the mystical body of christ and communion ecclesiology

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Irish Theological Quarterly

DOI: 10.1177/002114000507000101 2005; 70; 3 Irish Theological Quarterly

Edward P Hahnenberg Historical Parallels

The Mystical Body of Christ and Communion Ecclesiology:

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The Mystical Body of Christ andCommunion Ecclesiology:Historical Parallels

Edward P Hahnenberg

Recognizing that the Church cannot be encompassed by a single and eternal ecclesiology,and that there are stages in the development of the Church’s self-understanding, theauthor examines the history and development of two of the dominant twentieth centurymodels : the earlier Mystical Body ecclesiologies, and the post-conciliar Communion/Koinonia models. They contain interesting parallels, one of which is the risk of ignoringthe concrete Church — the mystery manifested in history. What ecclesiological models maynext rise to dominance?

rticles and books treating communion ecclesiology often begin byrecalling the claim made at the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops(and repeated by Pope John Paul II) that the ecclesiology of communion’is the central and fundamental idea’ of the documents of the SecondVatican Council.’ During the 1970s and 1980s, the various images andmodels of the Church proposed by Vatican II - body of Christ, sacrament,and especially people of God - gradually gave way to increased emphasison the notion of communion as a comprehensive category. Walter Kasperargued around the time of the synod: ‘For the Church, there is only oneway into the future: the way pointed by the Council, the full implemen-tation of the Council and its communion ecclesiology.’2 While JosephCardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, later called communionecclesiology the ’one basic ecclesiology’.3

These statements recall the enthusiasm generated by another ecclesio-logical model recovered by Catholics decades earlier: the model of theChurch as the mystical body of Christ. During the 1920s and 1930s,Paul’s organic image for the Christian community burst onto the scene, atheological revival led by figures like Romano Guardini, Karl Adam,Erich Przywara, and Emile Mersch and eventually endorsed by Pius XII.The confident claim of the 1985 synod evokes the finality with whichPius XII spoke in 1943:

1. Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, ’The Final Report’, Origins 15 (19 December 1985)444-50, at 448; John Paul II, The Vocation and Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church andin the World/Christifideles Laici (Washington, D.C.: USCC, 1988) 48. See, for example,Dennis M. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology: Vision and Versions (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,2000)2.2. Walter Kasper, Theology and Church, trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: Crossroad, 1989)150.3. Joseph Ratzinger, ’Ultimately There is One Basic Ecclesiology’, L’Osservatore Romano[English ed.], 17 June 1992, 1.




4

If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ -which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church - weshall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine thanthe expression ’the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ’ - an expressionwhich springs from and is, as it were, the fair flowering of therepeated teaching of the Sacred Scriptures and the holy Fathers .4

The following essay explores some of the historical parallels betweenthese two twentieth-century models and observes some of their sharedproblems. I am interested in reflecting on past developments in ecclesiol-ogy and in looking toward future theological reflection on the Church.Over the past three decades, the use of the elastic and encompassing con-cept of communion as a lens for interpreting the Council has generatedboth significant consensus and some debate. But history suggests that, likethe model of mystical body, today’s ecclesiology of communion will exertits influence and then give way to new and complementary ways of talk-ing about the Church.

Church models in history and the Church in history

The New Testament offers multiple images of the Christian commu-nity. The Church is a flock, a field, a temple, the bride and body of Christ,a holy priesthood, God’s people - one study counts over ninety differentdesignations.’ Each image says something about the Church community,none says everything. At different points over the past century, one oranother of these images emerged (or an extra-biblical image was adopted)as a kind of key, an attempt to integrate all the various insights offered bythis plurality of images and so offer a synthetic vision of Church, an eccle-siology. Avery Dulles famously introduced models to ecclesiology, high-lighting this second order attempt at synthesis: ‘When an image is

employed reflectively and critically to deepen one’s theoretical under-standing of a reality it becomes what is today called a &dquo;model&dquo;.’6 Churchmodels are rarely dreamt up and imposed on the community; instead,most are drawn from scripture or theological reflection or cultural formsas a way of interpreting, explaining, and arranging data already present to

4. Pius XII, ’Mystici Corporis Christi : Encyclical of Pope Pius XII on the Mystical Body ofChrist’, no. 13, in The Papal Encyclicals : 1939-1958, ed. Claudia Carlen (New York:McGrath, 1981) 37-63, at 39-40.5. See Paul S. Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament (Philadelphia:Westminster, 1960) 268-69.6. Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974) 21. Joseph A.Komonchak argues that, while a pluralism of Church images exists at a ’first order’ of reflec-tion, it is precisely the task of the ecclesiologist ’to attempt a critical and systematic inte-gration of all the insights generated by the first-order images’ (’The Synod of 1985 and theNotion of the Church’, Chicago Studies 26 [1987] 330-45, at 343). My goal is not to demon-strate this claim, but simply to illustrate how in recent history this integration hasoccurred.




5

the student of theology or the active parishioner. For Dulles, models arenot only explanatory, but also exploratory; that is, they both summarizewhat we know and lead heuristically in new directions.’ Ecclesiologicalmodels ’catch on’ when they account for both doctrinal claims and peo-ple’s experience, and when they offer an accessible pattern for addressingimportant questions. Then, a constellation takes shape that provides anew view, further insight into the reality that is the Church.

This essay studies Church models in their historical development. To acertain extent, the five, and later six, models Dulles identified (Church asinstitution, mystical communion, sacrament, herald, servant, and com-munity of disciples) function in his comparative approach as a-temporalideals. But models have a history: they emerge, have an influence, andthen fade or are subsumed into new models or perspectives. Church mod-els, in and of themselves, say very little. But different models privilege dif-ferent sets of questions, and it is largely the questions of an era thatdetermine which models come to the fore.’ Thus, on the one hand, thesocietas perfecta model - paradigmatic from 1540 to 1940 - privileged thevisible and institutional aspects of the Church and served the Catholic

response both to the Reformation challenge and to the claims of theemerging nation states of Europe. On the other hand, Vatican 11’s lan-guage of ’people of God’ privileged the themes of baptismal equality andthe Church’s eschatological orientation, offering categories for post-con-ciliar questions concerning the role of the laity and Church reform. Themodels that emerge are an insight into those questions and issues facingthe community; they are the shorthand for the concerns of a time.The following paragraphs explore parallels between two twentieth-

century models: the mystical body ecclesiologies of the 1920s, 30s, and40s and the communion ecclesiologies of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.9 Inskeletal form, I chart the recent history of reflection on the Church, ask-ing of each of these two ecclesiological interpretations: Where did it

begin? How did it take shape? What was or might be its subsequent his-tory ? These two models share common roots, they have been employed intheological accounts and Church teaching in similar ways, and they aremarked by some of the same problems. As earlier exclusive appeals to theChurch as mystical body were later complemented by the language ofpeople of God, so it seems likely that today’s focus on communion will becomplemented by other language and new, or newly recovered, models.

7. Dulles, Models of the Church, 22-23.8. Nicholas M. Healy helpfully points out that it is not the ecclesiological model that ismost significant, but rather the various construals that govern the model’s use (Church,World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Eccksiology [Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000] 45). This observation suggests that an historical approach is valu-able in coming to understand more clearly what guides the use of a particular model.9. Alberto Melloni compares the 1992 CDF document on communion ecclesiology to PiusXII’s Mystici Corporis in ’Note sul lessico della Communionis notio’, Cristianesimo nella storia16 (1995) 316-19.




6

This shifting of models follows the force of time, but it also flows fromthe models themselves. For both mystical body and communion ecclesi-ologies, as they have been developed by some theologians and appropri-ated by the Magisterium, have shown a tendency to account inadequatelyfor the character of the Church as ’historic subject’.’° The term ’historicsubject’ is used here in a way roughly equivalent to Nicholas Healy’s cat-egory ’concrete Church’, a category he warns should not be ’thought ofreductively as merely the visible or empirical Church in contradistinctionto its more &dquo;spiritual&dquo; or &dquo;theological&dquo; aspects. Rather, the latter

&dquo;aspects&dquo;, including most fundamentally the active presence of the HolySpirit, are constitutive of the concrete religious body.’I1 Appeal to the his-toric subject does not dismiss the Church’s ultimate source in the triuneGod; it does not, in a kind of ecclesiological Nestorianism, pit Church ashistoric subject against Church ’as mystery’. The categories ’historic sub-ject’ and ’concrete Church’ do, nevertheless, emphasize the reality of theChurch’s agency in history, its human, social, limited existence and activ-ity in time. Insofar as Church models fail to fully attend to the Church ashistoric subject, they risk an ecclesiological Monophysitism in which theChurch’s divine source, it’s character as mystery, absorbs or ignores theconcrete, historical community. This tendency can be seen over the lastcentury in versions of mystical body theology and communion ecclesi-ologies that speak less comfortably about change or reform and that areless able to explain and explore difficult pastoral issues. Somewhat ironi-cally, it is precisely this discomfort with the categories of history evidentin these models that gives way to history. Time pushes their claims foreternal and universal significance toward other ways of describing theChurch.

Mystical body ecclesiology

The idea that the Church is the ’body of Christ’ goes back to the ear-liest reflections on Christian community, the letters of Paul. ’Now you areChrist’s body, and individually parts of it.’12 Authors throughout the firstmillennium repeatedly drew on this Pauline metaphor to link the realities

10. The term comes from the International Theological Commission: "’Mystery" hererefers to the Church as deriving from the Trinity, while "historic subject" has to do withthe Church as a historical agent, contributing to history’s overall direction.... [T]he peo-ple of God is simultaneously mystery and historic subject, in such a fashion that the mys-tery constitutes the historic subject and the historic subject discloses the mystery.’ (’SelectThemes of Ecclesiology on the Occasion of the Eighth Anniversary of the Closing of theSecond Vatican Council’, in International Theological Commission: Texts and Documents1969-1985, ed. Michael Sharkey [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989] 267-304, at 274).11. Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life, 4.12. 1 Cor 12:27. See also Rom 12:4-8; 1 Cor 10:17; 12:12-31; Eph 1:22-23; 2:16; 4:1-6;Col 1:18; 1:24; 2:19; 3:15. In Romans and 1 Corinthians, Christ is equated with the entirebody that is the community. In Ephesians and Colossians, Christ is described as head of thebody.




7

of Christ, Church, and Eucharist - speaking of Christ’s ’mystical body’present in the Eucharist as signifying and realizing the ’true body’ (verumcorpus) of Christ that is the Church. With the controversies of Berengarof Tours in the eleventh century and the resultant increased emphasis onthe real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the adjectives were reversed.Subsequent theology so identified Christ’s physical body with theEucharist that the Eucharist became the verum corpus; the Churchbecame the corpus mysticum.lj Appearing in medieval treatises on Christ’sgrace of headship and in spiritual manuals of the Tridentine and earlymodem eras, the theme of the mystical body of Christ became tangentialto treatments of the Church preoccupied with the mechanics of ecclesi-astical structures. Responding to the Reformation challenge to papacyand hierarchy, Catholic Counter-Reformation theology asserted justthose elements under attack. Over time, treatises on the Church emergeddescribing it not with Paul’s organic image, but defining it in the juridi-cal language of political theory - a ’perfect society’ complete in itself andsubordinate to no other. 14

The roots of a modelOnly in the nineteenth century did the theme of the mystical body

emerge as the basis for a systematic account of the Church. 15 The ecclesi-ologist of Romantic Idealism, Johann Adam M6hler (1796-1838), drewfrom Paul and patristic sources a vision of the Church as a living, devel-oping organism. The genius of this Tubingen theologian was to considerthe Church not simply as the bearer of the mystery of faith, but as itselfan aspect of this mystery.’6 The Church cannot be reduced to its institu-tional structures, but is in its essence a deeper reality, the mystery of God’spresence to human beings. M6hler thus set the stage for modem ecclesi-ology by offering the question: What is the relationship between thisdeeper dimension, the Church as mystery, and the Church’s outward his-torical forms? His early work proposed a creative and dynamic answer tothis question, one that stressed the activity of the Spirit in individual andcommunity. As the years passed, Mbhler’s dialogue with Protestantism

13. Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: L’eucharistie et l’église au moyen age, 2nd ed. (Paris:Aubier, 1949; orig. ed. 1944) 23-135. See also Yves Congar, ’The Idea of the Church in St.Thomas Aquinas’, in The Mystery of the Church (Baltimore: Helicon, 1965) 53-74.14. On the eve of the Second Vatican Council, Joachim Salaverri’s influential Sacrae the-ologiae summa stated: ’The Church is a perfect society and absolutely independent with fulllegislative, judicial, and coercive power.’ Cited in Patrick Granfield, ’The Church asSocietas Perfecta in the Schemata of Vatican I’, Church History 48 (1979) 431-46, at 441.15. Emile Mersch’s The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of theMystical Body in Scripture and Tradition, trans. John R. Kelly (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1938; orig.ed. 1936) remains a basic resource on the development of this theme.16. Michael J. Himes, ’The Development of Ecclesiology: Modernity to the TwentiethCentury’, in The Gift of the Church: A Textbook on Ecclesiology in Honor of Patrick Granfield,O.S.B., ed. Peter C. Phan (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000) 45-67, at 59. See id.,Ongoing Incarnation: Johann Adam Möhler and the Beginnings of Modern Eccksiology (NewYork: Crossroad, 1997).




8

and his attempt to clarify his presentation of the God-world relationshipled him from a vision of the Spirit animating community to a christolog-ical, incarnational ecclesiology.&dquo; ’Thus, the visible Church, from thepoint of view here taken, is the Son of God himself, everlastingly mani-festing himself among men in a human form, perpetually renovated, andeternally young - the permanent incamation of the same, as in HolyWrit, even the faithful are called &dquo;the body of Christ&dquo;.’1$

Mbhler’s view of the Church as the continuation of the Incarnation in

space and time influenced the nineteenth-century Roman school ofGiovanni Perrone (1794-1876), Carlo Passaglia (1812-87), KlemensSchrader ( 1820-75 ), Johann Baptist Franzelin ( 1816-86), and especiallyMatthias Joseph Scheeben ( 1835-88). These theologians offered neithera narrow neoscholasticism nor creative systems, rather the Roman schoolrepresented a conservative attempt to synthesize biblical, patristic, andScholastic themes - something of an advance on the theology of the day.The later work of Mohler, Symbolik - and the influence of the Tubingenschool in general - introduced, in an initial way, history to ecclesiology.More importantly, it offered Christology as a guiding principle. With thehelp of Schrader, Passaglia published in 1853-54 the two-volume De ecde-sia Christi, organized around the theme of the body of Christ. Scheeben’sinfluential 1865 Die Mysterien des Christentums organized all of Catholictheology around one central idea, that of the incarnation, which is theexterior movement of the Trinity, the base of the Church, the body ofChrist, and is continued in faith and in the sacraments. Perrone drew theincarnational theology of the Tiibingen school into the orbit of theRoman Curia, while Schrader’s lectures at the Collegium Romanum onthe mystical body anticipated the first draft of Vatican I’s document onthe Church.’9On January 21, 1870, the schema on the Church (Supremi pastoris) was

presented to the participants at the First Vatican Council. The first chap-ter of this initial draft was titled ’The Church is the Mystical Body ofChrist’. The chapter began:

The only-begotten Son of God ... appeared in the likeness of man,having assumed the form of our body so that earthly corporeal men,putting on the new man which is created in the image of God in

17. Compare Möhler’s 1825 Unity in the Church or The Principle of Catholicism Presented inthe Spirit of the Church Fathers of the First Three Centuries, trans. Peter C. Erb (Washington,D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996) with his incamational approach of 1832 in Symbolism: Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences Between Catholics and Protestants asEvidenced by Their Symbolical Writings, trans. James Burton Robertson (New York:Crossroad, 1997).18. Möhler, Symbolism, 259.19. See Aug. Kerkvoorde, ’La theologie du "corps mystique" au dix-neuvieme siecle’,Nouvelle revue théologique 67 (1945) 1026-38; Heribert Schauf, De Corpore Christi Mysticosive de Ecclesia Christi Theses: Die Ekklesiologie des Konzilstheologen Clemens Schrader, S.J.(Freiburg: Herder, 1959).




9

justice and holiness of truth (Eph. 4:24) should constitute the mys-tical body of which he himself is the Head. 20

The opening paragraphs of this initial draft, reflecting the theologicalconvictions of its authors Perrone and Schrader, received mixed reviewsfrom the Council participants. Though never discussed by the body ofbishops, several written responses criticized the notion of the mysticalbody as too vague, as pertaining to mystical theology and not dogmatictheology proper, and as unable to offer a sufficiently specific definition ofthe Church. Some suggested the terms kingdom of God or society as bet-ter starting points for a definition. These reservations led to a second draft(Tametsi Deus}, prepared this time by the Jesuit Joseph Kleuten, that sub-ordinated the theme of the mystical body to the language of Church asthe ’true society’ of the faithful. While discussion on the second draftnever took place and no complete document De Ecclesia was promulgatedby the Council, the shift from the first to the second draft reveals theforce of the prevailing societas perfecta paradigm of Church. Despite thecreative recovery of the mystical body theology begun by Mbhler and fos-tered by theologians leading up to the Council, it would be sixty yearsbefore mystical body would emerge with real force.

A model takes shapeThe Pauline image of the body of Christ had been present in the

encyclicals of Leo XII and Leo XIII, but it began to appear in Catholictheology with growing frequency during the 1920s and 1930s.~ Surveyingperiodicals in Latin, French, and English, the American Jesuit JosephBluett observed that from 1920-25 the number of articles treating themystical body equalled that of the previous twenty years. The output dou-bled in the following five years, and continued to grow, reaching a kindof climax (in terms of volume) around 1937.&dquo;20. The Teaching of the Catholic Church as Contained in Her Documents, ed. Josef Neuner,Heinrich Roos, and Karl Rahner, trans. Geoffrey Stevens (Staten Island, N.Y.: Alba House,1967) 212. Official text of Supremi pastoris in Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima col-lectio, ed. J. D. Mansi (Paris and Leipzig, 1901-1927) 51: 539-53. Text of Tametsi Deus atMansi 53: 308-32. See Granfield, ’The Church as Societas Perfecta in the Schemata ofVatican I’, 431-46; J. Madoz, ’La Iglesia cuerpo mistico de Cristo según el primer esquema"De Ecclesia" en el concilio Vaticano’, Revista Expañola de teologia 31 (1943) 159-81.21. The encyclicals of Leo XIII suggest a growing appreciation of the Church as the mys-tical body of Christ - an image that nevertheless remains alongside the pope’s view of theChurch as a ’perfect society’. Compare his earlier Immortale Dei no. 8 with the later SatisCognitum nos. 3-5, 10 and Divinum Illud Munus no. 5, in Claudia Carlen, ed., The PapalEncyclicals: 1878-1903 (New York: McGrath, 1981) 109, 389-91, 395-96, 412.22. Joseph J. Bluett, ’The Mystical Body of Christ: 1890-1940’, Theological Studies 3 (1942)261-89, at 262. Other helpful bibliographies include Bernard-Dominique Dupuy, ’Le mys-tère de 1’Eglise: bibliographie organisée’, La Vie spirituelle 104 (1961) 70-85; J. Eileen Scully,’The Theology of the Mystical Body of Christ in French Language Theology 1930-1950’,Irish Theological Quarterly 58 (1992) 58-74, at 70-72. On German ecclesiology during thefirst half of the twentieth century, see Rudolf Michael Schmitz, Aufbruch zum Geheimnis derKirche Jesu Christi: Aspekte der katholischen Ekklesiologie des deutschen Sprachraumes von 1918bis 1943 (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1991). See also P. Stanislas Jáki, Les Tendances nouvelles del’Ecclésiologie (Rome: Casa Editrice Herder, 1957).




10

Already in 1922, Romano Guardini had declared that ’the Church isawakening in SOUIS’.13 By this phrase, Guardini referred to the growingawareness that the Church is not first an external institution, transmit-

ting life to its members as a viaduct transfers water. Rather, the Church islife; believers are incorporated into the Church and the Church lives inthem. Guardini blamed an institutional view of the Church on the indi-vidualism of the modem world. He offered the image of the mystical bodyof Christ as a response to the search for community that pervaded Europe- particularly Germany - following the First World War.24 Guardini andthe Tubingen theologian Karl Adam, whose 1924 Das Wesen desKatholi~ismus quickly became a best seller, introduced the theme of themystical body to an international audience. Scriptural and patristic stud-ies by scholars such as Gustave Bardy, Louis Bouyer, Henri de Lubac, JeanDani6lou, and others, contributed to a broad recovery of early Christianecclesiological themes, particularly the theme of the body of Christ.Meanwhile, the theological work of Guardini and Adams, Karl Feckes,Erich Przywara, L. Deimel, and Yves Congar promoted this new approachto ecclesiology between the two world wars. 15

Mystical body theology grew up in the twentieth century in contrast tothe institutionalism of Counter-Reformation ecclesiology and=the indi-vidualism of Enlightenment philosophy. It took shape as an affirmation ofthe Church’s mystery dimension, its participation in grace and continua-tion of Christ’s saving presence. This invisible reality - the mystical bodyof Christ - was affirmed, but how it was understood in relationship to thevisible Church on earth was variously understood. Three influentialinterpretations appearing during the 1930s reveal a range of views.Sebastian Tromp’s four volume Corpus Christi quod est ecclesia representeda traditional attempt to harmonize the ancient image of the mystical bodywith the institutional and juridical approach of the neo-Scholastic

23. Romano Guardini, Vom Sinn des Kirches (Mainz: Matthias Grünwald, 1990; orig. ed.1922) 19.24. ’In 1915 Max Scheler predicted that when the Great War came to an end, Germanswould desire a stronger sense of themselves as a people (Volk) and that they would act onthis desire by seeking guidance from Catholicism.’ Robert A. Krieg, Romano Guardini: APrecursor of Vatican II (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997) 47.Active in building Church-based social services in Germany between the two world wars,Constantin Noppel, S.J., drew on the ecclesiological theme of the mystical body to developa theology of the parish. See Constantin Noppel, Shepherd of Souls: The Pastoral Office inthe Mystical Body of Christ (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1939; orig. ed. 1937); id., Die neue Pfarrei:Eine Grundlegung (Freiburg: Herder, 1939).25. Note the overview articles by Yves Congar, ’Le Corps mystique du Christ’, La Vie spir-ituelle 50 (1937) 113-38; Erich Przywara, ’Corpus Christi Mysticum - Eine Bilanz (1940)’,in Katholische Krise, ed. Bernhard Gertz (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1967) 123-52; D. C. Lialine,’Une étape en ecclésiologie. Réflexions sur l’encyclique "Mystici Corporis"’, Irénikon 19(1946) 129-52, 283-317 and Irénikon 20 (1947) 34-54; Avery Dulles, ’A Half Century ofEcclesiology’, Theological Studies 50 (1989) 419-42, at 421-23. The Swiss theologianCharles Journet defies easy categorization, offering before Vatican II an original approachthat integrated themes of mystical body theology into an scheme built around Aristotle’sfour causes.




11

period.’6 Tromp argued that the model of the mystical body could not beplayed off against the institutional model, for the early Church did notenvision the mystical body as a purely spiritual association, but alwaysinsisted on the visible unity of the body which is the Church. At theother end of the spectrum, Karl Pelz’s controversial 1939 book, Der Christals Christus, took to an extreme an emphasis on the body’s spiritualdimension. His view of the intimate relationship between Christ and hismystical body led Pelz to compare this unity to the hypostatic union. Thelack of attention to the visible and juridical aspects of the Church and hisclose identification of Christ and the Christian led to fears of a false mys-ticism that would obscure the distinction between Creator and creation.Pelz’s book was ultimately placed on the Index .2’ Finally, the importantcontribution of Emile Mersch represented a middle position. In his his-torical studies and constructive theology, Mersch viewed Christ at workin the Church from within rather than as an efficient cause operatingfrom outside, which was the common view among neo-Scholastics. Notdenying the visible dimension of the Church, Mersch did distinguishbetween the visible society of the baptized under the direction of its legit-imate shepherds and the mystical body which is the communion of thosewho live in the life of Christ.’-8

In his 1943 encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi, Pius XII endorsed thistheological theme, claiming that there is no more noble or sublime

description of the Church than ’the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ’.’-9 Thisencyclical, the most comprehensive papal statement on the Church priorto Vatican II, was a careful bringing together of previous teaching andnew theological directions - a welcome, though modest, contribution.The Pope favoured Tromp’s attempt to harmonize the previous societasperfecta paradigm of Church with the recovered theme of the mysticalbody.3° Thus the encyclical contained a strong reaffirmation of the visibleand juridical nature of the Church; and given Pius XII’s ecclesiologicalpresuppositions, visible and juridical meant a Church hierarchically, andeven monarchically, constituted. For Pius XII the invisible and the visi-ble dimensions of Church are one and the same; the spiritual communityof Christ’s body is the institutional, hierarchically-ordered society. Theresult is that, in Mystici Corporis, the pliable image of the mystical bodyserves to justify prevailing patterns of authority and power. Recognizing arole for those who enjoy charismatic gifts, the encyclical reminded itsreaders that ’those who exercise sacred power in this Body are its first and

26. See Sebastian Tromp, Corpus Christi quod est ecclesia, 4 vols. (Rome: GregorianUniversity, 1937; rev. 1946, 1960, 1972).27. See Lialine, ’Une étape en ecclésiologie’, Irénikon 19 (1946) 146-50.28. See Mersch, The Whole Christ; id., The Theology of the Mystical Body, trans. CyrilVollert (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1951; orig. ed. 1944).29. Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, no. 1330. Tromp is generally recognized as the primary author of Mystici Corporis.




12

chief members’ .3’ The strong association between the Church’s invisiblehead (Christ) and its visible head (the Pope) affirmed papal centraliza-tion. In Mystici Corporis, the prerogatives of the Bishop of Rome, Christ’s‘Vicar on earth’, who ’governs His Mystical Body in a visible and normalway’, were asserted in no uncertain terms.32 Thus the model of mysticalbody itself, while offering a deeper theological ground to ecclesiology, hadlittle influence on the existing understanding of the Church’s concrete,historical existence.

Meanwhile, the encyclical’s identification of the mystical body withthe Roman Catholic Church left the status of other Christian traditionsand the place of non-Catholics baptized in Christ unclear. In the well-known passage, Pius XII stated:

Actually only those are to be included as members of the Churchwho have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have notbeen so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of theBody, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults com-mitted.... It follows that those who are divided in faith or govern-ment cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they beliving the life of its one Divine Spirit.33

The claim that membership in the mystical body of Christ requiresmembership in the Roman Catholic Church raised objections from manyCatholic theologians. Scripture scholars pointed out that for Paul validbaptism incorporates the believer into the body of Christ. Canonistspointed out that the Code of Canon Law recognizes that baptism makesone a person in the Church, even though heresy or schism may forfeit cer-tain rights of individuals or groups. Ecumenists observed that the encycli-cal did not adequately distinguish non-Catholic Christians fromnon-Christians.34 Pius XII’s 1947 encyclical on the liturgy, Mediator Dei,addressed some of these concerns by teaching that through baptismChristians are made members of Christ’s mystical body. But the theme ofthe mystical body continued to exist in Church teaching somewhatuncomfortably alongside a juridical and institutional approach.The mixed reception of Mystici Corporis illustrates a growing sense of

unease with the mystical body model itself. While conservative com-mentators, appealing to the neo-Scholastic clarity of the societas perfectamodel, accused these mystical body theologies of presenting an image ofthe Church vague, diffuse, and hard to pin down, figures such as ErichPrzywara, L. Deimel, and Mannes Dominikus Koster engaged in a more

31. Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, no. 17.32. Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, no. 40.33. Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, no. 22.34. See summary in Dulles, ’A Half Century of Ecclesiology’, 423.




13

nuanced critique .35This model alone seemed unable to clarify the rela-tionship between the visible and the invisible in the Church; its empha-sis on the mystery dimension seemed ill equipped to specify the Churchas an historic subject. Mystici Corporis confirmed the suspicion that ’mys-tical body’ could be invoked in support of whatever structural realityneeded support. While the encyclical gave the juridical concept of theChurch a deeper theological base, its emphasis on the papal officeexceeded even the language of the First Vatican Council. These limita-tions called for new approaches and new models.

The rise of new modeLs and perspectivesIn the years after Mystici Corporis, enthusiasm for the theology of the

mystical body began to fade. The question of membership had throwndoubt on the coherence of the encyclical; meanwhile, disillusionmentgrew with the model’s appeal to an abstract community spirit - followingthe war, Germans were especially conscious of the dangers of an uncriticalembrace of Volkgeist.36 While the post-war period was one of theologicalvitality, even before Pius XII’s encyclical critical studies had begun toappear that questioned mystical body as the comprehensive model ofChurch. ’The very retum to the sources that brought about the rise ofMystical Body theology contained a dynamism that evoked other

images.’3’ Mannes Dominikus Koster’s EkkLesiologie im Werden was seminal.In this 1940 book, Koster called the idea of the mystical body ’pre-theo-logical’, claiming the image was responsible for keeping ecclesiology in apre-scientific, merely metaphorical state. He argued that the theology ofthe mystical body, as filtered through Augustine and present in much ofGerman ecclesiology, tended to reduce the Church to an aggregate of indi-viduals sanctified by grace. That is, in its preference for the mystical, eccle-siology was not attending to its proper subject, the Church as a corporatehistorical reality. Koster believed that a truly theological definition of theChurch must begin with the idea of the people of God - an idea that hebelieved had a stronger foundation in scripture and liturgy.3$35. Przywara criticized the papal letter of ’a tendency to a certain vague romanticism, atendency to conceive the Mystical Body simply as the domain of grace, an inclination tosee the consequent aberration of imagining a permanent physical presence of Christ ineach Christian’, while still recognizing that the encyclical avoided the extremes of theChurch as a mystical milieu or legal institution. Cited in Thomas F. O’Meara, ErichPrzywara, S.J.: His Theology and His World (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre DamePress, 2002) 165. See Mannes Dominikus Koster, Ekklesiologie im Werden (Paderbom:Bonifacius-Druckerei, 1940); L. Deimel, Leib Christi: Sinn und Grenzen einer Deutung desinnerkirchlichen Lebens (Freiburg: Herder, 1940).36. See Kevin McNamara, ’The Ecclesiological Movement in Germany in the TwentiethCentury’, The Irish Ecclesiastical Record 102 (1964) 345-58, at 352.37. Dulles, ’A Half Century of Ecclesiology’, 423.38. Koster, Ekklesiologie im Werden, 22; See id., Volk Gottes im Wachsttum des Glaubens(Heidelberg: F. H. Kerle, 1950). Congar describes the influence of Koster’s work on theSecond Vatican Council in ’D’une "Ecclésiologie en gestation" à Lumen Gentium Chap. Iet II’, in Kirche im Wachstum des Glaubens: Festgabe Mannes Dominikus Koster zum siebzig-sten Geburtstag, ed. Otto Hermann Pesch and Hans-Dieter Langer (Freiburg: Paulusverlag,1971) 366-77.




14

Throughout the later 1940s and the 1950s, the theology of the mysti-cal body was overshadowed by a flood of studies on the Church as thepeople of God. Yves Congar lists a host of Protestant and Catholic the-ologians - including G. von Rad, Ernst Kdsemann, Nils A. Dahl, LucienCerfaux, A. Oepke, Frank Norris, and others - who explored the scrip-tural foundations of the concept.39 These studies on the people of Godtheme had the effect of affirming the continuity between the twoTestaments and of placing the Church within the larger story of salvationhistory. Lucien Cerfaux argued that Paul did not offer a fundamental def-inition of the Church as the body of Christ. Rather, Paul began with theJewish view of Israel as the people of God and saw Christians as the newpeople, called the Church of God; body of Christ was used by Paul tostress both the unity in these churches and their mystical union withChrist.&dquo; Eschatology made its way into ecclesiology through the biblicallanguage of a pilgrim people. Already in 1938, Robert Grosche hadargued that the image of the Church as the pilgrim people of God gavegreater attention to the Church’s eschatological orientation.4’ AnscarVonier’s The People of God complemented his The Spirit and the Bride bydrawing attention to the Church’s human and historical - and thus lim-ited - existence.&dquo; Following the Second World War, as the themes of sal-vation history, eschatology, and ecumenism received more attention,people of God entered a variety of ecclesiologies; in different ways, theGerman historian of doctrine Michael Schmaus and the canonist KlausMbrsdorf came to focus their views of the Church on this concept.43Twenty years after Vatican II, Joseph Ratzinger summarized the gainsassociated with the recovery of ’people of God’:

So, therefore, if we wish to sum up, by means of main points, themost prominent elements of the concept of the people of God thatwere important for the Council, it may be said that it was here thatthe historical character of the Church became clear, the unity of thehistory of God with his people, the internal unity of the people ofGod beyond the boundaries of sacramental states of life, the escha-tological dynamic, that is, the provisional and fragmentary charac-ter of the Church always in need of renewal, and finally theecumenical dynamic, namely, the various ways of being joined or

39. See Yves Congar, ’The Church: The People of God’, in The Church and Mankind, ed.Edward Schillebeeckx, Concilium 1 (Glen Rock, N.J.: Paulist, 1965) 11-37, at 16 n.6.40. Lucien Cerfaux, The Church in the Theology of St. Paul, trans. Geoffrey Webb andAdrian Walker (New York: Herder and Herder, 1959; orig. ed. 1942) 262-86.41. See Robert Grosche, Pilgernde Kirche (Freiburg: Herder, 1938).42. The Spirit and the Bride (1935) and The People of God (1937) can be found in TheCollected Works of Abbot Vonier (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1952) 2:3-225.43. See Michael Schmaus, Die Lehre von der Kirche, vol. 3 of Katholische Dogmatik (Munich:Max Hueber, 1958) 204-39; Klaus Mörsdorf, Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts, 3 vols. (Munich:Ferdinand Schöningh, 1964).




15

related to the Church which are possible and real, even beyond theconfines of the Catholic Church

Few pre-conciliar accounts denied a place for the former mystical bodytheme; most Catholic theologians saw body of Christ and people of Godas complementary images or models of the Church. While recognizingthat ’people of God’ emphasizes the Church’s continuity with Israel andits historical existence, Congar stressed that ’body of Christ’ was neces-sary to bring out what was new in the New Covenant: a share in the lifeof Christ. ’Under the new Dispensation, that of the promises realizedthrough the incarnation of the Son and the gift of the Spirit (the&dquo;Promised One&dquo;), the People of God was given a status that can beexpressed only in the categories and in the theology of the Body ofChrist. 141 Congar goes on to note this complementary approach in thework of R. Schnackenburg, 1. Backes, Joseph Ratzinger, C. Algermissen,Louis Bouyer, and Georges Florovsky. The view that body of Christ andpeople of God are complementary held in balance an earlier emphasis onthe mystery and eternal dimension of the Church with the new appreci-ation for the Church as a historic and changing subject. This was the viewthat guided the discussion at the Second Vatican Council. 41The initial draft document on the Church prepared for the Second

Vatican Council evoked a method and a paradigm that were fading.Highlighting the image of the Church as the mystical body of Christ, thedocument proceeded, much like Mystics Corporis, by subsuming this imageunder the juridical categories of the institutional model.&dquo; As the Councilparticipants left behind an exclusively neo-Scholastic and deductiveapproach and favoured language drawn from Scripture and liturgy, a plu-rality of images emerged. On the one hand, the pre-eminent placegranted to the language of mystical body was gradually relativized along-side other biblical images - subsequent drafts of what would becomeLumen Gentium considered these images together under an initial chap-ter on ’The Church as Mystery’. On the other hand, the language of peo-ple of God rose in prominence to become arguably the most importantway of describing the Church present in the document. Richard McBrien

44. Joseph Ratzinger, ’The Ecclesiology of Vatican II’, Origins 15 (14 November 1985)370-76, at 375. Ratzinger’s own early research studied the image of people of God inAugustine and his antecedents (see id., Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von derKirche [Munich: Zink, 1954]).45. Congar, ’The Church: The People of God’ 35. See id., Le concile de Vatican II. SonÉglise : Peuple de Dieu et Corps du Christ (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984).46. For a summary of the way in which this synthesis view entered into the discussions atVatican II, see Herwi Rikhof, The Concept of Church: A Methodological Inquiry into the Useof Metaphors in Ecclesiology (London: Sheed and Ward, 1981) 39-66.47. For a view of successive drafts of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, arranged insynoptic charts, see Constitutionis Dogmaticae Lumen Gentium: Synopsis Historica, ed.Giuseppe Alberigo and Franca Magistretti (Bologna: Istituto per le Scienze Religiose,1975).




16

observes: ’The Second Vatican Council ( 1962-65 ) made the People-ofGod image its dominant image of the Church, more prominent even thanBody of Christ, meriting an entire chapter in the Dogmatic Constitutionon the Church. 14’ The Council presented not a synthetic, systematic eccle-siology, but adopted a descriptive mode; thus, various images were invokedas required by different themes as they appeared in the documents. As anew model arose attentive to the Church’s concrete, historical existence,it served to complement the strengths of the former emphasis on theChurch’s mystery dimension. People of God complemented mystical bodyin a vision of a Church responding to the signs of the times.

Communion ecclesiology

Like the image of the body of Christ, the language of ’communion’(koin6nia) appears in the New Testament and was developed during theearly centuries of the Church. Paul speaks of Christians called in faith tofellowship with God and with one another (Phlm 6). This fellowshipincludes communion with Christ (1 Cor 1:9), the Spirit (2 Cor 13:13),and the Father (1 1 Jn 1:3), and there exists communion among Christiansin their sharing and service to those in need (Acts 2:42). The Eucharistis described as a communion in the body and blood of Christ ( Cor10:16-17).~ After the New Testament, the writings of Irenaeus, Cyprian,John Chrysostom, Basil of Caesara, and others speak of communion inthe celebration of the Eucharist, in the ministry of the bishop, and in themystery of the Trinity. Concrete practices in the early Church - such asthe sharing of eucharistic bread among altar communities, the participa-tion of neighbouring bishops at episcopal consecrations, regional synods,the circulation of letters, and so on - demonstrate the practice of com-munion among local churches .5’ Gradually, this mutual interchangeamong local churches gave way to the increased authority of the pre-emi-nent sees, especially Rome; theologies affirming spiritually-rootedChurch union were replaced by legislation regulating juridical bonds.Like body of Christ, the themes of communion were replaced by the insti-tutionalism of the Latin West.51

48. ’People of God’, in The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, ed. Richard P.McBrien (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995) 985. In 1974, Avery Dulles stated, ’Theprincipal paradigm of the Church in the documents of Vatican II is that of the People ofGod.’ (Models of the Church, 48).49. For an exhaustive review of New Testament references to koinônia, see John MichaelMcDermott, ’Biblical Doctrine of Koinonia’, Biblische Zeitschrift 19 (1975) 64-77, 219-33;John Reumann, ’Koinonia in Scripture: Survey of Biblical Texts’, in On the Way to FullerKoinonia : Official Report of the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order, ed. Thomas F. Bestand Günther Gassmann, Faith and Order Paper n.166 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1994)37-69.50. Michael A. Fahey, ’Ecclesiae Sorores ac Fratres: Sibling Communion in the Pre-NiceneChristian Era’, CTSA Proceedings 36 (1981) 15-38.51. Yves Congar, ’De la communion des églises à une ecclésiologie de l’église universelle’,in L’Épiscopat et l’Église universelle, ed. Yves Congar and B.-D. Dupuy, Unam Sanctam 39(Paris: Cerf, 1962) 227-60.




17

The roots of a modelCommunion ecclesiology, as a modem phenomenon, implies some

configuration of these patristic themes of spiritual fellowship, unity sym-bolized in the eucharistic celebration, and attention to the interplaybetween the local and the universal in the Church These themes reap-peared in the nineteenth century, where Johann Adam Mohler againserves as a seminal figure for Roman Catholic theology. The incarna-tional ecclesiology of his Symbolik, the focus of the latter part of his shortcareer, would have immediate influence in Germany and, via the RomanSchool, an indirect impact on the rise of mystical body theology. ButMbhler’s early pneumatological ecclesiology, found in Die Einheit, wasonly rediscovered in the 1930s and 1940s by figures such as JosephGeiselmann, Heinrich Fries, Pierre Chaillet, Marie-Dominique Chenu,and especially Yves Congar.53 M6hler’s early synthesis of German Idealismand patristic sources offered a vision of the Church as an organic, spiri-tual community. His view of the Spirit infusing each believer and perme-ating the community itself, along with his patristic appreciation forepiscopacy and catholicity, are early anticipations of the themes of twen-tieth-century communion ecclesiology.

Parallel to the creative theology of M6hler and the Roman CatholicTubingen school, a theological revival was gaining momentum in

Orthodox thought. The Russian Orthodox theologian Alexei Khomiakov( 1804-60) was, like Mohler, shaped by the Idealism of Schelling and thetheologies of the early Church. Khomiakov promoted, over-against whathe saw as the negative individualism of Western Christianity, a vision ofChurch as a living communion of mutual love. 54 This communitarian idealof sobornost would inspire the Slavophile movement, promoted in the earlytwentieth century by Russian Orthodox 6migr6s working at the InstitutSaint-Serge in Paris.55 The work of George Florovsky (1893-1979), PaulEvdokimov (1901-79), Vladimir Lossky (1903-58), and especially theeucharistic theology of Nicholas Afanasiev (1893,1966) fostered a revital-ization of Orthodox theology that touched Roman Catholic ecclesiology,

52. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology, 13.53. See Yves Congar, ’La pensée de Möhler et l’Ecclésiologie orthodoxe’, Irénikon 12(1935) 321-29; id., ’Sur l’évolution et l’interprétation de la pensée de Moehler’, Revue dessciences philosophiques et théologiques 27 (1938) 205-12; id., ’L’esprit des Pères d’aprèsMoehler’, La Vie Spirituelle 55 (1938) 1-25; id., ’La signification oecuménique de l’oeuvrede Moehler’, Irénikon 15 (1938) 113-30; L’Eglise est une: Hommage à Möhler, ed. PierreChaillet (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1939). See also Josef Rupert Geiselmann, Die KatholischeTübinger Schule : Ihre theologische Eigenart (Freiburg: Herder, 1964); Thomas F. O’Meara,’Beyond "Hierarchology": Johann Adam Möhler and Yves Congar’, in The Legacy of theTübingen School: The Relevance of Nineteenth-Century Theology for the Twenty-First Century,ed. Donald J. Dietrich and Michael J. Himes (New York: Crossroad, 1997) 173-91.54. See Alexei Stepanovich Khomiakov, The Church is One (London: S.P.C.K., 1948; orig.ed. 1863); id., L’Église latine et le Protestantisme au point de vue de l’Église d’orient (Lausanne:Benda, 1969; orig. ed. 1872).55. Alexis Kniazeff, L’Institut Saint-Serfe: De l’academie d’autrefois au rayonnement d’aujour-d’hui (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1974).




18

drawing attention especially to a theology of the local church and to thecentrality of the Eucharist in the community’s life and mission .5’ Theeucharistic ecclesiology of Afanasiev influenced the work of Congar,Henri de Lubac, John Meyendorff, Alexander Schmemann, Jean-MarieTillard, and John Zizioulas.

These two nineteenth-century trajectories - the one German andCatholic, the other French and Orthodox - came together in the nouvelletheologie of the first half of the twentieth century. The Paris-based UnamSanctam series marks these theological trails. Congar, who founded UnamSanctam, wanted to launch it with a new French translation of M6hler’sDie Einheit. Speaking of his discovery of the Tiibingen theologian, Congarlater recalled: ’As with other things, Pere Chenu revealed M6hler to me.I found there a source, the source, which I needed.... So what M6hlerdid in the nineteenth century became for me an ideal which would

inspire and lead me to my own theology in the twentieth century. 151 In hisfrequent contacts with Saint-Serge, the ecumenically-minded Congarserved as a bridge with Orthodox thought as well. Alongside Mohler’searly masterpiece, Unam Sanctam published Congar’s major works on ecu-menism, Church reform, and the laity, Albert Gratieux’s studies onKhomiakov and the Slavophile movement, a volume on nineteenth-cen-tury ecclesiology, and a multitude of historical studies .51 Patristic ecclesi-ological models made their way into Roman Catholic theology throughthe research of Congar, de Lubac, Bernard Botte, Jean Dani6lou, JosephL6cuyer, and Cyrille Vogel - models mediated in part by the Tubingenschool and Orthodox thought.The twentieth-century recovery of an ecclesiology of communion is

often linked to the early ecumenical studies of Hamer, Hertling, Congar,Le Guillou, and others.&dquo; But the emergence of the themes today consid-

56. See Albert Gratieux, A. S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile, Unam Sanctam 5 and6 (Paris: Cerf, 1939).57. Jean Puyo, Une vie pour la verité: Jean Puyo interroge le Père Congar (Paris: LeCenturion, 1975) 48.58. See Yves Congar, Chrétiens Désunis: Principes d’un ’Oecuménisme’ Catholique, UnamSanctam 1 (Paris: Cerf, 1937); id., Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’église, Unam Sanctam 20(Paris: Cerf, 1950); id., Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat, Unam Sanctam 23 (Paris: Cerf,1953); id., Chrétiens en dialogue: Contributions catholiques á l’oecuménisme, Unam Sanctam 50(Paris: Cerf, 1964); Gratieux, A. S. Khomiakov et le mouvement slavophile; id., Le MouvementSlavophile a la veille de la révolution: Dmitri A. Komiakov, Unam Sanctam 25 (Paris: Cerf,1953); L’Ecclésiologie au XIXe Siéck, ed. M. Nédoncelle et al., Unam Sanctam 34 (Paris:Cerf, 1960). Furthermore, some Unam Sanctam volumes took up directly the themes ofcommunion, including studies on collegiality (L’Épiscopat et l’Église universelle, ed. Congarand Dupuy; La Collégialité Épiscopale: Histoire et théologie, Unam Sanctam 52 [Paris: Cerf,1965]), Henri de Lubac’s Catholicisme, Unam Sanctam 3 (Paris: Cerf, 1938), M.-J. LeGuillou’s Mission et Unité: Les exigences de la communion, Unam Sanctam 33 (Paris: Cerf,1960), and Jerome Hamer’s L’Église est une communion, Unam Sanctam 40 (Paris: Cerf,1962).59. Jerome Hamer, The Church is a Communion, trans. Ronald Matthews (New York:Sheed & Ward, 1964; orig. ed. 1962); Ludwig Hertling, Communio: Church and Papacy inEarly Christianity, trans. Jared Wicks (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1972; orig. ed.




19

ered central to a communion ecclesiology extended beyond these impor-tant studies. In rediscovering fresh views on the Church existing prior tothe Middle Ages, pre-conciliar theologians raised questions surroundingspecific issues touching on the themes of communion: episcopal colle-giality, the role of the papacy in relation to the local churches, ecu-menism, liturgical reform, and the role of the laity. But unlike the imagesof mystical body, people of God, or sacrament, ’communion’ was notwidely promoted as a comprehensive and integrative model of theChurch prior to the Second Vatican Council. This is true even at theCouncil itself, even though the term ’communion’ itself appears through-out the documents. While the documents of Vatican II speak of theChurch as a sacrament of unity, the body of Christ, a bride, flock, temple,and above all, the people of God, nowhere do the texts state that theChurch itself is a communion.&dquo;To speak of the ’communion ecclesiology’ of the Second Vatican

Council cannot be referring to the preponderance of explicit statementsconcerning communion or even to the obvious intentions of the docu-ments’ drafters. Instead, the themes of communion can only be recon-structed from various passages in the Council texts that touch on differentdimensions of ecclesiology and Church life. While the first paragraph ofLumen Gentium calls the Church a sign and instrument ’of communionwith God and of the unity of the entire human race’, the document as awhole reflects the results of debate, compromise, and consensus on howcommunion is to take shape in relationships among real people andwithin Church structures.&dquo; How is communion recognized among variousCatholic rites, among Christians, with other religions, and with theworld? How is communion expressed and experienced at the eucharisticcelebration or within the local church that is the diocese? How do bish-

ops around the world exercise their ministry in communion with eachother and with the bishop of Rome? What is the role of the laity withinthe Church communion? In light of recent attempts (sketched below) to

1943); Yves Congar, ’Notes sur les mots "confession", "église", et "communion"’, Irénikon23 (1950) 3-36; id., ’De la communion des églises à une ecclésiologie de l’église uni-verselle’, 227-60; M.-J. Guillou, Mission et unité: Les exigences de la communion, UnamSanctam 33 (Paris: Cerf, 1960). See also the work of the German Lutheran Wemer Elert,Eucharist and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries, trans. N. E. Nagel (Saint Louis:Concordia Publishing, 1966; orig. ed. 1954).60. Avery Dulles challenges Oskar Saier’s argument that Unitatis Redintegratio no. 2

equates ’ecclesia’ with ’communio’ (’The Church as Communion’, in New Perspectives onHistorical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff, ed. Bradley Nassif [Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, 1996] 125-39, at 127 n.7). See Oskar Saier, ’Communio’ in der Lehre des ZweitenVatikanischen Konzils (Munich: Max Huebner, 1973) 35.61. Lumen Gentium 1. Jean Rigal helpfully outlines the themes of communion present inthe Council documents insofar as they touch on participation in the Trinitarian commu-nion, communion among the faithful, particular Churches in relation to the universalChurch, connection to liturgy, the meaning of hierarchical communion, ecumenism, mis-sion, and eschatology (L’Ecclésiologie de communion: Son évolution historique et ses fondements[Paris: Cerf, 1997] 63-81).




20

employ communion as an interpretative lens for Vatican II, it is impor-tant to recognize the converse as equally important: that the documentsof Vatican II provide the key for interpreting the notion of communion.

A model takes shape’Communion ecclesiology’, as a developed Church model, is a post-

Vatican II phenomenon. Most early commentaries on Lumen Gentiumconsidered ’people of God’ to be the main idea of the Council’s ecclesiol-ogy.6’- The themes of communion treated by the Council at first appearedmainly in studies on particular topics (e.g. liturgy, laity, ecumenism, col-legiality) and in concrete developments such as the revitalization of epis-copal conferences and the plans for future synods. But by the early 1970s,’communion’ began to emerge as a heuristic tool for reading the Councildocuments. The commentary on Lumen Gentium by Gerard Philips, thesecretary of the Council’s theological commission, drew attention to com-munion as an underlying theme, more implicit than explicit, and antici-pated the detailed exegetical studies by Oskar Saier, Antonio Acerbi,Hans Rossi, and Gianfranco Ghirlanda.63 Acerbi’s careful historical analy-sis of Lumen Gentium argued that the final text contains two ecclesiolo-gies, juxtaposed but not fully integrated, revealing the shift during theCouncil debates from a static, juridical ecclesiology to an open anddynamic view of the Church as a communion.Two broad approaches have taken shape since the Council, each sug-

gesting itself as the authentic interpretation of Vatican 11’s vision of theChurch as a communion: (1) an Aristotelian approach that begins withthe concrete, historical manifestation of the Church at the local level and(2) a Platonic approach that grants primacy to the universal Church asan ideal, spiritual reality.64 The first emphasizes the pastoral/practical

62. See Aloys Grillmeier, ’The People of God’, in Commentary on the Documents of VaticanII, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967; orig. ed. 1966) 1: 153-85,at 154; L’Église de Vatican II: Études autour de la Constitution conciliaire sur l’Église, ed.Guilherme Baraúna, Unam Sanctam 51b (Paris: Cerf, 1966) 395-698; BonaventureKloppenburg, The Eccksiology of Vatican II, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Chicago:Franciscan Herald Press, 1974; orig. ed. 1971) 41-44.63. See Gérard Philips, L’Église et son mystère au IIe Concile du Vatican: Histoire, texte etcommentaire de la Constitution Lumen Gentium (Paris: Desclée, 1967) 1: 7, 59; 2: 24, 54, 159;Antonio Acerbi, Due ecclesiologie: Ecclesiologia giuridica ed ecclesiologia di comunione nella’Lumen Gentium’ (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1975); Saier, ’Communio’ in der Lehre desZweiten Vatikanischen Konzils; Hans Rossi, Die Kirche als personale Gemeinschaft: Der kom-munitdre Charakter der Kirche nach den Dokumenten und Akten des Zweiten VatikanischenKonzils, Grenzfragen zwischen Theologie und Philosophie 25 (Cologne: Hanstein, 1976);Gianfranco Ghirlanda, ’Hierarchica communio’: Significato della formula nella Lumen gentium,Analecta Gregoriana 216 (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1980). In 1974, Avery Dullessubsumed the Council’s references to mystical body and people of God under his model of’mystical communion’ (Models of the Church, 46-51).64. The distinction is Walter Kasper’s: ’The conflict is between theological opinions andunderlying philosophical assumptions. One side [Ratzinger] proceeds by Plato’s method; itsstarting point is the primacy of an idea that is a universal concept. The other side [Kasper]follows Aristotle’s approach and sees the universal as existing in a concrete reality’ (’On




21

dimension of local churches existing in communion with one another,while the second highlights the one Church as a mystical communion ingrace. We consider each of these tendencies in turn.

Kilian McDonald observes the first approach, a communion ecclesiol-ogy ’from below’, bursting out in the life of local churches following theclose of the Council. 65 The rise of communid,ades eclesia~es de base in Braziland elsewhere led to reflection on the Church as present in the relation-ships within and among small, sub-parish gatherings of Christians. The1968 meeting of the Latin American bishops’ conferences (CELAM) inMedellin spoke of communion within these base communities; while tenyears later the bishops gathered in Puebla employed ’communion’, along-side ’participation’, as a central theme in their document on evangeliza-tion. Here ’communion’ involves participation in the life of the Trinity,participation in the Church, and participation in the work of social jus-tice for the poor. The questions emerging from Latin America began byasking how communion is present within and among local communitiesand local churches, and led to exploring how Church and political struc-tures facilitate or frustrate this communion. Leonardo Boff, in a theologyrooted in the experience of base communities, pushes to the limit thiscommunion ecclesiology ’from below’.66

In Europe and North America, the work of Congar in ecclesiology andecumenism inspired a line of theologians attending to the local church,including Jean-Marie Tillard, Herv6-Marie Legrand, and JosephKomonchak, among others. Tillard’s work has been particularly fruitful.He promoted a communion ecclesiology centred in the eucharistic cele-bration of the local church and pursued the implications of such a viewfor a host of theological issues, such as catholicity and inculturation, ecu-menism, apostolic succession, and episcopal collegiality. For Tillard, theChurch is a communion of communions, a Church of churches. His viewdoes not give priority to the local churches over the universal: rather thelocal and universal are simultaneous. Following Vatican II, Tillardclaimed that each local church exists only in communion with the

the Church’, America 184 [23-30 April 2001] 8-14, at 13. Avery Dulles describes the twoapproaches as ’universalist’ and ’particularist’ (’The Church as Communion’, 133) whileJoseph Komonchak uses the language of ecclesiologies ’from above’ and ’from below’ (’TheChurch Universal as the Communion of Local Churches’, in Where Does the Church Stand?,Concilium 146 (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1981) 30-35, at 30-31.65. See Kilian McDonnell, ’Vatican II (1962-1964), Puebla (1979), Synod (1985):Koinonia/Communio as an Integral Ecclesiology’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 25 (1988)399-427.66. See Leonardo Boff, Ecclesiogenesis: The Base Communities Reinvent the Church(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1986; orig. ed. 1977); id., Church: Charism and Power: LiberationTheology and the Institutional Church (New York: Crossroad, 1985; orig. ed. 1981). On theCDF’s criticisim of Boff’s work, see ’Doctrinal Congregation Criticizes BrazilianTheologian’s Book’, Origins 14 (4 April 1985) 683-87. Jamie Phelps argues that black lib-eration theology and communion ecclesiology share the same central themes and goal: theunity of the human community (’Communion Ecclesiology and Black Liberation

Theology’, Theological Studies 61 [2000] 672-99).




22

universal Church and that the universal Church exists in and from thelocal churches. Tillard’s theology attends to the historical, social, and cul-tural characteristics marking the local community - keeping his view ofthe universal Church from becoming an abstract Platonic ideal.&dquo;Attention to the local Church incarnates the notion of communion bytying it to real communities. In the Trinitarian ecclesiologies of BrunoForte, Medard Kehl, and Hermann Pottmeyer, or in the use of ’commu-nion’ within the ecclesiologies of Walter Kasper, Jean Rigal, MiguelGarijo-Guembe, and Ghislain LaFont, we see similar attention to theconcrete pastoral situation, to the unfolding reality of the Church as his-toric subject.&dquo;The second broad approach to the Church as communion, the Platonic

appeal to the universal and the ideal, began with the rise of the interna-tional Communio movement in the early 1970s. During the first meetingof the International Theological Commission in the fall of 1969, an infor-

’

mal summit occurred among theologians concerned about and generallydisillusioned with events in the Church following the close of theCouncil.69 There a small group of ITC theologians, led by Hans Urs vonBalthasar and including Joseph Ratzinger, Henri de Lubac, Louis Bouyer,J. Medina, and Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, discussed ways of addressingwhat they saw as undesirable developments following the Council: anoveremphasis on structural reform, an excessive modernization and

neglect of proper authority and tradition, a functional approach to truth,and a too sociological, democratic view of the Church.* Here the idea for

67. See especially Jean-Marie R. Tillard, The Bishop of Rome, trans. John de Satgé(Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1983; orig. ed. 1982); id., Church of Churches: TheEcclesiology of Communion, trans. R. C. De Peaux (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992; orig.ed. 1987); id., Flesh of the Church, Flesh of Christ: At the Source of the Ecclesiology ofCommunio, trans. Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2001; orig. ed.1992); id., L’Église locale: Ecclésiologie de communion et catholicité (Paris: Cerf, 1995).68. See Bruno Forte, The Church: Icon of the Trinity, trans. Robert Paolucci (Boston: St.Paul Books, 1991; orig. ed. 1984); id., La Chiesa della Trinità: Saggio sul mistero della chiesacommunio e missione (Rome: San Paolo, 1995); Medard Kehl, Die Kirche: Eine katholischeEkkksiologie (Würzburg: Echter, 1992); Hermann J. Pottmeyer, Towards a Papacy in

Communion: Perspectives From Vatican Councils I and II, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (NewYork: Crossroad, 1998); Kasper, Theology and Church, 148-65; Rigal, L’Ecclésiologie de com-munion; Miguel M. Garijo-Guembe, Communion of the Saints: Foundation, Nature, andStructure of the Church, trans. Patrick Madigan (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1994; orig.ed. 1988); Ghislain Lafont, Imagining the Catholic Church: Structured Communion in theSpirit, trans. John J. Burkhard (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000; orig. ed. 1995). Also inthis line of Aristotelean communion ecclesiologies are Ferdinand Klostermann, Gemeinde-Kirche der Zukunft: Thesen, Dienste, Modelle, 2 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1975); SiegfriedWiedenhofer, Das katholische Kirchenverständnis: Ein Lehrbuch der Ekklesiologie (Graz: Styria,1992); Robert Kress, The Church: Communion, Sacrament, Communication (New York:Paulist, 1985); Michael G. Lawler and Thomas J. Shanahan, Church: A SpiritedCommunion (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1995); The Church as Communion, ed. James H.Provost (Washington, D.C.: CLSA, 1984).69. Joseph Ratzinger, ’Communio: A Program’, Communio 19 (1992) 436-49, at 438-39.70. See Michael Fahey, ’Joseph Ratzinger as Ecclesiologist and Pastor’, in Neo-Conservatism : Social and Religious Phenomenon, ed. Gregory Baum (New York: Seabury,1981) 76-83, at 79.




23

a new journal - intended to balance the progressive series UoncmMm &horbar; anda new international movement was bom. After contacts with the conser-vative Italian lay movement Communione e Liberazione, von Balthasarchose the name ’Communio’ for the movement.’1 In 1972, the first edi-tion of Internationale katholische Zeitschrift: Communio appeared (in Italianas well as German editions); since then over a dozen editions in differentlanguages have appeared across Europe and the Americas.

By adopting the language of ’communio’, this movement has linkedthis patristic category with the ecclesiological and political commitmentsof its proponents. The ecclesiological writings of von Balthasar, Ratzinger,de Lubac, Jean Dani6lou, and, more recently, David Schindler strive torecover the mystery dimension of the Church, its divine ground andsacred space, against what they see as an accommodation of the Christianwitness to modem secularization.72 Repeated calls for institutional reform,public dissent, the decline in traditional modes of religious life, thegrowth of liberation and political theologies are all signals that theChurch is headed in the wrong direction. Avery Dulles notes the influ-ence on this movement of the Platonism of the early Church, and sees inthese authors a ’kind of neo-Augustinianism in ecclesiology’. Accordingto Dulles, proponents of this view

do not want to see the Church reduced to an instrument for the

rebuilding of secular society. They see it as a divinely animatedorganism, the bride of Christ, and the virginal mother who begetschildren for eternal life.... While approving of the accomplish-ments of Vatican II, they regard the postconciliar turmoil as thework of an alien spirit. They strongly resist all proposals to reformthe structures of the Church according to contemporary manage-ment theory. The Church, in their view, is being excessively politi-cized.... True reform, these theologians maintain, is interior and

spiritual. It requires humility and obedience, respect for authorityand tradition.’3

At times, this particular version of communion ecclesiology leads awayfrom the Council in presenting communio-mystery and people of God in

71. Ratzinger, ’Communio: A Program’, 439. See the programmatic essay by Hans Urs vonBalthasar, ’Communio — Ein Programm’, Internationale katholische Zeitschrift: Communio 1(1972) 4-17.72. For an introduction, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Office of Peter and the Structureof the Church, trans. Andrée Emery (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986; orig. ed. 1974); JosephRatzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays in Ecclesiology (New York:Crossroad, 1988; orig. ed. 1987); Henri de Lubac, The Motherhood of the Church, trans.Sergia Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1982; orig. ed. 1971); Jean Daniélou, Why theChurch?, trans. Maurice F. De Lange (Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 1975; orig. ed. 1972);David L. Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Eccksiology,Liberalism, and Liberation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).73. Dulles, ’A Half Century of Ecclesiology’, 440.




24

competitive terms; it can also neglect the Church’s existence as a historicsubject. 71 Ironically, by rejecting a too horizontal view of the Church andan overemphasis on the historicity of the pilgrim people of God, and byturning instead to the divine source and mystery of the Church, thisapproach has risked neglecting those aspects that gave communion shapein the Conciliar texts: collegiality, the importance of local churches, therole of the bishop in the eucharistic community, and the active partici-pation of the laity.The growing tension between the models of communion and people of

God fostered by the Communio movement emerged forcefully at the 1985Extraordinary Synod of Bishops. This synod, convoked to celebrate andreflect on the achievements of the Second Vatican Council, seems tohave made a deliberate effort to downplay the Council’s use of the peopleof God model. While the pre-synodal reports submitted from around theworld and several speeches at the synod itself spoke positively about theCouncil’s view of the Church as the people of God, the synod’s FinalReport contains only passing reference to this image - remarkable for adocument that warns against ’a partial and selective reading of theCouncil’ .75 Instead the Final Report favoured the language of Church asmystery and communion; it is markedly suspicious of an approach to theChurch too preoccupied with its concrete historical existence and insti-tutional forms. ’We cannot replace a false unilateral vision of the Churchas purely hierarchical with a new sociological conception which is alsounilateral.’’6 The Church is a mystery. This emphasis reflected the con-cerns especially of some of the German bishops present, led by CardinalsH6ffner, Meisner, and Ratzinger, who were in part reacting to the per-ceived bureaucratization of the German Church following Vatican II.&dquo;The initial report presented at the synod by Cardinal Danneels empha-sized the way in which the concept of people of God had been misusedideologically, how it had been isolated from other notions of Church pre-sent at Vatican II, and how it had been used to foster false oppositionswithin the Church. The result of these emphases is the new claim madein the synod’s Final Report, that the ’ecclesiology of communion is thecentral and fundamental idea of the Council’s documents’.’8

74. Ratzinger offers his reservations about the model of people of God in the first Chapterof Church, Ecumenism, and Politics.75. See Komonchak, ’The Synod of 1985 and the Notion of the Church’, 331. For docu-mentation of the synod, see Synode Extraordinaire: Célébration de Vatican II (Paris: Cerf,1986). The English and U.S. preparatory responses were published at Origins 15 (1985)177-86, 225-33. See also Peter Hebblethwaite, Synod Extraordinary: The Inside Story of theRome Synod November-December 1985 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1986); id., ’Exit"The People of God"’, The Tablet 240 (8 February 1986) 140-41.76. Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, ’The Final Report’, 446-47.77. Hermann Pottmeyer, ’The Church as Mysterium and as Institution’, in Synod 1985:An Evaluation, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and James Provost (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986)99-109, at 99.78. Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, ’The Final Report’, 448.




25

The synod’s appeal to the Church as communion can fail to recognizehow the language of mystery and the dismissal of questions concerninginstitution and power work to the advantage of those holding institu-tional power. An ecclesiology of the ideal present in careful phrases aboutthe Church’s Trinitarian ground led away from the structural, institu-

tional questions raised by many of the bishops before and at the synod -the teaching authority of episcopal conferences, the deliberative role ofsynods, and curial reform. When the Final Report considers the ways inwhich ’the ecclesiology of communion is also the foundation for order inthe Church’, its reflections on unity and pluriformity, Eastern-rite

Churches, collegiality, episcopal conferences, participation in the

Church, and ecumenism contain few concrete proposals.&dquo; JosephKomonchak concludes of the Final Report: ’invocations of &dquo;communion&dquo;and &dquo;collegial spirit&dquo; have triumphed over frank admission of serious prob-lems of structure and relation in the Church today’. 80These trends continue in the 1992 CDF letter, ’Some Aspects of the

Church Understood as Communion’ - a text that confirms the magister-ial drift toward a Platonic, universal and idealized interpretation of com-munion. In an attempt to counter a perceived over-emphasis on the localChurch in some versions of communion ecclesiology, the letter arguesthat the universal Church is ’a reality ontologically and temporally priorto every individual particular church’.81 This claim, which received sig-nificant criticism, seemed to imply the existence of an invisible, idealChurch that exists apart from any concrete, historical manifestations. A

quasi-official qualification of this claim appeared a year later in

l’Osservatore Romano, offering a helpful corrective.82 However, the CDF -following the ecclesiological perspective of its former prefect, CardinalJoseph Ratzinger - continues to affirm the priority of the universalChurch over the particular; the question becomes how the ’universal

79. Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, ’The Final Report’, 448-49. Walter Kasper, whoserved as synod secretary, was influential in promoting the language of communion as amediating category. His personal theological view of Church as mystery and communion isnuanced and attentive to the concrete implications of communion for the Church’s lifeand mission.80. Joseph Komonchak, ’The Theological Debate’, in Synod 1985: An Evaluation, 53-63,at 59 (emphasis in original). A more positive assessment of the Final Report’s use of com-munion is offered by Jean-Marie Tillard, ’Final Report of the Last Synod’, in Synod 1985:An Evaluation, 64-77.81. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ’Some Aspects of the Church Understoodas Communion’, Origins 22 (25 June 1992) 108-12, at 109. The congregation’s preferencefor an ecclesiology of communion is evident in the document’s opening line: ’The conceptof communio (koinonia), which appears with a certain prominence in the texts of theSecond Vatican Council, is very suitable for expressing the core of the mystery of theChurch and can certainly be a key for the renewal of Catholic ecclesiology’ (108).82. The unsigned letter stated: ’Every particular Church is truly Church, although it is notthe whole Church; at the same time, the universal Church is not distinct from the com-munion of particular Churches, without, however, being conceived as the sum of them.’’La Chiesa come Comunione’, L’Osservatore Romano, 23 June 1993, 1, 4 ; cited in Susan K.Wood, ’The Church as Communion’, in The Gift of the Church, 159-76, at 174.




26

Church’ is understood. Yet throughout the discussion, there seems to bean unwillingness on the part of the CDF (and Ratzinger personally) toadmit the concrete implications of a Platonic appeal to the universal. Ina recent public debate with Walter Kasper, Ratzinger wondered why theletter’s mention of the priority of the universal Church has led people tothink immediately of the Pope and the Curia, and of the problems of cen-tralization. Such a link, he claims, ’makes no sense’, for the 1992 letter’never dreamt of identifying the reality of the universal Church with thepope and Curia’ .83 The claims, Ratzinger asserts, are purely theological: ’Ifone strips away all the false associations with Church politics from theconcept of the universal Church and grasps it in its true theological (andhence quite concrete) content, then it becomes clear that the argumentabout Church politics misses the heart of the matter.’84 Kasper’s reply sug-gests that the problem lies not in the concepts of communion or univer-sal Church, but in the inability of a Platonic ecclesiological approach todeal with specific issues:

The question to Cardinal Ratzinger with which I should like to closeis whether such reflections really have to remain as devoid of con-crete consequences as his article might appear to claim. If one takesseriously the fact that in the Catholic view the Church is not somesort of Platonic republic, but a historically existing divine-humanreality, then it cannot be wholly wrongheaded and be chalked off asmere political reductionism to ask about concrete actions, not inpolitical, but in pastoral life.85 .

_

Under John Paul II, communion emerged as the favoured paradigm fordescribing the Church. Following the 1985 synod, the claims that com-munion is the code to Vatican II and the key to the renewal of ecclesiol-ogy appear again and again: John Paul II confirmed the synod’s choice ofcommunion in his apostolic exhortation on the laity, Christifideles Laici;86communion shapes his view of the Church in his apostolic exhortationson the formation of priests and on the religious life;87 communion appearsas an underlying theme in the Catechism of the Catholic Church;88 John83. Joseph Ratzinger, ’The Local Church and the Universal Church’, America 185 (19November 2001) 7-11, at 10, 8.84. Ibid. 11.85. Walter Kasper, ’From the President of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity’,America 185 (26 November 2001) 29. See Kilian McDonnell, ’The Ratzinger/KasperDebate: The Universal Church and Local Churches’, Theological Studies 63 (2002) 227-50.86. John Paul II, The Vocation and Mission of the Lay Faithful 48. See Avery Dulles, ’TheEcclesiology of John Paul II’, in The Gift of the Church, 93-110.87. See John Paul II, I Will Give You Shepherds/Pastores Dabo Vobis (Washington, D.C.:USCC, 1992) no. 12; id., The Consecrated Life/Vita Consecrata (Washington, D.C.: USCC,1996) no. 41.88. John Paul II calls the Catechism ’a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid andlegitimate instrument for ecclesial communion’. John Paul II, ’Apostolic Constitution FideiDepositum’, in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana,2000) 5.




27

Paul 11’s encyclical letter on ecumenism, Ut Unum Sint, is built on an

ecclesiology of communion;&dquo; and many of his public addresses invoke thetheme.90 These documents, with the notable exception of Ut Unum Sint,have shown a decided preference for a universalizing interpretation ofcommunion; a preference enhanced by the Platonic appeal to the Churchas mystery. The shift of attention away from concrete particular churcheshas meant a shift away from their concrete questions and a certain unwill-ingness to admit the concrete implications of an appeal to communion.Like Pius XII’s use of mystical body theology, the language of communionhas largely served to confirm the status quo; the appeal to mystery hasexcused ecclesiology of its responsibility for attending to the Church ashistoric subject.91

The riSe of new models and perspectivesJust as the mystical body theology appropriated by Pius XII was com-

plemented and thus relativized by the language of people of God and bythe plurality of images offered at Vatican II, so the Magisterium’s presentappeal to an ecclesiology of communion will likely give way to new mod-els, new approaches to and ways of describing the Church. Vatican II is amoment in history, offering not a single and etemal ecclesiology, but anopenness to many ecclesiologies, an openness to development and changein the Church’s self-understanding. The plurality of the Council’s visionand the evidence of history suggest that communion will unlikely disap-pear, nor should it. But how will an ecclesiology of communion functionin the future? Are there further models that might complement it? What,from our limited vantage point, might we anticipate about the next stagein ecclesiological development?89. John Paul II, That They May Be One: On Commitment to Ecumenism/Ut Unum Sint(Washington, D.C.: USCC, 1995). Tillard contributed directly to this encyclical.90. See, for example, the closing address to a Vatican symposium on the Council’s imple-mentation : John Paul II, ’Vatican Council II: Prophetic Message for the Church’s Life’,Origins 29 (4 May 2000) 753-55, at 755.91. During the 1970s and 1980s, communion emerged as a major category in ecumencialdialogue, reaching a high point in the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order, held atSantiago de Compostela in 1993, which took the theme, ’Toward (oinonia in Faith, Lifeand Witness’. Though it extends beyond the scope of this essay, it is important to note thatthe use of communion language in ecumenical dialogue has largely followed a Platonicapproach, by beginning with the ideal and working — to various deg-ees of success — towardconcrete implications. Susan Wood sounds a note of caution regarding this methodology:’Is [the term koinonia] becoming an umbrella term in ecclesiology generally, and in ecu-menical dialogues in particular, with the result that in coming to reter to everything, in theend it will refer to nothing?’ (’Ecclesial Koinonia in Ecumenical D alogues’, One in Christ30 [1994] 124-45, at 124). Wood suggests attention to the mediating structure of koinoniaas the crucial next step. See On the Way to Fuller Koinonia, ed. Thomas F. Best and GüntherGassmann, Faith and Order Paper n. 166 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1994); DeepeningCommunion: International Ecumencial Documents with Roman Catholic Participation, ed.William G. Rusch and Jeffrey Gros (Washington, D.C.: USCC, 1998). A fine summary ofthese ecumenical developments is available in Nicholas Sagovsky, Ecumenism, ChristianOrigins and the Practice of Communion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 18-47. See also George Vandervelde, ’Koinonia Ecclesiology: Ecumenical Breakthrough?’, Onein Christ 29 (1993) 126-42.




28

It seems that the future of communion ecclesiology lies not with adeductive and abstract Platonic approach, but with versions that attendto the concrete historical existence of the Church. A Platonic approachto communion risks either presenting a nebulous and content-less ideal,spiritualized to the point of denying any tangible implications for the his-torical community or serving as a mystical shell to mask an ideologicalrestoration of the societas perfecta model (accusations brought against thetheology of the mystical body before Vatican II).92 Thus, some criticsclaim ’communion’ is wholly inadequate for defining the historical mis-sion of the Church.93 Others call communion ecclesiologies to account fortheir underlying assumptions about Church polity. Ghislain Lafont wams:’But it can especially awaken the fear that, once we have defined theChurch as communion, we feel quite free to develop a juridical structurethat is even more restrictive and burdensome than the idea of commu-nion will bear.’~’ There have been constructive and creative communion

ecclesiologies. The work of Kasper and Tillard illustrates the ways inwhich the themes of communion (present in some Vatican II texts) canadvance the practical and pastoral, from ecumenical dialogue to incultur-ation to the role of bishops’ conferences. If it is concrete issues that pushecclesiology forward, then looking ahead to future models requires atten-tiveness to the pastoral questions facing the local churches today. VaticanII was successful because its view of the Church, grounded in scriptureand tradition, responded to particular and pressing questions: ecumenism,the laity, collegiality and primacy, the relationship of Church and State,the liturgy, and so on. Forty years later, some of the big issues that stillneed to be addressed concern religious pluralism, the growing role of newministries, structures for collegiality, inculturation, the Catholic identityand mission of important institutions, questions surrounding the struc,tures of clericalism and power, to name just a few. Ecclesiology cannottake refuge in mystery or idealized forms. Communion, as an organizingprinciple for ecclesiology, will survive to the extent that it addresses thesequestions demanding a response. More than likely, this model will needto be complemented by others. I conclude with two models recommendedby the issues listed above. These are suggestions more than predictions,two ideas borrowed from others about where ecclesiology might go next.

First, communion must be complemented by mission. Communionecclesiology has fruitfully sought connections between Trinitarian theol-ogy and reflection on the Church - recalling that the Church is an ’iconof the Trinity’. But the danger of over-identifying Church and the divineis ever present, and the analogy is problematic. Modelling Church

92. Joseph A. Komonchak, ’Concepts of Communion: Past and Present’, Cristianesimonella storia 16 (1995) 321-40, at 339.93. See Giuseppe Colombo, ’Il "Popolo di Dio" e il "misterio" della Chiesa nell’ecclsiolo-gia post-conciliare’, Teologia 10 (1985) 97-169.94. Lafont, Imagining the Catholic Church, 94.




29

communion on the Trinitarian communion-in-unity is difficult becausethe ’divine unity is where God is most different from God’s creatures,even the creation that we call Church’ .15 Neil Ormerod directs attention

away from the immanent Trinity to the economic:

What is first in our knowledge of the triune nature are the divinemissions of Word and Spirit, which in turn ground our knowledge ofthe processions and persons within the Trinity. In this way a missioecclesiology also makes contact with Trinitarian theology, not interms of communio and perichoresis, but in terms of missio and proces-sio. Communion may be our eschatological end in the vision of God,but in the here and now of a pilgrim Church mission captures ourongoing historical responsibility.96

A mission ecclesiology may be the future fruit of Lumen Gentium

Chapter 1, in which the Church’s source and ground in the triune God isdescribed not primarily in terms of inner-Trinitarian relations but interms of salvation history. These introductory paragraphs challenge thesolipsism of some communion ecclesiologies by recalling the Church’send and goal, the kingdom of God, and the Church’s historical movementin grace toward that goal.97 Just as the people of God model injectedeschatology into a static mystical body theology, so missio could makeroom for those questions that admit development and change: social andeconomic disparity, inculturation, the status of local churches, religiouspluralism and its relationship to the Church’s missionary activity.

Second, a baptismal ecclesiology. may take shape to complement thethemes of communion ecclesiology. Indeed, the links between Eucharist- so central to the development of an ecclesiology of communion - andbaptism suggest integrating both into a thoroughly sacramental ecclesiol-ogy. The polyvalence of baptismal imagery, and its theology, evokesdeath, burial and resurrection, new birth, incorporation and initiation.Reflecting on the ecclesiological implications of baptism offers fresh per-spectives on pressing issues receiving little attention in many treatmentsof the Church as a communion. Communion ecclesiology rightly empha-sizes the ministry of the bishop and his eucharistic presidency. But whatof the many new ministers and forms of ministry reshaping the Churchtoday? The theology of baptism as a call and commissioning to active ser-vice in the community extends through and beyond liturgy to the manyministries in taday’s parish; the diversity of baptismal charisms leaves

95. Neil Ormerod, ’The Structure of a Systematic Ecclesiology’, Theological Studies 63(2002) 3-30, at 29.96. Ibid.97. Lumen Gentium 5. See also Ad Gentes 2. In such a missio ecclesiology, it is the final sec-tion of the 1985 synod’s Final Report, ’The Church’s Mission in the World’, that will riseto balance in the Church’s self-understanding the report’s earlier sections on Church asmystery and communion.




30

behind a myopic focus on one minister (no matter how important thatminister is). Like people of God, a baptismal ecclesiology has the advan-tage of clearly affirming the equality of everyone in the Church, for thebasis of this equality lies in baptism. Could greater attention to a bap-tismal ecclesiology resist the too-easy appeal to the clergy-laity distinc-tion and instead affirm a diversity within the Church based on real rolesand concrete ministries? How would reflection on baptismal death andnew birth illuminate discussion of the sinfulness of the Church and its

perpetual need for reform? What if eucharistic fellowship, within the con-text of ecumenical dialogue, took as its primary referent common bap-tism ? A baptismal ecclesiology does not solve these difficult questions;instead, these difficult questions suggest a baptismal ecclesiology as ahelpful starting point for conversation.98

Conclusion

These pages have given not a history of the Church but a history ofrecent reflection on the Church. To study the succession of Church mod-els is not to argue for the inherent superiority of one over all others. It issimply the recognition that ideas have a history and the attempt toobserve how ideas about the Church change. The parallels between thepre-conciliar mystical body ecclesiology and the post-conciliar ecclesiol-ogy of communion are interesting. They share patristic roots and repre-sent the dual legacy of the nineteenth-century theologian M6hler. Intheir years of ascendancy, both models enjoyed an internal theologicaldiversity and saw one theological track appropriated and endorsed by thepapal magisterium. Both begin to fade in the face of unanswered ques-tions and issues left unaddressed by a static and abstract conception of theChurch, an interpretation that fails to account for the Church’s existenceas historic subject. Insofar as these models privilege mystery to the disre-gard of the community’s historical existence, they risk ignoring the verysubject matter of ecclesiological inquiry: the concrete Church - under-stood as a divine-human reality, a mystery manifested in history. Speakingof these limitations, Giuseppe Colombo concludes, ’To refer to the notionof &dquo;mystery&dquo;, demanded in any adequate ecclesiology, does not have thepurpose of resolving the question of its subject, but precisely that of pos-ing it.’99 As questions are asked and honestly addressed, other models andapproaches emerge that affirm the eschatological, the limited, and thelocal.

98. For initial suggestions toward a baptismal ecclesiology, see Maxwell Johnson, Images ofBaptism, Forum Essays 6 (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2001) 105-35; id.,’Romans 6 and the Identity of the Church: Toward a Baptismal Ecclesiology’,Catechumenate 22 (September 2000) 22-36.99. Colombo, ’Il "Popolo di Dio" e il "misterio" della Chiesa nell’ecclsiologia post-concil-iare’, 160-61.


