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More about Was the Church Too Democratic?

Norman Tanner SJ

The book is the text of the Bishop Thaliath Lectures given by the author at Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore, India, in August 2003.  The general theme is representation and participation in the Church.  Christianity should always challenge a culture as well as being challenged by it.  The Catholic church today, however, may be in danger of an excessive counter-culturalism in terms of both church structures and theology.  These issues, and others, are examined through the lens of the twenty-one ecumenical and general councils from Nicaea I in 325 to Vatican II in 1962-5.      The first two lectures look at councils and collegiality in the ecumenical and regional councils of the early Church: the third and fourth take the story through the Middle Ages, Trent and the two Vatican councils.  The last two lectures  broaden into some reflections on ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, and the future.

 

From the Conclusion

 

My final reflection partly summarises points already made.  It is that a more conciliar approach surely represents the best way forward for ecumenism.  The decree from the second council of Constantinople, just cited, makes the point clearly.  The Orthodox Church and the non-Chalcedonian (Oriental Orthodox) churches, as well as the churches of the Reformation, all use conciliar (synodical) forms of government and councils were fundamental to church order in the first millennium of Christianity.  Any form of reunion that is likely to be acceptable to these churches will require the Catholic church to return to a more conciliar form of government.         

The Catholic church's long-standing suspicion of conciliarism was mentioned in the  third of these reflections, also how damaging and unnecessary is this suspicion.  The Catholic church can learn from other churches regarding the conciliar dimension of church government but it also has much to contribute to the debate inasmuch as it has preserved better than other churches many other aspects of church order ; the papacy is but one example; which are important complements and balances to councils.  Despite this suspicion of councils, moreover, the Catholic church has in fact held exceptionally effective councils -- Trent and Vatican II are obvious examples; and so has good experience of them to offer to others.

 Even within the Catholic church, conciliarism offers a helpful way forward.  Recently, encouraged by the pope's encyclical Ut unum sint, there has been considerable discussion of reform of the Catholic church's structures of government.  Too much focus and hope, in my opinion, has been upon reform of the papacy and of the Roman Curia.  It is notoriously difficult for any institutions to reform themselves, so that waiting for these reforms may be waiting too long.  The councils, on the other hand, offer another way forward, one that has its origins at the centre of the Church;s tradition and whose orthodoxy is therefore guaranteed and yet is also acceptable to other christian churches. 

This way forward, too, offers many possibilities for future developments. Flexibility of arrangements in the councils of the past make this same quality possible in the future.  In terms of place, as mentioned, the first eight ecumenical councils were held in modern Turkey, half of them in Asia.  Future ecumenical councils, therefore, could return to Asia or be held in Africa or America: Bangalore or Kinshasa or New York?  In terms of organisation, the first eight councils were summoned by the emperors or empresses of the day, presided over by them directly or through their officials, and their decrees were promulgated by them.  So the laity, including women, may play a greater role in ecumenical councils to come.  Indeed, Constantine, emperor at the time of Nicaea I, was not a Christian, strictly speaking, at least according to our modern criteria, inasmuch as he had not yet been baptised.  So, maybe influences and individuals from outside the visible Church will return to play a fuller role in the councils of the future?  In many ways the councils show how inventive the Church can be in its arrangements.

In government, indeed, the councils have usually been ahead of their time.  The early councils, especially, offered a model to secular government and society: they were more open and more democratic than their counterparts in secular life.  Then, indeed, the Church as a whole, in which the councils played an integral part, was a leader in society.  It seems to have offered more opportunities to women or to slaves, for example, than they were afforded by secular society.  This is a tradition of which Christians, and Catholics, can be proud. Now, on the contrary, the Catholic Church is in danger of lagging behind.  It is placing excessive emphasis on the government of the Church being different from that of secular society; that it has its own hierarchical forms of government that have nothing to do with secular democracy; and on the need for the Church to be counter-cultural.  Earlier the Church had less fear of other institutions.  It was readier to adopt for itself the good elements in them, to use and then to improve upon them, to give a lead in society rather than to follow reluctantly or to distance itself unnecessarily.  We saw a revival of this leadership in government, on the part of the Church, at the time of Vatican II, but the momentum does not seem to have been maintained.  The councils open people's eyes to hopeful possibilities for the future.

 To end, let me disown any wish to urge the calling soon of another ecumenical council and any ability to prophecy when the next one will take place.  My feeling is that Vatican II needs more years of assimilation.  Another council too soon could produce rushed and divisive results; rather as Ephesus II did, the Robber; council back in 449.  There is nothing surprising about this need of ;reception; major councils such as Nicaea I, Chalcedon and Trent all took at least a century for the Church to digest.  Councils depend above all upon the inspiration of the holy Spirit, so they often occur at times and in ways that are unexpected to us: God's ways are not ours, the holy Spirit is full of surprises.  No more so was this the case than with Vatican II, which nobody except Pope John XXIII seems to have expected.

        The point of this ninth and last reflection is rather to urge the importance of conciliarism within the Church at lower levels.  Synod, the equivalent of council, is an evocative word formed from two Greek words meaning 'together' and 'journey'.  The sense is of travelling companions, people meeting for a purpose, with an unknown journey before them, in hope and expectation.  A beautiful image of the pilgrim church and a hopeful omen for the people of God as Christianity enters its third millennium.

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