On Ecclesiological Realism
Gerard Mannion (Georgetown University)
I. Introductory Remarks
Our ways of perceiving and understanding social entities give rise to practices and wider
worldviews that can come to dominate the actual life of that social entity and the people
within it. So such effects can be negative and positive alike and to varying degrees.
Whatever theological explanations of the church we choose to emphasize and privilege, it
is also undeniably a social entity. 1 Obviously ecclesiology has witnessed various
instances of change and development across time. Ecclesiology can be understood in
qualitatively differing ways vis-à-vis the contribution which such makes to the life and
mission of the church.
A core argument of this lecture is that the church will always gain so much to its
benefit from more existentially oriented and humble (both in existential and
epistemological terms) accounts of what the church is and what the church exists for.
Such ecclesiological approaches can therefore help influence and improve understanding
and exercise of specific ecclesial structures and practices complementary to this.2
Above all else, I wish to emphasize the need to further develop and encourage what I
shall call ecclesiological realism. I do not mean the type of realism encountered in, for
example, Augustine of Hippo’s pragmatic realism in relation to the Donatist crisis. Nor
1
Here see, for example, Lumen gentium, §12, 14, 20. Although Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes speaks of the
church transcending particular social structures and forms of social being etc., it nonetheless both implicitly
and explicitly recognizes the social nature and function of the church also. See, for example, chapter 4
especially, on the Church’s role in the ‘modern world’ and, in particular, §44, ‘Just as it is in the world's
interest to acknowledge the Church as an historical reality, and to recognize her good influence, so the
Church herself knows how richly she has profited by the history and development of humanity … Since the
Church has a visible and social structure as a sign of her unity in Christ, she can and ought to be enriched
by the development of human social life, not that there is any lack in the constitution given her by Christ,
but that she can understand it more penetratingly, express it better, and adjust it more successfully to our
times’. See, also, §58 on the church’s two-way interaction with various cultures and civilizations.
2
This lecture prepared for the Uppsala symposium remains in draft form (so the reader is asked to forgive
remaining imperfections). In it, I draw upon some of my writings elsewhere, particularly materials that will
be published in the near future (the paper as a whole is © the Author, 2016).
1
the somewhat pessimistic Christian realism outlined in Reinhold Niebuhr’s mid-twentieth
century writings. Nor, still should what I refer to as realism be mistaken for realpolitik.
Rather the ecclesiological realism I have in mind will be in the service of a constructive
and liberative ways of doing ecclesiology that are aspirational rather than primarily
reductive or pragmatic in character.
In what follows, I assume and build upon earlier work I have done on engaging in a
comparative approach to ecclesiology, particularly affirming those understandings of the
church shaped and informed by perspectives ‘from below’ as opposed to idealistic, even
totalizing ecclesiologies presumed to be uniform and normative whether pronounced
from hierarchichal structures of authority among church leadership or by no less
hierarchical assumptions on the part of particular academic schools of thought and the
perspectives and styles of certain scholars.
So after some preliminary reflections on method, I turn to consider one school of
thought which has and can continue to help inform the shaping of more constructive
conceptions of the church and so help both reflect and enhance the day to day realities of
life within and around the church for diverse peoples in differing contexts today. Finally I
touch upon one more specific and very positive example where ecclesiological realism is
taking shape before our very eyes in the present day. For the main part, I draw upon
examples from my own church tradition, Roman Catholicism, although much of what is
considered here has relevance for other churches in the Christian family of communities,
too.
II. Ecclesiology in Wider Interdisciplinary Contexts
I am opening up debates that have been explored in various differing ways and the have
been periodically the focus of multiple studies across recent decades and indeed, in
analogous forms across history. But the debates are still nonetheless important and
become pertinent still in ever-new ways in our times. How, then, can we best describe
and go about investigating, exploring and explaining the church in as well as for our
times? What conceptual tools, which methods and what frameworks might serve us best
2
here? Obviously, there are more numerous resources available than could possibly be
discussed fully in one single lecture. In the papers we have heard earlier and will hear
later and tomorrow, as well as in the splendid new collection, Ecclesiology in the
Trenches being launched today, we find a wealth of illuminating and diverse approaches
to reflect upon.
Perhaps what many of the most fruitful ecclesiological approaches share in
common is a commitment to honesty and frankness, alongside an embrace of
interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the church. The tools of the social sciences,
historical consciousness, organizational analysis, philosophical and particularly
epistemological frameworks can all be - and have been - employed to fruitful ends. One
of the key points which this lecture seeks to emphasize, which I go into in slightly more
detail in the Foreword to Ecclesiology in the Trenches, is that the discernment offered by
ethics in particular needs to play a major role in any exploration of the church.
While some voices in theology in recent decades have appeared perturbed by and
opposed to inter-disciplinary contributions,3 this ignores a reality that has always been
with the church. And this across different Christian denominations. Such opposition
frequently goes hand in hand with a more world-renouncing ecclesiological perspective .4
3
Fearing that such interdisciplinarity results in theological reductivism, see the discussion in Gerard
Mannion ‘Postmodern Ecclesiologies’ ch. 7 of The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, (eds.)
Gerard Mannion and Lewis S. Mudge, (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 127-52.
4
Although Tertullian (De praescriptione, VII) famously asked what Athens might have to do with
Jerusalem, or the ecclesia with the academy, the church’s resounding collective answer then, as since, was
clearly that they had a great deal to do with one another. In my own Roman Catholic tradition, we see that
Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes explicitly mentions the value of the social and historical sciences, alongside
other disciplines at §§5, 44, 53-54 and 62. The document also implicitly testifies to such value throughout.
However, of course prior to Vatican II many were very guarded about this cross-fertilization with other
intellectual, social and cultural developments (despite so much of the centralizing and overarching
ecclesiological writings of the 19th and 20th centuries demonstrating the very fruits of such crossfertilization in and of themselves, even when critiquing such crossing of the disciplines and learning from
the signs of the times. In the post-Vatican II era, many voices, in a variety of different churches, sought to
further isolate and bracket off theology from other disciplines, from wider social and cultural influences
still. For example in official Roman Catholic perspectives, to label a theological approach or specific
conclusion ‘sociological’, was often a pejorative judgment pointing toward reductivism and the rocky road
to relativism. Yet many persisted with interdisciplinary approaches and in trying to discern the
ecclesiological signs of widely differing times and contexts. We come somewhat full circle back to Vatican
II when interdisciplinary engagement is most recently reaffirmed in Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium, e.g.
3
Some such approaches have been more reticent or even diametrically opposed to
employing the social sciences in the service of theology and so have sought to fashion
alternative models and methods, albeit still requiring recourse to elements of
philosophical and indeed even social scientific theories in order to shape such a critique.5
There emerged more aggressively unapologetic forms of ‘apologetics’ that came to the
fore in theological circles across differing churches increasingly throughout the 1990s
and into our own century.6 In many such approaches the Christian narrative is perceived
as the only narrative in town that matters – all other attempts at explaining reality, social
or otherwise, fall short by comparison.
What much of the evidence across the global Christian community suggests to us
in recent times is that certain features and characteristics of older and more repressive
social imaginaries have, in recent decades, made a comeback across the church and
theology alike – however albeit with distinctly postmodern twists. Some influential
examples of these re-emphasized the division between the church and wider world. It
accentuates otherness in a pejorative sense. Shunning social visions based upon broader
mutuality and interdependence, they likewise effectively affirmed a retreat from the
wider social settings wherein Christians live out their daily forms of existence.
So, if one be permitted to paint in broad brush strokes here, the past four decades
or so has been a period of shifting ‘ecclesial imaginaries’ – in the one direction to try to
make the church more truly a sacramental presence ‘in’ the world, in the other direction
perceiving the need for the church to swim against the tide of that world.7 These ecclesial
§§40-41, just as the method and substance behind Francis’ Laudato Si’ (June 2015) further affirms such an
interdisciplinary approach.
5
In some theological circles, a version of this approach could be said to have developed further in a
distinctive direction with the postliberal attempts to employ aspects of the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
There was also overlap between such an approach and what came to be known as narrative theology in
some respects.
6
For a discussion of these developments, see, again, Mannion, ‘Postmodern Ecclesiologies’, particularly at
134-35, 136-142.
7
Naturally a wide variety of different perspectives and practices fall in-between these two ends of this
continuum. Our focus here is again heuristic in intention - we are not dealing in rigid ideal types in any
literal sense here. And this is not to downplay the significant advances in the articulation and practice of the
church’s social mission and its social teaching witnessed throughout this era. But an ambivalence (at best)
4
imaginaries have in turn been shaped by, complemented and in a number of ways
reflected shifts in wider social imaginaries of the period. But ecclesiology can work in the
opposite direction too.
For no matter what studies such as John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory
might have claimed, and contrary to the superioristic and condescending assumptions of
idealistic ecclesiologies of recent decades, ranging from those such as Stanley Hauerwas
to Joseph Ratzinger, in addition to the ecclesiological reflections of Milbank, himself, a
unidirectional understanding of positive influence between church and world is a fiction.
Ecclesiological realism informed by interdisciplinary perspectives can help
challenge both this fiction and counter other negative effects that have followed from the
type of ecclesiological idealism one can find in wide range of places elsewhere – and not
simply in the works of particular theologians but also even in the official teachings of
differing churches themselves.
The relationship between ecclesiology and other disciplines, human cultures and
perspectives then should never be understood in a uni-directional fashion as if official
church teaching can inform and help change the world yet the opposite is never the case.
Indeed, in general, we often build barriers and fences between academic disciplines in
artificial forms. There is certainly no reductivism entailed by such an interdisciplinary
approach, for the church has always, from the earliest times, drawn upon and learned
from wider cultural and intellectual gifts in order to assist it in its process of discerning
the truth that God has graciously self-communicated to the world that is God’s own
creation.8 If we take the latter word seriously, those gifts – from philosophy9 and the
towards the sense of the church as sacrament does thereby emerge in some of those very same teachings in
recent decades. At the same time that a world-renouncing motif influences much official ecclesiological
discourse, we nonetheless have a somewhat contradictory continued emphasis upon the sacramental
character of the church insofar as this pertains to social justice. One key problem here is that the former
negates the influence and efficacy of the latter to a great extent. The time and energy expended on the
liturgical translations in English in recent times offers a good example here. Such time and energy
expended throughout the church could and should have been directed more towards broadening, deepening
and enhancing the social mission of the church, alongside many other aspects of ecclesial life.
8
C.f. Lumen Gentium, chapter I, §§1-8.
5
social sciences,10 as well as myriad other sources, need to be perceived in various ways as
potentially being gifts from God, also. As the Dominican Thomas O’Meara has stated,
thereby illustrating the ubiquity of inter-disciplinary and wider socio-cultural and
intellectual factors in ecclesiology in general, ‘The study of the influence of metaphysical,
sociological or political frameworks in the history of the church is as large as the history
of ecclesiology’.11
Now we see through a glass darkly, but many lanterns along the journey help
illuminate our way. Without Hellenistic philosophy, the articulation of the core
Christological doctrines of the church would have proved very different indeed. Without
an analogical application of a particular social ‘theory’, so, also, would the doctrine of the
Trinity. Theology, that is discourse, by humans, about God and about God’s own word,
in response to divine ‘discourse’, so to speak, proceeds in and through dialogue. Indeed,
many forms of understanding and practicing church teaching authority and governance
throughout history have borrowed variously from the social and political theories and
practices in wider society. And this has been carried out in order to explicate and
facilitate the practice of wider ecclesial mindsets, structures and practices alike, including,
indeed, especially, in relation to teaching authority and ecclesial governance alike.
Obviously, sometimes this has been fruitful, sometimes those ‘borrowings’ have not been
from the most morally and socially good elements of wider society.
So, seeking to broaden our perspectives with the aid a variety of methods and tools is
a fruitful and well-established ecclesial undertaking. It is also necessary because wider
9
An incisive study here is Thomas F. O’Meara, ‘Philosophical Models in Ecclesiology’, Theological
Studies 39.1 (1978), 3-21. In broader and interdisciplinary terms still, c.f. the discussion in Stephen Bevans,
Models of Contextual Theology, esp. 28-35.
10
Two exhaustive albeit differing approaches to the study of the church that seek to employ historical and
social scientific perspectives in the service of ecclesiology throughout are Roger Haight, Christian
Community in History, 3 vols., (New York and London, Continuum, 2004-2008) and Neil Ormerod, Reenvisioning the Church: An Experiment in Systematic-Historical Ecclesiology, (New York, Fortress Press,
2014). One useful introductory survey of the wider contextual settings of the church is Curt Cadorette,
Catholicism in Social and Historical Contexts: an Introduction, (Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2009). As we shall
see in later chapters, the more explicitly political sciences have also been fruitfully employed in the study
of ecclesiology and with specific application to that of magisterium.
11
O’Meara, ‘Philosophical Models in Ecclesiology’, 20.
6
social and cultural factors – including religious belief systems along with their attendant
moral and value systems obviously have an impact on human individual lives and
communities. These social and cultural factors themselves obviously undergo on-going
change (including due to religious and axiological factors) - with both differing contexts
and the passage of time having an enormous impact upon such change.12
Therefore, while we can take a given the importance of the theological backdrop
to and implications of any understanding of the church – both in theory and practice – for
the day-to-day life of Christian communities of these times and of the future. But
theology never takes place in a vacuum.
So, let us here consider but a few issues and examples pertaining to what might help
us to look at ecclesiology differently and in more constructive ways for our times. As
ever, this always entails something of a going back to the future and relearning lessons
that could and should have been absorbed more widely throughout churches much earlier.
There is wide variety of different approaches are instructive and could prove most
fruitful for explorations into better understanding the church for our time. I wish also to
emphasize that differing ways of conceiving what the church is also entail very differing
ways of practicing ecclesiology and therefore qualitatively different social and ethical
consequences both within the church and in the wider world. I also wish to argue that
differing ways of understanding the church are inseparably bound up with cultural
contexts and this remains nonetheless true, indeed is often especially so demonstrated,
even when those who hold to such ways seek to assert that they transcend such contexts
and have a universal reach and relevance across time and geographical space alike.
In the time available today, what I can touch upon here will obviously not be
anything remotely like an exhaustive methodological list but rather but a few aspects of
some thought-provoking approaches that might offer various pathways for understanding
12
Obviously the understanding of shared social being and practices, as well as of the norms and mores
valued collectively will undergo periods of transformation, development and change just as much. Systems
of beliefs and values are rarely neatly demarcated in the story of human communities. Indeed, often the
sense of there even being a systematic form and character only comes much further down their
developmental line and is usually somewhat artificially imposed for the sake of greater understanding and
engagement with the most important ‘ingredients’ that are brought together to build such a system.
7
the church and better discerning its nature and purpose in a more fruitful and positive
fashion for our times. There are so many other ways and means, also and, again, an
impressive range of these feature in Ecclesiology in the Trenches.
Not every advance in ecclesiology needs to be or in fact proves to be a stunning
innovation. In fact a majority of the most important advances in ecclesioogy across the
history of the church have often reflected an engagement with the past, albeit in perhaps
innovative ways, in order to help better understand the ecclesial present and to better
inform and shape for the better the ecclesial future.
The notion of paradigm shift has been utilized by a number of theologians,13 as well
as the ongoing discourse about transformations in historical consciousness and the
development and fluctuations in both theological and historical method. Among the more
prominent shifts discussed in the literature is that from classical and organic worldviews
to historically-conscious perceptions, and from deductive reasoning to inductive
reasoning.14
Then there are wider general theological explorations of these developments,
including the implications for practical theology. 15 These also prove instructive for
developing ecclesiological realism.16 All these are complementary to the approach we
13
Below and in subsequent chapters we will encounter T. Howland Sanks’ groundbreaking study from
1974 - Authority in the Church - which applied the notion of paradigm shift to church teaching authority
itself.
14
Again as charted in Catholic theology by Bernard Lonergan, amongst others and applied so successfully
to, for example, social teaching by Charles E. Curran and to systematic theology by those such as Robert
Doran and Roger Haight who has also sought to develop a comparative ecclesiology along these lines.
Lonergan, himself, of course, discussed the employment of historical analysis with regard to theology and
particularly with regard to doctrine and dogma. Most notably although far from exclusively in his Method
in Theology.
15
Outlined in the works of, for example, David Tracy and Michael Lawler.
16
John O’Malley has illustrated very well how differing notions of history even impact upon
understandings and practices pertaining to ecclesial authority which connect directly with teaching as well
as other forms. C.f. John W. O’Malley, ‘Reform, Historical Consciousness, and Vatican II’s
Aggiornamento’, Theological Studies, 32 (1971), 573–601. See, also, the method employed in and
discussions of the understanding of change in the church as an historical event and process in John
O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II?,( Cambridge, MS, Harvard University Press, 2008), developing
the approach of O’Malley’s earlier essay 'Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?', Theological Studies 67
(2006), 3-33.
8
wish to take here and indeed have had a significant impact upon the shaping of that
approach.
But it is not just about history for, as we have been and will continue to hear
throughout our two days together, it is equally about social, political, intellectual and
ethnographic approaches and factors. It is also about taking a longer range and wider
vision with regard to morality, particularly with regard to how ecclesiology and more
specifically magisterium have been shaped and practiced vis-à-vis the church’s own
moral and especially social teachings. This in two senses – appreciating where the
practice of magisterium has fallen far short of the church’s own moral and social
traditions and, second, exploring some areas where the practice of magisterium might be
improved so as to be shaped by and reflect those traditions all the better.
Such an approach, again helps militate against a deductive, organic and seamless
hermeneutic of continuity because the evidence demands nothing less.
In addition to the need to be attentive to historical consciousness as well as to
philosophical and particularly epistemological approaches, I wish to elaborate upon how
vitally important it is that due attentiveness be given to the social and political contexts of
ecclesiology, including those approaches illuminated by ethnographic approaches. Indeed,
these differing perspectives can often be combined and are complementary. As Michael
Lawler has stated, ‘The social sciences and theology are not isolated from, but
inseparably bound to, one another, in as much as they derive from the same sociohistorical matrix’.17
And so many scholars have embraced and openly utilized the social sciences in
various fruitful and constructive ways.18 Critical social analysis is necessitated by the
17
Michael G. Lawler, What is and What Ought to Be: the Dialectic of Experience, Theology and Church,
New York and London, Continuum, 2005, 61.
18
In particular, there have been various applications made of social constructionism in the church, and
theologians such as Gregory Baum have made great use of this and other sociological theories in seeking to
make sense of the church. See, for example, his Essays in Critical Theology, (Kansas, MO, Sheed and
Ward, 1994) - Baum blends critical social theory and liberation theology in an especially thoughtful and
practically fruitful manner. A further example of direct relevance to our discussion topics here is by
Michael G. Lawler, What is and What Ought to Be: the Dialectic of Experience, Theology and Church,
(New York and London, Continuum, 2005), who discusses the ‘Sociology of Knowledge and Theology’ in
9
theological (and particularly eschatological) need to make sense of the sin and death from
which the good news saves. The social structures of sin must be analyzed: ‘Thus theology
itself calls for critical social analysis. Sociology here enters into the very constitution of
theology’.19
The social construction of reality is a topic that received an increasing amount of
attention in the second half of the twentieth century.20 Such essentially involves a set of
theories about the various ways in which we collectively shape and give existence to our
shared worlds, our ways and means of relating to one another, the processes and habits,
the concepts and forms of knowledge that govern our interactions and how such become
habituated through these processes and thereby become institutionalized over time. This
in turn shapes the knowledge and beliefs about our social reality itself. Such theories
have been considerably developed in various directions since. There are numerous ways
in which those working within the various theological disciplines and sub-disciplines
have sought to make use of such theories.
In an approach to ecclesiology that is attentive to realism, we embark upon an
attempt to consider certain implications of the social construction of ecclesial reality and,
in turn, the ecclesially-informed and shaped social construction of significant aspects of
our wider shared reality. By the first of these categories, I mean ways and means of
interacting, along with the accompanying discourse, conceptual frameworks and
knowledge that impact upon how we perceive and therefore how we actually relate to and
live out ecclesial life. By the second category, I refer to the ways in which our ecclesial
particular at 44-67. There have also been many attempts to apply such social scientific theories to
scholarship concerning the Bible and the history of the early church, just as there have been various
applications of such to later periods of church history, particularly the modern and contemporary periods.
The late Presbyterian scholar and noted ecumenist, Lewis S. Mudge offers a further example of a fruitful
and inter-disciplinary approach to ecclesiological questions. See, for example, his The Sense of a People:
Toward a Church for the Human Future, (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992) and Rethinking
the Beloved Community; Ecclesiology, Hermeneutics, Social Theory, (Geneva, WCC Publications and
University Press of America, 2001). See, again, Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, 3 vols, and
Neil Ormerod, Reenvisioning the Church.
19
Gregory Baum, ‘Sociology and Salvation’ Theological Studies (1989), 719-43, at 742. Realism informed
by a liberationist perspective. More of this to come.
20
The classic work is by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A
Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1966).
10
modes of being and our beliefs impact our wider being in the world and our belonging or
otherwise to additional social groups and communities. This approach can, of course, be
applied to wider ecclesiological viewpoints and modes of ecclesial being. Hence the
realism generated by such reflective engagement is twofold.
Particular forms of ecclesiological presumptions and structures can function as parts
of an ecclesial a ‘social imaginary’ – some forms of these can prove detrimental to the
life of the ecclesial communities affected by such an imaginary, but they can also prove
very positive and constructive for ecclesial life.
Taking the fruits of such approaches collectively, we can better discern that, how and
why ecclesiology has a history, that it undergoes change and development and, at times,
radical transformation both in relation to how it is perceived and understood and in
relation to how it is practiced. There are many significant ecclesial as well as wider social
consequences to such facts and particularly so when one particular understanding of the
church prevails. I now turn to one prominent approach to ecclesiology that has taken
onboard such a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding and shaping the life of
ecclesial communities and, in doing so, has embraced a thoroughgoing ecclesiological
realism.
III. The Realism of Liberation Ecclesiology
And in looking for one particular methodological approach that might help us to further
develop ecclesiological realism for our times, we do not have to delve especially far back
into the past at all. A thoroughgoing realism permeates the very foundations of this
approach which has deep-rooted origins in Latin America, whose Catholic bishops, in
1968, addressed ‘First world’ abuses and tackled head-on the issue of institutionalized
violence, while in 1979 they announced that famous call ‘for conversion on the part of
11
the whole church to a preferential option for the poor, an option aimed at their integral
liberation’.21
But liberation theology was to offer not just a critique of society, however, but
also of the church and of the power structures and oppression within it. Indeed that 1979
statement from Puebla itself is one charged with an ecclesiological vision and assertive of
ecclesiological priorities.
Let us briefly consider some of the core themes in liberation ecclesiology in order
to help appreciate its influence upon a more recent vision for the church. In doing so, we
find surprising parallels at every turn. T. Howland Sanks and Brian Smith summarize the
key components of such an approach to ecclesiology as follows,
‘the main characteristics of the ecclesiology of liberation theology are (1) the
affirmation of the universal salvific will, (2) the consequent “uncentering” of the
Church in the work of salvation-liberation, (3) understanding the Church as the
reflectively conscious part of humanity, whose function is to be a sign to the rest
of humanity, (4) the specification of this function always in terms of the concrete
historical realities in which the Church finds itself, and hence (5) the necessity for
an analysis of the society's socio-political-economic situation’.22
It is an approach to understanding and empowering the church that does not focus on
hierarchical categories or older symbols that accentuate the power and authority of the
institutional church and its key leaders.23
Sanks and Smith help further unpack the realism that permeates the character of
liberation ecclesiology in highlighting its contention that human beings are not created to
21
CELAM III (1979). It is generally agreed that the singlemost significant event for the emergence of
liberation theology was that earlier 1968 assembly of the Latin American Roman Catholic Bishops’
Conference - Conferencia Episcopal Latinoamericana (CELAM) at Medellín, Columbia, in 1968.
22
T. Howland Sanks and Brian H. Smith, ‘Liberation Ecclesiology: Praxis, Theory, Praxis,’ Theological
Studies 38/1 (March 1977): 3-38 at 15.
23
Elsewhere, I have suggested that ‘Liberation theology realises that, sufficiently transformed from the
sinful ways present throughout its own structures and ways, the church can be one of the most powerful
agents for human liberation and for building that kingdom. In essence, liberation ecclesiology seeks an
understanding and structure of church that is non-hierarchical, viewing all leadership purely in terms of
and as service to the community’, Mannion, ‘Liberation Ecclesiologies’, 426.
12
join the church, rather the church came into being to serve humanity ergo (drawing on the
ecclesiology of Juan Luis Segundo) ‘the Church is part of humanity, not some entity over
against humanity’.24 Furthermore, ‘the Christian must be open to and engage in analysis
of the political, economic, and cultural situation in which the Church is to function as a
sign. The Church has something to learn from the world as well as something to
contribute’.25 Indeed, the incarnation impresses upon the church an obligation to fashion
a radically transformative and salvific ethics, and so, citing Segundo in part, ‘the Church
is called upon to “adopt a deeper moral attitude,” a morality that is creative, progressive,
and social, directed toward building the human community, rather than a moral attitude
preoccupied with “wanting to know how we (individually) will be judged.” All our
actions and attitudes should be concerned with the other person's salvation, not our
own’.26
It is thus that doctrine serves the pastoral mission of the church and not the other
way around. Doctrine must never stand in the way of the dialogue and cooperation
between the wider world and the church, ‘The Church's doctrines should not be an
obstacle to this dialogue, because they are open-ended and by their very structure admit
of being questioned’.27 Sanks and Smith further analyse the ecclesiology of Gustavo
Gutiérrez,28 in which the prominent themes of focus include the emphasis upon the fact
that the church does not stand over and above the world but rather exists in its midst and
in the midst of historical and political reality to serve humanity and bring about liberative
salvation through the building of the kingdom, ‘This integral relationship between
24
Sanks and Smith, ‘Liberation Ecclesiology’, 8. They are drawing, in particular, upon Juan Luis Segundo,
The Community Called Church, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, NY.: Orbis, 1974).
25
Ibid., 10, see Segundo, Community Called Church, 99.
26
Ibid., Segundo, Community Called Church, 110-111.
27
Ibid., 11, Segundo, 126.
28
Gustavo Gutiérrez, S.J., A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, Salvation, tr. and ed. Sister Caridad
Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1973). Note Aguilar also discusses and indeed contrasts
the differing formative contexts for Segundo and Gutiérrez as well as their specific methdological
approaches.
13
liberation from sin and political, social, and economic liberation has obvious
consequences for the self-understanding of the Church and its mission’.29
Sanks and Smith sum up how realism is such a very significant methodological
feature of liberation ecclesiology in the following terms,
‘Influenced by Paulo Freiré, Segundo and Gutiérrez begin with the social situation
in which the Church finds itself existentially. Instead of beginning with
magisterial statements or documents from the tradition and coming to some
essentialist understanding of the Church's nature, they begin with an analysis of
the needs of the society, the political, economic, and cultural setting, and from
this move to the structures and procedures the Church should follow in such a
context. The Church is a function of the society, not some entity from another
culture, time, or place’.30
I suggest a similar ecclesiological realism can be seen to permeate the ecclesiological
vision and priorities of approach of a much more recent major figure in the story of
global Christianity. It is to that more recent ecclesiological vision and figure I now turn.
IV. Embracing Ecclesiological Realism for Our Times: the Vision of Pope Francis
So what might a preference for ecclesiological realism look like in practice in more
recent times still? Here, Roman Catholicism offers a pertinent example that is unfolding
before our very eyes. For those words just cited reflect what are now self-evident
ecclesiological truths that seem to have been embraced clearly by a certain Jorge
Bergoglio, and regardless at what stage of his own ministry such an embrace took place,
it nonetheless took place. Now, as Pope Francis, they are also clearly ecclesiological
truths and guiding principles that have left a deep imprint on his major teachings to date.
Indeed, a refreshing ecclesiological realism is a vital characteristic of the
ecclesiological vision of Pope Francis. This pope clearly does not hold an idealist vision
of a pure church free of blemishes. Far from it. He is astonishingly refreshing in
29
30
Sanks and Smith, ‘Liberation Ecclesiologies’, 14.
Sanks and Smith, “Liberation Ecclesiology’, 38.
14
acknowledging just how much of a mess the church is in – including, especially its
central offices and leadership. There is no pretense that somehow the church itself and
the messy fallible humans who constitute its people can somehow be separated. He
knows drastic structural and existential change is necessary. And he has set about
implementing such (this is something he has brought with him from the lessons learned
during his episcopal ministry in Argentina).
If we consider the roots of Pope Francis’ ecclesiological realism, we are drawn
back to the surprising enduring value of that theological approach that some critics had
long dismissed as passé. For it is in the theology of liberation that we find the roots of
Francis’ ecclesiological realism. And in liberation ecclesiology we find an approach
which by default encourages not only interdiscplinarity in our attempts to understand the
church but also the most thoroughgoing down to earth approach of an ecclesiology from
below. Here all of us working in ecclesiology may actually find further refreshing
resources long into the future.
Liberation ecclesiology lies also at the root of many other ecclesiological
approaches, from feminist ecclesiologies to black ecclesiologies, to the ecclesiological
perspectives of oppressed minorities, to the contextual ecclesiologies of oppressed
indigenous peoples and beyond. Pope Francis shares the same ecclesiological foundations
as these other liberative understandings of the church. There are profound pastoral and
ultimately liberative implications of such common heritage.
And while there has been much made of the idiosyncrasies of the forms of
liberation theology that emerged in Argentina during the formative years of the young
Jesuit Jorge Bergoglio and the battles over differing approaches that continued beyond
into his episcopal ministry, as well as much being made of the fluctuating relationship
between Bergoglio, liberation theology and its different proponents in Argentina,
including the notion of the ‘theology of the people’,31 what seems actually clear is that
31
Space does not permit a full treatment of those debates here but see, e.g. see Austen Ivereigh, The Great
Reformer, (New York: Henry Holt, 2014), 110-114, 122-123, 184-186, 190-197; Paul Vallely, Pope
Francis: Untying the Knots (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 41-61; 132-141, Aguilar, Pope
15
Bergoglio the priest, the bishop and Francis the pope owe a great deal to the fundamental
tenets of classical liberation theology. And, perhaps above all else, the ecclesiological
themes that emerged from liberation theology have left their imprint on the ecclesiology
of Pope Francis, too.32 This is most evident of all in that commitment to what the
classical liberation theologians termed orthopraxis. This is further illustrated by then
Cardinal Bergoglio’s deep influence on the fifth key meeting of the CELAM bishops in
2007, the final document of which is cited frequently by Francis in his very first major
teaching document, November 2013’s Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium.33
When one examines that earlier document, the links between the ecclesiological
vision of the evolving liberation theology from the late 1960s and 1970s and the cardinal
who became pope are clear, in particular the priority of orthopraxis. As one of Francis
biographers illustrates, ‘Aparecida’s final document was written with the help of
Bergoglio’s strong hand, a document that emphasises the service and mission of the
Church and gives a secondary role to the expansion or self-reflection of the Church’.34 In
other words, pastoral realism to be prioritized over narrow churchy evangelism and
dogmatic and purely abstract ecclesiology.
Throughout Evangelii Gaudium, Francis’ intentions to shift the focus of the
institutional church toward an emphasis upon the priority of pastorally-oriented practice
seems to be indistinguishable from the understanding of that vitally central concept for
liberation theology in general of orthopraxis. It therefore can also be interpreted as one of
Francis, 9-34, offers a nuanced overview of differing reactions to the emergent liberation theology across
Latin America, including in Argentina.
32
On liberation ecclesiology in general see, for example, Gerard Mannion ‘Liberation Ecclesiology’, ch. 23
of Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, (eds.) Mannion and Mudge, 2007, 425-46.
33
Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, (November 24th, 2013),
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazioneap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html.
34
Aguilar, Pope Francis, 34. See, also, 130, ‘A day after his appointment as president of the writing
commission for Aparecida, Bergoglio presided at the Eucharist with all the bishops and spoke quietly about
his own interpretation of the general theme of the meeting: a Church that would not focus on herself and
her self-sufficiency, but a Church that would reach out to every periphery, accepting an invitation to
mission. This theme became central in the final document, even after group deliberations that were
completely free and to which everyone was able to contribute’. Further parallels with the substance of
Evangelii Gaudium are discernible at 130-131.
16
many affirmations of the methods and achievements of liberation theology that we find in
his statements and teachings to date.
So, within just months of his election as Bishop of Rome, Bergoglio set out to
address multiple aspects of the crises the church has faced in recent times, and he
articulated his ecclesiological realism in multiple ways in Evangelii Gaudium, he calls for
a church that realizes it must not become obsessed with doctrinal minutiae and alienating
lines in the sand. Rather the gospel is about responding to the love of God in like kind.
On a vital number of long-divisive ecclesiological issues the document is clear and
unambiguous.35
Evangelii Gaudium clearly acknowledges that the church is a social entity and
that its institutional forms and practices can be deficient (points made also in many of his
frequent homilies, audiences, interviews and other addresses). Francis states that ‘There
are ecclesial structures which can hamper efforts at evangelization, yet even good
structures are only helpful when there is a life constantly driving, sustaining and
assessing them’ (§26).
The change that Francis knows is necessary in the church entails a radical
overhaul of magisterium in theory and practice. Francis envisions a church that teaches
with authority only for the sake of putting the gospel into practice in an open and
dialogical fashion. If people are leaving the church, that suggests a fault on the part of the
church and therefore on the part of its shepherds and leaders.36
Church doctrines, structures, organization, ministries and offices exist to serve the
gospel and the world, not the other way around. In Evangelii Gaudium Francis even
35
Although nobody would wish to downplay that there are ambivalent sections to the document and mixed
messages contained therein as we have heard from Francis in other contexts.
36
E.g. §63, ‘We must recognize that if part of our baptized people lack a sense of belonging to the Church,
this is also due to certain structures and the occasionally unwelcoming atmosphere of some of our parishes
and communities, or to a bureaucratic way of dealing with problems, be they simple or complex, in the
lives of our people. In many places an administrative approach prevails over a pastoral approach, as does a
concentration on administering the sacraments apart from other forms of evangelization’.
17
states boldly that ‘The papacy and the central structures of the universal Church also need
to hear the call to pastoral conversion’. 37
In Evangelii Gaudium, Francis warns against a ‘spiritual worldliness’ and speaks
of how ‘to avoid it by making the Church constantly go out from herself, keeping her
mission focused on Jesus Christ, and her commitment to the poor’.38 Likewise, he warns
against ‘a nostalgia for structures and customs which are no longer life-giving in today’s
world’.39 Everything must be understood not in the framework of rigid doctrine and
canon law but rather in terms of a ‘missionary key’.40
Like John XXIII, Jorge Bergoglio, it seems, is someone whose ministry has been
shaped by reflecting at length upon his own mistakes in the past and the signs to date
clearly suggest that he has learned from them. Those valuable lessons he has brought
with him to the Casa Santa Marta.41.42 This, too, is indicative of ecclesiological realism in
multiple ways.
So Francis prefers an ecclesiological realism, acknowledging the reality of the
messiness of the church (alongside its gifts and charisms as well). When he apologizes
for mistakes the church has made, he apologizes for the church and does not attempt
some neo-scholastic mental gymnastics to try and protect some imagined pure and
pristine institution which can never be at fault, as was the case when then Cardinal
Ratzinger urged John Paul II not to make a millennium apology on behalf of the church,
but rather to make the distinction of apologizing for failings on the part of individuals
within the church rather than the church itself. Francis has apologized for an enormous
range of failings on the church’s part, from its handling of the abuse crisis to its
37
Evangelii Gaudium, §32.
Evangelii Gaudium, §97.
39
Ibid., §108.
40
§§33-34.
41
Something also evident in his responses gathered in the collection, Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio
Rubin, Pope Francis: His Life in His Own Words, (New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2013, originally pub.
2010).
42
http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview. See, also, Piqué, Pope Francis, 61-93 and Ivereigh,
Pope Francis: the Great Reformer, 84-123 and Vallely, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots, esp. ch. 6, ‘What
Changed Bergoglio?’, 128-147, especially 131-132.
38
18
exploitation of indigenous peoples; 43 from its involvement in the persecution of
Waldensians, to that of Pentecostals in 1930s Italy, to members of others churches and
faiths for the Roman Catholic Church’s failings toward them also. He has outlined how
his church must share its part of the blame for why ecumenism has not made greater
progress.
In one of the most evocative passages from Evangelii Gaudium – a passage that is
among the most suggestive of his ecclesiological vision and priorities of all, he laments at
how it could not be a news story that a homeless person dies on the streets and yet a twopoint drop in the stock exchange somehow is. He has made his priorities as clear as
possible. This was a passage that was quickly cited around the globe and captured the
attention of so many,
‘I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on
the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from
clinging to its own security. I do not want a Church concerned with being at the
centre and which then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and
procedures. If something should rightly disturb us and trouble our consciences, it
is the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength,
light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community
of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life. More than by fear of
going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up
within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make
us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people
are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: “Give them something to eat”
(Mk 6:37).’44
43
See, for example, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pope-francis-apologises-forcatholic-crimes-against-indigenous-peoples-during-the-colonisation-of-the-americas-10380319.html,
http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2015/07/09/pope-francis-apologizes-for-exploitation-of-native-peoplescalls-for-economic-justice/.
44
Ibid., §49.
19
I want to suggest that these priorities – which can be summed as being indicative of an
ecclesiology driven first and foremost by liberative orthopraxis, help explain each and
every one of Francis’ subsequent areas of focus and therefore his vision of the church in
general – a church of and for the poor lies at the heart of his ecclesiology in every respect.
Everything else serves that priority because the gospel has that priority itself.
Indeed, we have seen both frankness and refreshing honesty in the open critique
with which Francis has been describing the failings within the church and among its
leaders and ministers in particular. Yet intransigent and reactionary forces remain
prevalent in all too many ecclesial quarters. The challenges ahead are still very great
indeed.
V. Concluding Remarks: Realism Driving Ecclesiological Revolution
Karl Rahner once famously predicted that the church at the end of the twentieth century
now had to face the challenge of becoming truly a global church (or otherwise faith a
long march into a sectarian, ghettoized form of existence).45 The post-Vatican II church
must, by necessity realize the world had become so radically different a place from that
which had shaped the ecclesiological thinking up to and, still for many council fathers,
throughout that council between 1962-65. Rahner therefore spoke, among other priorities,
of the need for a declericalized church, a church with open doors (comfortable with fluid
boundaries), one that is concerned with serving, that stands up for the poor and for justice
and freedom,46 a church that offers morality without moralizing, which has ‘concrete
directives’ and ‘real’ (and socially relevant and transformative) spirituality. Furthermore,
it must become ever more an ecumenical church, a ‘Church from the Roots’, 47 a
democratized church and a socio-critical church. Again, realism permeates each and
every one of Rahner’s priorities for the coming global church he then spoke of.
45
Karl Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come (London: SPCK, 1974), see, especially, 93.
On the latter see, for example, 62-63.
47
Ibid., 108.
46
20
Rahner’s vision, of course was addressed primarily to Roman Catholicism but could
equally be applicable in so many ways to many other denominations. 48 But the
ecclesiological realism that is demonstrated by Rahner’s prophetic vision for the church
here is also being realized today in the very ministry of the Bishop of Rome, himself.
My good friend and colleague, Peter Phan, has previously written about a
‘Copernican revolution in ecclesiology’ – a revolution brought about by the churches of
the global south and one which he warned must be embraced by those of the global ‘north’
if they are not to drastically decline further.49 This is a revolution that shifts from a core
focus on the institutional church – an ecclesiocentric vision, to one that focuses on the
kingdom, with the church in the service of building that reign of God on earth. Perhaps
the word revolution raises fear and uncertainty among some in the church and yet it need
not do so. In Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis spoke of the incarnation as a revolution of
tenderness. A new way of being church has already been set in motion. As with those
halcyon days of the aftermath of Vatican II it is only the people at the grassroots of the
church who can make this vision real and lasting – Pope Francis gets this and one senses
he is willing all throughout the church to bring about an ecclesial revolution of tenderness
for our times and for the church of tomorrow.
It is beyond doubt Pope Francis demonstrates a very healthy and refreshing
ecclesiological realism that reflects that of Jorge Bergoglio’s own mature pastoral
ministry itself. A realism learned all too often the hard way. This may be the greatest gift
that his ministry brings to the church. Although overcoming division runs constantly
throughout his many statements – it is clearly not by ignoring genuine differences and
divisions – rather these must be confronted and overcome in creative ways.
48
See, also, Karl Rahner, “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II”, Theological
Studies, 40, no. 4 (1979): 716-727, which Phan himself draws upon in Phan, In Our Own Tongues, 3.
49
Peter Phan, ‘A New Way of Being Church: Perspectives from Asia’, chapter 14 of in Governance,
Accountability and the Future of the Church eds. Francis Oakley and Bruce Russet, (New York,
Continuum, 2003, 178-90). See, also, Peter C. Phan, Christianity With an Asian Face: American Theology
in the Making, (Maryknoll, Orbis, 2003.
21
Ecclesiological realism is not possible without a long range view of the Christian
tradition and therefore, also, of ecclesiology – above all of the fact that there are different
ways of conceiving and understanding the church and many of these are more positive
and constructive than the ways in which the church has been understood in much of the
modern and especially the contemporary eras.
Francis encourages the ‘harmony of multiple voices’ and endorses pluralism in
cultural but crucially also religious and theological forms. Ergo he also endorses it in
terms of ecclesiology and here, again, is a further lesson from liberation theology. As
Sanks and Smith concluded, ‘Pluralism in ecclesiology is no more unthinkable than
pluralism in theology in general. A plurality of ecclesiologies may be mutually
illuminating. It may be the function of liberation theology to nudge us in this direction’.50
Realism about the plurality we find everywhere in the world today. Clearly Pope
Francis, building on the legacy of liberation theology, is doing so much more than
nudging us in this direction.
This should all encourage others throughout the many parts of the church to explore
the ‘long range view’ anew. The time has come to replace long-worn and divisive
paradigms of the church (no matter how pervasive this became throughout the church and
beyond) with ways of understanding and practicing what it is to be church that will reenergize the church and its mission for new times and new challenges ahead.
Christian Churches today cannot return to an imposed, normative, one size fits all
ecclesiological blueprint rolled out across the church. Rather a dispositional framework
that accentuates the openness of the church, its welcoming, compassionate and loving
character by default. This is what Pope Francis is emphasizing. A marked shift away
from the punitive and legalistic centralization of recent decades has clearly begun. Many
will not like that but it was inevitable and desperately necessary.
Yes, the test for the fruits of ecclesiological realism will quite rightly involve the
assessment of what substantial and long term changes are forthcoming in any particular
50
T. Howland Sanks and Brian H. Smith, ‘Liberation Ecclesiology: Praxis, Theory, Praxis,’ Theological
Studies 38/1 (March 1977): 3-38 at 38.
22
ecclesial culture and structures once ecclesiological realism has been embraced. For
example, it’s not enough to talk about love, mercy and compassion and yet leave in place
the conditions for the possibility of a return to a church of cold individualistic piety that
makes little difference in the real world. I hope and believe we can rediscover the courage
to own doubts openly in the church today and long into the future. Such will facilitate all
the more those constructive visions that seeks to prioritize the pastorally and socially
oriented visions for being church. Ecclesiological realism is an essential prerequisite for
this to happen. It’s time for ecclesiology to get real.
23