Pope Leo’s Corrigenda

In a recent essay here at CWR, I commented on the significance of Pope Leo’s decision to devote his weekly audiences during this first full year of his pontificate to Vatican II and to a renewed reading of its documents. His decision flows from the conviction he had expressed to the Cardinals gathered in consistory in January that “We can never emphasize enough the importance of continuing the journey that began with the Council … And this journey is a process of life, of conversion, of renewal of the entire Church.”

I also highlighted the fact that the first document he considered was Dei Verbum, the “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation.” Though not the first document to be promulgated by the Council, it is clearly foundational to all the others. For if God has not revealed himself definitively in the risen Lord Jesus Christ, then we must acknowledge, with Saint Paul, that Christian preaching is vain and Christian faith is vain.

After his reflections on Dei Verbum, Pope Leo has now turned to Lumen Gentium, the Council’s “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.” Once more, the theological astuteness of the Pope’s procedure should be noted. One can only speak meaningfully of the Church if it is seen in the light of divine revelation in Christ. Indeed, the very title of the Constitution is resolutely Christological: “Lumen gentium cum sit Christus: “Since Christ is the light of nations.”

The Church has no meaning or function absent Christ. Without Christ, the Church is but a headless body, a soulless collective.

Furthermore, Christian liturgy only assumes its full meaning and scope when placed within the matrix of Church, both the Church on earth, and, though too often neglected, both pastorally and theologically, the heavenly assembly, which is the Church come to full stature. Hence, truly Catholic liturgy presumes fully Catholic ecclesiology.

The foregoing may serve as an introduction to Pope Leo’s splendid reflection at his Audience of March 10th. There, he considered chapter two of Lumen Gentium: the Church as “People of God.” In my view, it is a masterly achievement: brief and substantive. Moreover, in a measured yet pointed way, it also implicitly corrects what I have found to be three truncated readings and even intentional misreadings in the reception of Lumen Gentium since the Council.

The first misreading is the failure to do justice to the distinctive identity of this people: namely, that it is the people of God. The Church is not a merely human enterprise, accessible without remainder by the studies and soundings of sociologists. It is also, and more fundamentally, a supernatural realization. Ecclesial unity is founded in a new supernatural identity and mission enabled by faith in what God has accomplished in Jesus Christ.

Thus, the Pope writes: “It is a people now made up of members of every nation; it is united by faith in Christ, by adherence to Him, by living the same life as Him, animated by the Spirit of the Risen One.”

This quote from Pope Leo already introduces the second feature of this people that has been unduly neglected—indeed, even set by some in opposition to Church as “people of God.” Namely, the Church, the people of God, is in its deepest identity, the “body of Christ.” Far from being opposed, the two images of Church as people of God and Body of Christ are both indispensable if we are to gain some purchase upon the Mystery of the Church (which, of course, is the topic of Lumen Gentium’s first chapter).

Pope Leo seamlessly joins the two images when he exclaims: “This is the Church: the people of God who draw their existence from the body of Christ and who are themselves the body of Christ.” And he adds: “Indeed, it is Christ who, in giving His Body and His Blood, unites this people in Himself and in a definitive way.”

In effect, the Pope is here making his own the teaching Pope Benedict XVI put forth in his great apostolic exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis:

The Eucharist is Christ who gives himself to us and continually builds us up as his body. Hence, in the striking interplay between the Eucharist which builds up the Church, and the Church herself which “makes” the Eucharist, the primary causality is expressed in the first formula: the Church is able to celebrate and adore the mystery of Christ present in the Eucharist precisely because Christ first gave himself to her in the sacrifice of the Cross. The Church’s ability to “make” the Eucharist is completely rooted in Christ’s self-gift to her. (no. 14)

Pope Leo draws the simple but profound conclusion that “what really matters in the Church is to be grafted onto Christ, to be children of God by grace.” In the deepest sense of the word, what matters is to become Christian, transfigured in Christ! No wonder Leo told the Cardinals that “this journey is a process of life, of conversion, of renewal.”

The third significant fruit of Leo’s re-reading of chapter two of Lumen Gentium is to highlight the Church’s intrinsically missionary nature. He asserts: “Unified in Christ, Lord and Savior of every man and woman, the Church can never turn inwards on herself but is open to everyone and is for everyone.” However, not only “open to,” which ventures too little, remains still pre-Pentecostal.

Rather, the Church, Leo declares, “cooperating in Christ’s mission, is called upon to spread the Gospel everywhere and to everyone (cf. LG 17), so that every person may enter into contact with Christ.”

It is noteworthy that in this last quote, Pope Leo directs us to paragraph seventeen of the Constitution. In many circles, rightly concerned with dialogue among the world religions and with nonbelievers, much stress has been placed upon paragraph sixteen of Lumen Gentium. There, the fathers of Vatican II sought to sketch the “various ways those who have not yet accepted the Gospel are related to the people of God” (LG 16).

However, too often, grateful recognition of the presence of seeds of the Word in various religions has served after Vatican II not as a spur to evangelization but as a cause of complacency. Mission has been reduced to manifestations of mutual respect and cooperation in humanitarian endeavors. Now, surely, such attitudes and actions are far preferable to mutual hostility and intolerance. But they cannot exhaust, much less abrogate, the evangelical imperative enshrined in such New Testament texts as Matthew 28:19-20 – expressly cited at the beginning of paragraph seventeen of Lumen Gentium. “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Thus, Pope Leo’s focus and emphasis are not primarily upon paragraphs fourteen through sixteen, which enumerate the elements that unite Catholics with fellow Christians, Jews, and adherents of other religions. His stress is upon chapters thirteen and seventeen, which bracket and provide the intervening chapters with their proper interpretation and telos. Leo writes: “Thus, this people shows its catholicity, welcoming the wealth and resources of different cultures and, at the same time, offering them the newness of the Gospel to purify them and to raise them up [italics mine] (cf. LG, 13).”

Leo, of course, consistently resists equating unity with uniformity. Nonetheless, his predominant passion is unity–as his episcopal motto makes evident: In Illo Uno Unum. And if the Church father closest to his heart is without question Augustine of Hippo, a clear second is Irenaeus of Lyons. Indeed, it is Irenaeus who is referenced in paragraph 13 of Lumen Gentium which declares: “This note of universality, which adorns the people of God, is a gift of the Lord himself by which the Catholic Church effectively and continually seeks to recapitulate the whole of humanity, with all its riches, under Christ the Head, in the unity of his Spirit.”

And this Irenaean vision of “recapitulation” appears again in the very last sentence of chapter two of Lumen Gentium:

Thus the Church both prays and labors that the fulness of the whole world may pass into the people of God, the body of the Lord and the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that in Christ, the head of all, all honor and glory may be given the Creator and Father of all. (LG, 17)

So, Pope Leo’s exegesis of chapter two of Lumen Gentium helps remove the grime and restore the luster of one of the Council’s revolutionary documents. He shows that its true revolution lies in reclaiming the fullness of the Good News of what God has done, is doing, and will do in Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world. Christ alone is the Light of the nations.

Let me close with a note on the notes. Pope Leo, in his Audience address, included three brief but striking quotes. In the published text, the authors of those quotes are identified: they are three theologians who played a decisive role at the Council. Two of them were primary influences on Lumen Gentium itself. The three are Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and Joseph Ratzinger. One delights to discover that, not surprisingly, they also play a crucial role in Leo’s reading of the Council and his correction of its misreadings.