MEljITA THEOLOGICA Vol. XXI 1969 Nos. 1 & 2 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH ACCORDING TO THE CONSTITUTION 'LUMEN GENTIUM' REDEMPTION is a divine action that liberates man. Already in the Old Testament salvation is often presented as a divine intervention in order to free man from all kind of slavery. The Church as the great sacrament of redemption is also a sacrament of freedom, namely of the liberty of the sons and daughters of God. It is true the liberty of the children of God can survive all forms of suppression and tyranny. But the Church cannot credibly proclaim the genuine nature of the liberty of the sons of God unless she is concerned to foster and to promote the freedom of all men on all levels, above all in the relationships which characterize her own life. The Church is the visible sign, the effective sacrament of salvation to the extent that she is also a sacrament of liberty that helps all men to distinguish genuine liberty from libertinism and to commit themselves to the cause of liberty for all mankind. Vatican II has rendered a great service to the credibility of the Church and to the right understanding of her relationship to State and society through the declaration on religious liberty. However this declaration receives its final value and authority only in the context of all the efforts of the Second Vatican Council and the postconciliar epoch to understand and to promote better religious and human freedom. All the decrees and Constitutions of Vatican II have made their contribution in order to manifest the authority which freedom has in the Catholic Church. Indeed, today it has become even clearer that the effective spiritual authority of the pastors of the Church depends to a great extent on the degree of authority which liberty itself enjoys in the Church !md is recognised in the OlUrch. <l> 2 BERNARD HARlNG The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy has restored to all men the liberty to hear. the sacramental message in their own language. It 'allows' the Holy Spirit to speak in many languages as in the first Pentecost. There is more scope for spontaneous prayer and for genuine adaptation to the needs of men of all cultures. The episcopal conferences and the individual bishops have once more the right to make those adaptations which are absolutely necessary in order to reach all people. The Decree on Priestly Formation underlines the education towards Christian maturity for future priests so that they, too, can make their own contribution for the growth of all faithful toward maturity and liberty in responsibility. The Decree on Ecumenism is a marvellous sign that the Catholic Church, trusting in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has regained a great liberty that allows her an open-minded approach to the sections of christianity separated from her; she finds above all the liberty to repent and to confess her own faults; she knows more clearly that she cannot free all her energies for the hoped-for freedom unless she recognizes all the good God has preserved and fostered in the orthodox Churches and those ecclesial communities that arose from the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Church is bound by God's grace to appreciate and to stress what unites rather than what divides us; only by doing so can she be at the same time sacrament of unity and sacrament of free­ dom. The Church is under the liberating Law of the Spirit and not under a strange, dead, immobile law which would hinder her from doing every­ thing possible to prepare herself in humility for unity in truth and truth in charity. Similarly, the Decree on the United Oriental Churches restores the many legitimate liberties which had been taken away from them. The Church will be more united and freer by allowing diversity in unity. At the Malta Catholic Institute I had the privilege to speak to a most sympathetic audience on authority and freedom in the Pastoral Consti­ tution on the Church in the Modem World. (The lecture is now in its substance published in my book: La contestazione dei non-violenti. Brecia, Ed. Morcelliana 1969). The Church makes a most solemn pledge that she wants to be present to the World of Today and of all the future as a servant of genuine freedom. To this goal she also gives a 'Magna Charta Libertatis' to her own sons and daughters, because she can be an efff!ctive sacrament of freedom for the whole world only to the extent that she is, first of all, the sacrament of liberty for her own members. FREEDOM AND AUTIIORITY ACCORDING TO 'LUMEN GENTIUM' 3 Our theme here is to study how this spirit of freedom is imbedded in Constitution on the Church. This Constitution is considered to be the cornerstone of Vatican IT and so it is important and meaningful to see how in this Constitution the spirit of a Christian freedom is promoted. We shall consider it under four aspects: the Church as a mystery, as a living temple of the Spirit, as the mystical body of Christ and as the people of God. This brings into the foreground those aspects which foster freedom, deemphasizing the juridical aspect, and even bringing into the juridical concept itself the spirit of liberty. Then we shall consider the synthesis between collegiality and authority, the most vexing problem for real freedom within authority. Thirdly, we shall consider the emphasis upon the liberating grace of the Holy Spirit and the charisms gi ven even to those not in authority, and finally the repeated and integrated stress on the role of the laity in the spirit of freedom, responsibility and initiative. I. THE UNDERSTANDING WHICH THE CHURCH HAS OF HER OWN MYSTERY AS A HOUSE OF FREEDOM. Already the great freedom of speech and varie.ty of opinions revealed in the Council without loss of unity and mutual understanding, has changed the image which some members of the Church and some aspects of her teaching had created of a Church unified only by a somewhat slavish obedience and uniformity under law. This was never totally the case; there were always Saints living the blessed freedom of the child­ ren of God. Yet no one can deny that under the influence of the Romano­ Germanic juridicism and of Irish-Celtic penitential practices, the juridi­ cal aspect of the Church came unduly to the fore, separated from the mystery of the Church, the community of love, and partially falsifying the juridical reality of the Church herself. However, the chief reason for the strong emphasis on a slavish de­ pendence and literal obedience was perhaps the individualism of past epochs, the spirit of European culture reigning among Catholics in the very fields of morality and religiosity. The primary question for the average Catholic seemed to be: 'how can I save my soul?', and if he was obsessed with this question alone he was willing to leave the world to the devil if he could save his own soul. But where there was no law, he considered and used his liberty egotistically. This individ­ ualism had to be compensated for by an almost total regulation by law. A paternalistic regulation by many laws was, to some extent, a ne'::essi­ ty. IndividualisQ,) elicited an almost complete repression of initiative. 4 BERNARD HARING By this conception of obedience and total regulation it seems that some Christians feared nothing so much as other Christians who wished to live by the Spirit, rather than by the mere letter of the law. These people wanted total legal regulation of every aspect of the Christian life. Therefore the great question now is, 'how does the Church understand herself and every member of the Christian people of God?' She understands herself as the living temple of the living God, as the mystical body of Christ. Paragraph seven of the Constitution Lumen Gentium says: As all the members of the human body, though they are many, form one body, so also the faithful in Christ. Also, in the building up of Christ's Body, various members and functions have thdr part to, play. There is only one Spirit who, according to his own richness and the n~eds of his ministries, gives his different gifts for the welfare of the Church. We see here the two mutually complementary aspects - great variety and unity. In the chapter on the laity (§ 32) it is said that it is the Holy Spirit who, through the variety of his gifts builds up unity, not in 'spite of different charisms, not in spite of a variety of initiatives among the members, but precisely because of these, he builds up unity. Paragraph nine describes the messianic people of God: The state of this people is that of the dignity and freedom of the sons of God, in whose hearts the Holy Spirit dwells as in his temple. Its law is the new commandment to love as Christ loved us. Its end is the kingdom of God, which was begun by God himself on earth and which is to be further extended until it is brought to perfection by him at the end of time. This great biblical view of community is built on the great law of spontaneous love, aot selfish love, upon a love that finds in all things what builds up the mystical body, what builds up the neighbour. All the faithful have full membership in the people of God, which is a holy people, a kingly priesthood, as paragraph ten reminds us: •.