualize this sentence within the ecclesiological debate on the sinfulness of the church. GS 19, I will argue, calls on the church to acknowledge not only its holiness, but also its sinfulness as a nota ecclesiae.

1   GS 19 and the Ecclesiological Paradigm Shift of Vatican II GS 19’s key statement that “believers … conceal rather than to reveal the true nature of God” relates to the overall ecclesiological reform of Vatican II in a threefold way. First, the redaction history of this particular sentence ties into the genealogy of the paradigm shift performed by the council. In this paradigm shift, the church moved from a stance of isolationism, through a cautionary search for ecclesiological re-orientations until a renewed self-understanding of the church was promulgated. With this paradigm shift, the church acknowledged that the preconciliar model of the church as a divinely instituted societas perfecta did not allow the church to live up to its constitutive mission because it conceived of the church in opposition to the world. The clear distinction it made between the supernatural order, to which the church was thought to belong, and the natural order of the world led to a practice of condemnations of the world. This self-understanding of the church curtailed the communication of faith; the 1  For a strong argument against a ‘Hermeneutics of Continuity’ cf. a series of articles in Theological Studies 67 (2006): John O’Malley, “Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?,” Theological Studies 67 (2006): 3–33; Stephen Schloesser, “Against Forgetting. Memory, History, Vatican II,” Theological Studies 67 (2006): 275–319; Neil Ormerod, “‘The Times they are a’Changin’. A Response to O’Malley and Schloesser,” Theological Studies 67 (2006): 834–856.

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church did not live up to the ground of its existence. It was the acknowledgment of this shortcoming which eventually triggered the convocation of the council and the ecclesiological re-orientation which it achieved had been built on preconciliar probings for new ways of imagining the church in relation to the world. The history of GS 19 reflects the pattern of this paradigm shift. The preconciliar church related to atheism in terms of unmistakable and harsh condemnations: In his 1878 encyclical Inscrutabili Dei Consili, Pope Leo XIII likened ‘complete forgetfulness of thin$gs eternal’ to ‘the deadly kind of plague which infects in its inmost recesses’ [sic]. This document set the tone for eight decades of magisterial teaching on unbelief. Indeed, Pius XI might have been speaking for an almost unbroken line of popes, stretching from Leo XIII to his own successor Pius XII, when he wrote in 1937: ‘During Our Pontificate we too have frequently and with urgent insistence denounced the current trend to atheism which is alarmingly on the increase’. Pius XII himself, not to be outdone, lambasted atheism’s ‘most ignoble corruptions’ in 1956’s Haurietis Aquas, along with its ‘lethal tenets’ in 1958’s Meminisse Iuvat.2

This aggressively defensive stance and the call for condemnation still influenced the preparatory documents of the council and were also present in the debates on Schema XIII.3 The majority of the council fathers, however, came to acknowledge atheism as a historical fact in the modern world (significantly, GS 19 does not describe it as a sign of the times4); a fact which is grave, problematic, but still a serious force the church has to reckon with. It cannot simply condemn atheism but has to face it as a challenge in the communication of faith. Accordingly, the Council strives to first understand atheism on its own terms (GS 19) before it develops an

2  Stephen Bullivant, “From ‘Main Tendue’ to Vatican II: The Catholic Engagement with Atheism 1936–1965,” New Blackfriars 90 (2009): 178–187. 3  For a detailed genealogy of GS 19-22 cf. James L. MacNeil, A Study of Gaudium et Spes 19-22, the Second Vatican Council Response to Contemporary Atheism (Lewiston, N.Y, Mellen Press: 1997). 4  Hans-Joachim Sander, “Theologischer Kommentar zur Pastoralen Konstitution über die Kirche,” in Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil, ed. Peter Hünermann und Jochen Hilberath (Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder, 2005), vol. 4, 736.

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ecclesial response and takes a stance against it (GS 21).5 This shift in perspective allowed, or better, it forced the church to see its own, previously unacknowledged role in the emergence of atheism. The shift in perspective had been prepared, prior to the Council, through an intellectual-theological engagement with atheism by nouvelle theologians and through political cooperation with atheists, for example, in the priest-worker movement.6 This intellectual and political engagement, of course, led first to new theological understandings of atheism, but soon, it also became clear that it entailed more far-reaching and unsettling trepidations for the church. Prominently, it was Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac who unearthed these implications. Probing for the origins of atheism, their diagnosis is a painful one for the church: they argue that the rise and consolidation of atheism can be traced back to the conduct of the church. Congar describes the reaction of the church to the separation between faith and life: “she fell back upon her positions, put up barricades and assumed an attitude of defense,”7 which alienated those who would have remained. “The world,” he says against this background, “is exonerated, to a degree, from the duty to believe.”8 Similarly, Henri de Lubac, who was, as peritus, involved in drafting the paragraphs on atheism in GS,9 asks in view of the atheist misrepresentation of the Christian God: “If such a misunderstanding has arisen and entrenched itself, if such an accusation is current, is it not our own fault?”10 Atheism, they both argue, emerges when the church falls short of its constitutive task. As the appropriate reaction to atheism, then, they call for a reform of the church. Congar says: “It seemed to me that, since the belief or unbelief of men depended so much on us, the effort to be made was a renovation of ecclesiology.”11 And this 5  It was Kardinal König who initiated this approach. He was appointed president of the Secretariat for Non-believers during the intersession of 1965. 6  Cf. Bullivant, “From ‘Main Tendue’ to Vatican II,” 180–182. 7  Yves Congar, “The Reasons for the Unbelief of Our Times, Pt. 2,” Integration: A Students’ Catholic Review, Dec. 1938/Jan. 1939, 10–26. 8  Yves Congar, “The Council in an Age of Dialogue,” Cross Currents 12 (1962): 144–151. 9  For de Lubac’s contributions to the council, cf. Karl Heinz Neufeld, “In the Service of the Council: Bishops and Theologians at the Second Vatican Council (for Cardinal Henri de Lubac on His Ninetieth Birthday),” in Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, Twenty-Five Years After, ed. René Latourelle (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988), vol. 1, 74–105. 10  Henri de Lubac, Catholicism, Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), ix-x. 11  Yves Congar, The Wide World My Parish. Salvation and its Problems (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1962), 147f.

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ecclesiological paradigm shift was then, indeed, the central concern of the Second Vatican Council. Hence, first, GS 19 documents the genealogy of this paradigm change. It presents atheism as one of the forces which made the church realize that it has fallen short of its essential task and thus as one of the forces which initiated the conciliar reform of the church. At the heart of this reform, there is a shift in the relation between church and world. The Council recognized that, in order to represent God’s word in the world, it is constitutive for the church to be in relation to the world. One crucial way for the Council to reclaim this essential notion of the church was the application of the concept of sacrament to the church itself (LG 1). By framing the church as sacrament, the Council brought about a significant change in the relation between church, world, and God’s revelation. Prior to the Council, this was conceived as a bi-polar relation: the church was identified with God’s revelation in opposition to the world. The application of the concept of sacrament to the church, however, breaks with this bipolarity and instead leads to a three-pole relation: it shifts the church as a mediator in-between God’s revelation and world. If it is constitutive for the church to be in relation to the world, then the world is of major relevance to the identity of the church. Church, then, cannot be defined without the world.12 What the church learns about itself in the world of today has vital significance for its self-­ understanding at intra. At this point, a second dimension of the ecclesiological significance of GS 19 can come to the fore. Not only does it document why the church has to reform. GS 19 also outlines what the church finds out about itself in relation to the world. The turn to the world reveals that it is a part of the nature of the church that it does not only reveal the true features of God but can also conceal these features. In the wake of the ecclesiological reform triggered by atheism, the concealment of God can no longer be considered a historical singularity, an unnatural and atypical perversion of an otherwise reliable proclamation of the church. Rather, it must be acknowledged as a fundamental condition of the ecclesial representation of revelation in the world. In the face of atheism, the church is forced to  Accordingly, the Council promulgated two constitutions on the church—both of equal dogmatic value and authority. Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes tackle the two relations which give identity to the church—ad intra and ad extra. Importantly, the council holds that the two ecclesiological constitutions can NOT be considered independently from each other. Cf. Sander, “Theologischer Kommentar zur Pastoralen Konstitution über die Kirche,” 590–596. 12

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acknowledge the contingency and ambivalence of its mediation as a fundamental ecclesiological datum. GS 19 thus picks up on the conciliar shift in the relation between revelation, church, and world, and it spells out the ecclesiological implications of this shift in more detail: when the church no longer understands itself univocally as the representation of God’s revelation in the world, and instead considers itself to be equally in relation to God and to the world, then its representation of God’s word is always also shaped by the world. It is contingent, and therefore ambivalent, and must, therefore, be scrutinized as to its validity.13 This fundamental ambivalence and contingency of the church expressed in GS 19 finds a strong parallel in LG 8. What the church finds out about itself in the face of atheism is central to the self-­ understanding of the church ad intra and has therefore found its way into a crucial passage of the dogmatic constitution of the church. LG 8 elaborates on GS 19 and gives it a Christological foundation: the church can both reveal and conceal the true features of God. It “comes together from a human and a divine element,” it is always both “earthly and heavenly,” it is “at once holy and always in need of purification” (LG 8). It represents, in short, God’s presence in no separation and no confusion (cf. the Christological dogma of Chalcedon). In sum, GS 19 is a key passage in the ecclesiological paradigm shift of Vatican II. It first names the cause for the conciliar reform: the ecclesiological underpinnings of the preconciliar church kept it from fulfilling its constitutive task and was therefore in need of renovation. Second, GS 19 is a typical instance of how the Council performed this reform: it left its stance of isolationism and its sense of superiority and instead turned to the world. The careful analysis of atheism in GS 19 demonstrates that, at the Council, the church granted the world autonomy, and a crucial role in the 13  GS 21 lists criteria for a valid ecclesial representation of God’s presence in the world: “Atheism must be countered both by presenting true teaching in a fitting manner and by the full and complete life of the Church and of her members. For it is the function of the Church to render God the Father and his incarnate Son present and as it were visible, while ceaselessly renewing and purifying herself under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This is brought about chiefly by the witness of a living and mature faith, one namely that is so well formed that it can see difficulties clearly and overcome them. Many martyrs have borne, and continue to bear, a splendid witness to this faith. This faith should show its fruitfulness by penetrating the whole life, even the worldly activities, of those who believe, and by urging them to be loving and just especially towards those in need. Lastly, what does most to show God’s presence clearly is the brotherly love of the faithful who, being all of one mind and spirit, work together for the faith of the Gospel’s and present themselves as a sign of unity.”

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ecclesiological description of the church. And thirdly, GS 19 outlines one of the crucial and deeply unsettling ecclesiological consequences of this reform. When read as a key passage in the ecclesiological paradigm shift of Vatican II, GS 19 is not only a gesture of humility toward atheism, but it also humbles the essence and mission of the church.14 In its turn to the world as a theologically significant place, the church acknowledges its own fundamental difference to God and God’s revelation; a difference which makes the existence of the church possible, and necessary, in the first place. God’s revelation and its representation through the church are no longer thought to coincide. Ultimately (if only implicitly), GS 19 calls on the church to acknowledge not only its holiness, but also its sinfulness as a nota ecclesiae.

2   GS 19 and the Sinfulness of the Church We can substantiate this diagnosis by recontextualizing the ecclesiological statement of GS 19 within the hamartiological traditions which find their literary origin in the two creation narratives of Gen 1-3. When GS 19 declares that the church is non-coincidental with God,15 it makes an implicit reference to a formal definition of sin whose theological foundation can be found in the first account of creation. For Gen 1, it is God’s gift and task of humanity to be imago Dei (Gen 1.27). When humans fall short of being the image of God (and instead, “they are careless about their instruction in the faith, or present its teaching falsely, or even fail in their religious, moral, or social life,” conceal the true face of God. Cf. GS 14  For ecclesial humility as an ecclesiological theme of Vatican II, cf. Richard R. Gaillardetz, An Unfinished Council, Vatican II, Pope Francis, and the Renewal of Catholicism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015), 50–73. 15  What is at stake for the church comes even more clearly to the fore in a parallel confession of guilt in another controversial document, in the declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae. In tracing the church’s attitude to religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, too, has formulated a ‘nostra culpa’: “Although in the life of the people of God (…) there has at times appeared a form of behavior which was hardly in keeping with the spirit of the Gospel and was even opposed to it..” (DH 12). The Council’s decision to use a prominent ecclesiological metaphor in this passage is crucial here and helps to pinpoint the issue at stake: The collective singular of “the people of God” makes the church, and not just individual Catholics, accountable for concealing the truth of the gospel. It thus highlights the ecclesiological import of this acknowledgement of guilt. It is not just individual believers (cf. GS 19), but it is the church by its theological nature who does not only represent but can also conceal the true features of God.

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19), they “miss the mark” (αμαρτάνουν) of being human. When humans differ from God, Gen 1 implies, they commit hamartia: they sin. According to Gen 1, non-coincidence with God is the crucial definition of sin. The following chapters, however, make an abrupt hamartiological turn and introduce an understanding of sin which is diametrically opposed to the perspectives of Gen 1. For a Christian reading of Gen 3, it is humanity’s original sin not to honor and instead to transgress the constitutive difference between God and (wo)man; Eve and Adam suffer the expulsion from the Garden of Eden because they succumb to the snake’s tempting promise that they “will be like God” (Gen 3.5). The anthropological and hamartiological traditions of Christian theology have tended to harmonize these two stories by forcing them into a metaphysical before/after scheme: (wo)man was created in the image of God, but the fall wounded or even corrupted and destroyed the image of God in humanity.16 This harmonization, however, conceals the fundamental differences in the anthropological and theological presuppositions of each narrative which result in contradictory hamartiologies. The Elohim of Gen 1 “created humankind in [God’s] image” (Gen 1.27); in Gen 3, however, (wo)man become the image of God only after they have transgressed the divine command not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2.17).17 After Eve and Adam have eaten from the tree, and thereby transgressed the boundary between God and humanity, the Yahweh of Gen 3 says: “See, the [wo]man has become like one of us” (Gen 3.22), and consequently Yahweh “sent [them] forth from the garden of Eden” (Gen 3.23). If we resist a harmonization, we begin to see that in these two narratives, two opposing hamartiologies are at work which make it difficult to conceive of the fall as described in Gen 3 as the reason for the loss of the imago Dei as promised in Gen 1. What is the reason for God to curse humanity in Gen 3 is described in Gen 1 as God’s gift to humanity. The suspension of the boundary between God and (wo)man is original sin (Gen 3) or humanity’s divine destiny (Gen 1).

16  “Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness.” Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 399. 17  This command is pointedly missing in Gen 1. Here, “God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. … I have given every green plant for food.’” (Gen 1.29f.).

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Yet, despite their contradictory and irreconcilable theologies,18 both stories have found their way into the bible. Both narratives were canonized and declared normative for the Jewish-Christian tradition. This contradiction is of highest theological significance. Christian theology only stays true to its normative scriptures if it takes the perspectives of both, Gen 1 and Gen 2-3, into account, and, if it refrains, just like the biblical juxtaposition of the two creation stories does, from harmonizing their opposing theologies. For developing a true (Jewish-)Christian theology, anthropology, hamartiology (and, by analogy, also ecclesiology19), we have to relate both positions to each other without leveling the discrepancies between them. But how can we do that? We can take a possible starting point from a closer analysis of the discrepant theologies which Gen 1 and Gen 2-3 develop. Informed by their respective socio-historical background and drawing on divergent religious traditions, the priestly (Gen 1) and the Yahwist tradition (Gen 2-3) develop very different imageries of God. Focusing on these theological differences between the creation narratives, John Caputo writes: “The several authors of Genesis, and multiple stratification of authorship and redaction, entertain competing visions of the rule of God that debate whether and what conditions are attached to the first gift. P is strong on God’s majesty, J on God’s immanence. The upbeat side of J’s portrait of Yahweh is that his tale is very earthy. Adam is described, not as the image of God on high, but as made of earth (adamah), destined to return to earth and born to work the earth, even as Yahweh enjoys evening strolls in the cool of the garden, which has an actual location on earth, in Mesopotamia, near real rivers like Tigris and Euphrates. Yahweh talks familiarly with Adam and Eve instead of making majestic pronouncements from the highest heavens to nobody in particular, as does Elohim. Elohim can seem rather distant, while Yahweh, who seems to have a volatile and stormy disposition, is—like anyone with real passion—also capable of being more loving. While Elohim makes pronouncements from on high, what Yahweh 18  For a thorough analysis of the different theological perspectives of Gen 1 and Gen 2-3, cf. John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God, A Theology of the Event (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 55–83. 19  We can develop a theological argument for the translation of Gen 1-3’s anthropology into an ecclesiology: The church believes Jesus the Christ to be truly human—and it understands itself as the representation of Christ. Through this christological point of reference, the theological anthropology of Gen 1-3 is therefore relevant for the development of ecclesiology.

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says has the ring of real language, spoken on the real earth. Elohim is quite unperturbed by his creation, but like most new parents, the Yahwist is not sure how to have Yahweh handle his offspring.”20 Historically, of course, these differences between ‘Elohim’ and ‘Yahweh’ can be traced back to their different religious origins. Theologically, however, the canonization of diverging religious traditions into the Hebrew Bible aimed at the formulation of a monotheistic theology.21 Two different theological language games, rather than two divine ontologies, are therefore at work here. Highlighting God’s transcendence, the priestly tradition envisions a perspective beyond history using proto/eschatological language (the language of promise and hope). And indeed, it is a hopeful vision which the first creation narrative promises. It imagines humans to be co-creators and wishes for (wo)man to safeguard and sustain rather than dominate over creation (cf. Gen 1.26 shamar).22 Creating them imagine Dei, God hopes for them to be equally life-giving. The historical experience of humanity, however, is in stark contrast to this proto/eschatological narrative. All too often, death, rather than life, marks human existence. All too often, (wo)men are destroyers rather than creators of life. We fall short of God’s hope and promise and miss the mark of being human in the image of God. In the proto/eschatological language game, this difference to God is sin. It hopes for an end of the non-coincidence of God and (wo)man. The Yahwist tradition, on the other hand, focuses on God’s immanence. It develops a theological language by using the concrete historical experience of human suffering and death as a starting point to talk about a God who involves Godself in God’s creation. Gen 2-3, more self-reflectively than Gen 1, is ‘written from outside paradise’; it is a theological etiology for a history of human death, suffering, and  Caputo, The Weakness of God, 312f.  “The first story is the prototype of a more open-ended, generous, gift-giving conception of religion, the rule of the good, of gifts giving rise to more gifts; while the second is a prototype of a grimmer kind of religion, which is a radically ‘economic’ book-balancing, sacrificial, authoritarian, archical, and hierarchical conception. … Both views of God and of ‘religion’ have since flourished. Both views had a future, and both have a basis in Genesis, in the ‘Lord God,’ since, whatever their provenance, Elohim and Yahweh are meant to be the same God, not two different Gods, but two different ‘personalities’ of the same protagonist, as Miles puts it so artfully.” Ibid., 312. 22  DeWitt contends that shamar implies a “loving, caring, sustaining kind of keeping”. Calvin B. DeWitt, Earthwise: A Guide to Hopeful Creation Care (Grand Rapids, MI, Faith Alive Christian Resources, 2011), 44. 20 21

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inequality.23 It accounts for the historical experience that (wo)men fall short of God’s protological gift and task, and eschatological promise for humanity to be imago Dei. Within the language game of this historically grounded theological narrative, it is sin to negate the fundamental difference between God and humanity in its concrete historical existence. The canonization of both these narratives makes both, the proto/eschatological language of hope and a historically grounded theology, normative for a biblically founded Christian theology. Yet, at the same time, we have to acknowledge that the Hebrew Bible resists a harmonization of their discrepant positions. Consequently, rather than confusing or conflating them, theology, too, has to carefully distinguish between these two different language games.24 Against this background, GS 19’s declaration that “believers … conceal … the true nature of God” is theologically polyvalent. With this statement, the Council, first, develops a historically grounded ecclesiology which does not commit the original sin of suspending the constitutive boundary between God and God’s representation in the world. By confessing that it conceals the face of God, the church acknowledges its fundamental difference to God; it highlights its historical and contingent gestalt, and it shows that it resists the tempting belief that it could “be like God” (cf. Gen 3). Yet, at the same time, we also have to read this statement within a proto/ eschatological language game, which, too, is an indispensable perspective in any theological statement. Then, the ecclesial acknowledgement of this difference is a confession of sin. The church concedes that in its current historical gestalt, it is far from realizing the promised Kingdom of God.25 23  Cf. Tatha Wiley, Original Sin: Origins, Developments, Contemporary Meanings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2002), 31–35. 24  Caputo comes to a similar conclusion when he says that “instead of simply opposing the two stories [or to harmonize them. JG], we do better to try to fit them together, as the Redactor is trying to do, and to see them in a good news/bad news sequence. In the first narrative, P announces the original covenant that Elohim makes with creation, which is what he has made is good; and in the second narrative, that judgment is put to the test by showing us to what extent things go wrong. But the second narrative is framed by the first, and the Redactor’s intention seem to be to enjoin us to keep the faith that creation is good, very good (= P’s narrative), no matter what (= the Yahwist narrative). The result is that the ‘good’ becomes in part descriptive and in part prescriptive; in part a judgment of what Elohim has done, and in part a promise of what is possible, of what he has in mind for creation.” Caputo, The Weakness of God, 71. 25  For an analysis of the ‘Kingdom of God’ as ecclesiological metaphor before the council and its eschatological relecture after the council, cf. John Haughey, “Church and Kingdom: Ecclesiology in the Light of Eschatology,” Theological Studies 29 (1968): 72–86.

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Through this theological polyvalence, then, GS 19 unfolds what it has already suggested with its contrite tone: the ecclesiological paradigm shift in which the Council acknowledged the contingency of the church, ultimately, makes it also necessary to acknowledge the sinfulness of the church. Sinfulness, like holiness, is a nota ecclesiae and the church can escape this ecclesiological consequence of the conciliar paradigm shift only at the risk of falling short of its normative scriptures, which call equally for both, an eschatological and a historically grounded theological perspective in no separation and no confusion. The church has always found it easier to proclaim its holiness than to confess its sinfulness, even though both have a strong tradition within the ecclesial depositum fidei.26 The Second Vatican Council, too, struggled to draw the hamartiological conclusions of its ecclesiological paradigm shift; ultimately, it refrained from a non-ambivalent statement on ecclesial sinfulness (cf. below). Yet, the allusions in the conciliar texts suffice as they imagine the church as both holy and sinful. After the Council, we are faced with a profound ecclesiological question: how can we hold on to the holiness of the church without concealing its sinfulness? In attempting to answer this question, we must, again, clearly discern the difference between the two theological language games: within the eschatological language game, difference to God is sin and for a historically grounded ecclesiology, a suspension of this difference is sin. Michael Böhnke indicates the dire consequences of confusing or conflating these two perspectives; discussing the recent child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, he argues that sexual abuse by church officials becomes possible when ecclesial holiness is proclaimed for the historically conditioned church. There are ways, Böhnke maintains, in which the ecclesial belief in the holiness of the church has authorized the abuse of those who “act in the name of Christ”:27 therefore, he agrees with Thomas Söding that sexual abuse by priests is not only an unspeakable human disaster, ‘but also a religious disaster. [It is] practical blasphemy. It is an encroachment on God’s holiness. It perverts God’s will and drags God’s mercy 26  Cf. Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse und kirchlichen Lehrentscheidungen, ed. Heinrich Denzinger, Helmut Hoping, Peter Hünermann (Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder, 1991), n° 1537 and 1573. 27  Michael Böhnke, Kirche der Sünder – Kirche der Gerechten., Eine These zur Diskussion, vorgestellt bei der gleichnamigen Veranstaltung zum Domjubiläum des Paulusdoms in Münster, am 27.09.2014, Münster, 2014, 5 (translation JG).

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through the mud.’ What Thomas Söding calls ‘religious disaster’ is the usurpation of God’s holiness by church officials.28

For this religious dimension of the disaster, Böhnke insists, theology has to be made accountable: theology needs to scrutinize in which ways the ecclesial belief in the holiness of the church has usurped and perverted God’s holiness: Söding’s prophetic criticism should not only be directed against practical blasphemy. It should equally be directed against a hegemonic theology which grants church officials with the power of disposition over God’s holiness. This hegemonic attitude shapes our common theological consciousness. How else could we account for passages in the catechism which speak of ‘the powerful presence of the spirit’ and the ‘lasting fullness’ of the means of salvation? Why these adjectives which contradict the Kenosis of God’s son? When theological consciousness is fixated on the power of disposition, it enables the church to keep the appearance of its holiness and to maintain it over against the sins of its members.29

The ‘religious disaster,’ Böhnke shows, results from a conflation of the language game of eschatological promise and a historically grounded theology. When the church in its historical gestalt proclaims its holiness, it negates its constitutive difference to God, and instead claims God’s holiness for itself. This is a usurpation of God’s holiness which leads to a perversion of divine holiness because it facilitates a hegemonic theology which legitimizes the abuse of God’s power. As the example of the pedophilia scandals shows, Perpetrators deliberated availed themselves of the moral authority of priesthood, … they used the psychic effects of rites such as prayer and confession in order to gain power of the children—to such an extent that minors were made to believe that the sexual assaults were expressions of the ‘loving unity in Christ’ or divine election. [Church officials] have claimed the authority of

 Ibid., 6 (translation JG).  Ibid.

28 29

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the church and the authority of God for their deeds and the victims have granted them this authority as an advantage of incumbency.30

In other words, if the church holds on to its holiness without acknowledging its simultaneous sinfulness, it authorizes a death-bearing rather than a life-sustaining theology and, hence, cultivates an ecclesial form which stands in stark difference to God’s eschatological promise and hope for humankind. Ultimately, Böhnke shows that if the church fully holds on to its holiness, it sins. If, however, the church does not conceal its difference to God and resists the temptation to claim God’s holiness for itself, it steers clear of the death-bearing, sinful consequences of such a transgression. This puts ecclesial holiness and sinfulness into a paradoxical relation: only if the church acknowledges its difference to God, and hence, confesses its eschatological imperfection, does it escape the lethal consequences of suspending the difference between the historically grounded church to God. In other words, only if the church proclaims its sinfulness can it be on its way to fulfill God’s eschatological promise of holiness. The claim of ecclesial holiness is protological promise and eschatological hope. It becomes sinful if it is used for a historically grounded ecclesiology.31

3  The Sinfulness of the Church—The Wirkungsgeschichte Since the Council GS 19’s theological polyvalence has shown that the conciliar paradigm shifts amount to a significant challenge for the self-understanding of the church: it has to acknowledge, simultaneously, both its holiness and its sinfulness, and it has to maintain a paradoxical tension between both. What is the Wirkungsgeschichte of this ecclesiological paradigm shift? Has the post-conciliar church fully realized this unsettling consequence of the Council’s turn to a historically grounded ecclesiology? Does the church today really understand itself as a sinful church?

 Ibid., 5 (translation JG). This is just one of many examples of hegemonic theology. For a systematic analysis of hegemonic theology, cf. Mark Lewis Taylor, The Theological and the Political, On the Weight of the World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2011). 31  This paradoxical tension can be traced in several passages of conciliar texts. Cf. UR 7 quoting 1 John 1.10: “If we say we have not sinned we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” 30

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First, it has to be acknowledged that the Council itself did not reach an unproblematic consensus in this issue; it did not promulgate an unambiguous statement on the sinfulness of the church. Michael Becht documents that the Council fathers and periti clearly discerned the full ecclesiological scope of the theological re-orientations of the Council and that the majority also called for an explicit acknowledgment of ecclesial sin.32 Yet, Becht also documents the intense controversies and objections which ultimately prevented the Council from making a clear confession of ecclesial sin. One particular revealing case is the promulgation of UR 3.33 This passage addresses the schisms between churches and includes a confession of guilt on the part of the Catholic church. The council minority petitioned against this explicit statement. Cardinal Ruffini argued that if there was to be such guilt, it can be attributed only to church members, not to the church itself. The majority of the Council fathers, however, approved the schema and yet, the day before the final vote, the text was changed significantly on papal instruction ‘ad maiorem claritatem textus’: The passage “[t]his people of God, though still liable to sin, …” was supplemented with the phrase “…in its members.” This textual addition introduces a division between the church and its members, which implicitly allows the church to hold on to its unbroken holiness by attributing sin to its members. The textual unambiguousness in this statement on ecclesial sin, which the Council fathers had in mind, was thus lost. This strategy of differentiating between the holy church and its sinful members ultimately gave all the relevant conciliar passages on ecclesial sin their final, promulgated shape. Becht concludes: So is there evidence that the idea of a ‘sinful’ church is in accordance with the conciliar texts? … As a first result we can state that Vatican II did not suppress the question of sin in the church. … At the council, the church decidedly confesses to be a ‘Church of Sinners’ … [but] the council did not use the terms ‘sinful church’ or ‘sinfulness of the church.’34

Still, Becht argues, the conflictive genealogy of the statements on ecclesial sin leaves traces of ambivalence in the documents:  Cf, for example, Karl Rahner, “Sündige Kirche nach den Dekreten des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils”, in: Schriften zur Theologie, 6 (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1965), 321–345. 33  Cf. Michael Becht, “Ecclesia Semper Reformanda, Teil 1 und 2,” in Catholica 49 (1995): 222–260. 34  Ibid., 254–256 (translation JG). 32

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Through … parallel formulations on the role of sin in the church, which on the one hand attribute guilt solely to believers, and on the other hand do evoke the notion of a sinful church, the texts have an ambivalent character … . Furthermore, the … artificial differentiation between ‘church’ and … ‘believers’ gives rise to the notion of an independent ecclesial collective person, separated from its concrete members—a notion which is hard to reconcile with other conciliar statements (cf. LG 8 and GS 40). … [Therefore,] it is one important result of our study that the council strived to implement the terminology of ‘church of sinners’, yet it still chose formulations which are, at the very least, open to the notion of a sinful church.35

The Council thus did not explicitly draw the full ecclesiological conclusions of its paradigm shift by including a teaching on the sinfulness of the church. Formally, however, through their textual ambiguities, the documents of the Council underscore its paradigmatic shift toward a historically grounded ecclesiology. The ambivalences, which still make the conflictive genealogy of the texts visible, reveal that all theology is historically conditioned. They clearly situate the normative texts of the church within the language game of a historically grounded theology, for which holiness remains protological gift and eschatological promise.36 Furthermore, this contingency of the normative texts problematizes the clear distinction between the ‘objectively’ holy church and its sinful subjects, which the Council used to refrain from promulgating an explicit text on ecclesial sin. Once we acknowledge that ecclesial teachings of highest authority take their shape in very concrete historical circumstances, can we still hold on to the notion that, somehow, the church exists independently from its actors and the rituals, prayers, theologies, and policies through which church is performed?37  Ibid., 257–258.  LG 48 explicitly calls for a clear differentiation between the eschatological church and “the pilgrim Church, in its sacraments and institutions, which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will pass, and she herself takes her place among the creatures which groan and travail yet and await the revelation of the sons of God (cf. Rom. 8:19-22).” 37  While a bifurcation between the objective holiness of the church and its sinful members informed Catholic ecclesiology since the polemical controversies of (counter)reformation, after the ecclesiological paradigm shifts of Vatican II, this separation becomes more and more untenable. This acknowledgment of ecclesial sin is a profoundly challenging process of reorientation for the church. A point in case is Karl Rahner’s (slow) theological shift from ‘the church of sinners’ to ‘the sinful church’. 35 36

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Still, it is precisely this differentiation which informs the vast majority of magisterial statements on this issue since the council. A prominent example is theological debates over Pope John Paul II’s 1994 call for repentance and conversion in preparation of the 2000 Jubilee year, roughly at a halfway mark between the Council and today.38 The Pope’s apologies triggered an intense debate over who, in fact, committed these sins. Was it the church itself or solely its individual and collective members? While a number of theologians did, also in reference to GS 19, argue for the sinfulness of the church,39 the official and magisterial documents tend to hold on to a differentiation between the church and its members:40 when God’s true features are concealed, it is through the missteps and the aberrations of sinning church members. The church itself is implicitly or explicitly thought to be free from sin. Ultimately, though, this bifurcation between holy church and its sinning members does not adequately maintain the paradoxical tension between holiness and sinfulness which is necessary for a theology of ecclesial sin; it does not sufficiently refrain from applying the eschatological language game to the church in its historical gestalt. On the contrary, by confessing the sins ‘of its members,’ the church can cement its claim for holiness unperturbed by sin, despite the transgressions of believers. Against this background, a speech which Pope Francis gave during his visit to Bolivia in July 2015 deserves closer scrutiny. Francis, too, like John Paul II, extends an apology for violence committed in the name of God. Unlike his predecessors, though, the current pope refrains from the bifurcation between the church and its members, and instead explicitly names the church as the subject of perpetrations and violence in the name of God: Here I wish to bring up an important issue. Some may rightly say, ‘When the Pope speaks of colonialism, he overlooks certain actions of the Church’. I  Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Letter. Tertio Millenio Adveniente, 1994.  There is extensive theological literature on this debate. For an overview and summary of the arguments cf. Jeremy M.  Bergen, Ecclesial Repentance. The Churches Confront Their Sinful Pasts (London—New York: T T Clark International, 2011), 115–151. 40  By way of example, cf. the study of the International Theological Commission, published in preparation for Pope John Paul II’s plea for forgiveness. Significantly, already in its title, this document avoids any notion of ecclesial sin by using the definite article (‘the’ faults of the past) instead of the thematically more adequate possessive adjective (‘her’ faults of the past). This shows paradigmatically that this document strives to uphold the bifurcation between the holy church and its sinful members: International Theological Commission, Memory and Reconciliation. The Church and the Faults of the Past, 1999. 38 39

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say this to you with regret: many grave sins were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God. My predecessors acknowledged this, CELAM, the Council of Latin American Bishops, has said it, and I too wish to say it. Like Saint John Paul II, I ask that the Church—I repeat what he said—‘kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters’. I would also say, and here I wish to be quite clear, as was Saint John Paul II: I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offenses of the Church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.41

Francis clearly and deliberately situates his apology within a tradition of ecclesial confessions of guilt, and yet, we can observe a significant shift: while John Paul II’s is a plea for forgiveness for the church’s ‘sons and daughters,’ Francis explicitly asks forgiveness for the offenses of the ‘Church herself.’ Rather than confessing sin of believers, Francis confesses ecclesial sin. Can we interpret this shift to mean that the Catholic church, with Francis as its guiding shepherd, is on its way to acknowledge sinfulness as much a nota ecclesiae as holiness, like the council has challenged it to do?

4  Conclusion When we read GS 19 as an ecclesiological statement, it is not just a gesture of humility toward atheism, but it humbles the self-understanding of the church. GS 19 calls the church to acknowledge its fundamental difference to God and take responsibility for both its historical contingency (cf. Gen 3) and its sinfulness (cf. Gen 1). The great hesitation with which the church adapts a theology of ecclesial sin serves as an indicator that the church is still struggling to implement this challenging ecclesiological paradigm shift initiated at the Second Vatican Council. It is still struggling to truly and explicitly become the historically conditioned representation of God’s eschatological promise that (wo)men “will be like God” (Gen 3).

41  Pope Francis, Address of the Holy Father, Participation at the Second World Meetings of Popular Movement., July 9, 2015.

“Downright Pelagian?”: Gaudium et Spes 17 and the Discussion on Who Is ‘in Possession’ of Conscience Jan Jans

It is, however, only in freedom that man [sic] can turn himself towards what is good. The people of our time prize freedom very highly and strive eagerly for it. In this they are right. Yet they often cherish it improperly, as if it gave them leave to do anything they like, even when it is evil. But that which is truly freedom is an exceptional sign of the image of God in man. For God willed that man should “be left in the hand of his own counsel” (Eccl. 15:10) so that he might of his own accord seek his creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him. Man’s dignity therefore requires him to act out of conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within, and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man gains such dignity when, ridding himself of all slavery to the passions, he presses forward towards his goal by freely choosing what is good, and, by his diligence and skill, effectively secures for himself the means suited to this end. Since human freedom has been

J. Jans (*) Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_11

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weakened by sin it is only by the help of God’s grace that man can give his actions their full and proper relationship to God. Before the judgment seat of God an account of his own life will be rendered to each one according as he has done either good or evil. (Cf. 2 Cor 5:10) (GS 17)

1   Introduction Some anecdotes are truly worth recalling, and by way of introduction, I will refer to one which, for me, catches the significance of Vatican II voiced by one of its important participants in a kind of sound-bite. First, about the context. In March 1999, a ‘fact finding mission’ (Nico Schreurs, systematic theology; Herman Beck, phenomenology of religion; Jan Jans, moral theology) of the Faculty of Theology of Tilburg (the Netherlands) was visiting South Africa to explore the possibilities of cooperation and exchange with theological institutions. It was the year that the presidency of Nelson Mandela came to an end, after serving from 1994 on, as a result of nationwide democratic elections and the future of South Africa looked bright. For the ‘fact finding mission,’ it was obvious to visit St. Joseph’s Theological Institute, located in Cedara near Pietermaritzburg. This institute was in full transition from its origin as a seminary of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) toward becoming the School of Catholic Theology within the cluster of academic institutions dealing with religion and theology connected to the University of Pietermaritzburg. To a certain degree, Tilburg Faculty of Theology was in a similar process of transition and therefore collaborations seemed to be very promising.1 One of the founding fathers of St. Joseph’s was the emeritus archbishop of Durban, Denis Hurley OMI. On Monday, March 22, 1999, the ‘fact finding mission’ met with archbishop Hurley, which was a day and a meeting to remember. Why? Well, let’s turn to content. We outlined part of the history of our own faculty,2 and when we mentioned that it was in part the result of the implementation of Vatican II in the Netherlands, archbishop 1  From June 21 to June 24, 2001, a joint expert meeting of researchers from St. Joseph Theological Institute and Tilburg Faculty of Theology took place in Tilburg on the topic of Contextual Theology – Doing Theology in South Africa and the Netherlands. Cf. Juxtaposing Contexts. Doing contextual theology in South Africa and the Netherlands, ed. Nico Schreurs and Thomas Plastow (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2003). 2  Cf. the historical study by Tessa Leesen, Tussen hamer en aambeeld. De Theologische Faculteit Tilburg op het snijvlak van wetenschap, kerk en samenleving [Between a Rock and a

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Hurley responded with a bright smile and commented: “Ah, yes: Vatican II—the biggest event of adult education in the history of the Catholic Church!”3 It was well known that archbishop Hurley was very fond of Vatican II (being 47 years old, in 1962 he was the youngest of the Council Fathers), and he used some of its social teachings to resist the South African politics of Apartheid. He also invoked the teachings on freedom and responsibility of conscience in order to substantiate civil disobedience.4 The ‘definition’ given by archbishop Hurley might sound a bit loose within the context of an academic discussion, so let me add a second which will bring us closer to the topic of this chapter. In his 1987 study on the history of Catholic moral theology, John Mahoney, SJ coined the following definition: “Vatican II … has produced a new edition of the Catholic Tradition.”5 In this truly magisterial short sentence, Mahoney both brings together and holds the tension between continuity and renewal, or even more precisely: between the continuity of renewal. In the years and decades following the Council and the struggle over its interpretations— in the plural—this also became known as ‘the hermeneutics of the Council’ in which categories such as ‘continuity, rupture, renewal’ were set up against each other.6 One issue which turned out to be important during Vatican II, and therefore also in this conflict of interpretations, was conscience.

Hard Place. Tilburg Faculty of Theology on the Intersection between Science, Church and Society] (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2004); esp. at 64–123: Hoofdstuk II – “1967–1974.” 3  Other sources express the same idea in somewhat different wordings. Cf. Albert Nolan O.P., “Foreword,” in Vatican II: Keeping the Dream Alive  – Denis Hurley OMI (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2005), ix: “Hurley spoke of the Council as ‘the great revolution that was taking place in the Catholic Church.’” Or Günter Simmermacher, Hurley Remembers Vatican II, in The Southern Cross, April 2, 2005: “[Hurley observed that the presence of so many scholars who had been called to Rome to assist with the work of Vatican II had created] ‘the greatest project of adult education ever held in the world.’” 4  Cf. the biography by Paddy Kearney, Guardian of the Light. Denis Hurley: Renewing the Church, Opposing Apartheid (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009). 5  John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 302. 6  Cf. Catherine E.  Clifford, Decoding Vatican II.  Interpretation and Ongoing Reception (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2014), esp. Part I.

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2   Vatican II and (Formation of) Conscience At the opening of Vatican II in October 1962, an impressive amount of work had been done in the preparation of documents which boiled down to a number of so-called Schemata.7 One of these is central to this chapter: namely De ordine morali, and more precisely, its second chapter De conscientia christiana. During the initial deliberations, it became clear that a growing number of Council Fathers were raising questions, and maybe even objections, with regard to some of the Schemata, but the fate of De ordine morali was rather straightforward since it did not make it beyond the first session.8 However, it is one thing to reject a preparatory text, but it is another to replace its content by something meeting the criterion of ‘a new edition of the Catholic tradition.’ The tradition with regard to conscience as presented by De ordine morali was rather top-down, as was analyzed by Karl Golser9: 1° there exists an objective moral order which expresses the will of God; 2° this order is known by the teaching office of the church; and 3° a properly formed conscience is like the herald of this teaching, repeating and obeying it. Some would call this ‘ecclesiastical positivism,’ which stresses the fact that the teaching office of the church can ‘bind’ the faithful’s conscience by its sheer authority, a.k.a. ‘creeping infallibility.’10 GS 16 was especially putting forward the ‘conciliar alternative,’ looking for a balance between, on the one hand, the dignity of conscience and its ability to connect people of faith with all those ‘in the world’ by their common search for truth (and I would add: for goodness and for beauty), and on the other hand, the risks of a poorly formed conscience. The ‘hard

7  Cf. The History of Vatican II. Volume 1: Announcing and Preparing Vatican Council II – Toward a New Era in Catholicism, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A.  Komonchak (Leuven: Peeters / Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995). 8  In a later remark, Philippe Delhaye noted that De ordine morali sought “to restore the repressive aspects of the teaching of Pius XII”. Cf. Dolores L. Christie, Adequately Considered. An American Perspective on Louis Janssens’ Personalist Morals. Louvain Theological & Pastoral Monographs, 4 (Leuven: Peeters Press, 1990), 101. 9  Karl Golser, Gewissen und objektive Sittenordnung. Zum Begriff des Gewissens in der neueren katholischen Moraltheologie. Wiener Beiträge zur Theologie, 48 (Wien: Wiener Dom-Verlag, 1975), 16–25. 10  For a recent analysis of this fallacy, cf. George Wilson, “It’s Nothing Personal. The History of Papal Infallibility,” in Commonweal February 4, 2016. [https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/its-nothing-personal].

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saying’ to be discussed here, however, appears in GS 17, where the importance of freedom is presented in order to support and explain conscience. Compared to GS 16, the Council is even more cautious here to find the balance between ‘freedom’ and a ‘leave to do anything they like,’ concluding that since human freedom has been damaged by sin, only with the help of God’s grace will it be possible to gain the authentic freedom which is the exceptional sign of the divine image in human beings. However, the critical commentary by Joseph Ratzinger, made first in 1969, that this treatment of free will in GS 17 is ‘downright Pelagian’11 is a signal that he did not agree with the balance sought after in GS 17 and that, therefore, in his opinion, it was off the mark. It might also be worthwhile to look at the original wording by Ratzinger in German: “[Der Text] verfällt in eine geradezu pelagianische Terminologie, wenn er davon spricht dass der Mensch ‘sese ab omni passionum captivate liberans, finum suum … persequitur et apta subsidia … procurat.’”12 The wording “eine geradezu pelagianische Terminologie” [“an almost pelagian terminology”] surely might be less strong when compared with ‘downright Pelagian,’ but it remains a very serious criticism. I will not discuss this comment/conversation stopper on its own but try to unpack what lies underneath. My suggestion is that it can be understood as an example of the very old and ongoing debate about the proper relationship between freedom and grace, or to be more precise, about the degree to which ‘unaided freedom/reason’ is capable of morality versus the need for divine assistance, including the issue of how this divine assistance is able to reach human sinners. This debate took a more specific form in the controversy over what is known as the post-tridentine ‘systems of morality’13 (with rigorism and laxism at the extreme ends and tutiorism 11  One source for this expression can be found in the article by Avery Dulles, “From Ratzinger to Benedict,” in First Things, February 2006 [http://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/02/from-ratzinger-to-benedict]. Dulles writes: “Ratzinger’s commentary on the first chapter of Gaudium et Spes contains still other provocative comments. … The treatment of free will in article 17 is in his judgment ‘downright Pelagian’”. 12  Joseph Ratzinger, Kommentar zum ersten Kapitel des ersten Teils, in Das zweite vatikanische Konzil … Kommentare Teil III [Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche], ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (Freiburg / Basel / Wien: Herder, 1968), 332. 13  For an analysis of how a truncated reading of Aquinas contributed to a shift from the primary place of intention towards the law in Cajetan and his followers—which in its term contributed to the conflict between freedom and authority, cf. Joseph A. Selling, Reframing Catholic Theological Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), Chapter 4 “From Trent to Vatican II.”

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and probabilism as the more balanced positions), which came down to the infamous debate about who is in possessione—that is, in possession of conscience, defined either as personal freedom or the law as formulated by ecclesiastical authority.14 To me it is clear that De ordine morali favored the second approach but that the Council looked for a balanced alternative that was not to the satisfaction of all, since free will seems to have become overstretched and therefore labeled ‘pelagian.’

3  Magisterium and Conscience According to Pope John Paul II in November 1988 In order to substantiate the thesis of this chapter, I will take a close look at the speech given by Pope John Paul II on November 12, 1988, to the participants of the Second International Congress on Moral Theology. Before going into the argument of this text, I have to point out a remarkable fact: as far as I know, this address is never used, quoted, or referred to in subsequent Papal or so-called Magisterial teaching. On the Vatican website, it is only available in the original Italian version15 and in a Spanish translation, although at least one official French translation also exists— more on that below. The speech does not have a specific title on the Vatican website, which is very different from the published versions in Italian and French in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. On Sunday, November 13, the day after the Pope gave this speech, it was published in the daily Italian edition under the long title: “Non si può parlare di diligente ricerca della Verità se non si tiene conto di ciò che il Magisterio insegna.”16 My translation: “One cannot speak of a diligent search for the Truth if one does not take into account what the Magisterium teaches.” Exactly one month later, the text was also published in the weekly French language edition of L’Osservatore Romano, this time having a very short title: “La doctrine de la vérité.”17 And the unofficial English 14  Cf. Julia A.  Fleming, Defending Probabilism. The Moral Theology of Juan Caramuel. Moral Tradition Series (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006), who discusses “Liberty, Law, and the Mediating Principle of Possession”, 125–127. 15  http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/speeches/1988/november/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19881112_teologia-morale.html. 16  Giovanni Paolo II, “Non si può parlare di diligente ricerca della Verità se non si tiene conto di ciò che il Magisterio insegna,” in L’Osservatore Romano, 13 Novembre 1988, 1; 4. 17  Jean Paul II, « La doctrine de la vérité », in L’Osservatore Romano : édition hebdomadaire en langue française, 13 décembre 1988.

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online translation, which was pointed out to me by a colleague, carries the title “Truth in the Magisterium (Con viva).”18 The speech was meant to connect to the theme of the Congress, called at the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the encyclical Humanae vitae, issued by Pope Paul VI in July of 1968. Pope John Paul II first assessed the reception and the discussions generated by Humanae vitae and claimed that as a result of this, “the Christian doctrine of moral conscience itself has been re-ordered by accepting the idea of a creative conscience.” He forcefully opposed this by stating: “Since the Magisterium of the Church [italics in original] has been established by Christ the Lord to illuminate conscience, making an appeal to conscience precisely to contest the truth of the teaching by the Magisterium contains the refusal of both the Catholic conception of Magisterium and of moral conscience.” After quoting the idea of “often (…) conscience goes astray” (GS 16), Pope John Paul II continued to say that, “Among the means anticipated by the saving love of Christ to avoid this dangerous error, one finds the Magisterium of the Church: in His name, it possesses a true and proper teaching authority.” The speech continued by addressing the defense of so-called intrinsically evil acts, supported by making theological claims about their connection with the holiness of God, and how this negation of magisterial teaching makes vain the cross of Christ [italics in original], but a discussion of this would lead us too far away from the current topic. What seems to be at stake here is an effort to subordinate freedom and conscience to the authority of the moral teachings proposed by the so-­ called Magisterium. However, the claims made to support this are lacking any kind of substantiation and boil down to nothing but an authoritarian mot de force. Content-wise, this means a return to one of the key notions of De ordine morali: properly formed conscience must be the herald of Magisterial teaching, repeating and above all obeying it. However, when on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1988, L’Osservatore Romano published an anonymous editorial under the provocative title “Sull’ autorità dottrinale della Istruzione ‘Donum Vitae,’” in which an echo could be heard of the address given by Pope John Paul II just six weeks before, no reference was made to the Pope’s speech. The rebuke voiced by the editorial had to do with a lack of obedience. Every type of dissent, both in words and in practice, was condemned as “gravissima ribellione” (grievous rebellion), because public opposition to the Magisterium comes down to the  http://www.cin.org/jp2ency/conviva.html.

18

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elaboration of a moral doctrine which affirms as licit some acts, which under the same conditions have been declared illicit by the Magisterium.19 And even the encyclical Veritatis Splendor issued by Pope John Paul II on October 5, 1993, in which the Pope refers to “what is certainly a genuine crisis”20 caused by the rift between the teachings of the Magisterium concerning moral truth and the dissenting positions and opinions of schools of theology and where several echoes to the address of November 1988 can be found,21 is lacking any reference to the Pope’s speech. It appears that even within the ‘reform of the reform,’ the extremist position of “Non si può…” was left behind.

4   What Kind of Underlying Moral Anthropology? Before I end this chapter with a half-open question, I will briefly clarify the underlying moral anthropology that leads to such claims of teaching authority that oppose free will and conscience. At least from the nineteenth century onward, the Magisterium has almost always addressed problems of moral behavior of the faithful with a ‘pessimistic’ undertone.22 Popes like Gregory XVI and Pius IX stressed the importance of strong and clear guidance to protect the faithful against the lure of sin and evil. Pope Gregory set the tone in his 1832 encyclical Mirari Vos: “When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin” (n° 5). I would claim that such a pessimistic moral anthropology, in combination with a genuine feeling of pastoral responsibility toward ‘the simple faithful,’ results in commands in order to avoid or prevent sin that reflect a narrow focus on authority and on the duty of obedience. From this ­perspective, freedom and ‘rights’ are only a dangerous disturbance of the proper and imposed ordine morali.

19  ***, Sull’ autorità dottrinale della Istruzione “Donum Vitae”, in L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Dicembre 1988, 1–2, at 1. 20  Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor  – Encyclical Letter on Some Fundamental Questions Regarding the Moral Teaching of the Church, § 5. 21  Cf. Jan Jans, “Moraaltheologisch crisismanagement. Achtergronden en implicaties van de encycliek Veritatis splendor,” Tijdschrift voor Theologie 34 (1994): 49–66. 22  Cf. Jan Jans, “Freedom of Conscience and Research,” in Disciples and Discipline. European Debate on Human Rights in the Roman Catholic Church, ed. Caroline Vander Stichele et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 114–124.

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However, during the twentieth century and notwithstanding the horror of the Great War and World War II, there emerged an alternative in Catholic theology which explored how duty was not necessarily opposed to freedom and rights, but how a renewed theology of conscience might be able to show their dialectic unity.23 Here, the underlying moral anthropology was colored by ‘optimism.’ An apt expression of this was the way Pope John XXIII welcomed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in his 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris. The Council agreed that an imposed moral order of duty and obedience was not (no longer?) fitting. One explicit example of how the tables were turned can be found in the teaching of GS 16 and 17, which this chapter has explored.

5  By Way of Conclusion: A Half-Open Question Who is in possessione of conscience? Let me share my intuition—and a bit more than an intuition—that framed in this way, the question is a perfect example of ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ The reason for this is that the framing contains the assumption that it is all about authority—who is ‘the boss’? But at its best, this question is only a kind of analogy pointing to the much more important issues of grace and freedom and how they can relate in a balanced but especially dynamic way. Here again, the legacy of the Council still could enlighten our ways, at least when we remember its teachings on personal dignity, a.k.a. libertate responsabili (responsible freedom). And this without any remaining flavor or suspicion of ‘Pelagianism.’

23  For an historical-systematic account of this long and winding road, cf. James F. Keenan, A History of Catholic Moral Theology in the Twentieth Century. From Confessing Sins to Liberating Consciences (London / New York: Continuum, 2010).

A Pilgrim Church in and for the World: Eschatological Ecclesiology and the Legacy of Vatican II: A Response to Paul Lakeland, Judith Gruber, and Jan Jans Scott MacDougall

Each of the three preceding papers clearly articulates how competing ecclesiological impulses that are present alongside of one another in some of the Vatican II documents constitute “hard sayings” that have bequeathed unresolved challenges to the present Roman Catholic Church. In all of these instances, how (and, indeed, whether) the challenges under examination are resolved carries important implications for how the church– world relationship is configured, both conceptually and practically. As the writers each make plain, the stakes here are not small.

S. MacDougall (*) Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7_12

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1   The Relation of the Existing Church to the Envisioned Church in the Documents of Vatican II According to Lakeland, Gruber, and Jans Paul Lakeland reads Lumen Gentium as simultaneously indicating the Council’s desire to affirm a “common priesthood” of the baptized, on the one hand, while also succumbing to a problematic dichotomy between this common priesthood of all baptized people and a ministerial priesthood of the ordained clergy on the other. This tension betrays the persistence of a stubborn, older ecclesiological view that asserts an ontological difference distinguishing ministerial priesthood in an essential way from the common priesthood. As a result, Lakeland wonders whether Vatican II is better understood as investing only the laity with a vocation to carry out the missio Dei in the wider world or whether the Council is properly understood as envisioning the ministerial priesthood as sharing in that worldly vocation: a vocation that includes rather than contrasts with or runs parallel to the clergy’s call to sacramental service. The Council’s language around this seems to be somewhat at odds with itself. But how the conundrum that this (for some) “hard” saying that Vatican II pronounces is resolved has tremendous implications for how we imagine and live out the church–world relationship. Judith Gruber reads GS 19 as another hard saying of the church to itself with respect to church–world relations. Here, Gruber argues, the Council evidences a move away from a pre-conciliar isolationism in which the church held itself out as a societas perfecta over against a world that it condemned, acknowledging that this posture actually prevented the world from seeing the church correctly. Gruber observes that in making this acknowledgment, the church takes responsibility (partially?) for the fact that its condemnation of the world served to conceal rather than reveal both itself and God to the world, thereby contributing to both people’s rejection of the church and the growth of atheism. Accepting this hard reality contributed to the Council’s adoption of a view of the church as a sacramental mediator between, as she puts it, “God’s revelation and the world.” The church, looking to understand itself in light of both God’s self-revelation and the world, comes to understand the world, God’s self-­ revelation, and itself in new and fruitful ways, and in ways that continuously call the church to assess and reassess its views, structures, and modi

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operandi. It has been, and continues to be, challenging for the church to come to grips with its own contingency and, indeed, its sinfulness in this way and there have been, and continue to be, various attempts to avoid having to do so.1 This, too, carries huge implications for church–world relations, particularly with respect to the public credibility of the church and the character of its work from a missiological standpoint. Jan Jans also points to another unresolved ecclesiological tension in a third hard saying of Vatican II to and about the church, and another that, depending on the way in which it is worked out, has important ramifications for church–world dynamics. Jans directs our attention to the treatment of moral conscience in GS 17 and to some of the reactions that it engendered to demonstrate this tension. GS 17 opens by stating that “only in freedom can [people] turn [themselves] towards what is good,” this freedom being the freedom to bring a well-formed moral conscience to bear in discerning a properly Christian way forward in the world. Jans argues that, in claiming that this conciliar formulation borders on being Pelagian, Joseph Ratzinger exemplifies an enduring strain of Catholic thinking that subordinates the free conscience invoked by GS 17 to the teaching of the Magisterium. John Paul II, as Jans makes clear, was adamant that this had to be so for (at least) crucial ecclesiological and soteriological reasons. And, of course, both maintained this view despite what appears to be a relatively straightforward desire on the part of the Council to move the treatment of conscience away from a model in which, as Jans puts it, the Magisterium “possesses” the conscience of the Catholic faithful. In all three of these instances, we have a clear demonstration of the dynamic that Hermann Pottmeyer illustrated by means of his striking construction-­site image.2 Pottmeyer described Vatican II as laying the foundation for a new ecclesial edifice, for building a new kind of church. However, he continued, the new church was being built adjacent to the previous one. The older building remained fully functional and its architectural forms and ornaments remained clearly in sight, casting a shadow on the newer one, and pulling the spectator’s eye back toward 1  See, for example, Bernard P.  Prusak, “Theological Considerations—Hermeneutical, Ecclesiological, Eschatological Regarding Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past,” Horizons 32 (2005): 136–151. Also, Brian P.  Flanagan, Stumbling in Holiness: Sin and Sanctity in the Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press Academic, 2018). 2  Hermann J.  Pottmeyer, Towards a Papacy in Communion: Perspectives from Vatican Councils I & II, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 110.

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itself while the newer church, still quite skeletal and only partially habitable, was in its earliest stages of construction. Vatican II may have broken ground and even laid the foundation for the erection of a new kind of church, but, as the late Gerard Mannion and Richard Gaillardetz, among others, have pointed out, drawing on Pottmeyer’s figure of the construction site, the church’s previous form loomed large on the ecclesial skyline, a powerful presence in the ecclesiological “eyes” and imagination of the Roman Catholic Church.3 The simultaneous existence of the old and new where a given ecclesiological theme or question is in view—a simultaneity that is sometimes found within the Council documents themselves, that at others is expressed in the post-conciliar struggles over the direction of the church, and that in still others takes both of these forms—lies at the heart of the tensions that Lakeland, Gruber, and Jans analyze. The “hard saying” in each instance can be understood as a hard saying posed to the existing church by the envisioned church. Being the product of conciliar processes, representing hundreds of voices from all points on the spectrum of ecclesiological views, Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium, even while pointing the church in new directions, are themselves marked by this tension. Moreover, the very real and important ambivalences that these three theologians interrogate facilitated the diverse and sometimes contradictory interpretations those documents received and continue to receive.

2   Rethinking the Church–World Relationship in Eschatological Terms: An Anglican Commentary on Lumen Gentium’s Chapter 7 While it is relatively commonplace and not at all inaccurate to claim that Vatican II was a watershed moment for the church’s understanding of itself, the ambivalence attendant on it prohibits it from being the ecclesial revolution that some characterize it as having been. In terms of the church–world relationship that is the focus here, the hard sayings of the Council do not seem to have thrown the church doors wide open to the

3  See, for example, Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Time (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2007), 29; and Richard R. Gaillardetz, “Building on Vatican II: Setting the Agenda for the Church of the 21st Century,” Theoforum 44 (2013): 67–90.

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world but only to have budged them ajar.4 Some tried at the time and have been trying ever since to slam those doors shut again. Some others were able to thrust a foot into the opening. The question now is which way those doors will be moved from this point. After all, as more than one post-conciliar pontificate has demonstrated, it is not a forgone conclusion that the doors will continue on an outward trajectory. If anything here is clear, it is that what lies on the other side of those doors is the world and that how the church conceptually and practically relates itself to it is one of most pressing ecclesiological matters of our time. Will the church turn inward once again? Or will it move even more boldly to take up the agenda that was set by one major emphasis of Vatican II, that of throwing its doors wide open to the world, definitively and exuberantly, or, as Pope Francis might have us put it, mercifully and joyfully?5 As an interested outsider, an Anglican trained in ecclesiology at a Jesuit institution who engages Roman Catholic teaching on the church in his own thinking and work, it seems to me that this is a fundamental question that lies beneath all three of these hard sayings. Will the Roman Catholic Church embrace fully the strand of Vatican II ecclesiology that emphasizes a common priesthood of all believers in and to the world, rooted in baptism, with diverse functional roles and vocations articulated and practiced within it, or will the clericalist impulse that also appeared in the conciliar documents, one that distinguishes between a worldly (and therefore “lower”) lay priesthood in the world and a sacramental–ecclesial (and therefore “higher”) priesthood in the church, ultimately prevail? Will there be a Roman Catholic Church that sacramentally mediates God’s self-­ revelation and the world God loves to one another through its continually revisable and historically contingent structures and practices, or will it return to a more balkanized church that considers itself a godly outpost in an ungodly world that it judges and condemns—and, in so doing, alienates from itself? Will there be a church that seeks to shape the healthy 4  Even those who applauded very early on what Vatican II had accomplished saw clearly that, when it came to the interaction of church and world, any advances that had been made were highly preliminary. See, for example, Johann Baptist Metz, “An Eschatological View of the Church and World,” in Theology of the World (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969), 81. 5  See Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, apostolic exhortation on the proclamation of the gospel in today’s world, Vatican, 2013, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html; The Church of Mercy (Chicago: Loyola, 2014); and The Name of God is Mercy (New York: Random House, 2016).

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formation and development of Christian moral agents with robust faculties of conscience that, aided by the good offices of the church, allow Christians to navigate the complex conundrums of postmodern reality, or will it return to a church “in possession” of the consciences of its members, that neither trusts that the faithful are capable of contending well with the complexities of life nor believes that it has much to learn from them or their “worldly” experiences? In short, will a world torn by violence, hardship, and injustice find the doors of the church open or closed to it—and to its realities, needs, experiences, questions, insights, and gifts? This is a question put to the church by many of the hard sayings of Vatican II and certainly by those brought to the fore by Lakeland, Gruber, and Jans. The reason why these sayings are hard is two-fold. First, they are hard because they are difficult for the church to pronounce and to hear. Gruber does an excellent job of showing how the church struggled to come to terms with its pre-conciliar condemnatory posture and with its own culpability in the growth of atheism that stemmed from that ecclesial hardness of heart. We can all think of multiple occasions, however, where an opportunity to tell a hard truth about ourselves was not so robustly taken up. It requires strength and courage to articulate loyal and loving criticism of the body that is most visibly and clearly associated with carrying out God’s own purposes in the world. It takes no less strength and courage to listen to such critique without falling into the deafness of defensiveness. This is one reason why these sayings are hard. Another is that they deliver a message with practical implications that are difficult. They threaten the ecclesial status quo, longstanding traditions, power structures, comfortable and reliable hierarchies, theological positions, and practices, ritual and moral. They are hard sayings because they are demanding sayings. However, each of these papers makes abundantly clear, each in its own way, that what is at stake in not doing this is the very pursuit of God’s mission in, for, and to the world. Is the church’s sacramental priesthood focused exclusively inward, or is it also properly directed outward? Does it serve only a sacerdotal function, or does it play a larger evangelical role? Does God’s church stand over against the world, or is it a community that mediates between God’s self-revelation and creation? Does it possess the consciences of its adherents or provide the resources for the proper formation of autonomous moral agents? The Vatican II documents answer these questions in multiple, sometimes contradictory, ways. Not surprisingly, the church has struggled between these

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competing ideas of how church and world are related in the decades since the Council. Of course, resolving the fundamental hard question of how the church and the world are related in a normative sense is to make a theological claim about what the church is and is for, at the most profound level of its nature and being. In my view, there is an additional Vatican II contribution to ecclesiology that is able to assist in articulating just such a claim. As might be expected, however, the guidance it provides is only suggestive, not definitive. It is marked by the same ambivalence—the same tension between the old and new architecture situated on the same construction site—that marks the hard sayings that Lakeland, Gruber, and Jans have brought to our attention. Even so, a more intentional, concerted effort to develop this theme could result in providing a robust context for adjudicating resolutions to the conundrums pertaining to church–world relations that these three essays identify. I will not be able to make the case fully here, but I will argue that chapter 7 of Lumen Gentium, on “The Pilgrim Church and Its Union with the Church in Heaven,” brings to the fore an eschatological view of the church that, if enhanced and amplified, could aid in clarifying the church–world relationship and, in so doing, suggest routes of egress out of some of the impasses represented by the hard sayings we have been addressing.6 Lumen Gentium chapter 7 (§§ 48–51) offers a treatment of the church as God’s “pilgrim people.” Through the church, Christ is calling the entire world to himself. Christ is truly present to the world sacramentally, in the eucharistic liturgy and in the life of the community that celebrates it. Constituted by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ is present to the world in the assembly that composes the gathered church, “the universal sacrament of salvation,” a sacramental body that journeys forward together, as a pilgrim people, into God’s promised future. Participation in the life of the church is an anticipation of reconciled, or “restored,” life in heaven, and this provides the context for discerning the meaning of present existence (§ 48). Beyond the liturgy, the church participates (always imperfectly) in this heavenly reality by imitating Christ. It is necessary to do this, since human lives are short, one does not know when one will die, and one desires to be judged worthy of proceeding to heaven when earthly life is 6  For a more thorough treatment of the overarching position being advanced here, see Scott MacDougall, More Than Communion: Imagining an Eschatological Ecclesiology (London: Bloomsbury–T&T Clark, 2015).

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over (§ 48). For this same reason, the faithful are exhorted to model their earthly lives on the actions of the saints who have died before, an orientation that keeps them “safe” on the corporate pilgrimage toward full eschatological holiness in heaven (§§ 49–50). The pilgrim people are encouraged to venerate the saints in accordance with the guidance established by the conciliar tradition of the church ranging from Nicea to Trent, further connecting the contemporary church with the communion of saints across space and time. This creates Christian ecclesial fellowship in the transtemporal and transspatial praise of God that will be perfected in the full realization of the heavenly Eucharist, “the liturgy of perfect glory,” as envisioned in Rev. 5 (§ 51). This formulation is certainly not utterly foreign to the mystical body ecclesiology that greatly characterized pre-conciliar views of the church,7 but new emphases are signaled. In the first paragraph of the chapter, Lumen Gentium claims that the eschatological fulfillment of God’s promise is communally “anticipated”—prefigured—by the church and that, in this time between the times, the church finds itself rooted in the world: However, until there be realized new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells (cf. 2 Pet. 3:13) the pilgrim Church, in its sacraments and institutions, which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will pass, and she herself takes her place among the creatures which groan and travail yet and await the revelation of the sons of God (cf. Rom. 8:19-22). (LG 48)

Although tentative, there is an accent on the world as the site for the church’s participation in God’s redemptive work of love and reconciliation, precisely as the (imperfect) anticipation of the eschatological completion of all things. Instead of drawing out the “hard” implications of such a construal of church, however, chapter 7 backs off from this initial position and takes up a more traditional treatment of eschatology. Instead of issuing additional hard sayings about the eschatological character of the church as the corporate body of disciples undertaking the risk of service in and to the world as it discerns a way toward the kingdom of God—an eschatological view of 7  The locus classicus for these views is Pius XII, Mystici Corporus Christi, encyclical on the mystical body of Christ, Vatican, 1943, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_29061943_mystici-corporis-christi.html.

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the church that, at the time of Vatican II was gaining significant traction8 and that has developed a great deal since—the bulk of Lumen Gentium’s treatment of the eschatological character of the church focuses largely on the destiny of individual believers after their death. Lumen Gentium’s eschatological imagination is essentially reduced to the four last things— death, judgment, heaven, and hell—along with a relatively traditional treatment of the communion of the saints.9 Yet, the opening lines of chapter 7, offering the idea of the church as a body of believers on an eschatological pilgrimage, had signaled a potential key shift in the church’s fundamental self-understanding. Once again, new and old appear side-by-­ side, in tension with one another, in the Vatican II documents. Methodist theologian John W.  Deschner, commenting on Lumen Gentium very soon after the Council, observed three distinct, non-­ harmonized, and, indeed, to him, ultimately non-harmonizable approaches to characterizing how the “transcendent” is related to the church in the dogmatic constitution. He followed George Lindbeck in perceiving an “ontological” conception of the church’s relationship to God, in which the church is “primarily … a mysterious second level of reality superimposed upon the here and now” within a greater “medieval two-level, earth and heaven ontology.” That, he argued, still following Lindbeck, sat in the document alongside an “eschatological” construal of this relationship, in which the church’s theological reality stems “mainly [from] a promised consum[m]ation or fulfillment approaching out of the future,” in the 8  A richer eschatological view than this alone was certainly available and had been increasingly coming into view for some time. Hans Urs von Balthasar could quip in 1957—in reply to Ernst Troeltsch’s remark in 1925 that “nowadays the eschatological office is closed most of the time”—that the office of eschatology had in fact been “working overtime” since Troeltsch’s day. See Christoph Schwöbel, “Last Things First? The Century of Eschatology in Retrospect,” in The Future as God’s Gift: Explorations in Christian Eschatology, ed. David Fergusson and Marcel Sarot (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 217, for a recounting of this exchange, and see the essay in full for a treatment of the eschatological currents swirling prior to and during Vatican II. 9  Henry Novello’s work suggests that, in some ways, this cannot be surprising, as the Vatican II moment marks the beginning of Roman Catholic theology opening to eschatological ideas beyond the “four last things,” as those wider views had mostly been the focus of Protestant thinkers up to that point. Traces of such ideas can be found in the conciliar documents, but only in initial forms that required further development. As such, one should not expect to find here the fruits of the subsequent work that the council itself enabled. See Henry Novello, “Eschatology Since Vatican II: Saved in Hope,” Australasian Catholic Record 90 (2013): 410–423.

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framework of “a more recent one-level history and kingdom eschatology.”10 To these, he added a third option of his own, a “juridical” impulse in Lumen Gentium that, on his account, seems to locate the transcendent character of the church in the structures of ecclesiality (episcopal collegiality, hierarchy, communion, and the like), which endow it with the authority it possesses as church.11 In Deschner’s estimation, the Council was wise to simply present these “fundamental motifs” side-by-side, without attempting to synthesize them. Properly, Deschner claimed, they left this task to the theologians who came after them to pursue. Significantly, he also took the position that these currents were likely not able to be synthesized “into a higher unity,” that ultimately, one of them, the ontological, the juridical, or the eschatological conception of the relationship of “transcendence” to the church, would need to prevail and the others interpreted in light of it. In his view, the clear best candidate for this was the eschatological theme.12 Deschner’s perceptive evaluation of Lumen Gentium is helpful for my purpose. First, his analysis of the unresolved tension between the old and the new churches that Lumen Gentium attempted (in part) to build next to one another, and his claim that theologians would ultimately need to decide which of the juxtaposed Vatican II ecclesiologies should take precedence, forecast and contextualize the theological struggle over the proper characterization of church that ensued in the decades following the Council.13 One could suggest, for example, that it was theological 10  John W. Deschner, “Concerning Lumen Gentium,” Perkins School of Theology Journal 20 (1967): 7. 11  Deschner, “Concerning Lumen Gentium,” 20. 12  Deschner, “Concerning Lumen Gentium,” 20. 13  This is not at all to claim that Deschner was unique in seeing this. Deschner is helpful in propelling the argument here as an early commentator who makes this claim with respect specifically to the eschatological dimension of the church as a theme mooted at Vatican II that both showed great promise and required much more development. The literature on the history, reception, and legacy of Vatican II and its teaching is replete with examples of those who noted a spectrum of such tensions and the ecclesial and theological contests that would inevitably result from them. See, for example, Giuseppe Alberigo, A Brief History of Vatican II, trans. Matthew Sherry (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2006); Kristin M. Colberg, Vatican I and Vatican II: Councils in the Living Tradition (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2016); Massimo Faggioli, Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning (New York: Paulist, 2012); Richard R.  Gaillardetz, An Unfinished Council: Vatican II, Pope Francis, and the Renewal of Catholicism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2016); and John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2010).

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partisans of the “ontological” strand in Lumen Gentium who re-­articulated and re-asserted the Neoplatonic metaphysical underpinning for certain forms of Roman Catholic communion ecclesiology.14 One could argue that a related (and in some ways overlapping) view was promulgated by those who took up the “juridical” motif, characterized by exchanges such as the famous Kasper–Ratzinger debate15 and the ecclesiological determinations of convenings such as the Second Extraordinary Synod in 1985, which explicitly claimed Vatican II warrants for its teaching on communion, church hierarchy, and ecclesial authority.16 And one could claim that theologians such as Edward Schillebeeckx,17 Johann Baptist Metz,18 and Gustavo Gutiérrez19 carried forward the “eschatological” theme in Lumen Gentium’s ecclesiology, emphasizing in a fuller manner than Vatican II itself was able to do what it can mean to conceive of and to be church in the mode of “pilgrim people,” in a truly (though, of course, not a narrowly) worldly sense. Each of the three ecclesiological vectors that Deschner thought were charted by Lumen Gentium have been traveled and explored in the years since the Council, with varying emphases and effects. This brings us to a second reason that Deschner’s analysis is helpful. Maintaining that the three ecclesiological options he described were not readily harmonizable, he championed the eschatological trajectory as the one most promising, and he did so, at least in part, precisely because he thought this perspective was the most salutary for articulating properly the church–world relationship. It is partially for this reason that he maintained that chapter 7 “is a chapter to watch.”20

14  See, for example, MacDougall, More Than Communion, 36–40. See also Edward Hahnenberg, “The Mystical Body of Christ and Communion Ecclesiology: Historical Parallels,” Irish Theological Quarterly 70 (2005): 3–30. 15  On this important exchange about the essential character of the church carried out in print between cardinals Walter Kasper and Joseph Ratzinger for nearly a decade, see Kilian McDonnell, “The Ratzinger/Kasper Debate: The Universal and Local Churches,” Theological Studies 63 (2002): 227–250. 16  “The Final Report,” AFER 28 (1986): 81–94. 17  Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroad, 1996). 18  Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (New York: Crossroad, 2007). 19  Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 15th anniversary revised edition, 1988). 20  Deschner, “Concerning Lumen Gentium,” 19.

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3   The Task Ahead: Carrying Through and Developing the Eschatological Ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium’s Chapter 7 I will now conclude this response to Lakeland, Gruber, and Jans by agreeing with Deschner and by suggesting that carrying through and developing Lumen Gentium’s attempt to characterize the church as the pilgrim people of God might contribute powerfully to resolving the ambivalences of the “hard sayings” of the church to itself with respect to the church– world dynamic that they identify. Developing the pilgrim-people vision of eschatological ecclesiology in Lumen Gentium chapter 7 means first acknowledging its underdevelopment in the text itself. While Deschner claimed that this chapter was “the most curious, interesting, and possibly explosive chapter in the entire document,” he also recognized that it was incomplete, “hardly more than a promise of theological labor yet to be accomplished.”21 As has already been pointed out, the chapter lacks a full eschatological perspective because its initial gesture in this direction contracts to a treatment of the four last things and the communion of the saints, so much so that the Jesuit theologian John Haughey would comment in 1968, “Despite the chapter’s title, this is communion-of-saints ecclesiology, not community-­ of-­pilgrims ecclesiology.”22 Barnabas Ahern, a Passionist priest and theologian, participant in Vatican II, and another early commentator on the eschatology of Lumen Gentium, also criticized it for its incompleteness, in the restriction of its eschatological scope to the human alone instead of expanding it to include the entire creation.23 Reflecting the “considerable” tensions evident both in Lumen Gentium24 and on the Vatican II “construction site” more widely, two modes of speaking of the eschatological dimension of the church appear here, one that understands Christian community as being somehow an  Deschner, “Concerning Lumen Gentium,” 12, 18.  John C. Haughey, “Church and Kingdom: Ecclesiology in the Light of Eschatology,” Theological Studies 29 (1968): 84. 23  Deschner, “Concerning Lumen Gentium,” 18. Ahern maintained that this wider eschatological view was, in fact, expressed by the Council in Gaudium et Spes, the constitution on the church in the modern world. To the extent that this is accurate—a matter that cannot be adjudicated here—it is hardly insignificant that the document that has the world as a primary focus also features a more robust eschatological imagination. 24  Deschner, “Concerning Lumen Gentium,” 12. 21 22

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“anticipation” of the eschatological perfection of all creation, in which the world appears as the context for the church’s work and witness, and another that links the church “on earth” with the church “in heaven,” in which the world recedes somewhat, the focus shifting to the church’s inclusion in the heavenly communion of saints, which is due, in part, to improperly conflating the church and the kingdom of God. A too-close association of church and kingdom is an ecclesiological temptation to which not a few theological perspectives over time have succumbed. Haughey makes the case that Lumen Gentium certainly appears to have done so. Not only does paragraph 3 portray the church–kingdom connection in very tight terms,25 but the eschatological future itself appears to be the future of the church, in heaven, much of which—specifically, those who have gone before, the communion of the saints—is already “there.” Moreover, its earthly component, including its ordained ministers, is tinged with a triumphalism that has traditionally accompanied such a conception of church. Scriptural passages about the kingdom of God are markedly absent, Haughey notes, surmising this is likely because they have simply been replaced by ecclesiology. In addition, any eschatological note of discontinuity between present and future has been silenced. In the end, in his estimation, this means that the putative theme of chapter 7, the pilgrim church, “is only lightly touched upon.”26 As Richard Lennan points out, a true pilgrim church must be carefully distinguished from the kingdom of God while never being conceived of as totally unrelated to it, on the one hand, or in competition with it, on the other. Following Karl Rahner, Lennan observes that a pilgrim church is not a triumphalistic church identified with the kingdom of God but a “self-critical” church in constant need of correction and reformation.27 According to Dennis Doyle, this is precisely what Otto Semmelroth, a peritus at Vatican II and a contributor to the work on Lumen Gentium, claimed that highlighting the historical and eschatological dimensions of the church in that document was designed to foster: a less triumphalistic and a more self-critical form of Roman Catholic ecclesiality.28 25  “The Church—that is, the kingdom of Christ already present in mystery—grows visibly through the power of God in the world.” 26  Haughey, “Church and Kingdom,” 83–85. 27  Richard Lennan, “A Continuing Pilgrimage: Ecclesiology Since Vatican II,” Australasian Catholic Record 91 (2014): 44–45. 28  Dennis Doyle, “Otto Semmelroth and the Advance of the Church as Sacrament at Vatican II,” Theological Studies 76 (2015): 81.

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4   Conclusion This is the eschatological impulse that needs to be amplified, the one that Deschner quite rightly perceived to be “explosive.” When church is decoupled from kingdom and becomes the anticipation of a thoroughgoing eschatological transformation in the advent of the new heaven and new earth, the primary object of its gaze is less “heaven” than it is “world” and its eschatological renewal. Participating in the missio Dei, the church is a corporate agent that mediates by anticipation, in its works and worship, the object of its hope. On its pilgrimage into God’s promised future, its role is one of complete service in and for the world that God loves and promises to bring to ultimate fulfillment. There can be no question of triumphalism, here, as the outworking of God’s promise is under no human control and its form is foreseen by no human mind. Humility, hope, and love are its watchwords. One of the energies present at Vatican II and its documents, the one I have already claimed is developed subsequently by theologians such as Schillebeeckx, Metz, and Gutiérrez, attempted to move the church in this direction. Deschner thought this is the trajectory that ought to prevail in the post-Vatican II theological struggle. While the argument has moved too quickly here to have demonstrated that he is right, I hope I have been able to at least suggest that he may be. If he is, if a wider, more world-transforming vision of the missio Dei and the church’s role as agent of it were to become the hermeneutical key for addressing the unresolved ecclesiological “hard sayings” of Vatican II that Lakeland, Gruber, and Jans examine, what might that look like? In the case of ordination that Lakeland raises, it would strongly suggest that there is ultimately only one priesthood, in which all Christians participate, in many different modes and fulfilling many different tasks. It would seem to provide an interpretive lens through which it becomes clear that all Christian pilgrims are oriented to the world, of which the church is a component and in which it is rooted, in love and service, without any ontological distinction marking sacerdotal ministry as somehow “higher” than the ministry of the non-ordained baptized. Similarly, regarding the questions that Gruber raises about a church able to accept that it sometimes both reveals and conceals God, and being able to learn from the ways in which it has fallen short, an eschatologically rich ecclesiology would encourage the cultivation of an ecclesial humility necessary to embrace this, as difficult as the task may be. If the pilgrim church is moving in and

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with the world, not only as part of it but also in loving relationship to it, that requires vulnerability to both God and the world, leaning from both, confessing to both. An eschatological view of the church that remembers that the church, not being the kingdom of God, is prey to sin and subject to judgment is better able to fulfill this aspect of its worldly vocation. With respect to the question of conscience that Jans outlines, this view could help us see that moral formation in the community of pilgrims is less about possessing conscience than unlocking it, developing agents of the missio Dei who are formed and informed by Christian hope, and who seek to discern appropriate ways of engaging the world in light of it. While they know they will miss the mark, they nevertheless trust in the God of promise to uphold them and their efforts (1 Cor. 3:15). Again, eschatological provisionality would seem to preclude the idea that the church could rightly “possess” the conscience of the pilgrim people, even as its scripture, tradition, and structures serve to shape the consciences of free moral agents in light of the core Christian narrative and ultimate eschatological expectation. In each of these cases, developing the eschatological theme of Vatican II’s ecclesiological legacy reshapes the resulting church–world dynamic in highly positive ways.

Index

A Ad Gentes, 128, 136, 141 Ahern, Barnabas, 204 Anglicans, 57, 67 Anti-Semitism, 145 Apostolicae Curae, 67, 75 The Apostolicity of the Church (TAC), 89 Aquinas, Thomas, 104 Athanasius, 27 Atheism, 6, 165, 167–171, 182, 194, 198 Authoritarianism, 82 B Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 100 Baptism, 36, 37, 39, 42, 55, 56, 58, 72, 93, 156, 157, 161, 163 Baptism and Growth in Communion, 90 Barnes, Michael, 134 Bätzing, Georg, 73 Baum, Gregory, 16, 27

Becht, Michael, 179 Beck, Herman, 184 Benedict XVI, 13, 15, 17–19, 27, 187, 195 Bévenot, Maurice, 56 Boff, Leonardo, 46 Böhnke, Michael, 176–178 Bruner, Frederick, 121 C Calvinism, 83 Calvinist, 33, 34, 41 Calvin, Jean, 33, 41 Caputo, John, 173 Caritas in Veritate, 17 Carl, Harold, 116, 122 Catholic Church, 38, 42, 54 Centesimus Annus, 16 Christian identity, 115, 117–119, 127, 135, 136 The Church as Koinonia of Salvation: Its Structures and Ministries, 70, 88, 89

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. De Mey, J. Gruber (eds.), Hard Sayings Left Behind by Vatican II, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45540-7

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INDEX

Church as sacrament, 148, 150, 169, 199 Church of Christ, 32, 37, 84, 86 The Church. Towards a Common Vision, 81 Ciappi, Mario, 61, 62 Cicognani, Amleto Giovanni Cardinal, 55 Clericalism, 12, 13, 19, 21–23, 25, 26, 29, 81, 163 Clooney, Francis, 136 Colberg, Kristin, 135 Common Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, 51 Common priesthood, 155, 156, 159–163, 194, 197, 198 Communicatio in sacris, 3, 50, 51, 53, 54, 75 Communion, 56, 74, 87, 93–95 Communion ecclesiology, 203 Communion of saints, 200, 201, 204, 205 Conférence Catholique pour les Questions Œcuméniques (CCQŒ), 38 Confessio Augustana, 85, 87, 94 Congar, Yves, 34–36, 38, 40, 146, 168 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 15, 117 Conscience, 7 Corruption, 18, 26 Costa, Franco, 57 Cullmann, Oscar, 63 Cunningham, Philip, 123 D Daniélou, Jean, 35 D’Costa, Gavin, 119, 121 Declaration on the Way: Church, Ministry, and Eucharist, 70

Decree on Ecumenism, 61, 63 De Ecclesia, 42, 43 Dei Verbum, 128, 129, 133, 134 De Smedt, Émile-Joseph, 12 Deschner, John W., 201–204, 206 Dialogue and Proclamation, 130, 137 Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, 50 Dieter, Theodor, 68 Dignitatis Humanae, 63 Directory concerning Ecumenical Matters, 51 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, 52 Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 128 Dominum et Vivificantem, 133, 145 Dominus Iesus, 44, 45, 86, 115, 117–119, 131, 133, 135 Doyle, Dennis, 205 Dupuis, Jacques, 132 E East, Brad, 150 Ecclesia catholica, 36, 37 Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 68 Ecclesial holiness, 176 Ecclesiality, 32, 40, 42, 44, 48, 77, 83–86, 95, 202, 205 Ecclesial sin, 182 Ecumenical dialogue, 32, 50, 68, 74, 75, 77, 78, 88, 91 Elementa ecclesiae, 3, 4, 32–34, 36, 38–45, 83–86 Episcopal collegiality, 13 Eschatological character of the church, 200, 201, 205 Eschatological dimension, 146, 147 Eschatological dimension of the church, 204

 INDEX 

Eucharist, 3, 50–54, 57–65, 72–75, 87, 88, 92–95, 158, 159, 200 Eucharistic hospitality, 91, 94, 95 Evagrius of Pontus, 27 Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), 88 Evangelii Gaudium, 13, 23, 78, 148 Evangelium Vitae, 16 Evangelization, 4, 99, 110, 111 Evil, 143, 190 Examination of conscience, 16, 18, 20, 23, 24, 28, 29, 81 F Feige, Gerhard, 73 Fides et Ratio, 134 Francis, Pope, 13, 14, 17–20, 22–29, 73, 78, 81, 82, 86, 148, 181, 182, 197 Freedom, 7, 15, 100, 185, 187–191, 195 From Conflict to Communion, 89, 90, 94 G Gaillardetz, Richard, 162, 196 Garcia, Samuel Ruiz, 65 Gaudium et Spes, 14, 126, 129, 142, 156–158, 165–171, 175, 176, 178, 181, 182, 186, 187, 189, 191, 194–196 Gollwitzer, Helmut, 120 Golser, Karl, 186 Grace, 11–13, 45, 78, 85, 104–107, 127, 129–131, 137, 142–144, 146–148, 150, 159, 162–164, 187, 191 Green, Ernest Arthur, 67 Gregorius XVI, 190 Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 203, 206

211

H Hahnenberg, Edward, 162 Hamartiology, 171–173, 176 Hamer, Jérôme, 35, 66 Haughey, John, 204, 205 Haurietis Aquas, 167 Hilberath, Jochen, 63 Hinze, Bradford E., 78 Holiness of the church, 2, 12, 19, 79, 176–178 Horton, Douglas, 63 Humanae vitae, 189 Hurley, Denis, 184, 185 I Ignatius of Loyola, 20, 27 Image of God, 171–174 Infantilizing of the laity, 21 Interfaith dialogue, 99, 100, 111 Interreligious dialogue, 5, 114, 135–137 J Jaeger, Lorenz, 57 Jews, 16, 104, 144–146 John Paul II, 13, 15–19, 25, 26, 28, 68, 84, 124, 133, 134, 136, 144–146, 181, 182, 188–190, 195 John XXIII, 191 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, 72, 95 Judaism, 144 K Kelly, Anthony, 143 Koch, Kurt Cardinal, 50, 73, 74, 92–95

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L Ladaria, Luis Cardinal, 82 Laity, 6, 22, 155–164 Lakeland, Paul, 194 Latin American Bishops’ Conference (CELAM), 14, 20, 22, 27 Lennan, Richard, 205 Leo XIII, 67, 167 Leppin, Volker, 71, 74, 92, 93 Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston, 105, 106 Levada, William Cardinal, 46 Liberation theology, 15, 17 Lindbeck, George, 201 Lubac, Henri de, 21, 168 Lumen Gentium, 12, 32, 41, 43, 45–48, 78, 79, 83, 86, 105, 107, 108, 126, 129, 130, 138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 146, 147, 155–162, 169, 170, 194, 196, 199–205 Luther, Martin, 79 Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, 90 Lutherans, 51, 57 M Maalouf, Amin, 149 Mahoney, John, 185 Mannion, Gerard, 196 McAfee Brown, Robert, 56 Membership in the church, 32, 34, 39, 40 Meminisse Iuvat, 167 Metz, Johann Baptist, 203, 206 Michalon, Pierre, 58, 60 Michalski, Melvin, 161 Ministerial priesthood, 58, 59, 155, 159, 160, 162, 163, 194, 197 Ministry, 161 Mirari Vos, 190

Missio Dei, 127, 138, 141, 194, 206, 207 Mission, 13, 20, 21, 27, 63, 78, 80, 81, 115, 122, 125–129, 135, 137–146, 150, 151, 156, 166, 171, 198 Moralejo, Rafael González, 65 Muslims, 16, 104, 146 N Non-Christian religions, 105, 139, 142, 146, 149 Nostra Aetate, 114, 115, 120, 127, 130, 135, 137, 138, 140, 142–144 O Ökumenische Arbeitskreis, 73 Old Catholic Church, 66 On Admitting Other Christians to Eucharistic Communion in the Catholic Church, 52 Ordine morali, 190 Orientalium Ecclesiarum, 54 Original sin, 26 Orthodox Church, 48 Ouellet, Marc Cardinal, 82 P Pacem in Terris, 191 Paul VI, 189 Pelagian, 105, 187, 188, 191, 195 People of God, 80 Personal sin, 14–16, 19, 26, 28, 109 Pesch, Otto-Herrmann, 91 Pfeil, Margaret, 17 Philippe, Paul, 59, 67 Pilgrim church, 126, 147–150, 199, 205, 206

 INDEX 

Pilgrim people of God, 5, 7, 140, 151, 199, 200, 203, 204, 207 Pius IX, 190 Pius XI, 167 Pius XII, 160, 161, 167 Pollefeyt, Didier, 123 Porter, Stanley, 122 Pottmeyer, Hermann, 195, 196 Priesthood, 67, 160, 163 Proclamation, 80, 114, 115, 117, 118, 120, 127, 135, 137, 138, 140, 141, 144 R Rahner, Karl, 100, 108, 130, 143, 146, 147, 205 Ratzinger, Joseph, 44 Reconciliatio et paenitentia, 15 Redemptoris Missio, 130, 146 Reed, Victor Joseph, 57 Reformation, 41, 77, 78, 80, 82, 90, 91, 95 Responsa ad quaestiones de aliquibus sententiis ad doctrinam de ecclesia pertinentibus, 44, 46, 69, 86, 88 Revealed truth, 13 Revelation, 12, 117, 119, 122, 129, 133–136, 144, 169–171, 194, 197, 198 S Sachs, John, 100 Sacrament(s), 80, 85, 87, 132 Sancrosanctum concilium, 14 Salvation, 4, 48, 54, 84, 99, 100, 104–108, 110, 111, 114, 116, 118–121, 123, 129–134, 136, 137, 140, 142, 143, 146–148 Sattler, Dorothea, 71, 92 Schillebeeckx, Edward, 203, 206

213

Schlink, Edmund, 64, 88 Schreurs, Nico, 184 Second Vatican Council, 38 Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, 39–40, 51, 52, 54–61, 63, 65–67, 75 Secularism, 158 Secularity, 6, 156, 158, 162, 163 Secular world, 159 Selvanayagam, Israel, 131 Semmelroth, Otto, 205 Sexual abuse crisis, 18, 176 Sinfulness of the church, 12, 17–20, 23, 29, 77, 79–81, 95, 166, 176, 178–181, 195 Sinful social structure, 80 Skydsgaard, Kristen E., 79 Social sin, 14–20, 26–28, 81, 109 Söding, Thomas, 176 Structural sin, 18, 19, 28 Structures of sin, 14–18, 20, 26–27, 29 Sullivan, Francis, 114 “Synodaler Weg,” 82 T Tack, Laura, 123, 125, 127 Tanner, Kathryn, 150 Thijssen, Frans, 56 Thils, Gustave, 37, 42 Together at the Lord’s table, 75, 91–95 Triumphalism, 2, 4, 11–13, 19, 29, 77–79, 81, 82, 95, 124, 125, 127, 205, 206 U Unitatis Redintegratio, 11, 12, 32, 45, 50, 55, 63, 66, 67, 72, 74, 78, 83–85, 87, 88, 90, 91 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 191

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INDEX

Universalism, 100 Universalist view of salvation, 140 Ut Unum Sint, 16 V Vacek, Edward, S.J., 147 van Dodewaard, Johannes (bishop), 43 Vatican II, 46 Veritatis Splendor, 124, 190 Visser’t Hooft, Wilhelm, 35

W Wenz, Gunther, 91 We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, 144 Willebrands, Johannes, 38, 39, 55, 61–63 Y Yoder, John, 150 Yoshigoro, Paul, 67