“The Creed Calls the Church Holy. Can the Church Also Be Called Sinful
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“The Creed calls the Church holy. Can the Church also be called sinful? The author presents a century’s worth of reflection on these points— preconciliar theologians, Vatican II, John Paul II—and on the question, sinful Church or Church of sinners? This careful study clarifies and illumines a century of complex reflection, a century that might be called, in theology, the century of ecclesiology, with Vatican I in the background and Lumen Gentium on the distant horizon. The author’s conclusion is the right one: the matter is not concluded. A book recommended enthusiastically.” — Joseph T. Lienhard, SJ Fordham University “Exhaustively researched and written in a clear and comprehensive style, A Holy Yet Sinful Church captures an important feature of John Paul’s efforts to move the Church forward in the twenty-first century. Informative and challenging, this monograph brings to light an important focus for contemporary Catholicism.” — Richard Gribble, CSC Stonehill College “In an ecclesial era of searching for ways forward for a new evangelization while constantly being confronted with our own failures to model the faith, new demands for a profound theology of the Church have confronted us. Sr. Jeanmarie Gribaudo has provided just such a careful examination of the variety of influences that shaped the Church’s self-understanding after Vatican II, which allows us to profess once again a new faith in a Church that is at once sinful and holy, mediating salvific grace for a people as much in need of it as ever.” — Christopher Collins, SJ Director of the Catholic Studies Program Saint Louis University “In A Holy Yet Sinful Church, Sr. Jeanmarie Gribaudo offers a scholarly yet accessible account of the claim that the Church has always been understood as both holy and sinful. Exemplifying how historical scholarship can temper and broaden theological perspective, Gribaudo focuses in particular on the appearance of these themes in preconciliar thought as well as Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, as these prepared the ground for Pope John Paul II’s remarkable litany of repentance for the Church’s faults in March 2000. Her work offers a timely lesson about the nature of the Church as both holy and sinful, which, taken to heart, is a lesson for the communal dimension of theological anthropology as well.” — Nancy Dallavalle Fairfield University Vice President for Mission and Identity Associate Professor of Religious Studies “Gribaudo has provided a foundational genealogy of current teaching on ecclesial holiness and sinfulness in the documents of Vatican II and in the words and actions of John Paul II. This work is rooted in a careful, insightful analysis of the origins of that teaching in preconciliar ressourcement theologians such as Mersch and de Lubac, and midcentury thinkers such as Congar and Rahner. Gribaudo then collects and analyzes ecclesial holiness and sinfulness in Lumen Gentium and in the papacy of John Paul II. No other work has gathered and analyzed such a wide variety of twentieth-century sources on this topic in such a comprehensive, observant way. Gribaudo’s book is valuable both as a historical study of the development of ecclesiology in this period and as an unsurpassed point of departure for all future systematic thought on the holiness and sinfulness of the Church.” — Brian P. Flanagan Assistant Professor of Theology Marymount University A Holy Yet Sinful Church Three Twentieth-Century Moments in a Developing Theology Jeanmarie Gribaudo, CSJ LITURGICAL PRESS Collegeville, Minnesota www.litpress.org Cover design by Jodi Hendrickson. Cover photo from the Flickr blog “Two Stout Monks.” Excerpts from the English translation of The Roman Missal © 2010, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved. Excerpts from Communion Ecclesiology by Dennis Doyle. Copyright © 2000 by Dennis M. Doyle. Reprinted with permission of Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York. Excerpts from Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Casta Meretrix,” in Explorations in Theology: Spouse of the Word, trans. John Saward (1991); Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard and Elizabeth Englund (1988); Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church, trans. Michael Mason (1986); and Charles Journet, The Theology of the Church, trans. Victor Szczurek (2004). Reprinted by permission of Ignatius Press. Unless otherwise indicated, excerpts from documents of the Second Vatican Council are from Vatican Council II: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations; The Basic Sixteen Documents, edited by Austin Flannery, OP, © 1996. Used with permission of Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms, © 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, DC, and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner. © 2015 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, microfiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the previous written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint John’s Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500. Printed in the United States of America. 123456789 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gribaudo, Jeanmarie. A holy yet sinful church : three twentieth-century moments in a developing theology / by Jeanmarie Gribaudo, CSJ. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8146-4771-4 — ISBN 978-0-8146-4796-7 (ebook) 1. Church—History of doctrines—20th century. 2. Catholic Church—Doctrines. 3. Nouvelle théologie (Catholic theology) I. Title. BX1746.G75 2015 262'.02—dc23 2014027643 Contents Introduction vii Chapter 1: The Treatment of the Church’s Holiness and Sinfulness in Key Works of Preconciliar Theologians 1 Introduction 1 Emile Mersch: Recapturing the Mystical Body 4 Henri de Lubac and Paradox 17 Hans Urs von Balthasar: Finding God in All Things 38 Yves Congar 50 Karl Rahner and a New Language of Faith: A Church of Sinners 66 Charles Journet: A Bridge to Vatican II 74 Major Preconciliar Contributions 83 Chapter 2: Lumen Gentium on the Holiness and Sinfulness of the Church: The Contributions of the Preconciliar Theologians 88 The Council in Context 89 Some Hermeneutical Considerations 91 Vatican II: The Context 97 The Church as the Theme of the Council 99 From De Ecclesia to Lumen Gentium 101 Lumen Gentium on the Holiness and Sinfulness of the Church 106 Theological Influences: The Holiness and Sinfulness of the Church in Lumen Gentium 107 Lumen Gentium Section One: Church as Mystery, Sacrament, and Sign 109 Lumen Gentium Section Four: One People and the Spirit’s Role in the Mission 115 v vi A Holy Yet Sinful Church Lumen Gentium Section Seven: Church as Body of Christ 119 Lumen Gentium Section Eight: Elements of the Church 124 Lumen Gentium Section Nine: People of God 128 Lumen Gentium Sections Thirty-Nine and Forty: Universal Call to Holiness 131 Lumen Gentium Section Forty-Eight: Church as Pilgrim 133 The Preconciliar Theologians at the Council 135 Holiness and Sinfulness in Other Documents of Vatican II 141 Conclusion: An Unfinished Agenda 143 After Vatican II 144 Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Vision that Still Needs Time 146 Chapter 3: Preconciliar Theologians and Lumen Gentium: Usher in Pope John Paul II’s Millennial Program 148 Background and Influences on Pope John Paul II’s Millennial Program of Repentance 149 The Anonymous Memo 153 Tertio Millennio Adveniente 156 Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past 161 The Papal Day of Pardon: March 12, 2000 168 Reactions to Pope John Paul II’s Decision to Ask for Forgiveness: Some Perspectives from the Secular Press 171 Analysis of the Reactions 188 Next Steps: Novo Millennio Ineunte 191 Conclusion 194 Conclusion 195 Further Theological Considerations 198 Bibliography 204 Index 220 Introduction On November 10, 1994, Pope John Paul II issued the apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente, in which he laid the groundwork for the acknowledgment that sin and error exist in the Church and have been a part of the Church’s history. In this letter, the pope made an unprece- dented public statement which called for the Church to seek pardon for the detrimental effect such sin and error have had on its credible living of the Gospel. John Paul II’s groundbreaking decision to seek forgiveness for the sins of the Church can be seen as the end result of an evolution in theology that began after the First World War and came to fruition at the time of the Second Vatican Council. In this study, I will examine how these new theological insights that came to the fore during the Second Vatican Coun- cil were not only reflective ofressourcement theology, that is, a theology that returned to the early sources of Christianity, particularly Scripture and the writings of the early fathers, but also opened up new vistas in understanding the holiness and sinfulness of the Church. Though these new vistas were not universally applauded by the Curia, they did set the course for John Paul II’s celebration of the millennium by asking for par- don for the deeds done by the sons and daughters of the Church, which on historical reflection have been judged to be sinful in nature. In Tertio Millennio Adveniente (TMA) the pope acknowledges the tension inherent in his decision to prepare for the “joy” of a Jubilee Year by asking for forgiveness of the sins of the Church: Nevertheless, the joy of every Jubilee is above all a joy based upon the forgiveness of sins, the joy of conversion.