In a real sense, the Second Vatican Council --- which ended 40 years ago this month --- gave concrete evidence that the Roman Catholic Church had finally come to terms with modernity. After its long struggle against "modernism," the council's documents reflected to a considerable degree modernity's historical-critical way of thinking:
---Its Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae) signified that the Church finally accepted the principle of religious liberty, already presumed in Western Europe and North America, thus moving beyond its traditional position that "error has no rights."
---Its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) signified a shift from the "fortress Church" mentality to a new vision of the Church at the service of the world.
---The Church embraced the ecumenical movement which Pope Pius XI had earlier rejected (Mortalium Animos) and encouraged dialogue with other religions (Nostra Aetate 2).
---Finally, its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) provided Catholics with a new way of understanding themselves and their Church.
Perhaps the Council's most important doctrinal achievement --- and certainly its most contested during the debates over Lumen Gentium --- was its teaching on episcopal collegiality. In the debate during the second session, Cardinal Alfrink of Utrecht suggested that the phrase "Peter and the apostles" would be better expressed as "Peter and the other apostles," thus putting Peter back within the apostolic college. The change was to have important consequences.
The constitution as it was finally approved taught that just as Peter and the apostles constituted one apostolic college, so the order of bishops together "with its head, the Supreme Pontiff, and never apart from him ... is the subject of supreme and full authority over the universal church" (LG 22); when they teach, united with each other and with the pope, they exercise the "infallibility promised to the church" (LG 25). At the same time, the bishops are not to be understood as vicars of the pope, but as heads of local or "particular" churches; as vicars and legates of Christ they govern "the particular churches assigned to them" (LG 27).
What the constitution had done was to rearticulate the relationship between bishops and pope. The result was a shift to a new way of understanding the Church itself. The institutional, monarchical image of the Church --- the pyramid, with all authority descending vertically from God to pope, then bishops, priests and finally people --- had given way to a new understanding of the church as a communion of churches, a linking of particular churches --- Los Angeles, Paris, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Lagos, Manila, and Bombay --- bound by the communion of their bishops with each other and with the Bishop of Rome. The Catholic Church is a communion of churches.
What this means for each church and the whole church is yet to be fully worked out. As Cardinal Walter Kasper has observed, Lumen Gentium represents a compromise which juxtaposed a "sacramental communio ecclesiology and a juristic unity ecclesiology." A communio ecclesiology means that particular churches must continue to prize the relationships that unite them with each other and with the Bishop of Rome.
At the same time, it means that local or particular churches are not just administrative subdivisions of the universal Church; they are true churches. This means that local and regional churches will gradually take on more responsibility for addressing their own pastoral problems, rather than waiting for directions from Rome. Bishops like retired San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn and theologians like Richard Gaillardetz argue that the principle of subsidiarity, holding that larger bodies should not take over decisions that should be made by smaller groups or associations, applies not just to civil society, but also to the church.
What does this mean concretely for the Church in Los Angeles, the largest archdiocese in the United States, and one of the most ethnically diverse, with some five million Catholics? If the Church in Los Angeles is to be faithful to its mission, if it is to truly be "Church," it must move from a "maintenance" to a "mission" model of Church, to use an expression of Paulist Father Robert Rivers.
The Church of Los Angeles has already taken a number of significant steps in that direction. On April 20, 2000, Cardinal Roger Mahony and the priests of the Archdiocese published a Pastoral Letter on Ministry, As I Have Done For You, stressing the diversity of gifts and ministries in the Church and calling for a new recognition of the vocation of the baptized to be and become the Body of Christ in the world, and to advance the Kingdom of God through witness, worship, and service. In concluding the letter, the Cardinal convoked an Archdiocesan Synod which took place in 2003.
Most recently, on Sept. 4, 2005, the Cardinal released a Pastoral Statement on Parish Leadership, As One Who Serves, calling all to holiness, acknowledging the emerging gifts of the laity, particularly those who will serve as lay parish leaders by holding fast to the vision of the Reign of God central to the message of Jesus, and calling others to be faithful to that vision through the charism of leadership.
There are now more paid professional lay ministers in our parishes than priests. At their November meeting the U.S. bishops approved guidelines on lay ecclesial ministry, now some 30,632 men and women, even though a handful of bishops still had problems with applying the terms "minister" and "ministry" to growing number of lay men and women serving the Church.
The Los Angeles Synod's first pastoral initiative and governing concern is evangelization and what Pope John Paul II spoke of as the new evangelization, re-evangelizing those inactive, alienated and non-practicing Catholics. Consider that the largest religious group in the United States is Roman Catholics, followed by non-practicing Catholics, and then by the Southern Baptists. If that is true in Los Angeles, that represents 2.5 million Catholics not being served in our parishes.
Thus, I was happy to see on the Archdiocesan website two buttons: "Interested in the Church?" and "Baptized Catholic and want to come home." That's at least a start. Imagine the gifts that those 2.5 million Catholics not presently involved could bring to the Catholic community and its mission as Church.
Another pastoral initiative singled out by the Archdiocesan Synod is ongoing education and formation for adults, young adults and youth, which is a particular need and challenge for the Church everywhere, certainly in the U.S. A just-released study by researchers at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill --- "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers" --- reports that U.S. Catholic teenagers are behind their Protestant peers by many standards of religious belief, practice, experiences and commitments, sometimes by as much as 25 percentage points, with many of them living outside the boundaries of what would be considered faithful Catholic life.
The study's authors saw the teenagers' relative religious laxity as reflecting the relative religious laxity of their parents and suggested that Catholic dioceses and parishes need to devote more resources to youth ministry and education. In the Synod process, similar observations about Catholic youth no longer practicing their faith came from all five pastoral regions of the Archdiocese.
With its population, its diversity, its talent and resources, its Religious Education Congress and its Synod, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is already playing a leading role in the American Church. Hopefully many more will hear the call to serve as disciples of Jesus. Jesuit Father Thomas P. Rausch is the T. Marie Chilton Professor of Catholic Theology at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. His latest book is "Towards a Truly Catholic Church" (The Liturgical Press, 2005). |