Prof. Carrasco – Madrid/Spagna

The development of the ecclesiology

Some post council contributions

I

The Vatican Council II is the top of a path, the harvest of mature fruits of the work of generations, and the starting point for the following ecclesiological reflection. The theological reception of the councillor teaching has inevitably been marked, at the start, by the fidelity to the origin. Most of their parts , on the one hand .converged ..into the councillor assembly and moreover they consciously and firmly live the fidelity to the Church and its Magistry , and, on the other hand, the fundamental directions of the councillor teaching rapidly showed their ability of answering the challenges that the Church was facing . In this way, those who rejected the fundamental choices of the Second Vatican were a few because the choices were bearers of novelty which were contrary to the tradition. If others, by following the councillor spirit and achieving their own mission in agreement with the world, could take them -selves away from the indications about important aspects, most of the ecclesiological thought faced the councillor event clearly and consciously confident to the Tradition, and in the meantime trying to take firmly the new directions towards the Mission of the Church. The theological effort of answering to such an event, where it is expressed in a mature form the faith and life of the Church of the world, is not naturally an easy work. First of all it is necessary to assimilate the fundamental contents of the Council. At this proposal the publication of the Acts was a decisive step: for a rapid redaction of them it was possible to proceed rapidly with the study and a closer knowledge of the councillor texts. By this work it was possible to access to the archives and to the documents of that time, and to publish the first great stories of the Vatican II, as a means for the comprehension of the councillor event and its meaning of the Church of our times.

The difficulties start at the moment of their interpretation, of the real reception of the precepts. The main cause is not to be found in the texts of the Council, for example in the contextual presence of a double ecclesiology, as it was sometimes pretended since the formula of unity which has been reached by the Council, are not a pure solution of compromise, that don’t have a real meaning and thus theological relevance. The existence of two possible ecclesiologies almost underlines those aspects of the ecclesial life, where the theological reflection is , and still remains more needed

Although the Vatican II, in some points, do not propose an ecclesiologically unitary-reflection that is inadvisable but that it is not the main goal of the Episcopal mastership-, nevertheless it offers, by its teaching an authentic witness of faith, and also important recommendations on crucial points of the dialogue between the Church and the theology with the contemporary world. The theology in this way has a starting point in this Magistry for facing its own challenges , the same the councillor fathers have met and that can be found in the announcement of the Gospel is to the culture and the people of our times. So, as the first general reflections confirms on the real reception of the Council, this reflection, to which also the ecclesiology is called, doesn’t occur only with the study of its texts and its history, but by facing the real challenges to which the Church and the faith are confronted in the world of our times.

Any way , it is possible to assess one of the most important results, of the actual ecclesiological study, the fact that the councillor texts, with all the strictness of the historical-critical study, and a balanced assessment of its meaning in the context of the great and true tradition of the Church .have been sufficiently known.

The post councillor ecclesiological developments were definitively determined by the new perspectives where the Second Vatican wanted to introduce the Church: by taking no further notice of the partial-hierarchical arguments....resulting from the typical modern debates, coming back to considering the Church as "mystery, or salvific sacrament"in the orison of the Trinitarian economy of the salvation.

Actually, the historical-salvific dimension is a constant point of the catholic tradition. We may say that in all the actual debates with the rationalism about the possibility and the nature of a divine and positive revelation, the catholic answer has above all always insisted on the historical aspect, about the God intervention in the History, as free, gratuitous not due gift trying to lead the man to the salvation, making possible for him to have the knowledge and consequently the life in the truth. The Vatican II systematically follows this perspective trying to show in this way the nature and the mission of all the Church and not being satisfied of affirming the existence of a visible structure and having authority on the service of the salvific faculty of Christ. For this reason a formal argument about the reliable intervention of God, and the hierarchical means that he establishes are not sufficient for the transmission of this revelation in the history. It is necessary to approach the historical happening for the reaffirmation not only of the fact but also the nature and the contents of the revelation.

II

The adoption of the salvific economy as sistematic perspective of comprehention of the Church has so shed to the attention the problem of the continuity between Jesus Christ and the Church, that used to be christologically represented with the phrase "the historical Jesus and the Christ of the faith", and ecclesiologically as "the establishment of the Church"

The reflexion on this problem forces to accept the historical- critical challange and , to be compared to the important conception of the relation among Jesus the apostolic Gospel and the rising Church. It is a hard work, but it is not possible to exagerate on its importance, because it nternally determines all the ecclesiological proposal and because it decides the same principle of the relation between the Church and the world.

In the post council sphere the dialoque did not take place as much with the liberal conceptions of the historical Jesus, as to with the so called "New Quest". The post bulmaniana school- and inevitably with its teacher Bultman. It was necessary to overcome a basic proposal that was historically showed rigid and theologically attractive, affirminf that Jesus is not the founder but he could be called the basis of the Church, in fact, the post Easter community moved by the charismatic experience of the Resurrection and of the Pentecost would have started again the walk according to Jesus to his movement, to his purpouse making it actual and suitable, giving a new shape to his message and to his own community, through the interpretation of those fundamental signs of his Person, and of his mission that was kept in the memory and was transmitted by the scripts. Such a basic scheme can also be found in some authors, it has almost been updated with the historical contributions of the so called "Third Quest".

The insufficience of these positions is a damage for the understanding of Jesus Christ and the Church mission, and its relation to the world; They cannot truly overcome the pure subjective human orison. They don’t answer to the more radical challange of the modern rationalism, for which the christian revelation and the Church it – self ultimately represent only some latent possibilities in the human spirit. The Church, and Christ him-self appear in front of the world as a further possibility- maybe it is the most appropriate for some specific cultures or regions – of the manifestation of its own religious and moral and human experience.

Although this position is still supported in relativistic, rationalist and contemporary prespectives it has already been overcome by the research which has opened the way to the understanding of the origin of the Church in continuity with the intentions and missions of Jesus Christ. It can be really said , in an historically strict way that the community of the disceples, the real Israel of God is summoned by Jesus trough his words and all his existence and that then God summons to the new alliance by totally delivering his Son. In fact Jesus has already called the new people of God during his life, and he formed the people by placing the foundation of his unity, giving it the fundamental characteristics- in accordance with the Word of God and the "culto tempio nuovi" –that totally depend on him as he is the center and the reason of the unity of this human community.

The Easter facts can never be interpreted as the failure of this calling, which was not only by Jesus but it "was" Jesus-him self. On the countrary, with the Glorious Resurrection, the disceples will have before their eyes the fulness of the Word-that the Father pronounces in the humanity of his Son, and that it will arrive to its top by the communication that Christ gives to the men,of him-self, this communication started in the embodiment, continued in the company that He offers trough the streets of Israel, and whose fulness, which was anticipated during the last supper, is realised with the gift of the Spirit by the risen Christ.

In this way, the outcoming people is not a simple human assosiation, whose peculiarity would have come from the religiousity of Israel and from the world of his era, but a real community of life and destiny with Jesus, started and created by him-self. He started his life through the streets of the Galilee, and it surprisingly ended in the Easter and it will be bound to arrive to the full realization as communion and salvation sphere of the men in Christ.

For a historical-salvific ecclesiology perspective It is, then easy to understand how fundamentally important is to consider the Church-as Communion: it is the forme through which the full witness of the revelation occured in Jesus Christ is transmitted.

In fact, the mission of the Son, made man, and the mission of the Spirit cannnot be reduced to communication fo truths that the reason cannot understand but that they can introduce the man in a new Unity reconciled with God and the men.

The action of the embodiment and the Redemption, the gift of the Spirit, introduce the men in a Mystery of mercy and reconciliation, of Unity in the common belonging to Christ, where the Truth of God and his own vocation, dignity, and destiny to the man is revealed .

This "community of faith, hope, and charity where the men, although they are sinner are led to the peace with God and to a fraternal relation of each other is the fruit of the mercy Love of the Father, This love is revealed through the Son and the Spirit sent by God and , it constitues in the history "as a sarament or sign and means of the intimate unionon with God and of the unity of all the human kind".

A mystery of unity which is reconciled in the common belonging to Christ , in which the men are incorporated if they accept the Gospel preached by the apostles – and their successors – by obeying to the faithand to the sacraments, to the Baptism and to the Eucharist. The Church, however, is reality of Communion, it is sign and means of the Gospel of God, of the salvation of the men.

The post-councillor reflexion has become more deeply aware of the novelty of this Communion, of its enrootment in the salvific, trinitarian economy and of its real presence in the world, as people who, for its own existence and life, "reveals and also realizes thre mystery of the love of God towards the man" 

It was particularly important to know that this communion is a new way of being in the world animated by an intelligent and tireless charity, that is not outside the destiny and the needs of the men. The communion of the Church is a sign of mercy, of reception of fraternity, in other words is sign of a new law of the love and unity, regarding all the spheres of the human life that can distinguish the good and the right for its affirmation and support, in the same way it can make distinction between the wrong and what comes from the sin., by calling the conversion and renewal of the life, always defending the man in the fundamental rigths given to him by God.

It was important to understand that this communion is a principle if new life, that gives birth to justice and charity actions for always realizing that its origin can be found in the mercy of the Lord, in his redemptor donation for the men. Forgetting it and conceiving the Church in the orison of the human plans, that are determined by economics, cultural, and also ethnics needs, it means to rely again on the cability of analysys and action of the single hman being, who is autosufficient and modern, who does’n t leave any place to God and to the Gospel in the rational establishment of the existence

In the orizon of a communion ecclesiology it is necessary to , equally, assess the high development of the reflexion on the particular and universal Church.

In this unique binding, showed by the witty coucillor phrase"in quibus et ex quibus", is expressed the peculiar nature of the new People of God, that since the beginning, as reality of communion with Christ, remains in the history as human real Unity with specific faces and names, this unity has become the place where we can meet God and the life in the Lord. However, through the salvific divine initiative, the peculiarity of being human becomes sign and means of the Catholicity, of the full Truth of God and the man.

The ecclesiological reflexion far more underlines this "particular" "local"dimension of the Church, in other words, the fact that it is a real and human place, in the time and in the space, and it is lived according to the men condition, where the only Communion with the Lord, that is manifested in the celebration of the eucharist, where the people is gathered with its Bishop around the altar is tangibly realized.

In particular, however there is a communion reality that is practically universal. In fact It is, the presence of the only universal communion in Christ, for which every man, in any place, is introduced in the only People of God. In this way, in the particular and universal Church, it is possible to live the dynamics of unity that comes from the belonging to the only Body of Christ: All the believers belong one another; all the Churches with their human and divine richness, belong one an other, they are reality of unity with no boundaries that can neeither devide or discriminate them.

A communion of believers; however, and communion of Churches with different historical forms of expression of their dynamics that are intrinsic of unity, they constitute, today, a center of attention of the ecclesiological conception.

I the orison of this communion ecclesiology there has also been an important development of the theology of the episcopal Ministry, the collegiality and the supremacy of the successor of Peter.

The reflexion on the Ministry of the successors of the apostles has underlined its sacredness as fundamental dimension following the main teaching of "Lumen Gentium".

This is a consequence of the conceivement of the Church as "Mistery that belongs to the history of the salvation, as reality of the human-divine unity that is not the result of the union of just the human strenght, but it comes from the gift of Jesus Christ and his spirit. This apostolic Ministry is irreplaceable firstly for its fyndamental sacrament, when the Church is considered a reality of communion, real but misterious that is totally manifested in the celebration of the Eucharist.

Since the councillor affirmation that says that this Ministry, for its nature must occur in the unity of the Church, the ecclesiology has particularly insisted on the fact that it should be included as a service, nside the Church that must be lived as communion .

This is the beginning of the development in the Church of different expressions of the real dynamics of the communion like for example the Episcopal Presbitherian or Pastora Boards and also generally the awareness of the need of a dialogue with all the believers, recognizing their own fields of participation and resposability in the life and in the mission of the Church.

An important development of the reflection took place either on the synodal dimension or on the relevance of the gifts and charisms of the believers in the life of the church, as expression of their initimate nature as people of god that walks in the humanity.

In a similar perspective there has been the reception of the doctrine of the episcopal collegiality and the supremacy of the pope where the peculiar nature of the church as reality of particular and universal communion is manifested.

The thological basis of the episcopal collegiality have attracted the attention of the Vatican Council II and they have largely and rapidly been recepted by the theology. For that, it is necessary to underline the particular efforce for the conceivement of this dynamics in relation to the different tangible form of realization of this "episcopal communion" in the history as for example, the episcopal conferences or the synod of the Bishops.

This expression is strictly restrained to the great difficulty of the way of deciding about the Ministry of the successor of Peter, that has also taken place for decision of pope John payl II him-self.

The conceivement of his service for the universal unity, in the faith and in the communion, object of the dogmatic definitions of the Vatican Council I, and of the teaching of the Vatican II, is a duty that is inseparable fro the church as sacramental reality of communion and then from the sacredness of the episcopate.

There have been important developments in this direction, they are very important because it will be possible to express in the best way the life of communion of the catholic church and till it will be possible to walk still in the way of unity of all the christians.

In this experience, the communion with the successor of peter, to whom Christ gave orders of pastureing the sheep, is not only garantee of permanence in the apostolic truth, but at the same time it is principle of a higher audacity and confidence in the achievement of the theological mission of the understandement and communication of the gospel.

LG 8

CFT AG,3

LG, 1

GS 45

LG, 23

CFR LG, 26

CFR LG, 21