Pastor
Aeternus;
THE SUPREMACY OF THE POPE
The
First Vatican council established as dogma the Holy Spirit’s gift of infallibility
to the Pope as teacher in matters of faith and Morals. The council also
established as a matter of doctrine the Roman Catholic understanding of papal
primacy. It is evident in the conciliar text Pastor Aerternus that after
Vatican I, the Practice of the church matters regarding the primacy and
infallibility of the pope did exceed the scope of the council’s own teachings.
The theology of the day tended to give to the pope great power than before.
From the very beginning of the document particularly in chapter three the conciliar
document stipulates the power and character of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff.
The
council affirms the world –wide view primacy of the Apostolic See and the Roman
Pontiff. The constitution speaks of the Roman church and its primacy as that
which carries and explains the primacy of the Pontiff when it says that Roman
church by the Lords disposition possesses over all other the a primacy of
ordinary power and this power of jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff truly
episcopal is immediate. There is therefore only one sovereign power in the
church and that sovereignty resides completely in the Vicar of Christ.. The
faithful are therefore required to submit to this authority by the duty of hierarchical
subordination and obedience in matters of faith, morals and discipline.
J.M.R. Tillard in his work The Bishop of Rome attempts to resolve
the tension that arises from the argument made by the constitution on the fact
that “in practice the power of the Roman pontiff is to promote rather than to
stifle that of other bishops”.
This power of the Supreme Pontiff by
no means detracts from that ordinary and immediate power of episcopal jurisdiction,
by which bishops, who have succeeded to the place of the apostles by
appointment of the Holy Spirit, tend and govern individually the particular
flocks which have been assigned to them. On the contrary, this power of theirs
is asserted, supported and defended by the Supreme and Universal Pastor; for
St. Gregory the Great says: "My honor is the honor of the whole Church. My
honor is the steadfast strength of my brethren. Then do I receive true honor,
when it is denied to none of those to whom honor is due. ( cf Denzinger 3061)
The hierarchy is therefore
established right from the beginning in the time of Apostles when Jesus himself
was the head .Jesus then wished to provide a vicar or a substitute for himself
when before leaving the world. He therefore chose Peter and made him the
foundation of his church promising him the keys of the Kingdom and commanded
him to feed his flock which involved both pastors and people.
The Summit in this case is Peter who
is the supreme authority followed by the Apostles who administer and govern
with the help of those chosen among the first disciples and finally the
faithful who have the responsibility to obey. This hierarchical structure has
been handed on through generations up to date. Thus we have the supreme
pontiff; vicar of Christ, successor of Peter and the teacher of all Christians.
Next in the hierarchy we have the bishops, successors of the Apostles given
responsibility over the dioceses with the help of priests under the authority
of the Pope.
With Vatican II however the emphasis was also
laid on the bishops as successors of the Apostles because, this Ecclesiology
arising from Vatican I became extremely unbalanced, with too much emphasis on
the papacy. The episcopal ordination is the fullness of the sacrament of orders
and the college of bishops succeeds the college the Apostles.
Their service is the service of the
community, presiding in place of God over the flock whose shepherd they are as
teachers of doctrine, priests of sacred worship and officers of good order. The
Council draws a theological connection between Jesus the Apostles and those who
lead the church today, the bishops and the pope. However the constant emphasis
here is the supremacy of the pope with the bishops in the church.
THE
THREE PRIMARY SYMBOLS OF THE CHURCH IN SCRIPTURE
The
second Vatican council’s Dogmatic constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium brings out some of the
symbols of the church as sheepfold, flock, field of God, vine, building founded
on the Apostles, spouse of the lamb, New Jerusalem among others. Generally over
the history the emphasis has been laid on the merely institutional elements of
the Church until Vatican II when the
image of the church as koinonia
or communio emerged. I will briefly
explain in this short reflection on the church, its symbol as people of God,
Body of Christ and Fellowship of the Spirit.
The
Church as People of God
The
Image of the people of God originally expressed the national religious unity
the of people of Israel and the covenant
that God established with them. Israel expressed itself as the Community of God’s
elect .This is the community which expressed itself as the remnant, the
faithful servant who is charged with bringing about the final gathering of all
the nations. The early Christians identified Jesus as the faithful servant.
There is in early Christians counsciousnes a sense that Gods People are
diminished to a faithful remnant of one, only to be renewed and
expanded in the new community of those who follow the risen Christ.
The
symbol stresses the continuity between the people of Israel and the church. The
church is the regenerated People of God, born in the one who was obedient to
death, foreshowed in twelve apostles who symbolize the church as the new
Israel. The Church is the continuance, renewal and enlargement of the chosen
people of God Israel.
“You
however are the a chosen race, a royal priesthood a holy nation a people God
claims for his own to proclaim the glorious works of the one who called you
from darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were no people, but now you
are Gods people; once there was no mercy for you but now you have found mercy”
( 1Peter2 9-11)
The Church as the fellowship of the spirit
Paul
particularly refers to the church as the temple of the Holy Spirit. He
understands the church as a building which is still in the process of being
built. The foundation of such a building is Christ himself .The church is
accordingly a fellowship. Through the Spirit of God which is the Spirit of
Jesus, the members of the Church are invited into the unique sharing. The faithful
shares the grace of Christ. In Baptism Christians share in his death and resurrection.
In the Spirit, Christians are called to special fellowship with one another. Such
sharing has concrete practical dimension which implies to enter into the church
means to enter into a fellowship that encompasses all dimensions of life.
The Church as the body of Christ.
“The
body is one and has many members, but all the members, many though they are one
body and so it is with Christ…..( 1Cor12:12f)
The
symbol of the body of Christ is one of the most important symbols of the
church. The scripture does show at least three different ways in which this
image is understood.
To
say the church is the body of Christ is to understand Christ as a corporate personality
through whom all believers experience solidarity with him and with all their
fellow believers. It also means Jesus in his risen and glorified person, possesses
many members. It is Christ who takes to himself through baptism and the work of
the Holy Spirit those who become members of his body.The mystery of his
redemptive death makes us members and so we call ourselves the Body of Christ.
To say the Church is the body of Christ
is to confess that while Christ has reconciled us in his body, Christians united to him must
continue the reconciling, suffering work of the body in the church and the
world.
****
VALENCE
J. KISAKA No 11016T
The
breakthrough in the understanding of the church’s relationship with the world
came with
Vatican
II Council .The theological foundations were laid in Lumen Gentiun
but the full extent of the shift in of the Catholic thinking on this relationship becomes
apparent in the Pastoral constitution on
the Church in the Modern World; Gaudium
et Spes
The
Fundamental task of the mission of the Church is the proclamation of the
Kingdom or Reign of God. The mission of the church is the continuation of the
mission of Christ. Gaudium et Spes opens
by acknowledging the intimate link between the two which goes beyond evangelization
and church planting. The dogmatic
Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentiun seeking
to underline such connection says; the joy and hope the grief and anguish of
the people of our time especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any way
are the joys and hope the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well
.This new view according to David Bosch
in his work Transforming Mission attempts
to underscore several points;
First
the Church’s final word is not the Church but the glory of the father and the
Son in the Spirit of liberty. Second, the church is not the Kingdom of God. The Church is on
earth the seed and the beginning that Kingdom ( LG 5).
Third the Church’s Missionary involvement
should be more than calling individuals into the church. Those who are
evangelized are with other human beings, subject to social, economic and political
conditions in this world.
There
is therefore a connection between liberating individuals and peoples in history
and proclamation of the final coming of Gods Reign (cf Bosch 374-378).
The
Kingdom of God is the reign of freedom, fellowship, and love. It is Gods new
order of truth, love, justice and peace. It is an order of integral liberation
encompassing human existence in all its dimensions, personal and communal. It
is an order that has special preference to the poor.
The
church is a symbol and a servant of the Kingdom. As a symbol its task is to be
the light to the nations, to give a clear witness to the values of Kingdom. As
a servant its task is to promote the reign of God in the World discerning the
signs of the times and collaborating with these graced moments by which the Holy
Spirit is bringing about the realization of Kingdom in and for the World. To
promote the Kingdom means taking part in the on- going struggle between the
oppressed and the oppressors and so take
on board the cause of those who are oppressed.
In today’s world the promotion of justice is a key element in the promotion of
the Reign of God and therefore a constitutive dimension of Mission. The church
is to promote justice and to truly liberate people from all that oppress them personally,
socially and religiously.
Pope
John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris
Missio places emphasis on the understanding of Mission in terms of the values
of the Kingdom. The Church‘s work of the promotion of the Kingdom is not to be reduced
to working for the humanistic vision of the World. The Reign of God is accordingly
inseparably bound up with the explicit proclamation of the Gospel of Christ.
The Kingdom does indeed demands the promotion
of human values. But such proclamation should not detach the church from her
fundamental tasks which is proclaiming Christ and his Gospel and establishing
and building up communities which make present and active within mankind the
living image of the Kingdom ( cf RM 19)
Redemsptoris Missio affirms the
continuing necessity, relevance and urgency of the Church’s mission and insists
that the mission of the church must include the explicit proclamation of Christ
as Savior of the world (RM 5). Moreover, the salvation Christ came to bring is
not only an interior, personal, spiritual, and other worldly reality. It is
rather an integral Salvation, embracing the material and spiritual, the
personal and political-historical aspects of human existence (RM 11).
***
The
Church as a Universal Sacrament of Salvation according to Lumen
Gentium.
VALENCE
J. KISAKA No 11016T
A
keen interest has been taken towards discovering the place of the Church
especially with the second Vatican Council. This interest reached its climax
with the Council itself when it produced one of its most important
constitutions about the Church Lumen Gentium. The primary concern of the Council was to emphasize the
church’s continual validity and necessity World. Conscious
of the great multitude of the people leaving outside the church, who would
attain Salvation, the council sought to employ the language which could
accommodate without exclusion the reality of religious diversity. Part of their
concern was to rid the multitude both within and outside the Church of their
deep seated wrong understanding of the axiom “outside the Church there is no Salvation”.
One
of the main teachings of the Second Vatican Council about the Church is that
the Church is a pilgrimage now on earth and therefore it is necessary:
That
one Christ is the mediator and the way of Salvation; he is present to us in his
body, which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of
faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the
Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not
be saved who, knowing that God founded the Catholic Church as necessary through
Christ, would refuse either to enter it or remain in it (cf. Lumen
Gentium 14).
Jesus did not only command that all nations should enter the
Church, but also decreed the Church must be a means of salvation without which
no one can enter the kingdom of eternal
heaven. The teaching does not
however hold responsible those who have never heard the message of the Gospel. Thus
the Council declares; Those who through no fault of their own, do not know the
Gospel of Christ, but who seeks God with sincere heart, and moved by the grace,
try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of
their conscience, may achieve eternal salvation ( cf. Lumen Gentium 16).
In this respect, for one to
obtain salvation it is not always required that he be incorporated into the
Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that he/she be united to her
by desire and longing. It is necessary therefore that this desire by which one
is related to the Church be animated by perfect charity. This desire can have
effect, if only a person has supernatural gift of faith “For he who comes to God must believe
that God exists and is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Heb. 11:6).
Those who are related to the
Mystical Body of Christ by a certain unconscious yearning and desire are
therefore not excluded from eternal salvation. The document therefore corrects
those who tend to exclude from eternal salvation all united to the Church only
by implicit desire, and those who falsely assert that men can be saved equally
well in every religion.
UNDERSTANDING OFRECONCILLIATION, JUSTICE AND PEACE
In the Post-Synodal Apostolic
Exhortaion, AfricaeMunus, Africa’s
commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ is described as a mission to which we
Africans are called to explore our Christian vocation and deepen it. At the
centre of this mission is reconciliation between individuals and communities
and the promotion of peace and justice. The exhortation points out that reconciliation,
peace and justice are essential aspects of the vocation of the church. The
effectiveness of this witness depends on the church’s rootedness in the word of
God. It is through this word, the faithful learn to listen to Christ and to be
led by the Holy Spirit, who reveals to us the meaning of all things.The Word
will help us to shape our lives so that we are able to reconcile ourselves with
God, who leads us towards reconciliation with our neighbour; a necessary path
for building our communities.
Reconciliation and justice are the two
essential premises of peace. However“human
peace obtained without justice is illusory and ephemeral. Human justice which
is not the fruit of reconciliation in the ‘truth of love’ remains incomplete;
it is not authentic justice” (AM 18). Love of the whole truth to which we are
brought by the Spirit is necessary in restoring the bonds of fraternity within
the ‘human family’ reconciled with God through Christ (cf AM 18).
The church in Africa is faced with
the task of forming upright consciences receptive to the demands of justice,
necessary for the building of a just social order. If justice is to prevail in
all areas of life, it needs to be sustained by subsidiarity and solidarity and
be inspired by charity. This has to be modelled after the divine justice (cf AM
25). The quest for a just social order implies a revolution of love which in
turn calls for a preferential attention to the poor, the hungry and the
disadvantaged after the pattern of Christ (cf AM 27).
Reconciliation
is a lengthy process to re-establishing love; hence it is seen as a way of life
and a mission. “In order to arrive at genuine reconciliation and to live out
the spirituality of communion that flows from it, the church needs witnesses
who are profoundly rooted in Christ and find nourishment in his word and the
sacraments.” (AM 34).
From the perspective of AfricaeMunus’ understanding, I can discern
several challenges to our approach to peace and reconciliation among which are:First,
it has been pointed out that the effectiveness of the church’s witness depends
on her rootedness in the Word of God. Thus the most important thing here has to
do with whether the Church in Africa is deeply rooted in the word of God. In my
own opinion, the word of God must take flesh in our Christiancommunities. In
other words the word of God must first work among us, reconciling us before we
can reconcile others. Christ proclaimed love of neighbour, even of enemies. We
need to be seen practising love of neighbour in order for us to serve as
authentic witnesses and hence walk on our path towards peace and reconciliation
successfully.
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