The Ecclesiology of Vatican II

Abstract

I have been asked to attempt something that I would not allow my graduate students to try: to treat a very large and complex question in a very short time. The difficulty, even impossibility, of the task is fairly obvious. Karl Rahner remarked that Vatican II, “in all of its sixteen constitutions, decrees, and declarations, was concerned with the Church.” At the time of the Council an effort was made to give coherence to its work by dividing its concerns under two great headings: the Ecclesia ad intra and the Ecclesia ad extra, a distinction which has its usefulness, as also its limits, but in any case does not lessen one’s work. The various conciliar documents were elaborated by distinct commissions, working at different rhythms, in the face of different problems and for different purposes, a lack of coordination and of systematic interest that was not entirely offset by the fact that on many of them the same experts played major roles (I think in particular of Msgr. Gérard Philips and of Fr. Yves Congar). Thus, for example, the Constitution on the Liturgy was completed before the Constitution on the Church and the latter before the Constitutions on Divine Revelation and on the Church in the Modern World. In addition, on more than a few matters, the Council deliberately chose not to settle important issues but instead to state their terms and to leave it to theologians and others to work out a more coherent reconciliation than was possible at the time. The Council also chose a rhetoric more discursive and allusive than the somewhat telegraphic language and argument characteristic of earlier councils. One might add to these difficulties others that would arise if one were to attempt to explicate the ecclesiology operative in the Council as an event.