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Looking at Vatican I's Pastor aeternus 150 Years Later: A Fresh Consideration of the Council's Significance Yesterday and Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2019

Kristin Colberg
Kristin Colberg*
Affiliation:
College of St. Benedict/Saint John's University
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Abstract

Many pressing issues facing the church today require a deeper appreciation of Vatican I, marking its one hundred and fiftieth year. We can now return it to its context and accept its “incompleteness” rather than insist upon its “wrongness.” The distance provided by time shows that its teachings are not as rigid or extreme as they are often perceived to be, but rather stand open to significantly broader interpretations. Pastor Aeternus has faced Vatican II, the social leveling brought about by democracy and the mass media, and an erosion of confidence in hierarchical institutions. Yet the council cannot be left behind. This essay's goal is to contextualize Vatican I's voice so that we can hear what it intended to say in its own day and see how it might contribute to some of our own most urgent conversations today.

Keywords

Vatican IPastor aeternuspapal infallibilityecclesiology
Type
Editorial Essay
Information
Horizons , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 323 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2019

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References

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34 Cardinal Walter Kasper, email to author, December 11, 2018.

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44 Kelly, “The Roman Catholic Doctrine of Papal Infallibility,” 133.

45 Ibid.

46 Bringing equilibrium to Vatican I's understanding of these subjects of authority—and our overall understanding of ecclesial authority—requires developing our knowledge and exercise of other forms of authority, especially lay authority. Given Vatican I does not significantly treat this topic, however, our focus here will be on bringing greater balance to that which it does treat.

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53 Kasper, “Introduction to the Theme and Catholic Hermeneutics of the Dogmas of the First Vatican Council,” 22.

54 Multiple chapters in For a Missionary Reform of the Church deal with the significance of Lumen gentium's third chapter in Francis’ papacy; particularly valuable is Hervé Legrand, OP's contribution entitled “Communio Ecclesiae, Communio Ecclesiarum, Collegium Episcoporum,” 159–95. Also valuable on this topic is Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism: Evangelii Gaudium at the Papal Agenda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)Google Scholar.

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