Posted on 03/02/2005 7:25:08 AM PST by franky
No conciliar decree has had more influence, while apparently remaining unread, than Lumen Gentium. Two generations of Catholics have now been educated to believe that in effect it abolished the hierarchical conception of the Church, substituting in its place the idea of “the people of God,” which is then understood as essentially a democracy.
The document obviously remains unread because its professed devotees appear unaware that it contains the strongest possible reaffirmations of hierarchical authority, including statements about papal authority as strong as anything in the decrees of the First Vatican Council, which Vatican II allegedly “corrected.” (The late Jesuit theologian Richard McCormick once published an essay on the ecclesiology of Vatican II without even mentioning Lumen Gentium.
Presumably, having read it, he found it an impassible stumbling block to the kind of ecclesiology he was advancing.) The disorders which have plagued the Church since the Council all stem from the fact that the conciliar decrees, very general in nature, were set forth without much regard for the cultural context of the times, ironic in view of the earnest desire of so many people precisely to “read the signs of the times.” The decrees were issued with no suspicion that the entire Western world was about to be engulfed in a major cultural crisis, assaulting its most fundamental beliefs, and that in such a situation the conciliar decrees, perfectly orthodox in themselves, perfectly in harmony with Tradition, would be given contentious interpretations.
“People of God” was one such example. The priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley, when criticized, makes the standard reply that he is simply the messenger bringing the bad news — he merely measures the ways in which Catholics have abandoned official Church teaching. But he and others take a constant hectoring tone towards the hierarchy, strongly implying that failure to bring Church teaching into conformity with opinion polls threatens the very existence of the institution. Although no liberal has actually said that doctrine should be determined by majority opinion, they act as though it were true.
Lumen Gentium also referred to “the pilgrim Church,” an image soon seized upon without regard for what religious pilgrimage means. Rather than understanding the Church as moving towards a fixed supernatural goal, traveling by routes well marked by those who have gone before, liberals have made pilgrims into mere wanderers (ironic again, in terms of the newspaper of that name), who are without reliable compasses and must simply band together to pool their fallible personal experiences. The true nature of the Church is determined by the Incarnation itself, so that the Church is both a spiritual and a material entity, its outer form manifesting its unseen inner reality. Many “reformers” have been embarrassed by the materiality of the Church. They posit an entirely “invisible Church” and see the outer ecclesiastical forms as hindrances to its true nature. The hope for a Church completely “pure” of worldly influence is a recurring dream which usually ends in heresy.
But while often compulsively railing at what they regard as the corruption of the Church by wealth and power, many contemporary liberals have also rejected the spiritual nature of the Church entirely, their ritualistic denunciation of the alleged power-seeking of the hierarchy a projection of their own obsession with power. For them the nature of the Church can be adequately measured by sociological tools, because it is not in its essence any different from, for example, the United Nations or the Ethical Culture Society — organization purportedly moved by moral idealism and using worldly means to achieve their goals.
The phenomenon called The Sixties — the whirlwind in which the post-conciliar Church found itself caught —was relentlessly reductionistic, even to the point of cynicism, in that no institution was conceded to have any genuine transcendental purpose. Rather every such institution — government, university, family, church, corporation — was defined merely as a conspiracy of privileged people aiming to subjugate others, all claims of idealism a mere cloak for power.
This perception of reality has swept through the Church and is especially strong among feminists, the people in whom the spirit of The Sixties is most alive, who continuously direct corrosive sneers at even the most venerable teachings of the Church when those teachings interfere with the modernist agenda. As Paul Goodman, a non-believing sociologist, once observed, many liberal Christians are engaged in a power struggle for control of the Church, which they regard as merely a valuable piece of real estate which no longer serves its traditional purpose but can be used for other, quite different, purposes.
There is not the slightest doubt as to how the Church, in Lumen Gentium, understands itself, but here as elsewhere that understanding is every day subverted in thousands of little ways.
Duh, I wonder why?
"Finally, to claim that the Church is "a sign and instrument" of the "unity of the whole human race" does not deny Church teaching on any of the issues you list."
Sure - and there is no evidence whatsoever that homosexuals in the priesthhod are a significant cause of the sex abuse scandals!!!
However, I believe your complacency is misplaced as even Paul VI felt the need to address this problem on 24th December 1965:
"The Church with its demanding and precise attitude to dogma, impedes free conversation and harmony among men; it is a principle of DIVISION in the world rather than of union. How are division, disagreement and dispute compatible with its catholicity and its sanctity?"
He tries to address this problem by saying that Catholicism is a principle of DISTINCTION among men rather than DIVISION. And he does this by reducing distinction to the level of that "natural unity" which I discussed above. He says that distinction is "of the same sort as that involved in the case of language, culture, art or profession." He goes on:
"It is true that Christianity can be a cause of separation and contrast, deriving from the good it bestows upon humanity: the light shines in the darkness and thus diversifies the zones of human space. But it is not of its nature to struggle against men, if it struggles at all, it is for them."
This is what I would call a tortured exegesis to try and reconcile two opposing worldviews.
Gone are the Scriptural principles of Christ being a "sign of contradiction", a "stumbling stone", a "sword that brings division" and warfare between the Church and the world.
So, if the Church is indeed an "instrument of unity" for all humanity, perhaps you can explain how this is so without negating the doctrines of predestination, hell, opposition between the Church and the world etc.?
Maybe you will make a better job of it than Paul VI did.
There’s also a relationship between the phrase 'People of God' and another conciliar phrase, 'Sense of the Faithful' (sensus fidelium). Taken out of context, both terms can lend themselves to the utterly false notion of internal polls defining magisterial teaching. In the sense that the Council used them, both terms presuppose 'thinking with the Church.'
You're right. And I've noticed from many of these threads that there is a reflexive defense of treating the definition of magisterial teaching in such a way. No one ever calls it polling or would admit to such an influence, instead they call it Living, much as those who call our Constitution living, with the same, predictable results. I think that's what is most worrisome: traditional catholics who state that even if the Magisterium teaches against what it has always taught, right is right, and wrong is right. They pledge allegiance to both fallibility and infalliblity.
"The Church with its demanding and precise attitude to dogma, impedes free conversation and harmony among men; it is a principle of DIVISION in the world rather than of union. How are division, disagreement and dispute compatible with its catholicity and its sanctity?"
To me, he's saying elimination of division, disagreement and dispute make for sactity and catholicity. Talk about a path of least resistance!
He tries to address this problem by saying that Catholicism is a principle of DISTINCTION among men rather than DIVISION. And he does this by reducing distinction to the level of that "natural unity" which I discussed above. He says that distinction is "of the same sort as that involved in the case of language, culture, art or profession."
I recently read that Pope John Paul II wrote a thesis in which he tried to defend the construction of Catholicism based on a german philosopher who was big on the idea that cultural sentiment is the road to understanding different peoples, and using that sentiment to bring them into the fold. I don't fully know what to make of it. I can see the up side of it, but I'm not sure I see how from that point Christ will reign. Christ always seems to be in the background.
That whole Assisi thing puzzled and distrubed me the most because of the removal of the Crucifix and other symbols of Christ (if all of that is true). Why, in His own Church was He treated as an impediment to coming to it? To me, it is the most bizarre realty of the whole Assisi thing.
He goes on:
"It is true that Christianity can be a cause of separation and contrast, deriving from the good it bestows upon humanity: the light shines in the darkness and thus diversifies the zones of human space. But it is not of its nature to struggle against men, if it struggles at all, it is for them."
Where is the Incarnation in all of this?
For me, the worst part is that I don't think there was any intent to contravene it, just this kind of Man before God, to get Man to God, type of thinking that there is no cure for.
I've never been able to develop an affection for the philosophy of Humanism (it doesn't consider Christ at all!), and it is this philosophy that lead to Assisi with the predicatable results of Humanism leaving it's not so precious mark on Catholicism, but Catholicism leaving no mark at all on Humanism.
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