Vatican II: Awakening Souls and Ecclesial Horizons - Essay Sample

Introduction

The Ecclesiology of Vatican II refers to the documents of the second Vatican council. Vatican II marked the awakening of the church among people's souls following the end of World War I. There were a few reasons for the existence of the second Vatican Council. According to Kloppenburg (1974), there was some unfinished business from the First Vatican Council that had been left unfinished due to the Franco-Prussian War. Then there was a rise of the ecclesial horizon, otherwise known as the sense of church. The council fathers were aware of the lack of a clear definition of the position, nature, and competence, by divine right, of the bishops in the church. That caused some ideas to come out to force during the period of ferment and hope, which was between 1920 and 1960. These ideas include the church as a mystery and sacrament and the church as people of God.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

The Church as a Mystery and a Sacrament

The participants of the Second Vatican Council were seeking to gain a better understanding of the church as they aimed to produce the constitution on the Church. According to Romano Guardini, one of the pioneers of the Second Vatican Council, "The Church is Awakening within Souls." That expression recognized the church as something that exists within the human soul, rather than an institution that exists outside the human soul. The concept was fundamental because it changed the way Christians and Roman Catholics, in particular, perceived the church. The concept is that humans are the church. The church was no longer viewed as an organization but rather an organism of the holy spirit. That means that it is alive and takes hold of the humans' existence.

The verbal expression for that consciousness is what is known as, "The Mystical Body of Christ," It is the new and liberating experience of the church (De Lubac, 1999). During the writing of the constitution in the same period, Guardini added that the church is not built by men, but its rather a living reality that transcends time. Furthermore, while changes occur, it remains the same. So, while humans had viewed the church as an association, they were yet to have a full comprehension of it. The church is a living reality, and so should the human relationship with it.

Guardini's revelations came at a critical time when the Roman Catholic was losing ground in the hearts of believers. It was seen as some archaic organization that is stuck in the past and resistant to recent changes. Religious studies from the time had been focusing on the question of primacy, which wanted to portray the church as a central organization that should be defended vehemently. It is the church that keeps the mystery of the reincarnation alive. Through the church, Christ continues to move through time. In the pinnacle of its deliberations, the Second Vatican Council expressed the concept through the words, "Lumen Gentium cum sit Christus," which means, since Christ is the Light of the World, the church is a mirror of His glory. The Church is a reflection of Christ's splendor. Most of all, the church represents the most intimate communion with Christ.

According to the Lumen Gentium, the church's character as 'we' is entailed in its communitarian nature. It is impossible to refer to oneself as the church. Furthermore, the 'we' does not represent an isolated group. Instead, it stands for an entire community of Christ's followers, both living and dead. Therefore, the expression of the body of Christ implies that Christ has created a body for himself. Such an idea of liberal theology presents the church as a body rather than an idea. On the other hand, a body would remain identical to itself through its entirety because of its constant renewal.

The Church as People of God

Lumen Gentium (LG) makes use of various images to describe the church. The Church as a People of God was the product of numerous analyses of the ideology of the body of Christ, as well as corrections to the concept. The work of De Lubac contains some od these corrections. There was a concern that the idea of the mystical body obscured the relationship between visible and invisible law, order, grace, and life. The result was that the theologians proposed the concept of the people of God, which is found in the old testament and also a broader description of the church. The new concept allows for the easy application of sociological and jurisdictional categories. In simple terms, the mystical body of Christ failed to express things using concepts. For one, the Mystical Body is too narrow a concept to describe the many forms of church that have been entangled in human history. If someone chooses to use the image of a body as the description of belonging, then they are limited to 'member' as the form of representation. A person is either a member or not. There is no other possible outcome. That means a person can question whether the image of the body is too restrictive. The case becomes even more justified when the existence of an intermediate degree of reality. As a result, the constitution of the church found it helpful to use the people of God. It could also explain the relationship of non-Catholic Christians as being in communion, and the non-Christians to have ordered relationship to the church.

The concept of the people of God was introduced as an ecumenical bridge. It is also important to note that the rediscovery of the church did not just apply to the Catholics. The phenomenon was familiar to them as well. It gave rise to reciprocal criticism.

Along with the concepts of the church as mystery and Sacrament, along with church as a people of God are not the only concepts in the Ecclesiology of Vatican II. The Second Vatican council introduced concepts such as collegiality, nature of hierocracy, and ordinary universal magisterium.

Collegiality

The formulation of Eucharistic ecclesiology gave rise to the ecclesiology of local churches. That typical feature of Vatican II presented a sacramental and internal foundation of the doctrine of collegiality. The LG No 22 shifts between the assertion of papal privileges and the immediate affirmation of episcopal collegiality. The papal privileges include the supreme or singular authority over the church, privilege over the college, as well as privilege to convene and affirm ecumenical councils. The pope, along with the bishop, are members of episcopal colleges. They get to share the divinely appointed office of loosing and binding. They share the bespeak of Catholicity and Church's unity. According to the Lumen Gentium, they share the Supreme Authority over the whole church. That means that Vatican II did not strip the papal of its traditional privileges but rather bestowed them in the context of collegiality. The theological concept of collegiality emphasizes cooperation between the bishops and the Pope.

Nature of Hierocracy

The nature of hierocracy is captured in the phrase, "Christ created the hierarchy at the and hence had taken sufficient care of the church until the end of time." The church on earth has invisible communion between the invisible communion and the visible communion in the Apostles' teachings within the sacraments and the hierarchical order. According to LG, within the context of the church being understood as a communion, consideration needs to be given to the many institutes and societies, those specific charisms of apostolic and consecrated life. It is these two features, concentrated and apostolic life that the Holy Spirit enriches the mythical body of Christ. However, they do not belong to the hierarchical structure, but rather the life and holiness.

Universal and Ordinary Magisterium

Within the Catholic hierarchy, or priestly order, there is a threefold power structure that correlates with the threefold role of government, teaching, sanctification. The three power systems are the power of jurisdiction, magisterium, and order (De Lubac, 1999). According to De Lubac (1999), each of the three power systems are essential to the Catholic hierarchy. That means that the teachings that are carried through the constant church preaching across all people are referred to as the Universal and Ordinary magisterium. The universal or ordinary magisterium was associated with the word 'magisterium' with the teaching of the entire episcopate rather than the Pope's teachings alone.

John Paul II-Benedict Notion of Communion Ecclesiology and Its Central Themes

Other than being known for the implementation of the Second Vatican Council, Benedict the 16th was also known for the hermeneutic of continuity rather than hermeneutic of rupture, which was more common. Hermeneutics is a branch of theology concerned with critical interpretation or explanation of the bible, also known as exegesis. One can only conduct a proper exegesis if he or she uses the right hermeneutic approach, which allows for an understanding of the truth that the holy spirit wishes to convey in a given text from the scriptures.

When interpreting the scriptures, one should ensure that they do not play one text against the other. All texts related to a particular concept must be evaluated from what they say about the given concept. The correct understanding is that which allows each text to retain its full meaning because everything in the scriptures is right. An attempt to take the plain meaning of based on one's preferred text while ignoring the other text that touches on the same subject is working against hermeneutic.

The same principle applies to not just the scriptures, but all of God's revelations. The only way for a Catholic to fully understand the word of God is for him or her to take into account what both the scripture and the magisterium have to say on the subject. Therefore, the technique that separates the magisterial texts or passages of scriptures from other texts is known as the hermeneutic of rupture. On the other hand, Synod (1985) implies that the right principle that sits at the center of what it means to be a Catholic and thinking in the Catholic way is hermeneutic of continuity.

Hermeneutic of Continuity

The internalization of the faith varies among various Catholics. It varies from shallow spirituality and little knowledge to deep spirituality and vast knowledge. There are very few people in the higher end of the spectrum, which comes from the fact that many Catholics have been betrayed from secularized versions of the religion. For those who are more informed, they have chosen to persevere the indignities imposed on them by taking them as punishment for sin. These have also contributed to the renewal, as described in the documents from Vatican II. This resulted in the creation of splinter groups.

Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI's solution to the issues described above was to push for the renewal that was called for at the Second Vatican Council. The goal was to isolate the implementation of Vatican II from those factions that have supported distortions in the name of Council's spirit, and instead advocate for renewal that is based on the Council's actual documents. Also, part of the hermeneutic of continuity was the advancements in teachings of the Magisterium of the church. One of the central themes of Benedict's notion of communion ecclesiology was that authentic renewal could not be a product of hermeneutic of rapture. According to the hermeneutic of continuity, all new developments in Catholic teachings, worship, devotion or discipline, should be understood as a development the reinforces and confirms those that came before it, even if it's a proposition of new and more in-depth insight, a more precise formulation or emphasis of what had previously been overlooked.

The hermeneutics of continuity is supposed to create a culture of continuity among the Catholics, which would, in turn, bear fruits every...