Ecclesial Discipleship Applying the Requirements of the Gospel to the Church As Social Institution

Louvain Studies 28 (2003) 344-362

Ecclesial Discipleship Applying the Requirements of the Gospel to the Church as Social Institution

Colleen Mary Mallon

Wanting to know how the requirements of Christian discipleship should be applied to the church as a social institution, Yves Congar wrote in Power and Poverty in the Church: I should like one day to devote a whole work to this question: to what extent should and can the Church herself, the Church as such, apply to herself the Gospel requirements that tend to be restricted to individual Christians – forgiveness of enemies, turning the other cheek, choosing the ways of poverty, meeting the temptations of the spirit.1 Recovering the fullness of Christian ecclesial life was the passion that informed Congar’s entire theological project. His critical historical perspective on the wide scope of the Christian tradition gave him a particularly privileged view of the Christian mystery. Thus, an exploration of the critical markers that characterize his notion of discipleship offers a possible answer to the question he raises concerning ecclesial discipleship and suggests a fruitful trajectory towards a contemporary thick description of Christian social identity.2 Congar’s concern for the fullness of ecclesial witness to the gospel is no less urgent today. As a church beginning its historical sojourn into

1. Yves Congar, Power and Poverty in the Church (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1965) 13. 2. Thick description, as employed by anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, is an interpretative methodology that is multidimensional and particular in its analysis of social discourse. See his “Thick Description, Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: BasicBooks, 1973) 3-32. I am borrowing Geertz’s notion to describe my approach to Congar’s theological corpus. Without claim- ing an exhaustive or prescriptive description of Christian social identity, I hope to draw out distinctive particularities that characterize Congar’s view of discipleship in order to develop a compelling picture of Christian social identity. ECCLESIAL DISCIPLESHIP 345 the twenty-first century, Roman Catholicism faces significant challenges: the ambiguities of globalization and the shifting ground of the world- political order, the promise and the peril of new technologies, the emer- gence of complex, over-lapping, even disjunctive, global cultural processes that seemingly defy systemization.3 Within these new “signs of the times” the church struggles to articulate its salvific witness to the divine mystery: ever ancient, ever new. Our present global reality casts into dra- matic relief pressing questions that were only beginning to take shape and gain density forty years ago. The tensions and disputes surrounding mod- ernism and the threat of historical relativism that dominated at the turn of the twentieth century have exponentially escalated as questions surrounding pluralism, identity, inculturation, and gender come of age at the turn of the present century. What are authentic and legitimate expressions of the Christian mystery today? Reflecting on the global cultural processes, can there be divergent and authentic expressions of Christian discipleship? Is such a “deep diversity” possible or will “a plurality of ways of belonging and being” undermine an essential unity?4 Theologically, Congar maintains that “the regenerating power that will finally operate is already at work in our world, transiently, precariously, fragmentarily and generally unperceived.”5 This eschatological experience of “already” and “not yet” saturates Congar’s ecclesiology and makes his thinking particularly helpful at a time such as ours. The reality of conflictual tensions and, in some cases even polemical impasses, illustrates the present need for transparent examination of ecclesial life both ad extra and ad intra. How might the Spirit be moving in these historical times toward a more authentic embrace of the gospel of Jesus?

3. For contrastive perspectives on emerging global cultural processes see Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London: SAGE Publica- tions, 1992) and Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Global- ization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). 4. “What we need, it seems, are not enormous ideas, nor the abandonment of synthesizing notions altogether. What we need are ways of thinking that are responsive to particularities, to individualities, oddities, discontinuities, contrasts, and singularities, responsive to what Charles Taylor has called ‘deep diversity’, a plurality of ways of belonging and being, and that yet can draw from them – from it – a sense of connectedness, a connectedness that is neither, comprehensive nor uniform, primal nor changeless, but nonetheless real.” Clifford Geertz, Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philo- sophical Topics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) 224. Geertz is quoting Charles Taylor, “Shared and Divergent Values,” Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Cana- dian Federalism and Nationalism (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993) 155-186. 5. Yves Congar, Lay People in the Church (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1957) 86. 346 COLLEEN MARY MALLON

Within the current global milieu are there new gifts of fidelity to be realized? What is needed is a reconsideration of ecclesial discipleship and the way in which the church does indeed “apply to herself the Gospel requirements … forgiveness of enemies, turning the other cheek, choosing the ways of poverty, meeting the temptations of the Spirit.” In this article I propose and explore three significant markers of Christian discipleship gleaned from a close reading of Congar’s major texts: fellowship, witness and service. Then, building on these categories I outline a new construal of ecclesial discipleship and describe its transformative function in our present circumstances.

Congar’s Context and Influences

At the time of his death, Yves Congar was eulogized as one of the greatest ecclesiologists of the twentieth century.6 A scholar, theologian and ardent believer, Congar, through his historical retrieval of Roman Catholic tradition, helped to give birth to the Second Vatican Council and nurtured its long term effects on the Catholic church’s self-understanding. Described as “indefatigable,” Congar was well known for working ten-hour days into his eighties until a debilitating neuro-muscular dis- ease refused to be ignored any longer.7 Even in the dark period when he and other scholars linked to nouvelle théologie were suspect and ultimately silenced for a period of time, Congar responded to the dispute with characteristic passion for the truth and respectful, albeit tenacious, engagement of ecclesial authority.8 Yves Congar’s vocation evolved during one of the most constricted times in Roman Catholic ecclesiological history. Coming of age as a theologian on the heels of the modernist crisis, Congar inherited an ecclesial legacy fraught with all the tensions and unresolved questions surrounding the meaning of revelation in the light of historical criticism. In response to this critical situation, Congar pur- sued an approach to theology that was at once historical and incarna- tional. Thoroughly informed by Dominican life and mission at Le Saulchoir, the influential Dominican studium, Congar, along with fellow Dominicans Marie-Dominique Chenu and Henri Marie Féret, challenged the dominant Neo-Thomism of the day by actively engaging in

6. Avery Dulles, “Yves Congar: In Appreciation,” America (July 15, 1995) 6-7. 7. Joseph Komonchak, “The Return of Yves Congar,” Commonweal 110 (1983) 402. 8. See in particular “La Crise de 1954” and “Affaires de Rome” in Yves Congar, Jour- nal d’un théologien 1946-1956 (Paris: Cerf, 2001) 223-367. ECCLESIAL DISCIPLESHIP 347 a ressourcement: a return to the living sources of the Christian tradition.9 Reminiscing on the profound influence of this fraternity, Congar recalls a particular day when he, with Fathers Chenu and Féret, conceived of a research project on the history of theology. One day, chatting at the entrance of the old Saulchoir, we found ourselves in profound accord – at once intellectual, vital and apostolic – on the idea of undertaking a “liquidation of baroque theology.” This was a moment of intense and total spiritual union … It was not a question of producing something negative: the rejections were only the reverse of aspects that were more positive. One day the balance will be drawn up, but already the positive quality can be sensed. What would a little later be called “ressourcement” was then at the heart of our efforts. It was not a matter either of mechanically replacing some theses by other theses or creating a “revolution” but of appealing, as Péguy says, from one tradition less profound to another more profound.10 Committed to forwarding a theology “more strongly rooted in revelation … [and] in the great medieval texts and more open to the questions of the twentieth century,” Congar learned at Le Saulchoir a historical approach to Thomas Aquinas that counterbalanced the more speculative scholastic interpretations of his seminary years at the Institut Catholique.11

Congar’s Historical Thomism

From Congar’s perspective, history not only matters; by God’s design history is the means through which “the Alpha of God’s intention” reaches its culminating fruition in the Omega when/where God shall be all in all.12 Eschatology pervades his theological perspective: “Everything

9. Le Saulchoir, the French Dominican house of studies, was moved in 1902 to Belgium because of the enforcement of anti-clerical laws in France. Marie-Dominique Chenu studied there and later became rector of the studium where he was also instrumen- tal in the establishment of an institute in medieval studies and the Bulletin thomiste. Chenu, remarking on the contribution of Le Saulchoir and its particular mission, writes, “This is the fruit of our conviction, that the intelligence of a text and a doctrine is strictly in solidarity with the recognition of a milieu which we have seen give them birth within us, because the intuition which has produced them is linked to the context – literary, cultural, philosophical, theological, spiritual – in which they have taken birth and been formed.” Marie-Dominique Chenu, Une école de theologie: Le Saulchoir 1937 (Paris: Cerf, 1985) 125. 10. Yves Congar, “The Brother I Have Known,” The Thomist 49 (1985) 495-503. 11. Étienne Fouilloux, “Friar Yves, Cardinal Congar, Dominican: Itinerary of a Theologian,” U.S. Catholic Historian 17 (1999) no. 2, 67. 348 COLLEEN MARY MALLON is human, everything is historical. Everything moves towards the goal aimed at by God.”13 For Congar, the God who creates and calls all humanity into relationship is profound mystery, forever beyond human comprehension. Yet this God approaches humanity in history and in materiality and invites relationship. The gift and task bestowed by this relationship is nothing less than a share in the divine life: through the power of the Spirit, God draws humanity to participate in God’s plan for creation. Congar’s sacramental worldview acknowledges the integrity of the material world in its own facticity and its capacity to hold, communicate and participate, however incompletely, in the divine life. The limits of the material do not fundamentally frustrate or negate the divine initiative and intention to bring all creation to its ultimate fruition in knowledge and love. Thus, not in spite of history, but rooted in history and guided by an eschatological hope in Trinitarian life, Congar examines the ecclesial practices of the People of God.

Construing Congar’s Notion of Ecclesial Discipleship as Fellowship, Witness and Service

Although Congar never wrote a major work on discipleship, it is a category that saturates his writings. Speaking of the Christian Mystery,14 Congar grounds his Christian anthropology in the Trinitarian conviction that the dual missions of Christ and the Spirit effect a new graced relationship between God and humanity. Referring to the procession of the Son and the Spirit in the life of the Trinity, Congar explains, “The fact that the Word and the Spirit come does not mean that they move. It means that they make a creature exist in a new relationship with them. This means that the procession that situates them in the eternity of the Uni-Trinity culminates freely and effectively in a created effect.”15 This

12. Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit (New York: Seabury, 1983) II: 39. 13. Yves Congar, This Church that I Love (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1969) 92-93. 14. “I have used the words ‘Christian mystery’. Christ is the principle and the center of that mystery, but he came ‘for us men and for our salvation’ and he does not operate without Christians, not even without all who are called (see Rom 8:28-30) … The Christian mystery is God’s revelation and communication of himself through his Son, Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, who is undoubtedly, in the words of Irenaeus of Lyons, the communicatio Christi – ‘communion with Christ’.” Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, II: 28. 15. Ibid., II: 8. My emphasis. ECCLESIAL DISCIPLESHIP 349 created effect is ultimately realized in the Christian mystery where the very life of God effects a graced humanity. Creation unfolds in an “already and not yet” with God as its Alpha inception and Omega con- summation.16 Christian discipleship, then for Congar, is fundamentally premised on the notion that human life is simultaneously a trinity- imbued life, eschatologically realized by Christ and the Spirit. Disciple- ship, for Congar, is first and foremost, the Christ life brought to com- pletion in the Spirit who creates the character of filial belonging.17 The Christ life is incarnate life; it is both a gift received and a task entrusted. As much as Christian life is conceived in divine mystery, its sacred potential can only be realized in the particularity human living: the joys and struggles of daily life. The task of Christian life expresses a way of being in the world that embodies the divine intention for creation. Congar expresses this in the second volume of his great pneuma- tological work, I Believe in the Holy Spirit when he describes the task of Christian life as “… a question of preserving the messianic and eschatological way of living in community that was received from the Lord until he comes again.”18 The incarnation seals God’s irrevocable promise to creation. In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, God offers a paradigm of true humanity. Jesus’s singular fidelity to the one he called “Abba” expresses in an ultimate manner what a human life, focused Godward in its totality, looks like. The faith of Jesus’s earliest followers rests in the conviction that God is made manifest in the very person of Jesus and not in a remote or distant fashion. The earliest followers of Jesus expressed their faith in the possibility of their participation in the very life of God through their continued communion with Jesus beyond the tomb. To be “in Christ,” then, is more than mimicking certain actions or following rules held sacred to the common memory of the Christian community. Congar’s point that discipleship involves conserving the way of life “received from the Lord” is not meant to reduce Christian living simply to a lifestyle, although it is a lifestyle. Believers in Jesus the Christ embrace a way of being in the world that seeks to forward the divine

16. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, II: 39. 17. “God, as it were, outside himself is God in us – God in his creatures. He is in us in his activity and the movement by which he directs and inspires history. He is there in us, above all by the gift that he makes of himself. As Augustine said, God gives us nothing less than himself. This gift is in accordance with a deep desire that is present in our nature, it is true that we are made in God’s image. We are therefore destined to become children of God by receiving the Spirit of his Son.” Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, III: 150. 18. Ibid., II: 39. 350 COLLEEN MARY MALLON intention: human flourishing. To borrow a phrase from fellow Domini- can, Edward Schillebeeckx, the human is God’s project.19 The Christian lifestyle is a way of life lived, not for its own sake, but for the transformative potentials it may yet release in the world. What, then, does this Christian way of life look like? What markers could be identified with a “messianic and eschatological way of living in community … received from the Lord?” A careful review of Con- gar’s major works highlights three markers woven throughout his writings on Christianity as a way of life. Christianity is fundamentally a communal life of fellowship, witness and service. Koinonia, diakonia, and marturia are ancient descriptors that characterize the Christian lifestyle from its earliest inception. According to Congar, compressed in these three words are “the greatest possible spiritual meaning” of the church in the world.20 Lauding the World Council of Churches selection of fellowship, witness and service as its pillars, Congar explains, “by so doing [the WCC] has gone straight to the heart of truth in its most authentic form.”21 If gospel living can be adequately (though not exhaustively), explored by the general descriptors of fellowship, witness and service, then it would be instructive to tease out how these descriptors function in Congar’s ecclesiology. Seemingly, it might offer a way of beginning to get at the question raised at the outset of this article, how might the requirements of gospel living, incumbent on individual believers, be applied to the church as a social entity?

1. Ecclesial Fellowship In Congar’s theology, the church is the fruit of the complementary missions of Christ and the Spirit. As such, the church is the result of the “overflow” of the divine life outside itself. The sending of Christ and the Spirit effects a new relationship between God and the world. Congar often refers to this as a new dynamism, released and active in time and space. The heart of this new energy is relational. God approaches and invites humanity to build the world that God desires.

19. Edward Schillebeeckx, God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1987) 17. 20. Congar, Power and Poverty, 138. 21. “Every initiative inspired by the Gospel leads instinctively in this direction … this is the moment for the whole Church to find the new style of her presence in the world by establishing, nourishing and inspiring true communities of brothers, projects and associations of service, and acts of witness.” Congar, Power and Poverty, 138. ECCLESIAL DISCIPLESHIP 351

Following Jesus can only happen within the community of faith, formed and fostered by the Spirit’s own life. This life is the sacred pos- session of the People of God who follow the Spirit’s lead towards the fulfillment that is God’s promise and culminating word. The People of God exist in the world for God’s purposes. They are the messianic people of God, “chosen, instituted and consecrated by God to be His servant and witness” as a “sacrament of salvation offered to the world.”22 As a human community, the church has an organized social structure; as a faith community, the church possesses an ecclesial structure organized by the charisms received from the Holy Spirit. Disciples within the community of faith contribute their unique Spirit-gifts to the up- building of Christian life in fellowship, witness and service. The presence of diverse gifts creates a differentiated community: equal in the bonds of faith and charity and diverse in the expression of this faith and love.23 Christian discipleship flows from a Spirit-diversified community of faith whose life in fellowship is both a gift received from God and a task; a mission, a sending forth as witness and servant.

2. Ecclesial Witness Christian witness, the second marker of discipleship, is fundamentally rooted in Jesus Christ, the faithful Witness to God’s promises to the world. Interestingly, Congar links the notion of Jesus’s divinity to a specific event of witness: the baptism of Jesus. Congar understands the baptism of Jesus to be that significant moment when Jesus is declared in a unique way “Son of God.”24 Without denying the event of the incarnation and the activity of the Spirit in effecting the hypostatic union, Congar maintains that in a public way Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan

22. Congar, This Church that I Love, 19. 23. In Roman Catholic ecclesiology this diversity has historically expressed itself in hierarchical distinctions. Congar’s understanding of these hierarchical distinctions develops over time. Although it is not possible to review this development, it is important to note that Congar consistently maintains that apostolicity is a gift that necessar- ily imposes a hierarchical character upon the institutional structures of the community of faith. Congar also asserts that “the Church is an institution, but it is also and even primarily the ‘we’ of Christians.” Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, II: 130. 24. Congar is following the work of Heribert Mühlen who challenged the highly christocentric theology of the Roman school. This overemphasis contributed to an ecclesiology that envisioned the church as an ongoing expression of the Incarnation, charac- terized as “ecclesiological monophysitism.” See Gregory E. Malanowski, “Pneumatology: the Growth of a Theological Perspective,” Living Light 26 (1990) 227-237. Congar discusses Mühlen’s contribution to his own pneumatology in I Believe in the Holy Spirit, I: 22-25. 352 COLLEEN MARY MALLON witnesses to his divine nature and purpose. Christ’s anointing by the Spirit at his baptism is a new declaration of his sonship because it reveals Jesus as Son-for-us. “… his baptism is a new act in which his divine sonship is made present – the act that made him and declared him to be ‘Christ’.”25 As Jesus’ baptism anointed him for his messianic mission of procla- mation, so each baptized Christian receives a share in Christ’s own anointing and mission. The disciple bears witness in the world to the Paschal event and its power, even now at work, bringing all to salvation. In his etymological study of the word “witness,” Congar shows how both Hebrew and Greek influences provide a hermeneutic for the meaning of Christian witness. The Hebrew verb (udh) means to “to bear witness” and “to testify.” The testimonies of God function as does God’s Word, they are directed forward in history towards the future that God promises. In contrast to this, the Greek word for witness marturein, mar- tur comes from the words “to remember.” The New Testament understanding of witness derives its meaning from both the Hebrew and Greek worlds and connotes both the notion of memorial and anticipation.26 Christian witness is simultaneously a movement backwards to the orig- inal saving event and a projection forward from that event into its present salvific expression. There is an essential continuity between these moments that only the Spirit of God guarantees. “The Spirit is … given to the Church as its transcendent principle of faithfulness.”27 Congar stresses this critical point regarding the apostolic witness of the church. First and foremost, it is the church that is apostolic and the church is made so by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Even as the historical expression of the transmission of the faith has been connected to the role of the bishops, this succession receives its authority within the larger context of “universal apostolicity.” This universal apostolicity is fundamentally an apostolicity of faith, but it is also an apostolicity of service, witness, suffering and strug- gle. The “apostolic succession,” in the technical sense of this term, has to be placed within the context of this apostolicity, that is, of this communion extended in time. It is, after all, possible to speak of an apostolic succession in the case of all believers, but only in the wider context of the faithful transmission of the faith. It is only in this

25. Yves Congar, The Word and the Spirit (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986) 88. 26. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, II: 41. 27. Ibid., II: 43. ECCLESIAL DISCIPLESHIP 353

communion that the “apostolic succession” in the strict sense of the term, in other words, the succession of the bishops, can take place.28 As a community of apostolic faith, the pilgrim people of God give witness to the inbreaking of God’s saving Presence in the world. Chris- tian disciples as witnesses must both speak God’s word and build God’s world.

3. Ecclesial Service The witness of the messianic community in word and deed is both a received gift and an entrusted task. In this light, service is that quality of ecclesial discipleship in which the church exists to influence or to “christofinalize” the world.29 It is not enough to call the world from evil and sin. Christians are disciples to the extent that they embrace the task of Godward action in the world. The heart of Christian loyalty to the world is rooted in the belief that the Spirit is effecting the reign of God in all creation; the world is the place where the “signs of the times” are read and interpreted. Even so, the history of the relationship between the Christian community and the world is marked by polar tensions. The dilemma presents itself to the church as a question of how to remain thoroughly engaged in the task of world building without succumbing to the allurements of power and prestige. Indeed, at times, the dynamic between the dual poles of church and world collapses and results either in a world without a church or a church without a world.30 Fundamentally, Christianity inspires a new order in the world; not by force or dominance but by a new attitude: agapic service or diakonia. “Diakonia, ministry, the position, behavior and activity of a servant, appears throughout the whole of the New Tes- tament to be as it were coextensive and practically identical with the character of disciple…”31 Agapè transforms the human experience of “otherness” (exteriorité): the other is no longer stranger, but neighbor.32 Christian service is other-centered in a manner that gives prece- dence to the good of the other; that is, the good of the other is guarded

28. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, II: 45. 29. Congar, Lay People, 110. 30. “In the presence of a religion without a world, men formulated the ideal of a world without religion.” Congar, This Church that I Love, 18. 31. Congar, Power and Poverty, 25. 32. “Christianity could not but inspire a new order in the world, since it involved a new way of looking at life and the regarding of others as one’s neighbors.” Congar, Lay People, 383. 354 COLLEEN MARY MALLON as the disciple’s own deepest good.33 In this manner, Christian service can approach, in however small a measure, the agapic quality of divine love, a “love that seeks not itself but gives itself, and for this very reason is directed towards the weakest and the most wretched.”34 The Christian disciple, as servant, knows that her fate is intimately bound to that of the other and encounters in the mystery of the other a grace of communion. This is the lesson of agapic love that Jesus preached and witnessed to in his own paschal mystery. The grace of the paschal event realizes agapic love in and through a power that reverberates throughout time and space, creating through the Spirit the means by which strangers become neighbors. The way leading to God who is “all in all”, leading that is to mankind in communion, is a state where others are not destroyed to sustain life, but where life, coming from God shines out on all men; it is the way of love in humble service.35 While diakonia is the path marked for all disciples, Congar makes clear in several texts that disciples entrusted with the charism of authority must particularly attend to the servant nature of their ministry. Con- gar speaks of “the necessity of a certain rediscovery of two religious realities by reference to which authority must find out the truth about itself.” These two religious realities are “the living God active among us through his grace and the holy community and brotherhood of the faithful.” It is by setting authority in an authentic relationship with these two Christian realities that we shall be able to go beyond legalism which consists in seeing the formal validity of phenomena to penetrating to their meaning. The movement back to the sources must go forward until it restores a completely evangelical concept of authority, a concept that will be both fully supernatural and fully communal.36 Authority is primarily a duty of service, a charism that furthers the life the community and secures the authenticity of its apostolic witness.37

33. Yves Congar, Priest and Layman (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1967) 40: “This will mean, in practice, deepening and purifying our love, a love which is really love; not, that is, asserting ourselves, even in the masked and apparently disinterested form of serving our Church, but seeking the good of the other person and, to that end, accept- ing the other, with a total respect for that profoundest movement in which he is truly himself. And we must do so as if it concerned ourselves and our own good, and that deepest movement which expresses ourselves, and which we accept with so profound an agree- ment.” 34. Congar, Priest and Layman, 6. 35. Congar, Power and Poverty, 30. 36. Ibid., 78. 37. Ibid., 91-92. ECCLESIAL DISCIPLESHIP 355

Authority as service does not eliminate the element of power; authority as service is situated in the context of the life of the community. “Chris- tianity must be posited first, and then the fact of authority in it … In this way, it is qualified as Christian from its very roots; it is service, because the Christian life is service.”38 As a result of the Spirit’s action, Christian disciples see with new eyes and encounter the other no longer as stranger, but as neighbor. Jesus is the sole inspiration of the servants of God; his refusal to engage in tac- tics of domination marks out a transformative, authoritative path char- acterized by humility, obedience and fidelity. Congar affirms throughout his theological project that Christian discipleship is never a matter of simply mimicking Jesus’s actions; it is a genuine embrace of the path of self-giving and surrender that Jesus walked.

Congar and Discipleship

For Congar, “the Christian mystery” is the essence of discipleship: disciples order the whole of their lives towards God and God’s plan for creation. The Christian life is never simply “a moral life on a human plane inspired by Christ but actually a life of Christ in mankind.”39 This gift is eschatological and its fulfillment is nothing less than deification.40 How might a consideration of Congar’s notion of discipleship influence contemporary reflection on the requirements of the gospel and the church as social institution? In the second half of this article I outline and describe three contemporary markers of ecclesial identity. Derived from Congar’s understanding of the Christian mystery, what follows is an attempt at a thick description of Christian social identity. Without pre- tending to be pseudo-Congar in voice, the markers described below offer an interpretation of the gospel message, applied to the church as a social entity. When discipleship is construed as koinonia, diakonia, and

38. Congar, Priest and Layman, 260. 39. Yves Congar, The Mystery of the Church (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1960) 120. 40. “… God communicates himself to us, makes himself active in us and thus enables us to perform actions of ‘Christ in us’ … This is not the case of God replacing us … God’s substance does not take the place of our substance. There is a communication of dynamism or of an active faculty and we continue to act … It has to be recog- nized that we are and will be the subjects of a quality of existence and activities which go back to God’s sphere of existence and activity. This is the ultimate context of the promise and the real fruit of the Spirit and the principle of our eschatological life.” Con- gar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, I: 31-32. 356 COLLEEN MARY MALLON marturia, what picture of church emerges? To state this in another way, how should the church today, as a social institution, apply to itself the requirements of discipleship as fellowship, witness and service? I will respond to this question by proposing three specific praxes that I believe are incumbent on the church as disciple: praxes of communion, reconciliation, and solidarity.

Communal Praxes of Discipleship: Contemporary Markers of Ecclesial Identity

1. Ecclesial Fellowship as the Praxis of Communion At Vatican II, the church reclaimed in a new way its identity as a particular locus of the saving intention of God in the world. Retrieving the notion of sacraments from a juridical, rubric-focused perspective, Vatican II situated all ritual life within the fundamental sacramental character of the entire ecclesial community. The church in the world is a sacramental presence of God. The gift of God’s indwelling is an eschatological gift given to humanity, affirming that, indeed, “the regenerating power that will finally operate is already at work in our world, transiently, precariously, fragmentarily and generally unperceived.”41 The sacramental character of the community is reflected in its total life: ad intra and ad extra. Thus, the very structures of the church and the relationships that sustain and challenge these structures are of exceed- ing importance as potential means of communicating the saving Presence of God. Yet, unresolved internal issues often threaten the prophetic mission of the church. Specifically, although a hierarchically-structured group is often best suited for carrying out long-term missions, these same orga- nizations have difficulty integrating new data, particularly data perceived as a threat to the very structures that afford such mission effectiveness.42

41. Congar, Lay People, 86. 42. The anthropologist Mary Douglas notes, “Hierarchy is a good solution for problems of coordination. It is run on principles of order, symmetry and balance. Its rules are formalized, it plans for the long term, and justifies what is does by reference to tradition. Its advantages are in its clearly stratified and specialized pattern of roles; it can organize effectively; it is resilient and tenacious in the face of adversity … Its conspicu- ous disadvantages are over-formalization and excessive trust in routine and regulation, which make it slow to respond. There is also a pathological tendency to try to control knowledge – for new knowledge is the biggest threat to its ordered rankings. Assimulat- ing new knowledge so that it does not destroy the painstakingly preserved order requires a big input of energy.” Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, new introduction to the 1996 edition (London: Routledge, 1970; 1996) xxiii-xxiv. ECCLESIAL DISCIPLESHIP 357

Whether cast in terms of periphery vs. center, laity vs. clerics, or charism vs. institution, the forces of stability and innovation which shape human social existence are often portrayed as inherently adversarial, oppositional, and a fundamental threat, one to the other. The entrenchment of insti- tutionalism is as disastrous for the church’s mission as the uncritical appropriation of innovations. Clearly the church as a community of disciples must face the challenge that the creative interplay between charism and institution presents. Since both aspects of the social dimension function sacramentally as potentially revelatory of God’s Presence, they must be understood and fostered as indispensable dimensions of the messianic People of God. Thus, a praxis of communion will engage the current internal struc- tural challenges of the ecclesial community and not ignore this critical dimension of the church’s sacramental identity. These internal concerns include a wide range of significant issues: women’s role and the reality of sexism in the church; inculturation and the often unacknowledged racism that informs the church’s missionary efforts and mistakes unity as adherence to forms of catholic identity, shaped primarily by a single Christian cultural experience; and then, there is pluralism and the resis- tance obstructing the meaningful engagement of the principles of sub- sidiarity and collegiality. Given the immediate historical context from which our present is emerging, I suggest that a praxis of communion calls for renewed attention to the ways in which the church expresses its nature as universal and catholic. Congar reminds us that it is not possible to speak of either catholicity or universality without the other. “Through the mission and gift of the Holy Spirit, the Church was born universal by being born manifold and particular.”43 Is the “fertile tension” between the universal and the particular within the church served through its current structures of governance? How might renewed attention to the inter-relational communion of the various local churches enhance ecclesial communion?44 As “the rediscovery and reassessment of local or particular churches” at Vatican II continues, what dialogical forms are needed to protect and foster this necessary and fruitful tension? Can regional synod gatherings (Asia, the Americas, Africa) be geographically local? Can the preparatory documents be generated from within the local church and still reflect the concerns of the universal church? Questions raised by the Japanese bishops in preparation for the Asian synod, held in Rome in

43. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, II: 26. 44. Ibid., II: 27. 358 COLLEEN MARY MALLON

April 1998, provide a case in point.45 How can the church’s ongoing reflection on the gift and task of collegiality help to secure the appropriate autonomy of the local church and support local and universal scrutiny of theological developments in the light of the entire tradition of the church? Since the unity of the many churches derives from the tri-unity of God, the praxis of communion today becomes the intentional work of promoting diversity-in-unity: creating ecclesial environments, governance structures, and communicative networks, that engage the profound com- plexity of our current polycentric situation. Certainly, a necessary skill related to this praxis is the ability to engage in mutual, critical dialogue. Promoting a social environment of respectful exchange, particularly in the areas where differences reach a conflictual pitch, makes the possibility of a truly catholic communion more viable. A praxis of communion from this perspective calls for a judicious retrieval and reinterpretation of the fiduciary responsibilities incumbent upon disciples entrusted with a universal mission, expressed and known within a particular local church.

2. Ecclesial Witness as The Praxis of Reconciliation For Congar, Christian witness testifies to the living God, present and active in the now. The words of Elizabeth Johnson aptly reflect Con- gar’s view: Christians attest to the “livingness of God” in all the circumstances of human life.46 Ecclesial witness to the God of Jesus can never

45. See “Official Response of the Japanese Church to the Lineamenta,” National Catholic Reporter (March 27, 1998). On March 27, 1998, the Japanese bishops pub- lished an official response to the lineamenta prepared in Rome and received by the Asian churches in September 1996. In their response, the Japanese bishops offered “proposals concerning methodology.” These proposals included the request that the Synodal Secre- tariat take into consideration that “of all the countries of Asia, there is not one that has a native language among those ordinarily used by the Holy See.” The diversity of lan- guages and cultures in Asia suggests that a “different methodology from that used in the synods held up to now is called for.” The Asian bishops asked for more direct input shaping the processes of deliberation. “The decision concerning the global direction of the synod should not be made by the Roman secretariat, but should be left to the bishops of Asia. The choice of the chairpersons of the committees and small groups that are to direct the work of the synod should also be left to the bishops from Asia.” The bishops also expressed concern for “a certain ‘defensiveness’ and apologetic attitude” in the lineamenta, particularly in the area of Christology. They noted that the lineamenta’s focus on “distinctions” and “differences” was more in line with “traditional scholastic theology” and did not reflect the Far Eastern “characteristic to search for creative harmony rather than distinctions.” 46. Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1994). ECCLESIAL DISCIPLESHIP 359 be reduced to a static formula or to rote practice, although important creeds, teachings and disciplines continue to guide and direct the community’s ongoing historical witness. The witness to the God who sent Jesus “for us and for our salvation” is challenged in every age to be faithful, intelligible and empowering.47 As witnesses to God’s saving action in the present moment, the Christian community attests to God’s plan for the well-being of all peoples. God desires the good, the fulfillment of all, yet sin undermines God’s intention. In Jesus, Christians affirm that the eschatological real- ization of God’s reign is already present in the world, however partial and fragmentary. Christians are impelled to share the intention of God to subvert sin and to reconcile all things to Godself in Jesus the Christ. Thus, the love of God is forwarded in the world through a praxis of reconciliation. Chris- tian witness is always a living memory, testifying that what God effects in Jesus is equally present today and directed towards the absolute future of God’s reign. It pleases God to effect the salvation of the world, the very cosmos, by inviting human beings to cooperate in God’s design. In a world where our differences threaten us more readily than they delight and intrigue us, Christian fellowship may yet become a human expression of the divine grace of reconciliation.48 A praxis of reconciliation invariably brings the ecclesial community into the heart of Jesus’s Paschal Mystery, particularly when violence rages in families, communities and nations. This suffering encompasses not only the horrific violations that are the stuff of daily news reports, but also the insidiously unacknowledged affronts to human dignity: sexism, racism, classism and other social and culturally embedded oppressions. Christian witness fails when it does not engage, condemn and counter- act the suffering of those denied that which God desires for them. The ecclesial community that will not risk the costs of discipleship and the

47. These three criteria come from Roger Haight’s Jesus Symbol of God. “Three cri- teriological points drawn from theology in general find an application in christology as well. These are faithfulness to the tradition, intelligibility in today’s world, and empow- erment of the Christian life.” Roger Haight, Jesus Symbol of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999) 47. 48. “To be in conformity with [God], means to be carrying out his plan. Since the world proceeds from him, God has a purpose for it, a purpose and a plan … it is the preparation for the Kingdom of God, that is, an attempt, aided by God’s grace, to make the world conform to his will. It is a communal plan, and therefore a plan of reconciliation, brotherhood, assistance to all who are suffering and are lost.” Yves Congar, Faith and the Spiritual Life (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968) 175. 360 COLLEEN MARY MALLON inevitable consequences of such witness, ultimately offers a counterwit- ness to God’s intentions. In the words of Jon Sobrino: We humans must make a choice not only between faith and atheism but between faith and idolatry. In a world of victims, little can be known about a person simply because he calls himself a believer or a nonbeliever. It is imperative to know in which God she believes and against which idols she does battle … I have learned that faith is dif- ficult but entirely possible, that it is very costly but deeply human- izing.49 What would happen to the church’s witness if Christian communities were primarily experienced as loci of reconciliation and fellowships of repentance? What, indeed, could be more timely? What changes would have to be made within the church’s own internal life to offer credible witness to the God of Jesus? Such a witness could call the world to rec- ognize its sinfulness, even as it acknowledges that the church itself is “made up of sinners … who do penance and try to lead a life of con- version.”50 A praxis of reconciliation, engaging in the active pursuit and practice of forgiveness, straining towards the eschatological accomplish- ment of justice in human social life, poses the Christian church’s greatest contemporary challenge and offers the world a singular hope.

3. Ecclesial Service as the Praxis of Solidarity Congar, reflecting some twenty years later on Vatican II, character- ized the church’s self-understanding as “an ecclesiology in gestation.”51 The momentous shifts in Roman Catholic understanding of the role of the church in the world heralded a new moment in world history, not just church history, and we are still in the midst of the paradigm shift that is Vatican II.52 The church today lives its mission within a decen- tered, polycentric, multipolar world that increasingly evades description.

49. Jon Sobrino, The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People from the Cross (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999) 9. 50. Congar, This Church that I Love, 27. 51. Yves Congar, “Moving Towards a Pilgrim Church,” Vatican II Revisited by Those Who Were There, ed. Alberic Stacpoole (Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press, 1986) 129-152. See also Yves Congar, “D’une ‘ecclésiologie en gestation’ à Lumen Gentium chap. I et II,” in his Le Concile de Vatican II: Son Église, Peuple de Dieu et Corps du Christ, Théologie historique, 71 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984) 123-136. 52. T. Howland Sanks argues that “Vatican II was not itself a paradigm shift, but was an excellent example of an institution in the process of a paradigm shift” (author’s emphasis). T. Howland Sanks, S.J., Salt, Leaven and Light (New York: Crossroad, 1992) 189. See also, T. Howland Sanks, S.J., Authority in the Church: A Study in Changing Par- adigms (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1974). ECCLESIAL DISCIPLESHIP 361

What is clear is the marked increase in the global experience of risk. The “process of reflexivity” that Robert Schreiter describes is a process “whereby the outflowing of modernization curves back upon the West” and “brings as well … a sense of contingency or risk that has long been the experience of countries on the periphery.”53 God’s pilgrim people exist in this globalized world for the single purpose of witnessing to the agapic love of Jesus the Christ. Far from avoiding the risks of global plurality and retreating into isolationism, the church today expresses its servant nature through a praxis of solidarity, particularly with those who are most threatened by the powers of death and oppression. Foregoing any safe haven, the church risks the consequences of contingency: where both the forces that oppose God’s purposes as well as the Spirit are likely to be encountered. For Congar, the revelation of God’s agapic love is both a gift and a task. Jesus, Servant of God, sought out the forgotten, the unwanted and the despised, modeling a praxis of solidarity with the least and affirming God’s own commitment to their ultimate good. Jesus’s fellowship with the least of humanity radicalizes our understanding of the ends to which God will go to be with those whose futures are denied by human greed and avarice. In his fellowship with expendable human beings, Jesus expresses the privileged place where God chooses to dwell among us. As a community of disciples, Christians can do no less; or they do so at the peril of their authentic witness to the Christian mystery, because truly “his mystery” must “become our mystery.”54 An ecclesial praxis of solidarity continues to refigure the church- world relationship. Today, the notion of the non-poor taking care of the poor, providing for the needy without working to change systems of oppression, is simply unacceptable. Furthermore, a praxis of solidarity has already liberated poor Christian churches to challenge the dominant, white, northern church’s complicity with a social order that subverts theological voices as well as economic power. What do the poor say of God that only they can tell us? What conversions are necessary to hear the God of Life issuing from their broken lives? Truly, Congar’s sense that this is an ecclesiology in gestation could not be more correct.

53. Robert Schreiter, The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997) 13. 54. Congar, Lay People, 52. 362 COLLEEN MARY MALLON

In Conclusion

I have attempted to offer an answer to Congar’s question: how should the requirements of individual discipleship be applied to the church as an ecclesial community? In a church informed by Congar’s vision of discipleship I would expect to see a recovery of right relationship between the local churches and the universal church; a praxis of communion such that the living tradition of Christian life and witness would be both the sacred trust of the universal church and the shared custodial legacy and fiduciary responsibility of the local churches. In such a church I would hope to encounter an ecclesial community whose praxis of reconciliation has so shaped and formed its members that the presence of real, conflictual differences would give evidence to a living question in need of serious prayer and reflection, not premature judgments or the unleashing of sectarian conflicts that destroy the witness of the church and the peace of the planet. Finally, in such a church I would hope to find that the praxis of solidarity has pushed us into the frontier spaces where peoples’ humanity is at risk and where their pressing and urgent questions demand to know if God is with them in their agony. In such a church I would love to be.

Colleen Mary Mallon is assistant professor of Theology and Religious Studies at St. John’s University, Jamaica, New York. Her research is centered especially on the theme of Catholic identity and tradition. She is a member of the Domini- can Sisters of Mission San Jose, California. Address: St. John’s University, Depart- ment of Theology and Religious Studies, 8000 Utopia Parkway, Jamaica, NY, 11439, U.S.A.