Published October 28, 2024
Overhyped, Overmanaged, Underwhelming—and Providentially Heartening
by George Weigel
In a 1989 article, future cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., agreed with Protestant historian Otto Dibelius that the twentieth century was the century of ecclesiology—the century of the theology of the Church. For Catholics, the pivot of that theological era was Pope Pius XII’s 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (The Mystical Body of Christ) and its magisterial apogee was the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which presented the Church in richly biblical and theological terms, rather than in the static, juridical-political language of the “perfect society” that had dominated post-Reformation Catholic ecclesiological thinking. Lumen Gentium also re-centered the Church on Christ; thus the dogmatic constitution did not begin “The Catholic Church is . . .” but rather “Lumen gentium cum sit Christus . . .” (Since Christ is the light of the nations . . .). Any truly Catholic ecclesiology is thus Christocentric, not ecclesiocentric.
If not wholly absent from Synod-2024, this fundamental teaching of Vatican II was at least muted. As more than one Synod participant mused, if the proverbial Man from Mars had scrutinized the Synod’s Instrumentum Laboris (Working Document) and then followed its discussions this past month, he might think that the only two “actors” in the Catholic Church were bishops and women, locked in a constant struggle for power (with “power” understood as who-gets-to-tell-others-what-to-do). Lumen Gentium’s Christocentricity and Vatican II’s theology of the Church as communion would have been hard for our interplanetary visitor to find.
So before dissecting Synod-2024 in both its miscues and accomplishments, it will help cleanse our spiritual and intellectual palates to return to Lumen Gentium—sixty years after its promulgation of Pope Paul VI on November 21, 1964—and drink deeply from its Christ-centered, biblical wisdom about just what the Church is and who we are as its members:
1. Christ is the Light of nations. Because this is so, this Sacred Synod gathered together in the Holy Spirit eagerly desires, by proclaiming the Gospel to every creature (cf. Mark 16:15), to bring the light of Christ to all men, a light brightly visible on the countenance of the Church. Since the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race, it desires now to unfold more fully to the faithful of the Church and to the whole world its own inner nature and universal mission . . . .
6. In the Old Testament the revelation of the Kingdom is often conveyed by means of metaphors. In the same way, the inner nature of the Church is now made known to us in different images taken either from tending sheep or cultivating the land, from building, or even from family life and betrothals, [as] the images receive preparatory shaping in the books of the Prophets.
The Church is a sheepfold whose one and indispensable door is Christ (John 10:1–10). It is a flock of which God himself foretold he would be the shepherd (cf. Is. 40:11; Exod. 34:11ff.), and whose sheep, although ruled by human shepherds, are nevertheless continuously led and nourished by Christ himself, the Good Shepherd and the prince of the shepherds (cf. John 10:11; 1 Peter 5:4), who gave his life for the sheep (cf. John 10:11–15).
The Church is a piece of land to be cultivated, the tillage of God (1 Cor. 3:9). On that land, the ancient olive tree grows whose holy roots were the Prophets and in which the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles has been brought about and will be brought about (Rom. 11:13–26). That land, like a choice vineyard, has been planted by the heavenly husbandman (Matt. 21:33–43; cf. Is. 5:1ff.). The true vine is Christ, who gives life and the power to bear abundant fruit to the branches, that is, to us, who through the Church remain in Christ, without whom we can do nothing (John 15:1–5).
Often the Church has also been called the building of God (1 Cor. 3:9). The Lord himself compared himself to the stone which the builders rejected, but which was made into the cornerstone (Matt. 21:42; Acts 4:11; 1 Peter 2:7; Ps. 117:22). On this foundation the Church is built by the apostles (cf. 1 Cor. 3:11), and from it the Church receives durability and consolidation. This edifice has many names to describe it: the house of God (1 Tim. 3:15) in which dwells his family; the household of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2: 19–22); the dwelling place of God among men (Rev. 21:3); and, especially, the holy temple. This temple, symbolized in places of worship built out of stone, is praised by the holy Fathers and, not without reason, is compared in the liturgy to the holy city, the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2). As living stones, we here on earth are built into it (1 Peter 2:5). John contemplates this holy city coming down from heaven at the renewal of the world as a bride made ready and adorned for her husband (Rev. 21:16).
The Church, further, “that Jerusalem which is above,” is also called “our mother”(Gal. 4:26; cf. Rev. 12:17). It is described as the spotless spouse of the spotless Lamb (Rev. 19:7; 21:2 and 9; 22:17), whom Christ “loved and for whom he delivered himself up that he might sanctify her” (Eph. 5:26), whom he unites to himself by an unbreakable covenant, and whom he unceasingly “nourishes and cherishes” (Eph. 5:29), and whom, once purified, he willed to be cleansed and joined to himself, subject to him in love and fidelity (cf. Eph. 5:24), and whom, finally, he filled with heavenly gifts for all eternity, in order that we may know the love of God and of Christ for us, a love which surpasses all knowledge (cf. Eph. 3:19). While on earth, the Church, which journeys in a foreign land away from the Lord (cf. 2 Cor. 5:6), is like in exile. It seeks and experiences those things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right-hand of God, where the life of the Church is hidden with Christ in God until it appears in glory with its Spouse (cf. Col. 3:1–4).
Would that we had heard more of that during this past month of synoding, and the past three years of the “synodal process” that preceded it.
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George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Catholic theologian and one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.