FRANCISCAN FAMILY - I
THE CHURCH
Guideline:
“Accentuate
the vision of the Church as the People of God and as communion (Lumen gentium, Gaudium et spes, the
final document of the 1985 Synod).”
I. MODELS OF THE CHURCH
We can identify seven models for
describing and understanding the nature of the Church since the Reformation.
They are, in the order of time: The Political Society, The Body of Christ, the
Sacrament, The Pilgrim People of God, The Human Community, The Servant, and Communion.
These models are not mutually exclusive of one another. They all have positive
aspects to contribute to a fully satisfactory working model of the Church.
Let’s proceed to describe each model
and to point out its weakness and its strength.
1. The Political Society model
In the period between approximately
1600 and the year 1940, the dominant model of the Church was the secular
political society, the State.
"The one and true Church is the community
of men brought together by the profession of the same Christian faith and
participation in the same sacraments under the authority of legitimate pastors
and especially of the one Vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman Pontiff.... The
one true Church is as visible and palpable as the
Weakness:
This model enumerates only the
visible and structural characteristics of the Church,
understood
as the "perfect society". The emphasis on visible, institutional characteristics alone together with its
polemical, exclusivist intent makes it a
very deficient model of the Church.
The
over-emphasis on authority and a corresponding lack of lay involvement in the
life and mission of the Church results
in a hierarchy rather than a church. Clericalism, juridicism, and triumphalism
thrive in this model.
The Church is much more than a
social structure. Other essential characteristics must be represented: the life of grace; a Christian
communion of faith, hope and charity; the abiding presence of Christ and the
gifts and assistance of the Spirit. In fact, the whole "mystery"
dimension of the Church goes unrepresented in this model. It doesn’t express a
reality that is above all a mystery of faith.
It was a serviceable model in the
Counter-Reformation period. The aim was generally to build up the Church
society on earth. Efforts to save souls were directed precisely to bringing
more and more people into the Church
society. Success for the missionary, and for the parish priest, was measured in
statistics of conversions, baptisms, regular attendance and communions.
Strength:
This model gave definite guidelines
by which Catholics could identify one another at a time when they felt this
need. Some of its elements must be incorporated into any complete description
of the Church, such as: the bonds of professed faith,
of government, and
of sacraments,. The Church is certainly a
society that can be identified by visible characteristics, but it is more than
that.
2. The
Body of Christ model
After such a long period of using
one single model, it was the beginning of a new era for the Church when another
model began to rise to prominence, through the encyclical Mystici Corporis, of 1943. This was an ancient model resurrected in
the nineteenth century.
It was
a welcome and much needed complement of the earlier Political Society model.
Strength:
This model stressed all those things
that were obviously missing from the Political Society model. It was a more
democratic model as well, stressing the activity and gifts of the Spirit in all
members and the dependence of all on the contributions of each.
Weakness:
It raised in an acute way the problem of the relationship between the mystical and the visible, between the supernatural community of grace in Christ and the visible society of very human beings.
The Church as not just an invisible
communion of grace, but it is also the visible community as the fullness and
completion of Christ, Christ in the Church being in some sense brought to
complete achievement.
Stressing the mystical dimension of
the spiritual communion can take an anti-institutional turn.
In 1943, Pius XII, in his encyclical
Mystici Corporis , stressed on the
one hand that the Church is not
"something invisible, intangible, a something merely spiritual
(‘pneumatical’)". Conversely, any presentation of the doctrine is to be
rejected that makes the faithful in any
way pass beyond the order of created things. Not even one single attribute of
the eternal God can be predicated of
them in the proper sense.
(Yves Congar) The fellowship with
God and with one another in Christ and
the totality of means by which this
fellowship is produced and maintained are two inseparable aspects of the
one reality. In Vatican II it is stated that the society furnished with
hierarchical agencies and the Mystical Body of Christ are not to be considered
as two realities, but the visible assembly and the spiritual community are
"one interlocked reality" (Lumen
Gentium, 8).
The tendency to identify the human
with the divine in the Body of Christ
model can probably best be counteracted by understanding that the Body
of Christ model does not aim to represent the union of members in the Body of
Christ as a biological union. It must remain an interpersonal communion in
which individuals retain integrally their own individual distinctness.
So, the tension remains between the
visible, institutional society and the essentially spiritual communion. Both
are essential. But the Body of Christ model does not make it clear how they are
combined.
Besides, many were uneasy with Pius
XII's dogmatic and exclusivist statement in Mystici
Corporis that the Church of Christ is the Roman Catholic Church, a
statement that he reiterated in Humani
Generis, in 1950, with the
words, "The Mystical Body of Christ
and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing" (a statement
which he intended in the exclusivist sense).
3. The Sacrament model
The next model to emerge, that of
the Church as Sacrament, initially took on vigour in the late 1940's. Again, a
very ancient model was resurrected. It was adopted and further developed by 20th
Century theologians. Thereupon it was accepted
into the Vatican II’s Lumen
gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, in the statement:
"The Church is in Christ as a sacrament or sign and instrument of intimate
union with God and of the unity of all mankind." It became a major theme
of the Council (ch. L.G.9, 48; S.C. 26; A.G. 5; G.S. 42).
A sacrament is both sign and instrument.
It describes in some sense the indescribable and inexpressible spiritual
reality. For instance, pouring of water expressed spiritual purification: the
Church as a sacrament of Christ expresses Christ, and, as sacrament of
salvation, the Church's community life expresses something of what salvation
essentially consists in. At the same time, a sacrament is an instrument which
effects what it signifies. The symbolic washing brings about the spiritual
purification it expresses: the Church as a sacrament of Christ brings about the
continuation of Christ's ministry and as sacrament of salvation builds a
community of salvation in the world.
Strength:
From 1949 onwards, this was a very
popular model among Catholic theologians. It appeared to offer a solution to
the dilemma of the relationship between the visible and the invisible. The
visible community in this model was the visible form of the invisible communion
in Christ. It was seen to have an advantage over the Body of Christ model in
permitting a grey area in place of a sharp line of demarcation between Church
and non-Church.
In this model, the Church is the
visible form of the invisible communion in Christ and the visible form of
salvation itself. So, there is little basis for the exclusivist claim that the
Vatican II officially accepted that conclusion in the
famous change of wording in Lumen gentium,
from "The unique
This model had the capacity to
provide a new impetus to the missionary activity of the Church by stressing the
fact that the Church community is essentially an effective sign as a light to
the world, a beacon of hope, and a community-building force at the heart of the
world. The model could also motivate loyalty to the Church from the realization
of the importance of being in the
community and striving to be one with it. One would thus be striving to accept its doctrines and discipline and
yet be permitted the right to make constructive criticism in the light of the
Church's collective effort to be a better sign. The model thus avoided the
static, "perfect" (complete)
impression given by the previous models, since human expressions of the divine
are never adequate!
Weakness:
This model has never had the impact
on the life of the Church that the Political Society model or the Body of
Christ model have had. It remains very
much a theologian's model, not easy to popularise. This is most probably because
"sacrament" is a technical term, the meaning of which is difficult to
grasp and consequently poorly understood. Hence it would not impress with the
simple clarity of the earlier models.
II. THE PEOPLE OF GOD
4. The Pilgrim People of God model
The dominant model of Vatican II was
that of "The Pilgrim People of God". Several decades of important
work in the fields of scriptural, patristic and liturgical studies gave a
renewed sense in the Church of "sacred history", the gradual
unfolding through history of God's plan
to unite all peoples in Christ by means of a single people. This people is itself on pilgrimage
through history like the rest of humanity. But this is a favoured people;
because it has hope, it is enabled to walk by faith, led by the Spirit of God.
It sees itself in this model as in the vanguard of the whole pilgrim human race
not in the old triumphalist way, but specially graced in order to lead the rest of them on their pilgrimage to their
ultimate destiny.
Strength:
In this model the Church is no
longer seen as an immobile, supra-terrestrial institution always the same,
unaffected by time, change or history. It is a historical community on
pilgrimage. Not only has it not "arrived", it still has a long way to
travel. It has limitations that are to
be overcome with the assistance of the Spirit of God. It is not exempt from the
common human lot of having to live with uncertainty. It must make its way
tentatively, often by trial and error. The people have the consolation that all
along the way God travels with them, and the
providential guidance of the Spirit will always be with them. New
insights, ideas, methods and approaches are continually to be expected. There is no provision made for
"things" to settle down into a new static stability after a period of
transition and updating.
So, after three and a half centuries
in which we understood the Church by means of a static model, followed by a
brief period under another although less static model, the Church had this
model to live with. From a timeless model, long entrenched, we changed rather
abruptly to a model of the Church situated in the heart of history.
The change of imagery imposed a kind of mental revolution. Once the
mental revolution had been accomplished - if in fact it was accomplished in the
Council - the real revolution had to begin: the Church had to start to
assimilate the consequences.
In the Exodus, a basic category that
goes with this model, the people were trained to be content with few cumbersome
accessories and stocks of provisions, but traveled with tents that could be
quickly folded up and moved. Once one begins to apply the model, one catches a
glimpse of how radical it is. It affects all concepts of Church structures,
traditions, education in the faith, and liturgy.
The Pilgrim People model is a
democratic model, emphasizing the fundamental unity of all that precedes any
diversification of roles or offices in the Church. Hierarchical offices are
seen as different forms of service to the whole people. The model was used in
the Council in a designedly
anti-hierarchical manner, to offset the clericalism and juridicism that tends
to dog Catholic Church life. It is also designedly anti-triumphalist,
emphasizing that the Church is a human group in history, stressing that the
mercy of God is the basis of the people's existence, stressing the continual
dependence on and inadequate fidelity to the Spirit of God, and stressing the
need for repentance and renewal.
Liturgical renewal is dominated by
this model of pilgrim people, called into a covenantal relationship with God,
inaugurated through the good news of Jesus Christ, called to announce that good
news until the Lord will come again. This is the model of Church consonant with
worship: a pilgrim people, wandering sometimes without any great sense of direction,
but stopping at times, gathering on holy ground to meet God in worship and
then, conscious of the marvelous tradition that has brought us to where we are,
telling again in word and sacrament, the story of God, God’s Christ, and God’s
people. Then we move on, but to engage again and again in this liturgical
action.
Weakness:
Although
this model avoids the tendency to divinize the visible community, a
difficulty with the Body of Christ
model, it does so at the expense of under-stressing the relationship between
the people and Jesus Christ. It fails to bring out what is new in this covenant
relationship, namely, that all persons become by adoption the children of God.
Many authors, not exclusively Protestant, explain the model in a way that leaves
the impression that Christians are still living under the conditions of the Old
Law.
The Pilgrim People of God model,
even though it has the weight of the authority of the Council behind it, seems
never to have imposed itself as a model outside the Council and its documents.
While it is no doubt stronger now than the Political Society and Body of Christ
models, it seems to be rivaled at the
present time by three other models which, if not arising from the Council, were
at least given considerable impetus by the Council. These three models have
taken on after the Vatical Council.
5. The
Human Community model
The first of these is the Human
Community model, which owes less to theological theory than to basic human
needs and to pastoral strategy. This model generates simple prayer groups,
house churches and pentecostal gatherings. More sophisticated groups apply
principles of sociology and psychology and related fields such as transactional
analysis and group dynamics.
Strength:
Such groups give promise to
fulfilling a real need in modern society, for a style of Christian life that is
more personal, less hampered by institutional structures, and in which
friendship and trust have an essential place.
The fruits of this model, hopefully,
will be a large-scale loosening up of the rigid social system that has been
constructed in the Church under the influence of the Political Society model.
If institution and community can be moulded into one, we may well be coming
much closer to realizing the Catholic ideal.
Weakness:
The model can at times engender an
exaggerated anti-institutionalism and narcissism, tending to encourage the
formation of little communes in which people enjoy one another, and undergo
rarefied and beautiful experiences, but do not contribute responsibly to the
development of human society as a whole.
This is a worry, for instance, when
promoters of such groups speak of getting past the superficiality and
unimportance of much of what they have
been experiencing in churches, and achieving relationships of depth and meaning
and concern. If such groups are born of despair, then they can easily cast
themselves loose from their institutional moorings, then become underground
churches and finally sects. It is possible to be excessively optimistic about
the capacity of simple unstructured human communities to fulfil humanity's
deepest needs. Hence the conviction that
the institutional Church is essential is well founded, even from a psychological and sociological standpoint.
6. The Church as a Servant Model
This model owes a great deal to theology, especially a theme
that developed in an unexpected manner
in the Council itself: the model of the Church as Servant. This model is dominant
in Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes, the
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in
the Modern World, and all the official social documents that have
followed the Council have further
developed and applied the model.
Strength:
Commencing from an explicit
acceptance that the Church must be part of the human community and intimately
associated with all that is genuinely human, because that was what Christ
became through the Incarnation, the Church sees that it is called to make a
positive contribution to all persons, whoever they are and whatever their particular
needs, after the example of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve.
Briefly, as Christ came to serve, the Church must carry on his mission of
service to the whole world.
This model is not an invention of
Vatican II. One of the earliest clear formulation of the model in recent times
is to be found in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters
and Papers from Prison, in which, after presenting Christ as the Man for
Others, he proceeds to call on the Church
to become a servant Church, sharing in the problems of human life, not
dominating but helping and serving, after the example of Christ. The revival of the theology of hope has come
under the influence of this model. The
Church is at times presented in this
theology as an "exodus community" pioneering the future of the
world. The Church is pictured as God's avant-garde.
Surprisingly, this model is
developed in a low-key, non-authoritarian, even humble vein. Emphasis is placed
on the need first of all to scrutinise the "signs of the times", a
phrase originating in the New Testament
(Mt. 16:2-4), but given a particular twist by Pope John XXIII, especially in Pacem in Terris. These "signs" can be summarised as
the major movements towards
personalization (development) and socialisation (grouping for the achievement of common purposes). These
movements are considered to reflect the
movement of the Spirit in the world towards the achievement of the plan of God.
So, this model introduces a rather new attitude of listening to the world and
learning from it. It makes the world a reality to be investigated by a proper
theological method.
Having scrutinised the signs of the
times and discerned the action of the Spirit in the world, the Church's task is
then to associate itself as an institution and through its members with all
movements working for the values of peace, liberation, justice, development
and reconciliation in the temporal
order.
This model makes many demands on the
Church institution to become more obviously structured towards the mission of
service instead of building up its own house. In mission territories, it is
being concretely worked out by rapid
indigenisation and greater concentration on ministering to the basic human
needs of under-developed nations.
This model dominates the theology of
liberation. Its impact has been most felt in the third world, especially in
In some areas, the theology of
liberation has further evolved into "political theology", and fostered alliances with
social movements originally inspired by
humanist and Marxist ideologies, a turn of events that was given a measure of
positive official encouragement under Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, but not
much under John Paul II.
Weakness:
This is an exciting and hazardous
model, and it impresses many theologians as fundamentally sound. But further
clarifications are yet required. The special mission of the Church, its proper
and distinctive contribution in the socio-political sphere, is not clear. More
basically, it is not clear what is the relationship between human development
and the growth of the Kingdom of God, the progressive restoration of all things in
Christ. Also the terms used in this
theology are often biblical terms: liberation, salvation, peace, justice,
charity, community, life, oppression, injustice. But being biblical terms they
originally belong to biblical models,
and there is a danger of confusion if terms are taken over by a different model
without advertence to inevitable shifts of meaning. In this Servant model, they are given a rather
clear and definite social meaning. It has yet to become apparent where the
shifts of meaning and over-simplifications lie.
The Servant model of the Church
features strongly in the Church’s social teaching, which we will discuss
tomorrow.
III. COMMUNION
7. The
Communion model
This is a recent development of the
Body of Christ model. The Pastoral Instruction on the Means of Social
Communication, Communio et Progressio
promoted this model in 1971. In 2000, Pope John Paul II, in Novo millennio ineunte (n. 43)
proposed “to make the Church the home
and the school of communion.”
The Church is Christ's Mystical
Body, the hidden completion of Christ Glorified who "fills the whole
creation". As a result, we move, within the Church and with the help of
the word and the sacraments, towards the hope of that final unity where
"God will be all in all".
The Church is a communion of persons
and eucharistic communities, rooted in the intimate communion of the Trinity
and mirroring it. There can be no communion without a community, and a
community will quickly fall apart without communication.
All communication is grounded in
that among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Trinitarian communion reaches out to
humankind. The Son is the Word, eternally "spoken" by the Father; and
in and through Jesus Christ, Son and Word made flesh, God communicates himself
and his salvation to persons. "In many and various ways God spoke of old
to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a
Son" (Heb 1:1-2).
Jesus Christ's communication was, in
fact, spirit and life. In the institution of the Holy Eucharist, Jesus gave us
the most perfect and most intimate form of communion between God and man
possible in this life, and, out of this,
the deepest possible unity between people. Further, Christ communicated to us his life-giving Spirit, who brings all
persons together in unity.
Strength:
In the Christian faith, the unity
and brotherhood of man are the chief aims of all communication and these find
their source and model in the central mystery of the eternal communion between
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who live a single divine life.
Communication,
at its most profound level, is the giving of self in love. Communication in and
by the Church finds its starting point in the communion of love among the
divine Persons and their communication with us.
Weakness:
Being a development of the Body of Christ model, this Communion model may have inherited a weakness. The tension may still remain between the essentially spiritual communion and the visible, institutional society.