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Yves Congar: Mentor for Theologians Richard P Louvain Studies 29 (2004) 258-272 Yves Congar: Mentor for Theologians Richard P. McBrien It is a special honor for me to have been invited to deliver the Cen- tenary Lecture for this international conference honoring Yves Congar, one of the greatest ecclesiologists in the history of the Church, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The purpose of the paper is not to provide an overview of Congar’s ecclesiology, but to reflect, in a largely autobiographical fashion, on the impact Yves Congar has had, and continues to have, on Catholic theolo- gians generally, young and old alike, and on Catholic ecclesiologists in particular – whether they fully realize it or not. It is hardly surprising that among theologians attention has focused on Congar’s ecclesiology, the pre-eminent concern of his academic career. An ever-growing body of literature is clear testimony to an increased awareness of his importance among academics.1 I am reminded of a comment that the eminent Lutheran church his- torian, Martin Marty, emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, made some forty years ago regarding the influence that Dietrich Bonhoef- fer had been exerting on younger European and American Protestant 1. The following is an outline of the major studies on Congar’s thought: Jean-Pierre Jossua, Le Père Congar: la théologie au service du peuple de Dieu, Chrétiens de tous les Temps, 20 (Paris: Cerf, 1967); Joseph Famerée, L’Ecclésiologie d’Yves Congar avant Vatican II: Histoire et Église: Analyse et reprise critique, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 107 (Louvain: Leuven University Press/Peeters, 1992); Cardinal Yves Congar 1904-1995: actes du colloque réuni à Rome les 3-4 juin 1996, ed. André Vauchez (Paris: Cerf, 1999); Aidan Nichols, Yves Congar (London/Wilton, CT: Geoffrey Chapman/Morehouse-Barlow, 1989); Charles MacDonald, Church and World in the Plan of God: Aspects of History and Eschatology in the Thought of Père Yves Congar O.P. (Frankfurt: Lang, 1982); Timothy I. MacDonald, The Ecclesiology of Yves Congar: Foun- dational Themes (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984); William Henn, The Hierarchy of Truths According to Yves Congar, O.P. (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1987); Cornelis Th. M. van Vliet, Communio sacramentalis: Das Kirchenverständnis von Yves Congar – genetisch und systematisch betrachtet (Mainz: Grünewald, 1995); Ramiro Pellitero, La Teología del Laicado en la obra de Yves Congar (Pamplona: University of Navarra Press, 1996); Elizabeth Teresa Groppe, Yves Congar’s Theology of the Holy Spirit (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Gabriel Flynn, Yves Congar’s Vision of the Church in a World of Unbelief (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). YVES CONGAR: MENTOR FOR THEOLOGIANS 259 theologians in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This was not many years after Bonhoeffer’s execution by the Nazis toward the end of the Second World War. These younger European and American theologians, Martin Marty observed, “often seem to be divided into two camps: those who acknowledge their debt to Bonhoeffer and those who are indebted but who obscure the traces to their source.”2 I do not suggest that there are younger Catholic theologians, and especially younger Catholic ecclesiologists, who have consciously obscured the traces to the source of their theological reflections on the mystery, mission, ministries, and structures of the Church. However, if my own experience over the past twenty-four years with my doctoral and Masters-level students at the University of Notre Dame is a reliable indication, relatively few Catholic graduate students of theology are aware, when they begin their studies, of the extraordinary and lasting contributions that Yves Congar made to theology, to the Second Vatican Council, and to the life of the Church generally. I am happy to report that, when these young Catholic students are exposed to the writings and also to the personal story of Yves Congar, they are almost immediately drawn to him and to his story, and are eager to read more of his work and to learn more about his life’s story as a theologian and as one of the Church’s most courageous and most effec- tive ecumenists and ecclesiastical reformers. I may be taking something of a risk here in not delivering a tradi- tional, academic paper at an event of such obvious scholarly character and importance. As I suggested only a moment ago, this Centenary Lecture which I have been so honored to give will be more autobiographical than academic. I should like to think, however, that the particular genre of this lecture shall enhance rather than detract from the scholarly tone of this conference. After all, Yves Congar himself was a real person, and the theologians whom he had influenced, and continues to influence, were and are also real persons, with their own stories to tell, with their own distinctive backgrounds and sets of experiences that have shaped and directed their lives as persons, as Christians, and as theologians – just like Yves Congar himself. Indeed, Congar recognized the importance of telling his own story, again and again, in order to help his readers better understand his the- ology and the actual life of the Church in which and for which his and 2. “Introduction: Problems and Possibilities in Bonhoeffer’s Thought,” The Place of Bonhoeffer: Problems and Possibilities in His Thought,” ed. Martin E. Marty (New York: Association Press, 1962) 10. 260 RICHARD P. MCBRIEN our theologies are done. So many of Yves Congar’s writings are, in fact, autobiographical in nature: his four daybooks on the four sessions of Vatican II,3 his two-volume diaries of the Council,4 his journal of his experiences as a theologian for the years 1946-1956,5 his diary of the First World War,6 his bluntly honest preface to his Dialogue Between Christians,7 his conversations with Bernard Lauret in which he reflected on fifty years of Catholic theology in a book of that title,8 his article in New Blackfriars on his life and work as a theologian,9 occasional letters to conferences and symposia meeting in his honor, just like this one,10 and, to some extent as well, the book which provides the theme of this Centenary Conference, This Church that I Love.11 I first came in touch with the writings of Yves Congar while a young seminarian back in the 1950s. Once I caught the taste, so to speak, I con- sumed everything written by him that I could lay my hands on at the sem- inary library and bookstore. Among the earliest formative works were Con- gar’s Lay People in the Church,12 his magisterial article on theology in the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique,13 better known simply as the DTC, and his subsequently-withdrawn work, Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Église.14 3. Vatican II: Le Concile au jour le jour (Paris: Cerf, 1963); Le Concile au jour le jour, deuxième session (Paris: Cerf, 1964); ET, Report from Rome on the Second Session of the Vatican Council, trans. L. Sheppard (London: Chapman, 1964); Le Concile au jour le jour, troisième session (Paris: Cerf, 1965); Le Concile au jour le jour, quatrième session (Paris: Cerf, 1966); and Mon journal du Concile, ed. Éric Mahieu (Paris: Cerf, 2002). 4. Mon journal du Concile (Paris: Cerf, 2002), 2 vols. 5. Journal d’un théologien 1946-1956, ed. Étienne Fouilloux (Paris: Cerf, 2001). 6. Journal de la Guerre 1914-1918 (Paris: Cerf, 1997). 7. “Preface,” Dialogue Between Christians: Catholic Contributions to Ecumenism, trans. Philip Loretz (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1966) 28-45. Originally published as Chrétiens en dialogue: Contributions catholiques à l’œcuménisme (Paris: Cerf, 1964). 8. Fifty Years of Catholic Theology: Conversations with Yves Congar, ed. Bernard Lauret (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1988). Originally published as Entretiens d’automne (Paris: Cerf, 1987). 9. “Reflections on Being a Theologian,” New Blackfriars 62 (1981) 405-409. 10. See, for example, “Letter from Father Yves Congar, O.P.,” Theology Digest 32 (1985) 213-216. 11. Trans. Lucien Delafuente (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1969). Originally published as Cette Église que j’aime (Paris: Cerf, 1968). For an incisive, yet broadly based, comment on this book, see Gabriel Flynn, “The Role of Affectivity in Congar’s Theol- ogy,” Theology Digest 50 (2003) 115-122. Originally published in New Blackfriars 83 (2002) 347-364. 12. Lay People in the Church: A Study for a Theology of the Laity, trans. Donald Attwater (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1957; 21965). Originally published as Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat (Paris: Cerf, 1953). 13. “Théologie,” Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, vol. 15 (Paris: Éditions Letouzy & Ané, 1938-39); ET, A History of Theology, trans. Hunter Guthrie (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968). 14. (Paris: Cerf, 1950; 21968). YVES CONGAR: MENTOR FOR THEOLOGIANS 261 These were years, I must remind or inform you (depending upon your age), when it was considered unusual for seminarians, at least in the United States, to have an actual interest in theology. Our course texts in what we called then Dogmatic Theology were either Latin manuals or mimeographed notes, usually translations of the so-called Spanish Summa,15 a four-volume series produced by the Jesuit faculty of theol- ogy at the University of Salamanca, or translations of the Latin manuals that some of our professors had used in Rome. Our ecclesiology text was J. M. Hervé’s Manuale theologiae dogmaticae.16 These theology textbooks and course notes resembled the dry, if somewhat complex, rules of the road that one must master before gaining a driver’s license. Once one has passed the written and road tests, however, the driver’s manuals are never to be consulted again. The seminary theology of those years was in the same category.
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