Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T19:29:35.381Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ecclesiological Contours: the Vatican Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Gerard Kelly
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Throughout the Catholic world there has been extensive discussion of the differences in tone, emphasis and sympathy between the two documents on the theology of liberation issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—the cautionary Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation of 1984, which was primarily concerned with drawing attention to ‘deviations and risks of deviation damaging to the faith’, and the Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation of 1986. The concern of this article is not so much with the contents themselves of these two documents as with the different ecclesiologies which appear to have shaped those contents. The prime object is to discern what the differences between them have to say to us about the place of ecclesiology in the Church’s mission today.

The ecclesiology of the first Vatican Instruction is present more by inference than direct reference. The danger points in contemporary ecclesiology are identified as a dismissal of the hierarchical nature of the Church as the People of God, and an ecclesiology that has become too immanentist. The document admits that it is not really interested in giving a positive theology—it leaves that task to the later document. Nevertheless one can discern an emerging ecclesiology underlying the text.

At about the same time that the Instruction was released, the text of an interview given by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation, was also published. Many of the ideas in the Instruction are the same as those in the interview.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 68 , Issue 804 , April 1987 , pp. 170 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation, Introduction, 1.

2 Ratzinger, Joseph with Messori, Vittorio, The Ratzinger Report. An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church (trans. Attanasio, Salvator & Harrison, Graham), San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1985, p. 49Google Scholar.

3 ibid., p. 47.

4 These words of Paul VI are quoted by Juan Luis Segundo in Theology and the Church, Minneapolis, Seabury Press, p. 71Google Scholar.

5 ibid., p. 70.

6 The Ratzinger Report, op. cit., pp. 36—37.

7 ibid., p. 46.

8 Cf. Boff, Leonardo, The Church: Charism and Power (trans. Diercksmeier, John W.), New York, Crossroad, 1985, pp. 131—137Google Scholar.

9 See Kelly, Gerard, ‘The Vatican Congregation and Liberation Theology’ in Press, Margaret & Brown, Neil (edd.), Faith and Culture: Focus on Ministry, Sydney, Catholic Institute of Sydney, 1985, pp. 36—38Google Scholar.

10 Komonchak, Joseph A., ‘Lonergan and the Tasks of Ecclesiology’ in Lamb, Matthew (ed.), Creativity and Method, Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 1981, p. 271Google Scholar.

11 Lash, Nicholas, ‘Catholic Theology and the Crisis of Classicism’ in New Blackfriars 66 (June, 1985), p. 282CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 ibid.

13 cf. ibid., 283.

14 Quoted by ibid., p. 281.