- Feb 5, 2002
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COMMENTARY: We are all sinners in need of grace and we are all looking to the horizon for Our Lord’s return.
One of the assumptions that seems to animate so many of the conversations surrounding a more synodal Church is that a more “democratized” Catholic Church is by definition a better Church. To that end, we saw in last year’s Synod on Synodality that there was a lot of chatter about a Church that listens to “the people of God.” And those two concepts — a democratized Church and the Church as the people of God — were often conflated to mean almost the same thing.
I think that this conflation is incorrect and that the “people of God” metaphor, used in Lumen Gentium, when properly understood not only does not endorse a more democratic Church but actually implies the opposite.
Whenever I saw the “people of God” metaphor referenced in the lead-up to the first part of the Synod on Synodality, I was reminded of the words of the character Indigo Montoya in the movie The Princess Bride: “You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.” Indeed, the synodal leaders resurrected a long-dead interpretation of the people of God metaphor, popular among liberal theologians in the ’70s, to denote the laity as opposed to the hierarchy, with that mistake compounded by a related one, where a distinction was made between “the institutional Church” (a tiresome and oppressive oligarchy of old celibate men) and “the Church of the people” (a liberating wonderland of “real people”).
Therefore, it was concluded back then, and apparently today again, that the Church is in desperate need of democratization and this is to be achieved by empowering the “people of God” in a vague egalitarianism of magically renewed structures.
By contrast, in Chapter 2 of Lumen Gentium (the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church) the “people of God” motif was not used to distinguish between the laity and the hierarchy, but rather to unite them under a single, overarching theological concept (9-17). The conciliar usage of the metaphor, though novel in modern Catholicism, harkened back to the Church fathers who wanted to emphasize that all Christians — laity, religious and hierarchy together — were all “pilgrims” and “sojourners” in this world. We are all sinners in need of grace and we are all looking to the horizon for Our Lord’s return. We are all the people of God and it is not at all synonymous with “the laity.”
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
One of the assumptions that seems to animate so many of the conversations surrounding a more synodal Church is that a more “democratized” Catholic Church is by definition a better Church. To that end, we saw in last year’s Synod on Synodality that there was a lot of chatter about a Church that listens to “the people of God.” And those two concepts — a democratized Church and the Church as the people of God — were often conflated to mean almost the same thing.
I think that this conflation is incorrect and that the “people of God” metaphor, used in Lumen Gentium, when properly understood not only does not endorse a more democratic Church but actually implies the opposite.
Whenever I saw the “people of God” metaphor referenced in the lead-up to the first part of the Synod on Synodality, I was reminded of the words of the character Indigo Montoya in the movie The Princess Bride: “You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.” Indeed, the synodal leaders resurrected a long-dead interpretation of the people of God metaphor, popular among liberal theologians in the ’70s, to denote the laity as opposed to the hierarchy, with that mistake compounded by a related one, where a distinction was made between “the institutional Church” (a tiresome and oppressive oligarchy of old celibate men) and “the Church of the people” (a liberating wonderland of “real people”).
Therefore, it was concluded back then, and apparently today again, that the Church is in desperate need of democratization and this is to be achieved by empowering the “people of God” in a vague egalitarianism of magically renewed structures.
By contrast, in Chapter 2 of Lumen Gentium (the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church) the “people of God” motif was not used to distinguish between the laity and the hierarchy, but rather to unite them under a single, overarching theological concept (9-17). The conciliar usage of the metaphor, though novel in modern Catholicism, harkened back to the Church fathers who wanted to emphasize that all Christians — laity, religious and hierarchy together — were all “pilgrims” and “sojourners” in this world. We are all sinners in need of grace and we are all looking to the horizon for Our Lord’s return. We are all the people of God and it is not at all synonymous with “the laity.”
Continued below.
True and False Democracy in the Catholic Church
COMMENTARY: We are all sinners in need of grace and we are all looking to the horizon for Our Lord’s return.
