the 
Church 

In our day 
A collective pastoral of the 

American hierarchy 

on the mystery of the Church, 

on her nature and function, 

prepared in the light 

of the Dogmatic Constitution 

on the Church 

adopted by Vatican Council II 

and of certain 

doctrinal problems of the hour 

Approved by the Catholic Bishops of the United States at 
their meeting in Washington, D.C., November, 1967 for 
publication January 21, 1968 



©UNITED STATES CATHOLIC CONFERENCE 1968 

United States Catholic Conference 

1312 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20005 



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Foreword 

IN response to the needs of the hour and, in Pope John 
words, alive to the "rhythm of the times," the Bish 
the United States have undertaken this year to address 
selves to a major doctrinal statement on the Church. 

The format for this collective pastoral letter is a dep 
from the customary statements of the American hie" 
Specifically it is to be a doctrinal exposition on the 
development of the American Church in the light of 
Council II. The principal document interpreted in the 
letter is the doctrinal Constitution on the Church. It und 
this commentary in addressing itself to areas of sped 
cern to the Church in the United States in our day. As i 
name implies, the pastoral letter is intended to have as i 
objective and as its guiding principle the care of souls 

In an age where questions concerning the "charis 
and "institutional" elements of the Church are of mom 
a time when the essentials of priestly life and religious 
tion are freely discussed, in these days when freedom 
science and religious authority come often into conve 
it is thought not only prudent but necessary that the A" 
Bishops present the considered, extended statement on 
trinal matters underlying the present discussions. 

At a time when faith is challenged on many side 
especially necessary to remind all the people of God 
need for continued, strong and devoted love for Christ's 
This is particularly appropriate in the Year of Faith, 
ness of that Church to the presence of Christ in the wo 
light to us and to all men of Christ's saving grace amon 



itness can only be expressed if it is seen, felt and lived 
visible Church — the evidence of Christ's incarnation in 
y-

rith this in mind the Bishops of the United States make a 
plea for a renewal among God's people of that love for 

lurch that has so characterized the faithful of all ages. 
is their hope that this present pastoral letter will con-

j to that renewal. • 

Hi JOHN F. DEARDEN, D.D. 
President, 
National Conference of 
Catholic Bishops 

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CONTENTS 
Foreword / 3 

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT / 7 

Chapter I THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH / I I 
Problem of God and Problem of Church / 13 
What Is the Church / 14 
The Church as One / 17 
The Church as Community / 18 
Images of the Church / 20 
Social Implications / 23 

Chapter II THE STRUCTURE OF THE CHURCH / 25 
Hidden Grace, Visible Church / 26 
The Unicity of the Church / 28 
Catholicity of the Church / 30 
I. THE LAITY / 32 
The Layman's Witness / 35 
II. THE PRIESTHOOD / 38 
Relation of Priests to Renewal / 39 
Crisis in Present Priestly Life / 42 

1. Relevance / 43 
2. Loneliness / 45 
3. Apartness / 48 

Special Witness of Religious / 50 
III. THE EPISCOPACY / 52 
The Ministry of Bishops / 54 
Collegiality: Continuity of Present with Past / 56 
Church as a Family / 57 
The Local Church / 59 
Teaching Office of Church and Bishops / 61 
Freedom in the Church / 64 
Freedom and Authority / 66 
Infallibility in the Church / 69 
Religious Assent / 71 

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS / 73 
God's Providence / 75 
Love of the Church / 77 

5 





Introductory Statement 

THE Church of Christ is living today a privileged hour. Seldom 
in her long history has there been so much to do, so many new 
possibilities for everything except that mediocrity which Pius 
XI, in the early moments of this hour, repudiated for all 
Christians. 

We see not only the glory but also the burden of this 
privileged hour. We share the concern of all those who experi-
ence the promise and the concomitant uncertainties of this 
moment. Our deep love for the Church and all her people makes 
us long to do more, yearn to serve better, wish that we had 
fewer limitations and were more like to Jesus of Nazareth. At 
times, we must remind ourselves that it is only when Christ 
comes back to us that "there shall be no night" (Rev 21:25). 
At moments, we must meditate on the great promise of the 
Master, "I shall indeed be with you soon!" (Rev 22:20) and on 
the Church's trusting response, "Amen! Come, Lord Jesus" 
(Rev 22:20). 

We, your elder brothers in the Church, "shepherds of the 
flock of God" (1 Pet 5:2), are eager to share with you our 
thoughts on the Second Vatican Council and on this post-con-
ciliar period. For you are with us "a chosen race, a royal priest-
hood, a consecrated nation" (1 Pet 2:9). You are, furthermore, 
at once our brothers and sisters in faith and yet our sons and 
daughters in whom our spiritual fatherhood is realized and put 
to the test. 

We speak not to "lord it over" the brethren nor to "make 
our authority felt" (Ait 20:25), though we are conscious of 
the responsible position we have received from the Lord for the 
good of the community. We speak in discharge of our responsi-

7 



bility, motivated by a pastoral love that sometimes speaks in 
silence but chooses now to speak in words. For we bear in our 
office not only the solicitude of the Church and her people but 
also a mandate to instruct the Church of God and to exercise 
that "authority which the Lord gave us for building up and not 
for destroying" (2 Cor 13:10). 

EXPOSITION OF BASIC COUNCIL DOCUMENT 
The motive which prompts us is response to a need many 

have made known to us together with their desire that the 
Bishops of the United States interpret the present moment for 
the American Church. Our action takes the form of a collective 
pastoral letter, the first since the convocation of the Second 
Vatican Council. We wish to consider with you the opening 
chapters of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church and some 
of their implications for Catholic life in the United States. 

A special urgency attaches to this letter since we are 
speaking of a grave matter, involving salvation, namely, the 
doctrine on the Church, and we do this in a season of particular 
solemnity, namely, the Year of Faith. In later collective pastor-
als we hope to interpret and, in due course, apply other Council 
documents and decrees. 

We speak because we must. Even though our words may 
not, in every case, be heeded, they still have to be spoken. 
Words are not solutions in themselves, but words convey saving 
ideas indispensable to order here and salvation hereafter. 
Words are not only a means of instruction; they are, in then-
own way, sacramental, even redemptive. Through words, we 
come to understand one another and we are often healed by 
this understanding. It is through words, above all through the 
Incarnate Word, that we come to know something of the wisdom 
and love of God and something of the destiny of man as faith 
perceives that destiny. 

The experience of the Second Vatican Council has given us 
Catholics in the United States, as it has given the whole Church 
of God, a fresh outlook and new horizons. The Council may 
prove to have been the most productive and far-reaching of all 
the Church's Ecumenical Councils. The openness of our delib-
erations helped us to see with new clarity all the freedoms in 
which God has created us and by which Jesus Christ has set us 
free. We saw in the pursuit of our common hopes how the 

8 



ns as she teaches, rules as she serves, receives as 
Ve heard in the Council the call of the future, a 
n shall be no less responsive to God's redeeming 
truth than were the best and holiest moments of 
[ past. We sensed in the Council not only the great 
hurch has done for man and for God in her long 
ingled joys and sorrows but also the many things 
dured, undertaken and accomplished, 
uncil gave us increased consciousness of our re-
! as custodians of a Tradition whose sacred richness 
It we be vigilant; it made us no less conscious of our 
raids of a future wherein that Tradition will reveal 
for new glory. As the years of the Council prog-
iecame more aware of the magnitude of the agony 
iness of the aspirations which identify this mighty 
experienced anew our need to carry the cross of 

condition, to trust more deeply in the never failing 
the Spirit, to affirm hope even when many would 
pair, and to wait, in all our distress, the fulfilment 
master promise. 
(lis, we felt ourselves at once the servants and min-
reat Mystery. Our conciliar work illumined for us 
f the Mystery of the Lord, the Mystery of the World 
jnciliation of these in the Mystery of the Church, 
t God our Father, who keeps alive in us a sense of 
icy, may give us the courage to bring to fruition the 
Council which begins and ends with confidence in 
and with faith in Him. • 

9 





Chapter I 

The Mystery of the Church 
P OPE John XXIII intended the Council to be both the occasion 
and the means for renewing the Church. He spoke of the para-
doxes by which the Church is "always living and always young." 
She "feels the rhythm of the times" and, therefore, in a mar-
velous manner "radiates new light, achieves new conquests, 
while remaining identical with herself, faithful to the divine 
image impressed on her countenance by her Spouse, Who loves 
her and protects her, Christ Jesus" (Bull of Convocation: 
December 25, 1961). 

Pope Paul VI has emphasized that the basic theme of the 
Council is this Mystery of the Church. He therefore summons 
us, with ever-increasing urgency, to more positive pastoral in-
volvement with one another. 

The Council altered some patterns which may have proved 
oppressive in the past. We must not now become prisoners of 
the present. Our continuity with Christ and the apostolic age 
survives all the changing patterns of the past and yet pre-
supposes a continuing relationship with the perennial elements 
of our religious past. To lose our past in this latter sense is to 
lose ourselves. Such a loss could account for that spiritual 
amnesia which, it is said, afflicts a generation suffering a cul-
tural and spiritual identity crisis. To demean the Church of 
former ages is to diminish the Church of the present age and to 
impoverish the future. We know the past has not been perfect 
but we gain nothing by infidelity to it. We profit from the 
courage to see in the past many things which might have been 
done better. With equal insight, we see in the past a faithfulness 
to God and a service rendered to man which make us con-
fident again. 

11 



Ours is not, in any case, a Church of the past. Ours is 
always the Church of the present moment. Thus, we move with 
the "rhythm of the times." We welcome the fresh insights of 
theologians, indeed of all God's people, as they confront the 
Mystery of the Church. We profit most of all from those mem-
bers of the Church whose prayer and spiritual sensitivity have 
given them a pre-eminent title to speak in the community of 
faith and worship. 

With sadness we notice that some today, using the noble 
word "charism" or employing theology almost as therapy, 
ridicule the Church and, under the guise of being contemporary, 
seem hostile to everything except their own views. What begins 
as necessary and solid criticism seems readily to degenerate 
into a destructive attitude toward life unworthy of reason and 
inconsistent with faith. Too often (and here each of us must 
examine his conscience) the life of prayer and the pursuit of 
spiritual excellence have become the last and the least of con-
siderations. A new Pelagianism seeks salvation in the correction 
of structures rather than in conversion to God; a new Gnostic-
ism places all its hope in the apt phrase or the esoteric formula 
rather than in Jesus Christ crucified and risen. We must not 
forget that what we are seeking to reform is not a mortal in-
stitution but the Church of the Living God. 

Let these words not be interpreted as a desire to discourage 
the positive forces developing in the American Catholic Church. 
We all have much to learn from one another. We shall learn 
well if we remember that humility is always the mark of the 
believer and that we all constitute the faithful; patience is still 
the attitude of a disciple and we are all disciples; and love for 
one another in God is more important than all else, leading us 
to the fulfilment of Christ's highest commandment and to the 
performance of the most distinctive of Christian virtues. 

The Church is ultimately a Church of the future. We 
witness to Christ Jesus Who is the same not only yesterday 
and today but forever (Heb. 13:8). We are one with the same 
Christ Who proclaims: "Behold! I make all things new!" (Rev 
21:5). Our attitude toward the future is affirmative, not fearful. 
For one day in the future, known only to the Father, the Lord 
is destined to return to us. 

The future does not, however, hold out its own inevitable 
solutions to our problems. Only those who labor to ransom the 

12 



present are worthy to inherit the promises of the future. The 
Church we seek to become depends upon the Church we are 
today. 

The Christian perspective is threefold. It looks to the past 
with reverence, to the present with responsibility, and to the 
future with faith, which is the substance of hope (Heb 11:1). 

PROBLEM OF GOD AND PROBLEM OF CHURCH 

There are two perplexing questions which especially 
trouble contemporary man. The first concerns whether God 
exists and if He does, what kind of a God He is—and what 
must be said of Him. The second is a problem for men who 
believe in God. It asks whether there need be a Church and 
what must be said of the Church. We discern an inevitable 
relationship between these two questions. No one who believes 
in God is totally estranged from the Church. Conversely, every-
one who truly belongs to the Church can never be far from 
God. For it is the Church which summons man to God and 
speaks of God to man. She is charged by the Spirit with a 
mission of witnessing to God by the power of her deeds (sacra-
mental, social, sacrificial) and the suasion of her words. Be-
cause of this, the Church bears a certain responsibility for 
belief and unbelief in the world. She yearns to bring all be-
lievers into ever more complete communion with herself and 
all men into ever more conscious communion with God. She 
longs to do this not because she desires dominion but because 
there is no better way to serve man and to make him free. 

The Second Vatican Council was a Council of the Church 
about the Church. If any synthesis of the Council can be given, 
the Church is the key to that synthesis. The Council's preoccu-
pation with the Church by no means made her horizon less 
catholic, as is proved by a mere listing of the issues it delib-
erated. 

Pope Paul VI, mindful of this centrality of the Church, 
refers "to the science of the Church, ecclesiology," as "the 
vivid need of our time" (Address to General Audience, April 
27, 1966). The Church was "the principal question" studied 
by the Council, "the center" of Vatican IPs deliberations. "To 
know what the Church is," he declared, "becomes decisive in 
relation to so many other vital questions: the religious question 

13 



first of all, the ecumenical question, the humanistic ques-
tion " 

Although we know the Church, unique among institutions, 
to be a mystery, still we must know, to some extent, what the 
Church is before we can say what she must do. The social or 
cultural, the educational, religious and ecumenical tasks we 
undertake depend upon our awareness of the nature and pur-
pose of the Church as well as of our places in her life and 
action. 

Pope Paul puts it plainly: 
"We have inalienable duties towards the Church 

and in her we seek to find truth and salvation without 
pluralisms which are contrary to the unifying and 
constitutive principle of the Church and without elastic 
uncertainties and equivocations . . ." (Address of April 
27, 1966). 

Thus, our mission to the present moment of history is 
too complex for simplifications. We must serve our fellow-men 
with all our heart and energy but we must serve them in a 
manner befitting disciples of Jesus Christ and as members of 
His Church. We act under a mandate from the Lord requiring 
that in all we are and all we do for and among men we become 
the light of the world, the lamp illumined to show where Christ 
is to be found. 

WHAT IS THE CHURCH? 

The Church has her beginning even before time, "before 
the world was made, the Father chose us in Christ" (Eph 1:4), 
in that mysterious community of persons who constitute the 
Trinity. Under another aspect, however, the Church begins 
with the human phenomenon. In the creation of man, Christ 
and His Holy Church are already there. The first events of 
human history are the first acts of a drama dominated by the 
Mystery of the Incarnation and the Power of Pentecost. Man 
is made, from his first breath, in the image of God. He awaits 
from the beginning that further expression of the divine image 
in the Word that would be made flesh. 

The Church is solicitous for the dignity of man since in 
man the image of God and the humanity of Christ are at issue. 

14 



The Church seeks the progress of man; she does so because 
God made man worthy of such solicitude but also because God 
so made her that she cannot do other than love and serve man. 
The Church is diminished not only when her children, in 
despair, forget God but also when, in presumption, they dare 
to neglect man. The Church is that assembly which looks 
heavenward to pray "Abba, Father" and then earthward to 
greet all men as brothers. Thus, the Church is the keeper 
of each man as a brother because she is God's family. Hence 
the Church cries out: "Who is scandalized and I am not on 
fire?" (2 Cor 11:29). The Church makes her own "the joy 
and the hope, the grief and the anxiety" (Gaudium et Spes, 1) 
of all the human family. 

The Church emerges not only from the grace of God but 
from mankind and its history. Her vision for man includes 
his boldest dreams but soars beyond them and lifts to levels 
literally divine the hopes of the human heart. The Church tells 
man that all the splendor of this world will pass (1 Jn 2:17), 
that in any case it is not enough for him. She tells him that 
he is meant for God. One day he will inherit not a perishable 
city or a corruptible body but a new heaven and a new earth. 
The Church speaks of an end to human sorrow, of a day when 
man shall weep no more, of an indestructible love that conquers 
death, cancels guilt, and heals alienation. 

Though the Church reveals to man visions beyond his 
power to dream, realistically she speaks to him of his tragic 
insufficiency and his human sinfulness. She reminds him that 
he is not only a creature with understanding and freedom given 
him by none other than God but a creature who for all his en-
lightenment walks in darkness, who for all his freedom is 
alienated. Thus, he must be redeemed. His redemption is 
achieved not by his fellow-men, though they are called to share 
in this, but by God Himself. Yet we are redeemed and judged 
by man, by One of our brothers, in Whom we see not only our 
other self but also God's only Son. 

It is ultimately, then, in Jesus Christ that the Church places 
all her hope. In no past moment of her history did she really 
trust in princes and in no future moment will she rely, in fact, 
on the people's pleasure or the judgment of the crowd. She 
makes concordats with kings, perhaps, but she never presumes 
to bargain with Christ. She delights to be among the children 



of men and to find them siding with her, but she must always 
be on the side of God, as was Moses, and of God's honor, as was 
Thomas Becket. Public opinion, like the king's favor, may fre-
quently be a passing solace to her but it fades into nothingness 
in the face of the judgment of God. Like her saint, Thomas 
More, she is the king's good servant, a servant Church among 
the sons of men, but she is God's servant first or she is nothing. 

That is why the Church sees in Christ her sole Savior and 
her Founder. She does not think it too bold to declare that she 
was brought into being, structured, commissioned, and given 
her life by the Lord Himself. Her faithfulness to herself be-
comes, therefore, faithfulness to Him. Her total mission in 
history begins and ends with Jesus. The human phenomenon, 
which demands her action, reaches its highest intensity in 
Christ. Divine Love, furthermore, achieves its most tangible ex-
pression in that same Christ. Thus, the Mystery of the Church 
is inseparable from the mystery of the human heart and its 
needs, above all the need for redemption; it is likewise insep-
arable from the mystery of that Jesus Who is ever our Re-
deemer, the source of our salvation. 

At a time when many question the Church, when some 
forsake her and seek an allegiance to Christ without a Church, 
the Church reminds us that discipleship in Christ is necessarily 
a vocation to the Church of Christ. It is Christ Who evokes the 
Church. All who listen carefully to His voice hear the clarity 
of His summons to belong also to the Church. But for the his-
toric Church, there would be today no possibility of affirming 
or denying Christ. For without the Church men, over the long 
centuries, would have made of Christ what they preferred Christ 
to be rather than what He is. Some seek to follow the Lord 
without the Church in what seems to them a simple, less com-
plex, and more spontaneous religious experience. But we must 
remind ourselves that without the Church the following of, 
Jesus subtly becomes a following of self or even a following 
of those false prophets against whom Christ warned and whom 
the Church resists. 

Jesus lives undiminished only in that Church which has 
written and preached the Scriptures; in that Church wherein 
apostolic tradition remains alive in Christian hearts; in that 
Church which celebrates the sacraments, proclaims the creeds, 
assembles the councils, worships the Father, offers the Body 

16 



of the Lord in her liturgy, and lives by the unfailing Spirit of 
God. The Church is alive in Christ and Christ lives in His 
Church. Thus she exists for the glory of God and for the healing 
of mankind. In Christ, she realizes how mighty is God's glory 
which abides with us in so tangible a manner. God, however, 
is not glorified nor are human hearts healed when men seek 
Christ while consciously rejecting His Church. Man is not al-
lowed to pick and choose when he seeks God's Will for himself. 

THE CHURCH AS ONE 

The Second Vatican Council reminded us: 
"The present-day conditions of the world add 

greater urgency to this work of the Church so that all 
men, joined more closely today by various social, tech-
nical, and cultural ties, may also attain fuller unity in 
Christ" (Lumen Gentium, 1). 

The work of Christ and His Church is a work for unity, 
unity among mankind, unity between mankind and God. It 
was the Church that first told us that because of our baptism 
in Christ "there are no more distinctions between Jew and 
Greek, slave and free, male and female" (Gal 3:28). This is 
the Church's true mission. If she falters in this, she must recover 
again her pilgrim path in repentance and renewal. Continually 
the Church is reminded by the baptism she celebrates, by the 
Gospel she proclaims, by the Bread she breaks, that her mission 
is unity, her purpose is harmony, her service is reconciliation. 
She forever gives thanks to God because she knows that there 
was a day when we "had no Christ," when we "were immersed 
in this world, without hope and without God" (Eph 2:12). Now 
all this has changed! For "in His own person He killed hostility," 
so that now we "are no longer aliens but citizens like all the 
saints and part of God's household" (Eph 2:16-19). 

Now we know that peace binds us together into "one Body, 
one Spirit, one and the same hope, one Lord, one faith, one 
baptism, and one God Who is Father of all, over all, through 
all and within all" (Eph 4:3-6). Now we know that Jesus is 
man's Good Shepherd, that He gave His life for His sheep, 
and that He prayed for one flock under one pastor (Jn 10:14-
17). Now we know that "Jesus was to die" so that He might 
"gather together in unity the scattered children of God" (Jn 

17 



11:50-52). Now we understand, we who live out the post-Easter 
history of the community of Jesus, what He meant on the night 
before He died when He asked that "all may be one, Father, as 
you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe" 
(Jn 17:21). Now we know this and we give thanks to the Father 
Who did not forget His children, to the Son made our brother 
Who died and came to life for us, and to the Spirit Who prompts 
us to reach out for God and for one another. One day the glory 
of Christ will burst in radiance upon the Church and call it 
home, perfecting its unity. One day, "when Christ appears . . . 
the glory of God will light up the heavenly city and . . . the 
whole Church of the saints in the supreme blessedness of 
charity will adore God" (Lumen Gentium, 51). 

What, then, shall we say of the Church? It is a mys-
tery so deep that every word which gives us awareness of her 
sacredness gives us also experience of our ignorance. We see 
the Church-to-be in the dawn of history, in the alliance God 
forged with man on Sinai, in the new commitment made during 
the Lord's Last Supper. God's plan was always "to raise men to 
a sharing of divine life. When man had fallen in Adam, God the 
Father did not leave man to himself, but constantly offered 
helps to salvation in view of Christ . . . He planned to assemble 
in the holy Church all those who would believe in Christ. From 
the very beginning of the world, the foreshadowing of the 
Church took place" (Lumen Gentium, 2). If the human phe-
nomenon cannot be separated from the Incarnation of Christ, 
Christ cannot be considered in His fulness without the Church. 

THE CHURCH AS COMMUNITY 

One of the clearest features of the Church, a feature re-
ceiving ever-greater emphasis today, is the fact of community. 

"God does not make men holy and save them 
merely as individuals, without bond or link between 
one another. Rather has it pleased Him to bring men 
together as one people. . . . " (Lumen Gentium, 9). 

The Holy Spirit is given in His fulness only to the com-
munity. No one member or one structure in the Church re-
ceives the Spirit for itself alone. Likewise, the liturgy of the 
Church is never unmindful of the community. 

18 



Few things are more treasured in life than association in 
friendship and community. In His mercy, God has joined us 
together in such a way that we share not only our lives but His 
life as well. Thus, the Church is not only the sum total of all 
the persons who are her members but something mysteriously 
more. As one lives the life of the Church, he discovers not 
only his brethren but his God. 

This emphasis on community is needed. It must not lead 
us, however, to neglect the individual person. Man is not a 
creature made only for the good of others. Each man shares 
with all others a common good at the core of which is Eternal 
Life and God. He has, however, an inalienable value in himself. 
Though he is saved in community, he is saved in virtue of his 
individual response to the call to share in that community's 
life. No other, certainly no community, can bear for a man the 
cross of his own existence or wear for him the crown of his 
own responsibility. He comes into community as SOMEONE. 
Though he is never absent from the prayer and concern of his 
brethren, there is an inevitable solitude about his living and 
his dying. Though he faces God in the midst of his family, 
there is always something God requires of him uniquely, some-
thing which He does not ask of others. 

It is our visible coming together as a community in the 
power of the Spirit which makes the Church not only a way 
of life for us but a sign of salvation for the world. Our coming 
together signifies Christ for the community itself and for the 
human family not yet visibly one with us. Our coming together 
not only signifies Christ, of course, but makes Him effectively 
present to history so that through the Church Christ Himself 
acts and saves. Our community with each other is not only a 
witness to the Lord but an efficacious instrument of His do-
minion. Thus, formation into a lawfully structured Church is 
not only something we need ourselves; it is something we owe 
our brethren within the community to whom we make ourselves 
available, something we owe our brethren outside the com-
munity and for whom we become a saving sign of Christ, as 
well as something we owe God Himself Who wishes to share 
His life with us in the most intimate manner possible. 

We share in the life of Christ's community, then, not only 
out of concern for ourselves and our fellow-men, but in obedi-
ence to God's supreme and saving Will. Life itself, Christian 

19 



life even more, is not only what we decide to make it; it is a 
recognition of our accountability in freedom, of our obedience 
in humility to God. A life of service to God is not bondage; it 
is the enlightened exercise of freedom. Without God, we become 
prisoners of our own resources and captives of time and space. 
Without God, our eagerness for life becomes anxious and our 
plans for the future lead to inevitable futility. If there is no 
God at the beginning and at the end of life, then man lives 
with little meaning. He is born by accident and is destined for 
extinction. One day his history and his world will vanish with-
out a trace that he was here. Without God all the human family 
will one day perish without ever having known why they were 
here, for what they were made, to what purpose they had lived 
so glorious and tragic a history. Without God, human life tends 
to dust, fatally and forever. 

Christians cannot accept this gospel of despair. They ask 
man, heroic in the dreams he has achieved, to dare dream of 
collaboration with God. They invite our courageous century 
to attain the further courage of faith. They invite a waiting, ex-
pectant age, in all its waiting, to await even God. 

Our faith in God is not an escape from life, a reprieve from 
responsibility, or a hope with no foundation. Our faith in God 
is a celebration of existence, an affirmation of indestructible 
meaning in every man and in man's world, a refusal to live 
with the fiction that human inventions or even human life can 
offer all the answers and all the healing man needs. A man 
who cannot aspire beyond the boundaries of space and the 
limits of time is of all creatures the most pathetic. 

The Church proclaims her Gospel in the confidence that 
men can find a stronger faith, a mightier love, a richer life. 
Such faith, love and life, with the hope to which these give 
substance, are the Church's reason for being; they determine 
her nature. 

IMAGES OF THE CHURCH 

In seeking to describe the Church, we discover that images 
often convey more than definitions or precise words. There 
is more mystery here than categories can manage or scientific 
phrases exhaust. Ever since the Council adjourned, Pope Paul 
in his occasional discourses has been using a variety of figures 

20 



and symbols with which to clarify the mystery of the Church. 
He has reminded us that the Church is the House of God (1 Tim 
3:15), the home in which man meets God, an inner place where 
a family gathers, a loving community of kinsmen. It is the tem-
ple of the Spirit; it is a city, a community united and governed 
by a distinct social law; it is the Bride of Christ and the Mother 
of the spiritually reborn. The Church is a pledge of great love, 
the light of the nations, a beacon bringing hope and charity and 
courage. The Church is a pilgrim pointing out the sure way to 
order and salvation, a school where Christ is taught, faith fos-
tered, prayer encouraged. 

Many of these images have long been familiar to us. For 
centuries, for example, the Church has thought of herself as 
the "Bride of Christ." St. Paul exhorts husbands to love then-
wives "just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed Himself 
for her to make her holy" (Eph 5:25). 

This latter image has always had great meaning for the 
Church's theologians. For example, Cardinal Franzelin recalls 
that "in marriage . . . two become 'one flesh,' one moral person, 
one belongs to the other and both become, as it were, parts of 
one unity in an indissoluble common life; and hence the love 
of one for the other is the same as the love for himself . . . ." 
He appeals to St. Paul's description of the Church as Bride: 

"Christ is the Proto-type forming, sanctifying, 
conserving, glorifying His Church . . . the sanctified 
unity of man and wife is the sacred sign and likeness 
by which this Proto-type is represented" (De Ecclesia). 

The theme of the Church as the Bride of Christ immediate-
ly suggests another Pauline doctrine. The Apostle did not hesi-
tate to call the Church the Body of Christ. Of all the many 
images of the Church, surely this is the most difficult to com-
prehend and yet the most eloquent. It reminds us that the 
Church has a sanctity, a holiness which no one of us would 
have imagined had not the Apostle assured us of this under 
God's own inspiration. We have been chosen as a body, indeed 
as the Body of Christ, to be the People of God. 

"By communicating His Spirit mystically, Christ made His 
brothers, called together from all nations, the components of 
His own Body" (Lumen Gentium, 7). United to Him by baptism, 
really and truly partaking of the Body of the Lord in the Sacred 

21 



Eucharist, we are raised into fellowship with Him and with 
one another (1 Cor 10:17). In this way, all of us are made 
members of Christ and through Him, members of one another 
(Rom 12:5). This union we call the Mystical Body of Christ. 

The Church, seen as the family of God but even more pro-
foundly when seen as the Body of the Lord, is the doctrinal 
justification and the premise of the mandate for our social 
apostolate to the world. It insists that in a unity so intimate men 
are more than brothers; each is a living part of all the others. 
In such a community of life, beyond mere community of inter-
est, I am no longer my brother's keeper; I am one with my 
brother and somehow we are both Christ. 

St. Paul returns to this mystery of faith frequently (Eph 5; 
1 Cor 12; Col 1; Rom 12). He himself learned in a vivid manner 
how intimately the Church is Christ. Bent on the persecution of 
the Christian community, an insignificant minority with scant 
sign of divine power, he was asked by the Lord: "Saul, why 
do you persecute Me?" (Acts 9:4). Lest Paul be mistaken, he 
was reminded: "I am Jesus and you are persecuting Me" (Acts 
22:7). 

Thus, the Church does not see herself as one more human 
institution in a world of many institutions. She does not view 
herself as an organization of social service at a time when there 
are so many such services available to us. The Church is a 
sacred, religious, charismatic, incarnational reality. The Church 
is "the complement of the Redeemer, while Christ, in a sense, 
attains through the Church a fulness in all things" (Mystici 
Corporis, 77.) 

Catholic spirituality, therefore, is always an ecclesial spiri-
tuality. It is a spirituality which lives the life of the Church, 
her worship, her tradition, her sacraments, her liturgical year. 
The Church seen as the Body of Jesus should inspire all our 
prayer and lead us to the full celebration of the Church's sacra-
mental Liturgy. A Catholic spirituality brings us especially to 
the Eucharist which is, in another and real way, the Body of 
Christ and, therefore, the cause of our unity and its final ex-
pression. 

There are few things more urgent in our present need 
than the development of a truly modern and deeply ecclesial 
spirituality. No little of the unrest in the world is due to the 
unrest in the hearts of men. So much of the turmoil in the lives 

22 



of some Catholics since the Council is due to the absence of a 
mature and serious spiritual life. The invitation to a more in-
tense following of Christ is not an invitation to quietism. It 
calls us to labor more arduously than ever before. We must 
renew and reform the Church. We must enter into dialogue 
with each other, with other religions, with the world of unbelief. 
Yet all this must be done with a serenity and peace of heart 
which only Christ gives. If we see ourselves as the Body of 
Jesus, then we shall strive to be one with Christ in His conse-
cration to the Father, one with Him in His openness to the 
Spirit, one with Him in His love for His brethren even unto 
death. 

SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS 

This life-giving union with Christ and his brothers should 
fire the Catholic with a fervent zeal for the social apostolate. 
Every Catholic should be eager to endure any hardship for the 
good of all his fellow-men, recalling the words of St. Paul: "If 
one of us suffers, all suffer together; if one of us is honored, 
all rejoice together" (1 Cor 12:26). A Catholic becomes re-
sponsible when he realizes that his own dignity and destiny are 
bound up with the dignity and destiny of all men. A vocation 
to Catholic life is also a vocation of service to every member 
of the human family. 

Therefore, indignity, injustice, and inhumanity at any time, 
in any place, toward any man should arouse in us a deep and 
burning concern. This concern is not accidental to the devout 
life, something super—added to the faith as an evidence of its 
presence or an adornment of its practice. It is the faith at work, 
the faith alive in the works without which faith is dead. It is 
a concern active in us when fellow men are denied human or 
civil rights, when there are riots in our streets, when death and 
devastation are rained on other men's cities, when men hun-
ger and thirst in other lands or in our own. A Catholic must 
be one who truly believes that as one of us suffers, all suffer, 
as one of us is healed, all are healed, when one of us is denied 
justice, all are threatened. Every Catholic conscience must re-
spond in word and deed to the moral imperative addressed by 
Christ to nations as well as to men: "Whatever you wish that 
men would do to you, do so to them" (Mt 7:12). 

We seek Christ not only in the Scriptures but in the signs of 

23 



the times; not only in the sacraments but in the hearts of men; 
not only in sacred Tradition but in all human cultures, in the 
human condition itself. 

Within recent years the Church has maintained the high 
level of its official teaching in encyclicals, in Council, in Synod, 
in papal addresses. She has borne dramatic witness to principle 
in Mater et Magistra, in Pacem in Terris, in the Pastoral Con-
stitution on the Church in the Modern World, at the United 
Nations, and in Progressio Populorum. She has addressed her-
self to social justice, world peace, the political order, the un-
derdeveloped nations. By all this, many were moved to put 
their hopes in her. If Catholic performance does not match 
Catholic promise, then truly we shall have failed. If our deeds 
contradict our statements, then we shall have doubly sinned. 
We were warned once: "It is not your encyclicals which we 
despise; what we despise is the neglect with which you your-
selves treat them!" (Rappoport as quoted by Richard in Le 
Pape et le Communisme). This was said in indictment of the 
People of God in another nation and another generation, but 
there is no point in pretending that it cannot be applied with 
equal force and fury against us in America in our decade. * 

24 



Chapter II 

The Structure of the Church 
T H E Scriptures tell us that Jesus went about preaching the 
Kingdom of God. That Kingdom, present in His Church, does 
not hover formlessly over the cities or exist unseen among 
the nations of the world. The People of God, the Body of 
Christ, the Temple of the Spirit, His Church is organized, 
structured, visible. The visibility of the Church is essential 
to her identity and is, indeed, a sign, in this case sacramental, 
of something divine. The Church is a visible sign of the 
mystery of God, the mystery of grace, the mystery of Christ 
and of the Spirit. When one realizes that the visibility of 
the Church is achieved through human persons and human 
signs, then one understands why her visibility will be inade-
quate to the task of signifying all that must be signified. None-
theless, the visibility of the Church is a sign, a sacrament, an 
instrument through which God acts and dwells with us. 

If one reflects on how detached from human history 
and how inconsistent with the human condition an invisible 
Church would be, he realizes how necessary is that visibility 
which Catholics have always believed to be Christ's own 
provision for His Church. 

This does not mean that visibility is merely the best 
of many possible choices. Nor does it mean that visibility 
is something for which we settle either for reasons of conven-
ience or because there is nothing else available. It does not 
mean, finally, that visibility is something extrinsic to the 
Church, a ceremonial addition or a pragmatic necessity, some-
thing the Church might have done without or may yet do 
without, or even something which is not really the Church, 
as if the real Church were to be found only on an invisible 

25 



level eluding and resisting all the visible structures of com-
munity. 

If this latter concept were well-founded, then there 
would, in effect, be two Churches. One would be invisible and 
therein alone the reality of the Church would be accessible to 
us or at least to some of us; the other, visible, would somehow 
parallel the invisible Church, being tolerable when useful 
for the less enlightened, but not for those who, as in every 
form of Gnosticism, think of themselves as a religious elite 
and deprecate the need for a visible or, as they sometimes say, 
institutional Church. 

The visibility which is Christ's intention for His Church 
is explained by none of the above. The visible structuring 
of the Church is no less the Church than her invisible reality. 
The sacramental Church is the spontaneous result of grace 
which, like love, seeks visible expression and identifies with 
it. The grace of Christ in which the Church is created is 
not imprisoned in the visible structure of the Church, but 
neither is it independent of her. For the Church is a sign 
or sacrament of grace. This means that the grace of the Lord, 
requiring visible presence among us (even as did He), is 
destined to triumph when time shall be no more and is 
expressed through the institutional structures of the Church 
and is inseparable from them. This is not to say that grace, 
salvation, or the Kingdom of God is found only where the 
organized Church is seen to be at work, but it is to say that 
all grace seeks to become manifest not only in the Incarnation 
of Christ, but also in those visible elements of His Church 
which are not merely human but sacramental in the fullest 
sense of the word. 

HIDDEN GRACE, VISIBLE CHURCH 

As is a sacrament, the Church is the result of grace, 
an intensification of gr^ce and an effective sign of grace 
at work among us. One who belongs to the Church through 
faith, hope and charity has found where God's graces con-
verge concretely. In the visible Church, grace is given an 
earthly habitation and a name; in the visible Church, Christ's 
victorious saving presence is recognized and celebrated; in 
the visible Church, the invisible mystery of the Church 
achieves its history. 

26 



The Council clarifies this point for us: 

"Christ, the one mediator, established here on 
earth His holy Church which He unfailingly sustains 
as a community of faith, hope and charity, a visible 
organization through which He communicates truth 
and grace to all. . . . As the assumed nature insepara-
bly united to Him serves the divine Word as a living 
organ of salvation, so, in a similar way, does the 
visible social structure of the Church serve the Spirit 
of Christ, Who vivifies it, in the building up of the 
body. This is the one Church of Christ which in the 
Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, 
which our Savior, after His resurrection, commis-
sioned Peter to shepherd, and with the other apostles 
to extend and rule, establishing it for all ages as 'the 
pillar and mainstay of truth' (1 Tim 3:15). This 
Church, constituted and organized in the world as 
a society, exists in the Catholic Church, which is gov-
erned by the successor of Peter and by the bishops 
in communion with him, although many elements 
of sanctification and of truth are found outside of 
its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging 
to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward 
Catholic unity" (Lumen Gentium, 8). 

Nothing in the created universe is potentially more 
sacred than the human: the human person, human gestures, 
human words. Through these potentially most sacred of visible 
realities, the Church acquires her visibility. Sacred though 
these realities may become, they are not immune from the 
imperfection and sinfulness of the human condition. And 
so one must not be Utopian in what he expects of his fellow-
men, even when they are called by the Spirit or sacramentally 
ordained for the Church of Jesus Christ. But neither may 
one be pessimistic about God's power and choice to sanctify 
us through our fellow-men and created signs. 

Of all things visible by which men are drawn to God, 
the Church is the sum and the sign. And yet, there recurs in 
history the temptation to take scandal at the idea of God 
present among men in flesh like their own, or of a Church 
audible, visible, human as well as divine, and therefore in-
evitably imperfect. Hence some men turn away impatiently 
from the Church when they find her less than ideal. This 

27 



turning away from the Church would be less harmful if there 
were any beneficent alternative to the Church. History records 
none. 

Men may criticize the Church but no one can create the 
indispensable substitute for her. One who lives the life of the 
Church senses in his heart not only the sentiments expressed 
by Peter's haunting question "Lord, to whom else shall we 
go?" (Jn 6:68), but also the conviction that there is no better 
place to be in than in the Church: "It is good for us to 
be here" (Mfc 9:5). In other words, the Church brings into 
history an experience we would not wish to forego even were 
it possible to do so without harm to ourselves and to our 
brethren. 

THE UNICITY OF THE CHURCH 
And so, in a sense even more profound than the polemic 

of past centuries could have supposed, we are beginning to 
discover new meaning in such seemingly harsh but nonetheless 
inescapable formulations of theological truth as "Neither is 
there salvation in any other (than Christ)" (Acts 4:21). . . . 
"Outside of Christ, there is no salvation". . . . "Outside the 
Church, no salvation." 

The Second Vatican Council developed broader implica-
tions of the doctrine of salvation that is God's will for His 
children and the consequent validity of many human societies 
or religious institutions which become signs of salvation for 
their members. 

Speaking of certain non-Christians and even of some 
atheists, the Council remarked: 

"Nor is God Himself far distant from those who 
in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it 
is He Who gives to all men life and breath and every 
other gift and Who as Savior wills that all men be 
saved. . . . Nor does divine Providence deny the help 
necessary for salvation to those who without blame 
on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit 
knowledge of God, but who strive to live a good life, 
thanks to His grace" (Lumen Gentium, 16). 

Pope Paul touched on the same theme in his first 
encyclical: 

28 



"We see these men (i.e., atheists) full of yearn-
ing, prompted sometimes by passion and desire for 
the unattainable, but also by great-hearted dreams of 
justice and progress. In such dreams noble social aims 
are set up in the place of the absolute and necessary 
God, testifying thereby to the ineradicable need for 
the Divine Source and End of all things, whose tran-
scendence and immanence it is the task of our teach-
ing office to reveal with patience and wisdom" (Ec-
clesiam Suam, 108). 

What is true of men who have not yet explicitly found 
God, is certainly true of those who explicitly acknowledge Him. 
For man is saved not only in the solitude of his heart but 
also by means of those legitimate human, religious and 
ecclesial communities which, under God's mercy, not only 
announce but somehow minister salvation to their conscien-
tious members. 

But the Council could not possibly imply that there is 
any other God than the God Whom we know to be Father, 
Son and Spirit; that there is any other Redeemer than the 
one Savior Who died for all men in atoning love and Who 
reigns over the human family as its only Source of grace 
and guarantee of salvation. Nor could the Council suggest 
that there is any other Church ultimately intended for man's 
salvation than that Church of Christ which "exists in the 
Catholic Church" (Lumen Gentium, 8). 

In any case, Christians reject the notion that there 
are many divergent ways to salvation, ways which by-pass 
the Church and yet arrive in Christ or ways which turn 
aside from even Christ, Who is the only Way (Jn 14:6), and 
yet result in God. The formulations of the theology of salvation 
which we have cited are more subtle than we may have 
appreciated; they are not, however, any less valid today 
than in the past. When one has found Christ and come into 
the Church, he has discovered not one of many equal ways 
to salvation. He has become one through grace with the one 
Christ in Whom every effort at salvation, whether His name 
be known or not, begins and ends; he has done this within 
the one Church to which all grace is oriented and through 
which the grace of Christ is uniquely communicated to God's 
children. When one comes into the visible Church, he has 

29 



followed the path, along which men seek salvation, to its 
destination. 

In the Church of Christ, men find God; they are, how-
ever, still called to explore ever more fully His infinite 
mystery. In our continued search within the Church we 
enjoy the security of those who are at home and who know 
the Master of the house. Many of God's people are not yet 
in the Church of Christ, as He Himself reminds us. We look 
forward to the day when, together with all who seek God, 
we can continue even more closely to search out the mystery 
of the brotherhood by which and in which we are saved 
under the Fatherhood of God. 

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH 

The Church of Christ is not only visible. It is also 
Catholic in every sense of the word. It provides for differences, 
but it has no vertical or horizontal lines of division. It has, 
for example, no vertical lines of division essentially separating 
conservatives and liberals, nor horizontal lines so dividing 
generations within the Church into young and old or ministries 
within the Church into clergy and laity as to pit these 
one against another. There is no "coming great Church" that 
is not already present in the world, having come to us across 
the centuries from the first Pentecost and the primitive 
Christian community; the Church as it yet may be, however 
different its style or developed its structures, will be the tree 
essentially present when first the mustard seed began to 
sprout; the Church in every stage of its maturity was present 
in that tiny seed. 

In no essential sense can the Church be constricted 
within a contemporary Church, a futuristic Church, a tradi-
tionalist Church, or a Church of the past. A Church monopo-
lized by any group or reserved to any one period or com-
fortable in any single culture would run counter to the plurali-
ties recognized and demanded by Vatican II and would, in ef-
fect, become that monolithic, uncatholic institution which the 
partisans of each special group or tendency profess to reject. 

What baffles most is the neglect of Scripture and history 
by some who, professing to seek or even to perfect the 
Church, seem disinclined to recognize what Christ intended 
the Church to be. There are others who measure the Church 

30 



exclusively in terms of social effectiveness, of cultural con-
formity, or of whatever efficiency most appeals to their 
special interest; some speak only of relevancy to those values 
of the world which they cherish, or of suitability to the 
temper of the times. These things, many good in themselves, 
are hardly adequate norms for evaluating the open, eternal, 
transcendent, human yet divine Church of God. If one seeks 
confirmation of this, let him ponder how Jesus Christ would 
fare if He were measured only in terms of the historical 
effect of His preaching or by the secular relevancy or suitabili-
ty of His Person to His times. 

If one makes use of only such norms as these, the 
Church will always be "irrelevant." This must not discourage 
those who labor for reform or renewal. It is merely a re-
minder of what we are about. There are those who are frus-
trated because they cannot fully explain the Church or her 
activity in a vocabulary which the world can fully compre-
hend, forgetting that today, as always both Christ and His 
Church remain foolishness for some, a stumbling block to 
others (1 Cor 1:23). 

The problem which confronts us, then, is not whether 
there should be a Church. If there were none, believers would 
inevitably bring one into being by their desire to converse 
with one another about the common concerns of the devout, 
to worship the God awareness of Whom brings them together 
in prayer. Sharing creates community; shared religious beliefs 
create religious communities which, however spiritual, speed-
ily become structured and visible parts of history. The prob-
lem is the kind of Church there must be, especially since God 
has sent His only Son to live with us and to make known to 
us the Mystery of our salvation and the means He intended 
for its accomplishment. What we must seek is a careful 
understanding of the type of Church the Lord provided. 

We speak in this chapter of but one feature of the 
Church's visibility, namely, the structures by which the Church 
is constituted and those by which it is ordered. No one pre-
tends, least of all we who are Bishops, that these latter insti-
tutions are the most important, though their validity is 
fundamental and essential. Everyone knows that the structures 
and forms involved in the Church's work of sanctification, 
especially the sacraments, are more important (more "noble" 
our traditional philosophers might have said) than the struc-

31 



tures of juridical authority, even as the order of love takes 
precedence over the order of law, though by no means con-
tradicting it. 

So too the structures for teaching the faith are doubtless 
more important in the total work of the Church than are 
those of governing, though faith and order will often depend 
on how well the work of governing facilitates the work of 
teaching and implements the work of sanctifying. A contem-
porary theologian has observed in this connection: 

"The order of jurisdiction, necessary and of 
divine origin though it be, is not the noblest nor most 
divine thing in the Church. All its greatness is 
derived from its purpose which is to be the servant of 
Love . . . Did not our Lord Himself say that He had 
come to serve? . . . the Church is greater and nobler 
than what exists for her sake. The Papacy is for the 
Church, not vice versa. It is therefore true that the 
Pope is not a master but a servant, and that the 
Church, absolutely speaking, is more excellent and 
nobler than he, although from the standpoint of juris-
diction, he is her head." (Charles Journet: The 
Church of the Word Incarnate) 

All these offices in the Church and all the structures 
through which they operate are services, but there is a hier-
archy among them, a hierarchy of worth and a hierarchy of 
relative proximity to the heart of the matter, which is always 
salvation. 

I. THE LAITY 
The spirit of the times suggests that we begin our dis-

cussion of the structured Church with the laity. A major 
task of the layman in the present chapter of Church history is 
the discovery of his own identity and vocation in the Church of 
Christ. Somewhere between the prevailing, but far from uni-
versal, silence of the past and the occasionally strident con-

32 



fusion of the present must be heard the authentic voice of 
the layman. 

The laity is a sacramental structure in the Church. The 
Church is realized, though not completely, in the Christian 
layman. From his baptism in Christ to his confirmation 
anointing in the Spirit, from his communion with Christ and 
the Church in the Eucharist to his mirroring forth of the 
Church in the sign of his marriage or other vocations to 
hallow the world, the layman is part of everything meant 
by discipleship in Christ. 

U 
Hence the layman is not to be defined negatively as if 

he were merely a person not ordained to Holy Orders or 
not called to religious life under vows. He is a positive part 
of the Church and a force in her life and action; he is a 
consecrated person, called to participate in the general priest-
ly work of Christ and His Church. He therefore shares in 
the prophetic gifts and charismatic endowments with which 
the Spirit has enriched the Church. 

Cardinal Suhard, anticipating a generation ago the charter 
which Vatican Council II has given to the Christian laity, 
wrote: 

"Such is the irreplaceable mission of the laity. 
They have their own witness to bear, their specific 
problems to solve and reforms to be undertaken, all 
on their own responsibility. By giving them a free 
hand, the Church is not making the best of a bad job 
and using them as substitutes until such times as she 
has reliable priests to take over the direction of the 

A, temporal order. On the contrary, she fully intends, 
without any ulterior motive, to confide to the laity 
the full responsibility for human society" (Priests 
among Men). 

It is for these reasons that without the laity there is 
no Church. When the layman, understood as the Church in-
tends, is silent, we all suffer and God's work remains only 
partly done; when the layman is passive, we are all weakened; 
if he leaves us we are all diminished. Frequently, the layman 
is the only means by which the secular world knows there 
is a Church or profits from the fact. "Even when pre-occupied 
with temporal cares, the laity can and must perform a work 

33 



of great value for the evangelization of the world" (Lumen 
Gentium, 35). "Guided by a Christian conscience," the lay-
man realizes that "there is no human activity which can be 
withdrawn from God's dominion" (Lumen Gentium, 36). 

The laity, however, like any part of the structured Church, 
is not a law unto itself, any more than is the hierarchy. The 
layman is not only responsible to Christ as revealed to us in 
Scripture and Tradition, but also to all those structures in the 
Church which are essential to the composition of the organ-
ized but organic Christian community. The fact that the 
hierarchical and lay structures are distinct, in the very nature 
of the constitution of the Church, and have their respective 
proper functions does not destroy the unity of the Church 
nor diminish the mutuality of the different gifts and ministries 
within the Church; quite the contrary, these differences are 
the condition of the unity in the midst of diversity which 
makes possible the accomplishment by His Church of the 
manifold works of Christ. 

In any consultation of the laity concerning the faith, the 
layman's ability to speak and his title to be heeded depend, 
to an extent, upon his openness to Christ and to the whole 
community, which means to the grace of his own calling. 
Let us explain. Those who hold an office of apostolic authority 
in the Church have a right to be heard when they speak in 
legitimate exercise of that office. This does not exonerate 
them from the obligation of witnessing Christ to the com-
munity by the personal example of their lives as well as 
by the official exercise of their office. They would still have 
to be heard, nevertheless, when they spoke authentically 
even if, sadly, their personal lives did not reflect their own 
teaching. "The scribes and the Pharisees occupy the chair of 
Moses. You must, therefore, do what they tell you and listen 
to what they say" (Mt 23:1-3). These words of our Lord are 
all the more pertinent since Jesus had just warned that those 
in authority of whom he spoke "do not practice what they 
preach." Things will doubtless be otherwise in His Kingdom, 
but not so different that authority may be discounted or the 
possibility of scandal eliminated. It was especially to the disci-
ples that Jesus confided: 

"Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 
So he called a little child to him and set the child in 
front of them. Then he said. . . 'the one who makes 

34 



himself as little as this little child is the greatest in 
the kingdom of heaven.' " (Mt 18:1-4). 

It was especially to the apostles that Jesus cautioned after 
He had washed their feet: 

"Do you understand what I have done to you? 
You call me Master and Lord, and rightly; so I am. 
If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your 
feet, you should wash each other's feet. I have given 
you an example . . ." (Jn 13:13-15). 

THE LAYMAN'S WITNESS 

The layman has his right to speak and to be heard 
in virtue of his status in the Church. Given the nature of 
the Church, his title to be heeded on matters of faith and 
morals depends not upon his ability to teach with apostolic 
authority but upon his ability to witness the Will of Christ, 
the Judgment of the Gospel or the genuine good of the 
community. The voice of the Spirit is the more clearly heard 
when those in authority exercise the charism of their office 
in appropriate consultation with the laity. Scripture and 
Tradition assure us, however, that the layman never speaks 
to and for the community in the same way as must those who 
possess apostolic authority. No one would maintain, for exam-
ple, that an individual layman or all the laity together should 
be heard by the Christian community in the same way that 
the Pope in his office of Chief Shepherd, or the College of 
Bishops are to be heard. 

The voice of the laity must echo the authentic voice of 
Christ to the whole community which is heard in the commu-
nity at large and therefore never in isolation from those who 
hold apostolic office. "Anyone who listens to you, listens to 
me" (Lfe 10:16) was not spoken to any one of the faithful 
but to the Church as Christ intended it. Hence, the layman who 
loses the sense of community loses his ability to echo Christ. 
Likewise, those in apostolic office who violate the limits of 
their authority imperil the sense of community and diminish 
their effectiveness in echoing Christ authentically. 

The man held responsible by Christ because he would 
not hear the Church (cf. Mt 18:15-17) was not accused of 
neglecting selected voices, or even the voice of the majority, 
but that of the Church as Christ constituted her. In no case 

35 



does the Church listen to the voice of any individual as such 
for the statement of the faith of the community. An individual 
who does not reflect the spirit of the Church or respect its 
structure speaks in a manner that the community cannot 
interpret. This is true of Pope, bishop, priest or layman, in 
each case with careful regard to the formalities of their 
respective roles. When an individual is heard, he is heard 
as an individual in the community and thus not as an individual 
as such. He is an individual who has taken his place and 
found himself in the context of a wider reality, namely, the 
community of Christ. 

Even when the Church speaks officially, she relies on 
the continuing work of the faithful to clarify further what 
has been taught and to apply concretely the program specified 
in ecclesiastical pronouncements. 

"While the definition of the Faith has been con-
fided to the successors of the apostles in union with 
the successor of St. Peter, or to the Pope speaking 
in their name, the development of revelation has been 
confided to all who have been baptized in Jesus 
Christ" (Jean Guitton: The Church and the Laity). 

With the layman's increasing voice in the life of the 
developing Church comes a graver responsibility. The Church 
does not listen, as we have just said, to any individual as 
such. She listens in each voice for the echo of the ages with 
their accumulated wisdom and for the voice of eternity with 
its ultimate judgment. With a subtle discernment, she recog-
nizes the voice of the person, be he priest or layman, whose 
accent is unmistakably Catholic and whose motive is the 
genuine good of the brethren, neither of these being divorced 
from the integrity of the faith. Better than Isaac, she knows 
how to distinguish the voice of Esau from that of Jacob 
when the inheritance of the Christian people, a matter of 
faith and morals, is at issue (Gen 27:22). 

Thus there is never sound reason to believe that the 
voice of the layman concerning the faith is heard in public-
opinion polls or any mere counting of hands. Rather, the 
faith of the Church is heard in the judgment of the deeply-
committed Catholic who witnesses to the community the 
experience of integral Christian living. It is not how many say 
something which is significant for the Church, but who it is 

36 



who is speaking and what manner of faith is his. Numbers 
count only if those who comprise the total really know. Some-
times, as when the Church was threatened with Arianism, 
the laity were articulate on the side of those who know and 
who speak accurately the voice of Tradition. Sometimes, 
as when the Church verged on the brink of conciliarism, it is 
the voice of Peter who confirms his uncertain brothers in 
the episcopate. Sometimes, as in the Second Vatican Council, 
Pope and laity listen with special care to the voice of the 
bishops. This is not to say that the Church moves forward 
disregarding Pope, bishops, priests or laity. It is to say that 
God's Providence provides for special moments and occasions 
when each structure in the Church is called upon to aid the 
others without subverting that order for the Church which is 
Christ's disposition and the Spirit's gift to the community. 

It is imperative, however, to add that we welcome, not 
avoid the consultation of the laity in every manner consistent 
with the mission of the Church, the promptings of the Spirit, 
and the needs of the community of faith. Thus it is not rhetor-
ical concession to the mood of the hour, but an exercise of 
the pastoral office we share with Pope St. Leo which impels 
us to say to the laity of our times what he said to those of 
his day: "Recognize, 0 Christian, your dignity!" 

It was our intent in the Council to salute that dignity in 
the chapter on the laity in the Dogmatic Constitution on the 
Church and in the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity. It 
is our hope that these documents will be studied in depth 
and implemented in detail by all the laity who bring the 
gift of their graces to the structures, permanent and con-
tingent, present and future, of the Church they love no less 
than do we. 

Our present efforts at restructuring procedures in the 
Church within the national and diocesan communities depend 
in great measure on the seriousness with which study is under-
taken and the disposition to implement it on the part of the 
laity. 

The sacred calling of the layman was summed up by the 
Council: 

"The supreme and eternal Priest, Christ Jesus, 
since He wills to continue His witness and service also 
through the laity, vivifies them in the Spirit and in-

37 



creasingly urges them on to every good and perfect 
work. For besides intimately linking them to His life 
and His mission, He also gives them a sharing in His 
priestly function of offering spiritual worship for the 
glory of God and the salvation of men" (Lumen Gen-
tium, 34). 

We have had these words in mind when providing for 
liturgical renewal in our nation. We shall return to other 
aspects of the vocation of the laity in the future statements 
and programs as, in proper fashion, there develop new forms 
for the apostolate of the laity among us, particularly in the 
Pastoral Councils for the establishment of which we are 
presently preparing norms. Meanwhile, Cardinal Suhard's ap-
peal for the unity of the Church in his country is the theme 
underlying our respective and mutual parts in the new Pente-
cost of the Church in America: 

"We shall have to create among all men that 
fraternal union which alone can assure the victory of 
the Gospel: by the same token we must bring an 
end to rivalries between classes, groups, vested in-
terests, and egoisms, which so often destroy all har-
mony and paralyze our efforts . . . The success of the 
apostolic effort, which will influence the salvation of 
the country, depends in a large part on the answer 
you give to the urgent appeal which we address to 
you" (Cardinal Suhard: The Parish Community). 

II. THE PRIESTHOOD 
In the manifold sacerdotal offices committed by Christ 

to His Church, priests, from earliest times, have been the 
most proximate and intimate collaborators of the bishops. 
They remain so still. By the very nature of the Church in 
its essence and its structure they must always be so. 

"The priest. . . enters the scene, sent by God . . . 
to fulfill the anguished need of men . . . he is present 
in the Church always; he is, with the Holy Spirit, the 

38 



enduring source of her permanence and of her life" 
(Cardinal Suhard: Priests among Men). 

The Second Vatican Council left no doubt that the "renewal 
of the whole Church depends in large measure on. . . . 
priests" (Optatam Totius, Preface). Hence the reasons why 
renewal of some aspects of priestly life is so important. 

"The pastoral and human circumstances of the priesthood 
have in very many instances been thoroughly changed (Presby-
terorum Ordinis, Preface). With this in mind, Pope Paul spoke 
to the pastors and Lenten preachers of Rome about an "op-
pressing doubt about the value of one's own vocation and 
ministry" which can assail even the best of priests (February 
21, 1966). 

Confusion about one's role and crisis in identity are 
not peculiar to modern-day priests. Many sensitive Christians 
in their various vocations of marriage or religious life, the 
professions or public life, find themselves in these troubled 
times frequently overwhelmed, quite as much as any priest, 
by the sense of inadequacy in the face of mounting pressures, 
questioned values and out-moded methods. The Holy Father 
recognized the same problem which the Council had seen as 
a "danger," namely, that priests today can easily become "de-
pressed in spirit," unless, of course, the Spirit Himself con-
stantly renews them. 

It may not be too much to say that countless priests today 
dwell in the desert of their temptations. Like their Master, 
they are tempted to become ministers of the temporal city 
of man, forsaking their consecration as ministers of Redemp-
tion and neglecting Scripture's mandate that they "must 
worship the Lord their God, and serve Him alone" (Mt 4:10). 

How can we, the elder brothers of all men in the priest-
hood, be unaware of the suffering or the problems that priests 
endure? How can we ignore situations which we too have 
known and still know? It is not likely that we would dismiss 
as unfounded or unreal difficulties of which we have familiari-
ty not only because we daily experience them in ourselves 
but also because we see them in those whom, because they are 
our brother priests, we best know and most love. 

RELATION OF PRIESTS TO RENEWAL 
Let us first agree, priests or, for that matter, all Chris-

39 



tians, that no benefits of the affluent society or the age of 
technology can remove the cross and its redeeming burden 
from the shoulders of any who bear the name of Christian, 
especially when they are ordained ministers of Christ as we 
priests are called to be. Conversely, the joy of the priesthood 
is and must forever be different from any joy which this 
world alone or the human condition as such can instill. 

This said, let us begin candidly. We need every brother 
priest who is truly a priest. More: humanity needs him. More 
still: the Church of Christ needs not merely the priesthood 
but everyone who qualifies to accept its burdens, dispense 
its mysteries, achieve its works. Most of all: Christ needs the 
priest so much that "when he dies (the priest) can say to 
his Lord: 'I am an unprofitable servant.' But he can also add: 
'You made me a priest, Lord! It was your idea, after all. 
It was you who pretended that you needed me' " (Abbe Mich-
onneau: My Father's Business). 

When a priest falters, the whole Church trembles. When a 
priest is troubled in heart, the tranquility of all God's People 
is threatened. Indeed, the world itself is not yet so sophisti-
cated that it does not still take scandal, whatever it may pre-
tend, when a priest is derelict. Everyone knows this, so why 
should we keep silent about it? However a priest may think of 
himself as being exactly like everyone else, the world does 
not so see him. Certainly the believer does not and neither 
does Christ, as He Himself explicitly said, above all the night 
before He died: "They do not belong to the world any more 
than I belong to the world" (Jn 17:16). "I shall not call you 
servants any more; because a servant does not know his 
master's business; I call you friends . . . You did not choose 
me, no, I chose you" (Jn 15:14-16). 

The priest bears within Him not only the consecration 
received through us bishops but the hopes of all the re-
deemed for the future. 

Let us be even more candid. The ministry which we as 
bishops share with our brother-priests becomes bearable and 
fruitful in the degree of our mutual fidelity, our faithfulness 
to priests, their loyalty to us. If it be true, as it is, that be-
cause we are men we know the burdens of priests, it is also 
true that because they are priests they know the special bur-
dens which trouble us. In times of greatest stress, next only 
to the presence of the Paraclete, it is the solidarity of priests, 

40 



compactly closed around us, their understanding, their un-
selfish devotion, their persevering work, the laughter and the 
tears they and we share, which blend with all the resources 
of nature and grace, to enable us the better to perform every 
priestly function that Christ committed to the college of His 
apostles in communion with Peter. This priestly office we 
share with all the priests in union with us. 

Even were it possible for priests to live out their lives 
in isolation from us, neither we nor they would wish this. 
The reasons why this is impossible are far from being merely 
juridical and moral; they are doctrinal and ontological. They 
are reasons rooted in the very nature of the priesthood as 
Christ has shared with us the priesthood in which He Himself 
was constituted. 

"The only means of transmitting the Gospel is to 
have received it by 'tradition.' The priest is not sent 
to improvise his preaching of the Good News; he is 
sent by the Church, and more precisely, by the 
Bishop. For 'the Church is in the Bishop' (St. Cyprian, 
Ep. 69:8). He is not merely the head who ordains, con-
trols and reprimands. He is at once the symbol and 
the source of unity and life. 'Let priests do nothing 
without the Bishop's approval, for it is to him that 
the Lord's people have been committed' (Canon 
Apost. 39:2). This is fundamental. If he is cut off 
from the Bishop, the priest will be cut off from the 
Mystical Body, 'like the branch from the Vine' . . . 
With all this in mind, no one can say that priestly 
'obedience' is a secondary virtue. It does even more 
than make the priest accessible: it helps him, with 
God's grace, to perpetuate the Church and thus to save 
the world" (Cardinal Suhard: Priests among Men). 

Thus the priesthood we share together is not only some-
thing priests have received through us. It is also something 
by which we and they are bound together and through which 
we are mutually enriched. Our episcopacy takes on new 
meaning and new value in the priesthood of the men we or-
dain. Through them, our priesthood is increased not only 
in the number of Christians we reach but in the intensity of 
grace that their ministry and holiness bestows upon us in 
the communion of saints and the fraternity of the priest-
hood. In them we behold not only one of the most sublime 
expressions of our priesthood but also our brothers by whom 

41 



we and our churches are made strong: a brother that is helped 
by his brother is like a strong city (Prov 18:19). 

In his encyclical on priestly celibacy, Pope Paul spoke 
with personal love as well as official concern about those who 
have tragically abandoned their priestly witness. He saw in 
their leaving not only individual disasters, the dimensions of 
which they themselves well know, but a catastrophe for the 
Church at large. No new appraisal of the sacral and the secu-
lar, no sympathy born of deeper insights into human frailty or 
human needs, alters the fact that Christian peoples generally, 
dedicated religious and seminarians eager to grow in the 
image of Christ, are scandalized by the derelict priest and 
threatened in the pursuit of their own sacred destinies. 

CRISIS IN PRESENT PRIESTLY LIFE 
Some priests, whose vocation it remains to mirror Christ, 

have not only lost their own vision but have sought to shatter 
the ideals of others and made a public display of their de-
fects. We urge such priests, motivated by their personal 
need of repentance as well as by a public obligation of ex-
ample, speedily to reconcile themselves, as priests have done 
for centuries, with the Christ Whose priesthood all unworthily, 
even in the case of saints, we sinners bear. To the priests of 
the twentieth century no less than to His contemporary dis-
ciples, Christ speaks a language that is diminished in its 
gravity by no findings of psychology, sociology or theology: 

"Anyone who is a scandal to bring down one of 
these little ones who have faith in Me would be better 
drowned in the depths of the sea with a great mill-
stone round his neck. Alas for the world that there 
should be such scandals. Scandals indeed there must 
be, but alas for the man who provides them!" (Mt 18: 
6-7). 

On the other hand, in manner at once impressive and 
unique, the priest, every priest, is a sign of fidelity to all 
the People of God; he proclaims God's faithfulness in raising 
up the priests He promised and he proclaims the Church's 
faithfulness in serving God and leading men to Him. 

Are we and our people to believe that a significant num-
ber of priests have lost the vision that gives meaning to 
their vocation? Even if there are only a few who waver, why 
has this come about? 

42 



To some extent we bishops may be responsible. To some 
extent the laity may be responsible. It still remains true, 
however, that, as in any other collapses of ideals or failures 
of commitment, the individuals involved, in this case priests, 
have their plain personal responsibility. However, in this 
sad problem we have no need for accusers or victims. There 
is too much sorrow, too much guilt among all of us for that. 

It is not the Christian vocation to canonize the human 
condition as such or to lament over it. It is our vocation 
to rise above it where it drags us down; to transform it where 
it might trap others; to ennoble it by the operation, through 
our agency, of that Spirit Who continually refreshes the 
Church and renews the face of the earth. In all this Pope Paul 
has reminded us, his brother bishops, in the encyclical on 
priestly celibacy, that we "owe the best part of our hearts 
and pastoral care to priests and to the young men preparing 
to be priests" (Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, 92). 

It is the Vicar of Christ, the Bishop in whom we Catho-
lics see an expression of the unity of the Church, who in-
structs us twentieth-century bishops: 

"It is your fraternal and kindly presence and 
deeds that must fill up in advance the human loneli-
ness of the priest, which is so often the cause of his 
discouragement and temptations. Before being the 
superiors and judges of your priests, be their teach-
ers, fathers, friends, their good and kind brothers, 
always ready to understand, to sympathize, and to 
help. In every possible way, encourage your priests 
to be your personal friends and to be very open with 
you. This will not weaken the relationship of juridical 
obedience; rather it will transform it into pastoral 
love so that they will obey more willingly, sincerely 
and securely." (Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, 93). 

1. RELEVANCE 
On the pastoral level, there are three especially grave 

problems which we see confronting priests. 
The first of these is sometimes said to be disturbing doubt 

concerning the worth of their lives. It is painful when one, for 
whatever reason, is faced with doubt concerning the meaning 
of the career he has chosen. This is a present pain for countless 
parents, married couples, religious and persons following other 
special vocations; it must especially afflict, nowadays, many 

43 



in the armed forces. In the case of the priest assailed by such 
misgiving there are probably two reasons why his anxiety may 
today be so acute. One is the sudden review of doctrine and 
discipline occasioned by the Council. This may have left some 
priests, who are teachers and shepherds of their communities, 
somehow less secure in their message and with themselves. 
Here time and the patience to arrive at understanding through 
study and priestly experience will help. The priest who sur-
mounts the problems and redeems the promises of aggiorna-
mento will find that Church doctrine has been enriched thereby 
and that the service of the Church made more meaningful. He 
discovers, moreover, that the priest is needed today more than 
ever before, more needed liturgically in the worship of the peo-
ple he serves, more needed apostolically in the market place, 
more needed intellectually in the forum and on the campus, 
more needed prophetically in the Church and in the world. In 
every case (and here is the point) he is more, not less needed. 

We must all, the entire hierarchy of bishops and priests, 
address ourselves to the pressing questions of authority, struc-
tures, communication, education and increased demands upon 
priestly life. But when we do, before we do, and after we do, 
the essential need which remains and controls all else is the 
need for the priesthood itself and for every priest capable of 
the generosity that is the heart of the priesthood. 

A second reason why misgiving among some priests may 
be acute in an age of automation is perhaps the prevailing norms 
by which people generally appear to measure the worth and 
meaning of modern lives. The priestly ministry cannot be made 
meaningful in terms of the technological categories we tend 
to prize here in the United States. Nor can the priesthood be 
made relevant in terms of any purely humanistic categories 
such as are widely exalted in Western civilization. Christ's ac-
ceptance of the crucifixion, for example, was hardly a "hu-
manistic" approach to the problem of the human condition. 
Moreover, the Church, speaking for Christ, often makes de-
mands which conflict with purely humanistic norms and con-
tradict merely terrestrial humanism. Among these demands we 
might include religious poverty and chastity, celibacy and obedi-
ence, penance and even worship itself. All these, viewed in the 
positive premises of the renunciations they require, serve not 
to diminish the person but to help accomplish in him freedom 
and resurrection into new life. 

44 



Priests understand that the meaning and worth of their 
priesthood can never be adequately, least of all easily explained 
except by the principles which justify the Church herself. The 
priest, for example, is not the deputy of the world in the Pres-
ence of God, as some would have it. He is an apostle of Jesus 
Christ. The power and glory of God abide in him in a special 
manner. He is not only the bearer of peace to men of good 
will but sometimes the minister of disquietude and the sign of 
contradiction to a world disposed and frequently eager to live 
by lesser, even sinful values. 

The meaning of the priesthood is known to the man of 
faith, to the disciple of Christ, to the man who lives by the 
Spirit. Such a man knows that the priesthood is indispensable to 
the worship of the God revealed by Jesus Christ and to the 
bringing of salvation to a world redeemed by Him. This priest-
hood not only sanctifies the world; it also humanizes society 
as a result of its relation to the redemption of man and the 
glory of God. We must, however, avoid two misconceptions 
about the "humanizing" mission of the priesthood. One is the 
fiction that the priesthood must be seen only in terms of secular 
man. The other is the error which alleges that only the Church 
can humanize. The former, through its negations of the sacred, 
leads to a humanism which does not ultimately humanize; the 
latter, through its neglect of the secular, leads to the unrealities 
of the heresy of angelism. 

In preparing ourselves to function more effectively in the 
secular society, in our efforts to be relevant to its problems 
and intelligible to its mentality, we have many lessons to learn 
but none more essential than the wisdom of the saints. It re-
mains God's Will for His priests that they be saints; it is still 
a primary function of the priesthood to lead God's people to 
holiness by the power of God's grace. The Church rightly calls 
herself the communion of the saints even though she be, in 
God's mercy and for our sake, the Church of sinners. All this 
is wny tne entire Church of God, bishops, priests and laity, is 
harmed if the spiritual dimensions of the priesthood are ne-
glected. 

2. LONELINESS 

A second problem which confronts priests is loneliness. 
This problem is not peculiar to the priesthood. Any loneliness 

45 



in the priest can hardly be seen as unique to his vocation. No 
one knows better than the priest the loneliness of the aged, the 
imprisoned, those unmarried despite their preference, the 
exiled, the abandoned, the dedicated who have renounced con-
solation to pursue art, science or the service of neighbor. 

However, mindful precisely of priests, the Council speaks 
of the "bitter loneliness," and even of the "seeming sterility 
of the past labors" which priests may sometimes experience. 
Pope Paul also cautions that "loneliness will weigh heavily on 
the priest" (Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, 59). But it is well to keep 
certain realities in mind when there is consideration of the 
loneliness involved in the human condition; even more, it is 
bound up with the vocation of the Christian, always a pilgrim 
and stranger on the face of the earth. We are not yet, in the 
fullest sense of the word, "home"; we have not here a lasting 
dwelling-place and ours is the unrest of those who seek a city. 
Nor do we yet so completely experience the effects of redemp-
tion that estrangement from God, from one another, and even 
from our true selves is no longer to be feared. 

Married or single, religious or lay, priest or people, all 
must come to terms with loneliness. Often the sustaining of 
loneliness results in human and Christian maturity, making us 
aware of our limitations and of our need for one another. 
"Christ, too, in the most tragic hours of His life was alone— 
abandoned by the very ones He had chosen as . . . witnesses 
. . . and companions . . . and whom He had loved unto the end" 
(Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, 59). 

All priests should be involved in the ministry of healing 
their brother priests. Priests ought to meet frequently together, 
welcoming opportunities for the social and other gatherings 
which give mutual support to one another. All superiors, pas-
tors of parishes especially, have a grave responsibility to see to 
it that priests are encouraged to perform in maximum freedom 
all the truly priestly functions of their vocation. Younger priests 
should see in those whom they assist not only someone in au-
thority but a brother priest who has known in his lifetime his 
own share of sorrow and frustration. Priestly charity is not the 
same as mere friendliness; it is even more than fraternity as 
this relationship is usually understood; it is expressed most 
fully in moments and under circumstances when charity is 
sorely tried and compassion, in the root sense of the word, be-
comes the compelling need. 

46 



These are especially trying times in the priesthood, times 
of divergent opinions about some of the functions of the priest-
hood, about the relation of the Church to specific aspects of 
society, about the most apt theology for post-conciliar life. 
While we are working out together whatever new consensus 
may be indicated on these and like pastoral problems, priestly 
charity and perspectives are more necessary than ever: In try-
ing times, priests have an opportunity to draw closely together 
in friendship and to render heroic service to one another and 
to the Church. Priests must never become so involved in then-
personal pursuits, even in serving their people and others, that 
they no longer notice their brother priests whose needs may be 
deeper than their ability to express them. Priests often require 
special support because they bear in their hearts not only the 
cares of their own lives but the sufferings of their people and 
no small part of the solicitude of the Church herself. 

No mature priest, indeed no adult Christian, will suppose 
that life is or ought to be problem-free. We may reduce con-
flict by reform and ease tension by understanding, but we shall 
never eliminate anguish from life. We priests are called to be 
the first to perceive the true horizon of the human condition, 
to recognize the essential limitations of creation, to be conscious 
of the universal effects of sin and of the pilgrim character of 
human history. Though we labor with all our hearts to heal, we 
realize that, although he succeeds in eliminating some prob-
lems from life, man remains a creature who must always live 
with contradiction, frustration, even heart-break. 

"And if hostility, lack of confidence and the in-
difference of his fellow-men make his solitude quite 
painful, (a priest) will thus be able to share, with 
dramatic charity the very experience of Christ, as an 
apostle who is not above him, by whom he has been 
sent. . . ." (Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, 59). 

In an age perhaps overly given to introspection, personal 
problems are intensified by the disposition to concentrate on 
them. A priest who loses himself in his apostolate, serving 
God's people, particularly the poor and the neglected, in imi-
tation of his Master will find that much of his loneliness disap-
pears. The loneliness which remains is a small price to pay for 
a vocation whose sacredness and consolations can hardly be 
exaggerated. In spite of any problems of the priesthood, there 

47 



is no greater joy than that which accompanies the work of the 
dedicated priest, no calling more literally divine than his. In 
moments of isolation, priests, no matter how great their fears, 
will recall the words which sustained Christ in His greater 
loneliness: "I am not alone, for the Father is with me" (Jn 
16:32). 

3. APARTNESS 

A further problem which may obscure the reality and func-
tion of the priesthood arises from a current temptation of priest 
and people alike to underestimate the consecration of Holy 
Orders. The liturgical and sacramental sacrifice which is at 
the heart of the Christian life presupposes a liturgical and sacra-
mental priesthood. An essential office of the ordained priest-
hood is the formation of Christian community. This the priest 
accomplishes by the celebration of the sacraments, the man-
dated preaching of the Word, and by that special presence of 
a priest in the midst of God's People as a result of which com-
munity is formed. The ordained priesthood expresses in its 
own unique way the priestly aims and actions of that Body 
Which, so to speak, keeps Christ at work in the world. The or-
dained priest depends for his ordination on the priesthood of 
the bishop; the priesthood of the laity depends upon ordained 
priests for its increase and its perfection in the sacraments, 
primarily, of course, in the Eucharist. 

It is always a symptom that Christian concepts and norms 
have become confused when sacramental distinctions are seen 
as class differences or interpreted in merely sociological or 
cultural terms. Not less destructive of a sound understanding of 
the priest's vocation is the attitude toward priestly "apartness" 
as a result of which clergy or laity become unwilling to acknowl-
edge the priest as a man definitively set apart among men, 
even though he is and is bound to remain one with his fellow-
men. 

There is an essential difference between priest and people 
no matter how much the heart of the priest identifies with his 
people. In a dramatic and altogether decisive manner, the or-
dained priest is a man of the Church; he becomes the sign of 
the Church as no other Christian does, he gives expression in 
his priesthood to special ministries of Jesus Christ, the sole 
High Priest. His ultimate responsibility is not alone to his peo-

48 



pie, great though his duties to them, nor is it to himself nor to 
any priestly caste; his responsibility is to God, by Whom he has 
been called, as Aaron was, to a mission apart from that of the 
unordained and yet within the community of God's people, a 
mission to which he is called and ordered by those appointed by 
God to rule His Church. 

Truth itself as well as pastoral solicitude will require a 
priest, in encouraging the laity in an appreciation of their vo-
cation, not to do so at the price of destroying confidence in his 
own priesthood. The historic development in the Council of the 
doctrine of the priesthood of the laity should prove a blessing 
to all the Church; the fruits of that blessing could be dimin-
ished, even lost, if the heightened awareness of the general 
priesthood in the Church lowered, even momentarily, a true 
appreciation of the necessary roles of the particular vocation 
special to the priest called apart and ordained for men in the 
things that pertain to God. 

Many of us think we see an unfortunate eclipse of the clear 
and separate status of ordained priesthood; this is not good for 
priests nor for the laity, nor for the Church nor for the world 
that the Church serves through its diversity of ministries. 

Jean Guitton, in his moving dialogues with Pope Paul, com-
ments on this problem, especially in terms of its relation to 
those aspects of contemporary culture which call into question 
not only celibacy but the priesthood, indeed the whole Christian 
message. Both the Holy Father and the lay philosopher found 
the reflections of Henri Bergson instructive concerning the 
salutary witness of priestly celibacy, a witness which in its posi-
tive values and affirmations goes far beyond sexual renuncia-
tions. Even in its negative aspects, such a witness brings pro-
phetic judgment and redemptive healing to a civilization Berg-
son describes as already "aphrodisiac" in so much of its imagery 
and emphasis. 

Hence the necessity, both the layman and the Pope agreed, 
for the development of a new attitude toward priestly spiri-
tuality. If the human and pastoral circumstances of the priest-
hood have changed, attitudes towards priestly spirituality have 
been influenced by these changes. A more contemporary spir-
ituality would depend increasingly upon dogmatic and ascetical 
theology, sciences which have a strong kinship with each other, 
rather than on canonical or sociological studies alone. To this 

49 



task we invite the best of our theologians and spiritual di-
rectors. 

Whatever emphasizes the intimate brotherhood of priests, 
of which the Council speaks, and the tie to their bishop, as a 
result of which "they make him present in a certain sense in 
the individual local congregations and take upon themselves, as 
far as they are able, his duties and the burden of his care" 
(Lumen Gentium, 28), gives firm foundation to the needed 
theology of the priesthood and direction to a new priestly spir-
ituality. We commend to priests in parishes, seminaries and 
religious communities the recommendations of the recent "In-
struction on Eucharistic Worship" (May 25, 1967) with respect 
to the concelebrated Mass and a fresh appreciation of the com-
mon life to be shared by priests in rectories and religious 
houses; these should be made truly homelike by the fraternal 
spirit derived from Christ Himself Who dwells with them. 

Pointedly and urgently, Pope Paul calls upon the laity to 
"feel responsible for the virtue of those of their brothers who 
have undertaken the mission of serving them in the priesthood 
for the salvation of their souls" (Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, 96). 

We understand something of the premises to this pointed 
admonition, for such it is, of the Holy Father. One consideration 
was suggested by Rosmini well over a century ago: the people 
of God produce their clergy and their clergy are therefore a re-
flection of the spiritual excellence expected by the people from 
whom they come. Furthermore, nothing would better manifest 
the readiness of the laity to assume their mature place in the 
life of the Church and warrant the confidence that the Church 
will profit from consultation of their minds and hearts than 
the evidence that they recognize the special reasons for priestly 
virtue and their own responsibility toward the development 
of that virtue in word and deed. 

SPECIAL WITNESS OF RELIGIOUS 
Though we have spoken directly of the priesthood, many 

of the things we have said apply with equal validity to religious. 
Without the public witness to the counsels of poverty, chastity 
and obedience which religious vow, without their generous ex-
ample of community life, the Church would be sorely impov-
erished. The religious life should serve constantly to remind 
us of what the Church is. Religious manifest to us the beauty 
and the discipline harmonized in the Christian life, a beauty 

50 



that does not neglect the sinful human condition nor the reality 
of death, yet a discipline which is never so severe that it over-
looks the redeemed status of the human condition or the in-
evitability of resurrection. Religious likewise give us a striking 
sign of the eschatological dimension of the Church; they re-
mind us of the pilgrim road we all travel and of the values by 
which we shall live in the Promised Land. 

The very presence of religious in the world is a consolation. 
It is also a salutary rebuke to any of us who may be tempted 
to make our Christian vocation an easy or a worldly endeavor. 
The presence among us of religious is a preaching of the Gos-
pel to the laity and the priesthood alike; in our country this 
preaching has been notably confirmed by the titanic work of 
teaching, hospital service, care of other people's children, mercy 
to the aged and pioneering in social work accomplished by Cath-
olic Sisters and Brothers who, usually anonymous and too often 
unthanked, have borne a professional as well as religious wit-
ness of unparalleled heroism, holiness and achievement. 

We have devoted much of this pastoral letter to priests. 
The emphasis is required by the problems we face. The whole 
People of God depends upon priests and religious in a unique 
way; in the name of God's People we wish to tell priests how 
much they are needed. As bishops we commend to the American 
people and to the Church Universal the qualities of the priests 
and religious of our country, without whom both the United 
States and the Church of Jesus would be spiritually by far the 
poorer. 

We are painfully aware of the shortcomings of some among 
us, the excesses of a few. There is neither possibility of con-
cealing these nor point to apology for them. But we can and do 
ask that people, beginning with people within the Church, be 
more mindful of our saints, notably the saints in the making 
among our priests. The Church never promised to be without 
sinners and she is the last to repudiate them; it was promised 
that she would give the world many and great saints. In this 
time of adjustment and self-scrutiny, God is faithful to His 
promise to raise up in our midst the saints He has never denied 
us. Future generations may yet envy us the opportunities for 
sanctity we had and the number of saints God gave us, especial-
ly among those American priests and religious who do far more 
good than they realize, even if it be less than, in their zeal, 
they intend. 

51 



+ + ++++ 
III. THE EPISCOPACY 

Every community must have a self-awareness if it hopes 
to function effectively. The Church of Christ is no exception. 
Hence, the need to focus attention on the nature and ministry 
of the episcopacy in the Church now that we have considered 
the laity and the priesthood. 

We may begin by recalling the relationship of the epis-
copacy to the operation of the Holy Spirit among us. The Holy 
Father states it briefly: 

"Christ has entrusted the fulfilment of His work 
among mankind to two different factors: to the Holy 
Spirit and to the apostles. He promised to send the 
Holy Spirit and He sent the apostles. Both these mis-
sions proceed equally from Christ" (General Audi-
ence, May 18, 1966). 

Pope Paul, reflecting the mind of the Council and of pre-
vailing Catholic tradition, points out that, while the action of 
the Holy Spirit is by no means restricted to the visible ministry 
even of the divinely-appointed episcopacy, that ministry is none-
theless ordinarily needed: 

"We should always remember that the work of 
the visible hierarchy is ordained to the diffusion of 
the Holy Spirit in the members of the Church. Its 
ministry is not indispensable to the mercy of God. 
For, His mercy can be bestowed as God pleases. But 
normally, it is indispensable for us, who have had the 
occasion and the good fortune to obtain the Word of 
God, the grace of God and the guidance of God from 
the apostles. . ." 

In its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Vatican II 
outlined some essential features of this ministry of the bishops. 
They have been appointed, for example, by the Will of Christ 
"shepherds of His Church to the consummation of the world" 
(Lumen Gentium, 18). By divine institution, bishops succeed 
to the place of the apostles (Lumen Gentium, 20). Without the 
episcopacy, apostolicity in the Church suffers an essential de-

52 



feet. Without the episcopacy, there is no Eucharist, no priest-
hood, no historic continuity with the apostolic age and the prim-
itive Christian community. The bishops of the world form to-
gether a college whose ministry includes not only the shepherd-
ing of their respective Churches, each with the cooperation of 
his presbyterium (Christus Dominus, 11), but also "supreme 
and full authority over the universal Church, provided we un-
derstand (the college of the bishops) together with its head, 
the Roman Pontiff, and never without this head" (Lumen Gen-
tium, 22). The Council dares to add that bishops preside "in 
place of God over the flock whose shepherds they are, as teach-
ers for doctrine, priests for sacred worship, and ministers for 
governing" (Lumen Gentium, 20). Indeed, when certain con-
ditions are present, the collegiate body of the bishops proclaims 
Christ's doctrine infallibly (Lumen Gentium, 25). 

Thus, when we speak of our office as bishops of the Church 
of God, we speak in no self-serving spirit. We declare to the 
present and future generations of believers only what has been 
handed down from the origins of Christianity. Setting forth 
the substance of the episcopal office, we are not treating of 
anything incidental or accidental to the life of the Christian 
community. Historically and theologically, Catholic Christians 
(not to mention their Orthodox and many Protestant brethren) 
have been plainly aware that the episcopacy pertains to the 
essence not only of the structured Church but of the very con-
cept of Christian community. They have understood that while, 
historically, there have doubtless been claims or actions be-
yond the proper limits of episcopal authority, with the result 
that prelates have on occasion been called to account by the 
due process of the organized Christian community, such ex-
cesses or defects have been recognized precisely as abnormal 
and have in no way undermined the legitimate uses of sacred 
authority. We can repeat, without qualification, the sentiment 
expressed in the beginning of the second century by Ignatius 
of Antioch: 

"Let a man respect the bishop, for whoever is 
sent by the Master to run His house, we ought to re-
ceive him as we would receive the Master Himself . . . " 
(Ephesians 6). 

"Wherever the bishop appears, there, let the 
people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the 
Catholic Church. . ." (Smyrneans 8). 

53 



THE MINISTRY OF BISHOPS 

The episcopacy is but one ministry in the Church's variety 
of ministries (Lumen Gentium, 18). However, the episcopal 
ministry is uniquely endowed with sacred and sacramental 
power to direct the members of God's People "toward the 
common goal of salvation, freely, and in an orderly way" (Lu-
men Gentium, 18). This ministry, like every ministry in the 
Church, is a form of service; the service in the case of the 
bishop is that of presiding over the Church as Christ provided 
that His Apostles and their successors should do when He would 
no longer remain visibly with His people. He gave those who 
would share His authority example as to how He wished that 
it be exercised. Mindful of their human frailty and of the scan-
dals that would inevitably come, He prayed that they would be 
confirmed by the Holy Spirit and by" one another, above all by 
Peter, when Satan would seek to sift him as wheat and thus 
prevail against the Church (cf. Lk 22:31). 

In a special way, the hierarchy, united with the Pope, is a 
ministry for unity and peace in the Christian community. The 
constant underlying theme of conciliar teaching on the epis-
copacy is unity—a unity of Pope and bishops, of bishops with 
one another, of bishops and priests, of clergy and laity. 

Some seek to divide the Church neatly into her institutional 
and her charismatic components, to declare oversimply what 
is Gospel and what is grace, what is Church and what is Christ. 
The premises of such divisions are frequently forced and al-
ways over-simplified, even when based on appeal to isolated 
phrases of Scripture. A more reasoned and faithful reading 
of the sources of theology will discover that, while some ele-
ments in the Church are unmistakably spiritual and some mani-
festly institutional, most, if not all, are blends of the two. 
Episcopacy and papacy not only represent institution, Gospel, 
and Church; they are likewise charismatic, supernaturally vital, 
and signs of Christ. Conversely, there is no genuinely charis-
matic figure who does not have relationship to institution, Gos-
pel and Church. Catholicism glories in the history of its power-
fully charismatic and persuasively prophetic persons: its re-
formers, many of its mystics, its saints among the laity of both 
sexes, the clergy of every rank, and even its children. But it 
is not without gratitude to those institutional personalities who, 
whatever the human defects which characterize even the saints 

54 



among them and certainly the sinners, historically helped main-
tain the Church's continuity, stability and organized witness in 
the world. 

The heresies which began with scandal at the human ele-
ments in the Church often ended with a denial of Christ's own 
humanity and invariably pitted against one another charismatic 
and institutional elements in the Church as if they were mutu-
ally exclusive, indeed antagonistic (cf., for example, Gnostic-
ism, Albigensianism and not a few elements in the Modernist 
synthesis). A like perverse tendency to polarize has time and 
again led to excessive distinctions between the human and the 
divine in the Word made flesh, between the Christ of faith and 
the Jesus of history, between freedom and authority in reli-
gion, and, finally, between charism and institution. Tertullian 
described the problem of which we are speaking in words still 
timely: 

"Why do you cut Christ in half with a lie? If the 
flesh with its sufferings is a figment, then the Spirit 
with its mighty works was unreal" (De Came Christi). 

Or, more pointedly: "Those who hold Christ had an imaginary 
body are imaginary Christians" (Adv. Valent.). 

Who fails to recognize how the institutional and charis-
matic elements of the Church were interwoven and exemplified 
in the organized assembly of Vatican II, a contemporary re-
minder that ours is a Church of charisms? Who fails to see how 
structured and institutionalized was even the charismatic 
Church of Pentecost? 

"Having nominated two candidates . . . they then 
drew lots for them, and as the lot fell to Matthias, he 
was listed as one of the twelve apostles" (Acts 
1:23-26). 

"These remained faithful to the teaching of the 
apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread, 
and to the prayers . . . the faithful all lived together 
and owned everything in common . . . they went as a 
body to the Temple every day . . ." (Acts 2:42-47). 

There can hardly be a cleavage between Gospel and grace, be-
tween Church and Christ, between episcopacy and charism, 
between priesthood and laity, between apostolicity and the Holy 
Spirit. 

55 



COLLEGIALITY: CONTINUITY OF PRESENT WITH PAST 

These reflections provide a background to the exposition 
in Vatican Council II of the doctrine of episcopal collegiality. 
The full implications of the conciliar teaching on collegiality will 
be felt for centuries in the developing theology, spiritual life, 
effective administration, missionary activity, and self-awareness 
of the Church. So dramatic are some of these implications that 
a few have been tempted to see the whole idea of collegiality as 
if it were a "break through" somehow parting with tradition, a 
concept reserved for discovery only in our times. 

In fact, the development of collegiality in Vatican Council 
II affords many new directions and rich promise for whole 
new areas of theological thought and pastoral activity; how-
ever, the concepts at issue are as native to the beginning of the 
Church as the acts and letters of the apostles. They are as 
venerable as the institution of Church synods and councils and 
the fundamental concept of Churches in communion with each 
other and with Rome. Specifically, and more proximately, the 
doctrine of collegiality is in complete continuity with the First 
Vatican Council. 

When we Catholics speak of continuity rather than change, 
or of development rather than repudiation of the past, we are 
not playing with words or indulging in equivocations. We are 
expressing a reality that is part of the organic nature of the 
Church and a law of her life. Development in the present and 
identity with the past in all essentials are conditions of progress 
in the Church. 

It is sometimes suggested that the contemporary emphasis 
on episcopal collegiality runs counter to the claims for papal 
primacy defined in Vatican Council I. But the concept of pri-
macy in itself presupposes a college or body within which and 
over which the primate rules. This was recognized in the de-
liberations and the projected agenda of Vatican I. It was neces-
sarily implicit in that Council's definition of the prerogatives 
of the papacy and was explicit in its references to the divinely-
established episcopate. So, Vatican II, explicating the doctrine 
of episcopal collegiality, kept full faith with Vatican Council I 
by its insistence on papal primacy in all that the primacy en-
tails. 

We touch on this issue because of occasional suggestions 
that one Council breaks with its predecessors and presents an 

56 



entirely different face to the world from that presented by 
Councils of the past. To evaluate properly any Council, one must 
keep in mind the problems and pressures peculiar to its moment 
of history, the opportune and providential work that it is called 
to do in the special circumstances of its generation and the 
language it employs to express its faith. That is why indict-
ments of the Council of Trent, as if it were somehow blame-
worthy for not having been Vatican II, are so beside the point. 
Likewise, efforts to invent contradictions between Vatican I 
and Vatican II or to find fault with Vatican I for not being 
Vatican II are of dubious worth. Vatican I served its own mo-
ment of history; it could not have anticipated the questions 
and problems which became mature only in the twentieth cen-
tury. As it was, Vatican I played its part in Vatican II and the 
twentieth-century Council advanced deliberately and faithfully 
in the tradition of its predecessors. 

CHURCH AS A FAMILY 
The more profound significance of the collegiality of the 

bishops is grasped best in the awareness we have of the Church 
as a community of charity. The basis of all hierarchy is love, 
a love which expresses itself in community, according to the 
Will of Christ, a love which includes and requires every form 
of service for which the Lord made provision, including teach-
ing and governing. The consequent institutional inequalities 
constitute no threat to a community of love. Every family, as 
we know, comes together unequally but united in love. The 
charity and the loyalties which characterize the family neither 
preclude nor destroy the inequalities consistent with love; in 
effect, they intensify and consecrate those diversities as a re-
sult of which each member has a proper and distinctive service 
to render. 

The image of the family is pertinent for many reasons. The 
doctrine of collegiality reinforces the Church's consciousness 
of her succession from the apostles as a community, not in 
disparate lines of succession, bishop by bishop as it were, but 
within the ancestral continuity of a family. Within that ecclesial 
family, each member of the college of bishops is charged with 
concern for the whole community just as each member of a 
family shares the common solicitude and cares about every 
other. Collegiality, furthermore, reminds us that bishops are 

57 



bound to one another, to their peoples, and to all the Church 
not by arbitrary choices or patterns, nor merely by juridical 
ties, but by the built-in pieties and loves which at once typify 
and constitute the family. 

For all these reasons and denying the validity of none of 
the figures of speech used to express something of the rela-
tionship of the bishops to those especially committed to their 
care, no image of the episcopate is more eloquent than that 
which depicts the bishop as a father. The juridical and theolog-
ical titles of the Pope, Chief Bishop in the Church, become clear 
to all when they are explained, but everyone instinctively un-
derstands the meaning of the words "Holy Father." 

The love of every bishop for his people is fostered not only 
by their need of him and their filial demands upon him but by 
the sustaining unity of the whole college of bishops, by the 
Gospel which calls him constantly to an accounting and by the 
living Tradition he can never dismiss of that Church which is 
so familial in its nature, history and spirit. The love of a bishop 
for his people is made ardent by the liturgy he celebrates, by 
the doctrine he proclaims, and by the Church order he admin-
isters. 

The apostolic authority essential to the Church and ex-
ercised by those who succeed to the place of the apostles is di-
rected, as we have said, to the service of the community. By 
virtue of collegiality, that community joins each bishop as well 
as all the bishops together to the service of the universal Peo-
ple of God: 

"It is the duty of all bishops to promote and safe-
guard the unity of faith and the discipline common to 
the whole Church, to instruct the faithful, to love the 
whole Mystical Body of Christ, especially its poor and 
sorrowing members and those who are suffering perse-
cution for the sake of justice" (Lumen Gentium, 23). 

Even when he acts alone, each bishop ministers to the re-
demption of all men. He does not preach Christ, preside over 
liturgical worship or even organize a local Church apostolically 
for one diocese only, without the effects of all this reaching the 
outer limits of the Church. The message, the worship, the local 
Church involve the bishop in realities which go far beyond 
the territorial boundaries of his diocese and advance the com-

58 



ing of God's Kingdom and the accomplishment of His love 
among all the sons of men. 

THE LOCAL CHURCH 

Each bishop represents Christ's saving Will for those en-
trusted to him, for them he is called, with a truth that should 
comfort his people even as it may frighten him, to be an effec-
tive sign of their salvation. Together with his brothers in the 
episcopate, he becomes a sign of Christ's universal Will for the 
salvation of all men. Without the local Church, there is no 
universal Church; yet no local Church can isolate itself from 
the universal premises and implications of Christ's work and 
the Church's mission. 

The doctrine of collegiality does not, however, diminish 
the bishop's special mission to his own diocese. The local Church 
must always be the direct and unique object of the bishop's 
consecrated service and personal apostolate. Through their 
bishop, united in the common brotherhood of all bishops with 
their elder brother the Successor of Peter, the members of 
each local Church are assured their place in the universal 
Church. 

The common brotherhood among the bishops effects fra-
ternal communion among all local Churches and enables each 
to see the other as truly Catholic, particularly since the brother-
hood of the bishops includes as an essential unifying bond the 
recognition of the Roman Pontiff. The whole Church sees in 
the Successor of Peter "the perpetual and visible principle and 
foundation of unity of both the bishops and of the faithful" 
(Lumen Gentium, 23). Thus, "individual bishops represent each 
his own Church but all of them together and with the Pope 
represent the entire Church" (Lumen Gentium, 23). 

The fact of Christian fraternity, which is the hallmark of 
the Church and the heart of collegiality, must be signified pre-
eminently in those who, as bishops, preside over local Churches. 
It is in the exercise of their brotherhood, with all its collegial 
manifestations, that bishops fulfill the offices of faith concern-
ing their people, mutually confirm the faith of their fellow 
bishops, and keep faith with Christ through Peter. Episcopal 
unity, thus grounded in faith, and episcopal eagerness for the 
consecrated service urged by love are the core of Christian 
brotherhood. Without brotherhood in faith and love thus un-

59 



derstood, a bishop's local Church would become not a local 
Church but an isolated enclave. 

The recent Council, then, did not so explain collegiality as 
to neglect the central role of the local bishop in the local 
Church. 

"The individual bishops, however, are the visible 
principle and foundation of unity in their particular 
Churches. These Churches are fashioned after the 
model of the Universal Church. In them and from 
them comes the one and only Catholic Church. For this 
reason, each individual bishop represents his own 
Church but all of them together and with the Pope 
represent the entire Church in the bond of peace, love, 
and unity" (Lumen Gentium, 23). 

At a time when society is becoming increasingly unified 
in its institutions, more complex and less personal than ever, 
the traditional doctrine of the local Church, in addition to its 
positive content, serves as a welcome counterforce. The the-
ology of the local Church brings the Church of Christ in its 
fullness into our neighborhoods. Thus, we are members of 
the Universal Church through the more tangible reality of the 
local Church. The Church, in its local presence, celebrates the 
Eucharist and all the other sacraments, proclaims the Gospel, 
and possesses all the sacramental structures by which the 
Church is governed and differentiated. The local Church gath-
ers us around one shepherd who shares the proximate concerns 
of the community of Christians united closely with one another 
and with him. 

Nor is this to suggest in the slightest that the local Church 
isolates us from the Universal Church or from those other 
local Churches in communion with Peter where we find our 
brothers in the faith; if it did so, it might be local but it would 
cease to be the Church. Collegiality turns us, at one and the 
same time, to our local bishop, in whom we see apostolicity 
expressed, and then to the entire episcopate, in whom we see 
apostolicity manifesting ever-new evidence of its catholicity. In 
a marvelous manner, collegiality, taken together with the the-
ology of the local Church, proclaims to us the pluralities of 
traditions within the Church, the diversities of cultures, and the 
multiplicity of languages and rites, each of these typified in 
its bishops, all of which harmonize into the sign of a Church 

60 



properly called catholic. Thus in one doctrine is revealed the 
diversity, the universality, and the catholicity within the unity 
of the Church of Christ. 

The episcopate, therefore, is given to the Church not for 
her division but precisely for her unity. Both bishop and people, 
contemplating this profound truth, must act in accordance with 
it. The bishop is commissioned by the Church and called by the 
Holy Spirit to make the community of Christ concretely present 
on the local level. He is given the Church's power to celebrate 
the death of the Lord, to pray and to preside, and to do all the 
works of love called to mind on the day of his consecration: 
"to govern, to interpret doctrine, to consecrate, to ordain, to 
offer Sacrifice, to baptize and to confirm" (The Roman Pon-
tifical). He is given these powers not for himself, but to make 
present and proximate the Mystery of the Church in a local 
community. As the people of that community gather around the 
altar of their local bishop; as they assemble to hear from him the 
Word of God authentically proclaimed and to be formed by 
it, as they recognize, in accordance with their respective gifts, 
the institutional and charismatic leadership which comes to 
them through his apostolic episcopacy; as they do all this, the 
whole Church of God comes into their midst in an intimate, 
truly personal, visible, tangible and audible manner. 

TEACHING OFFICE OF CHURCH AND BISHOPS 

There remains a word to be said about the teaching office 
of the bishops since it is through them that the truths of Christ's 
saving faith are authentically proclaimed in the local Church. 
These truths of Christian faith are not efficaciously believed 
unless they be heard, not heard unless they be preached, not 
preached except by those who are sent (Rom 10:14). 

One of the most vexing problems of our day is the proper 
relationship between conscience and authority. The problem, of 
course, is not new. There has never been a moment in human 
history when men have not been confronted with the claims of 
both conscience and some form of authority. By authority here, 
we do not mean civil jurisdiction as such nor those other valid 
forces by which the good ordering of any society is sought, 
forces which seek their fulfilment in external compliance, even 
when one sees this compliance as morally binding. By authority 
we mean a force which obligates one in conscience, a force 

61 



which therefore enters into a man's inner evaluation of himself 
and which seeks not only external conformity but internal 
acceptance as well. 

We restrict our considerations here to religious authority 
an authority which imposes itself more profoundly than any 
other since it deals with man's relationship to God and has at 
stake not only his religious welfare now but his ultimate salva-
tion hereafter. 

By conscience, we mean a person's awareness of the moral 
imperative in his life toward truth and virtue, his fellow-men 
and his God. By moral imperative we intend all those theologi-
cal and ethical considerations which require a man to call some 
things good and others evil, some things true for human devel-
opment, others false. 

With few exceptions, modern man is notably concerned 
about the problem of conscience. The acuteness of the question 
may reflect a reaction to a time when personal values and de-
cisions are more than ever threatened by group patterns 
demanding corporate loyalties and controlled so often by im-
personal forces. The problem may be intensified by the plural-
ity of ideologies seeking the allegiance of each of us in a society 
which welcomes options in everything but fears decisions, above 
all decisions which require fidelity and restrict one's spontane-
ity of behavior. 

We shall speak first of conscience and its force; secondly 
of authority and freedom in religion; thirdly, of ecclesial au-
thority and Catholic conscience. The vastness and complexity 
of these questions should make it obvious that we do not in-
tend an exhaustive consideration of these matters in this letter 
We consider them only in relation to their bearing on the place 
of the Church's teaching office in our Christian life. 

The question of conscience was set forth in clear terms by 
Cardinal Newman many years ago: 

"Conscience does not repose on itself, but vaguely 
reaches forward to something beyond itself and dimly 
discerns a sanction higher than self for its decisions 
as is evidenced in that keen sense of obligation and 
responsibility which informs them" (Grammar of As-
sent). 

Conscience, then, though it is inviolable, is not a law unto 
itself. One cannot, in the name of conscience, violate the rights 

62 



of others. Thus, conscience must have some norm. Today it is 
widely asserted that conscience's norm is the dignity of the 
human person. Men of belief go further, however, and see the 
norm to be the dignity of the human person indeed, but in the 
light of God. Judaeo-Christian traditions speak of a God Who 
reveals to us truths and values, ultimately Himself, in Whom 
conscience finds its norm. 

We cannot agree, therefore, with those who derive the 
force of conscience only from social or environmental influ-
ences. Conscience ultimately derives from the image of God in 
which man is made and the grace of God by which man is 
called. 

If on these points we draw heavily on Cardinal Newman 
it is because few theologians have stated so well the mind or 
the problems of the Church in the face of a skeptical, sub-
jectivist age. 

On conscience he wrote and spoke frequently and clearly: 
"If man has been betrayed into any kind of im-

morality, he has a lively sense of responsibility and 
guilt, though the act be no offense against society,— 
of distress and apprehension, even though it may be 
of present service" to him,—of compunction and regret, 
though in itself it be most pleasurable,—of confusion 
of face, though it may have no witnesses . . ." (Gram-
mar of Assent). 

The force of conscience, then, which we believe makes us 
beholden to God, no matter how dimly He is perceived or under 
what form He may be affirmed, obliges us to choose. We are 
diminished when we choose against it; we are, likewise, com-
promised when we accept as the dictate of conscience only what 
we find pleasurable, not attempting to align conscience with the 
rights of others and with the ultimate question of God's exist-
ence and demands upon us. Conscience is not only a gift, inspir-
ing us to virtue and restraining us from vice; it is also a de-
mand that must be accomplished, enlightened, formed, elevated. 

Every morally responsible person knows that good is not 
the same as evil, that the former is to be affirmed and the 
latter repudiated. He knows also that conscience is an indis-
pensable factor in the recognition of what is good and the re-
jection of what is evil. Yet conscience does not of itself give us 
all the answers or even all the elements for the definition of 

63 



what is good; at once a basic element of religion and, in a sense, 
the most personal of teachers, it is not, for all this, totally 
luminous, being (as Newman observed) so easily puzzled, ob-
scured and perverted as to need the formation and perfection 
the Church provides. 

FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH 
A further question we wish to consider concerns the re-

lationship between freedom and authority in religion. 

The Second Vatican Council wisely observed: 
"A sense of the dignity of the human person has 

been impressing itself more and more deeply on the 
consciousness of contemporary man. And the demand 
is increasingly made that men should act on their own 
judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible 
freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by a 
sense of duty" (Dignitatis Humanae Personae, 1). 

This helped the Council to conclude: 
"This Vatican Synod declares that the human 

person has a right to religious freedom. . . . The synod 
further declares that the right to religious freedom has 
its foundation in the very dignity of the human person, 
as the dignity is known through the revealed Word of 
God and by reason itself" (Dignitatis Humanae Per-
sonae, 2). 

The Church, whatever her critics may isolate in her his-
tory, regardless of what her loyal sons may wish were done 
better, is a force for freedom and is freedom's home. It is in 
the Church and for the Church that Jesus redeems. It is the 
Church, as we said before, which grace, and hence freedom, 
seeks. In the Church, the sacrament of freedom is celebrated 
in the Eucharist; the Gospel of freedom is proclaimed; and a 
community is formed from that faith in freedom without which 
we are dead in sin and without which we have no final hope. 

St. Paul knew this well and spoke frequently, especially 
to the Galatians, of the Church's understanding of freedom: 

"Before faith came, we were allowed no free-
dom . . ." (Gal 3:23). 

64 



"When Christ freed us, He meant us to remain 
free" (Gal 5:1). 

"My brothers, you were called, as you know, to 
freedom . . . " (Gal 5:13). 

". . . Be careful or this liberty will provide an 
opening for self-indulgence. Serve one another, rather, 
in works of love. . . . If you go snapping at each other 
and tearing each other to pieces, you had better watch 
or you will destroy the whole community" (Gal 
5:13-15). 

These are words written by the Church herself, in the 
Church's own book, by the Church's ardent apostle, for the 
Church's people, as the Church's norm. She strives, today as 
so often in the past, to signify in her every visible structure the 
freedom which brought her into being, a freedom so full that 
she can never be completely loyal to it, a freedom so per-
suasive that it always demands more of her. She knows what 
she is about even though sin may hinder her mission of making 
freedom credible to that world which always settles for a 
lesser freedom or at times hails as freedom what the Church 
knows to be spiritual bondage. 

Thus, the Church speaks in harmony with her nature when 
she declares: 

"In all his activity, a man is bound to follow his 
conscience faithfully, in order that he may come to 
God, for Whom he was created . . . and he is not to be 
forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience" 
(Dignitatis Humanae Personae, 3). 

The ways in which the freedom of the Christian is to be 
formulated by the Church in signs convincing to the world and 
consistent with herself are not always obvious. The ultimate 
freedom that the Church professes is realized in charity, of 
course. There is no freedom without authority, however, just 
as there is no love without obligation. The intricate questions 
arising from the relation of freedom to only these two moral 
factors, charity and authority, hint at how early we are in man's 
growth toward full understanding of freedom in itself and in 
its ramifications. Can we, then, be as complacent about the 
present, or as contemptuous of the past as we sometimes sound 
when there is talk about freedom? 

65 



Is it really honest to suggest for example, that we have 
discovered freedom's perfect formulation only in this century? 
Is it just to imply that other centuries were wrong when they 
had to seek other formulations? Is it not prudent to anticipate 
that future ages will be able to say of us that our way to free-
dom was less free than we thought? In each age, the Church 
may need different signs to signify her essential freedom, 
signs which are not subterfuges but sacraments. This is not to 
pretend that there were not failings in the past. It is to empha-
size that the past was not always untrue to freedom, that the 
present has not given freedom its final sign, and that the fu-
ture need not simply repeat our formulas. Even while begging 
God for pardon from our sins against freedom (as against 
every virtue), we thank Him, all the same, for what His grace 
and His freedom have achieved from the beginning of the 
Church's life. S 

FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY 
The Second Vatican Council, in its Declaration on Reli-

gious Freedom, does not use the phrase "freedom of con-
science." This is in part because such a formula is open to con-
siderable misinterpretation. Cardinal Newman once referred to 
an attitude, prevalent in his day, common to ours: 

"When men advocate the rights of conscience, 
they in no sense mean the rights of the Creator, nor 
the duty to Him, in thought and deed, of the creature; 
but the right of thinking, speaking, writing, and acting 
according to their judgment or their humor, without 
any thought of God at all . . . 
[Each professes] what he pleases, asking no one's 
leave, and accounting priest or preacher, speaker or 
writer, unutterably impertinent, who dares to say a 
word against his going to perdition, if he likes it, in 
his own way . . ." (Difficulties of Anglicans). 

Religious authority was a vital distinction, for Newman, 
between natural and revealed religion. 

". . . it must be borne in mind that, as the essence 
of all religion is authority and obedience, so the dis-
tinction between natural religion and revealed lies in 
this, that the one has a subjective authority, and the 
other an objective" (Development of Doctrine). 

66 



If there must be authority in religion, an authority essen-
tial to freedom's survival, which authority shall it be? 

Catholics believe that unaided conscience is insufficient; 
human nature, inadequate; Scripture, incomplete. These are the 
three most impressive norms which are available to us, it would 
seem. Yet "conscience does not repose on itself" (Grammar of 
Assent)-, humanity is not sufficient "to arrest fierce wilful hu-
man nature in its onward course" (Apologia pro Vita Sua)] and 
even of Scripture it must be said that "a book, after all, cannot 
make a stand against the wild living intellect of man (Ibid..). 

Authority in the Church rests ultimately in God (Who is 
too unknown to us to serve as a concrete norm), revealing Him-
self in Christ (Who, even in His Spirit, does not give us clear 
lines of procedure for doctrinal development or disciplinary 
progress), in the Mystery and sacrament of the Church. In the 
Church, not only does conscience have its place; human nature, 
its office; Scripture, its pre-eminence, but in the Church God 
rules over us in the Revelation of His Son through the Spirit 
Who dwells in the community of Christ. 

Some, of course, while admitting that unsteady conscience 
seeks a sturdy norm, assert that there is no such norm and in-
sist that man must bear bravely with the torment of his con-
science, learning to live with darkness on every side. We believe 
that God does not leave man to himself but has entered history 
through a Word which is "the true light that enlightens all men" 
(Jn 1:8). That Word speaks to us and still enlightens us in the 
Church of Jesus Christ which carries the double burden of 
human conscience and divine authority. The only sufficient 
norm for conscience is authority established in a person. Thus, 
the Church appeals ultimately to God, to Christ and to herself 
whom she sees not as institution but as person since she is the 
Body of Jesus vivified by the Holy Spirit and present in the 
world. 

When one confronts the question of ecclesial authority and 
Catholic conscience, he faces the issue of infallibility in the 
Church. The Catholic Church sees infallibility as Providence, as 
grace, a gift she receives in humility for the sake of her Master 
and for the salvation of her sons and daughters. It is not in 
arrogance but in wonder that she claims infallibility for her 
substantive teaching and guidance. 

For the reasons we have adduced, Cardinal Newman's 
67 



warning is well-founded that denial of external authority by a 
Christian puts him in the condition of mankind had God not 
given Revelation: 

"The supremacy of conscience is the essence of 
natural religion; the supremacy of Apostle, or Pope, 
or Church, or Bishop is the essence of revealed; and 
when such external authority is taken away, the mind 
falls back again of necessity upon that inward guide 
which it possessed even before Revelation was vouch-
safed" (Development of Doctrine). 

In all this, Scripture's prominence in the Church and in 
the formation of Christian conscience is not replaced but under-
scored: 

"I would not deny as an abstract principle that a 
Christian may gain the whole truth from the Scrip-
tures, but would maintain that the chances are very 
seriously against a given individual. I would not deny, 
rather I maintain that a religious, wise, and intellectu-
ally gifted man will succeed; but who answers to this 
description but the collective Church? . . . The Catho-
lic Church, the true Prophet of God, alone is able to 
tell the dream and its interpretation" (Via Media). 

Although the Second Vatican Council committed the 
Church to reform and renewal, although (and even because) 
the Council urged the Church's encouragement of her charis-
matic elements, words spoken over a century ago by Cardinal 
Newman are suddenly timely. Indeed, they seem spoken pre-
cisely to meet certain present problems: 

"There is a time for everything, and many a man 
desires a reformation of an abuse, or the fuller de-
velopment of a doctrine, or the adoption of a particu-
lar policy, but forgets to ask himself whether the right 
time for it is come He may seem to the world to be 
nothing else than a bold champion for the truth and a 
martyr to free opinion, when he is just one of those 
persons the competent authority ought to silence; and, 
though the case may not fall within that subject-
matter in which the authority is infallible . . . it is 
clearly the duty of authority to act vigorously in the 
case. Yet it will go down to posterity as an instance of 
a tyrannical interference with private judgment, and 
of the silencing of a reformer, and of a base love of 

68 



corruption or error; and it will show still less to ad-
vantage, if the ruling power happens in the proceed-
ings to evince any defect of prudence or consideration. 
And all those who take part of that ruling authority 
will be considered time-servers, or indifferent to the 
cause of uprightness and truth . . ." (Apologia pro 
Vita Sua). 

INFALLIBILITY IN THE CHURCH 
Against this background, let us consider the teaching 

authority of the Church. Vatican II reminds us of the im-
portance of that authority and of its essentially pastoral 
preoccupation: 

"It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, sacred 
Scripture, and the teaching authority of the Church, in 
accord with God's most wise design, are so linked and 
joined together that one cannot stand without the 
others, and that all together and each in its own way 
under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute 
effectively to the salvation of souls" (Dei Verbum, 
10) . 

In preaching the truths by which believers in Christ strive 
to live, the Church acts with that freedom from error (infalli-
bility) with which Christ endowed her for the preservation and 
proper development of what relates to the substance of sacred 
doctrine and the essentials of moral life. This freedom from 
substantial error in teaching is a privilege of Peter in defined 
circumstances; it is also a privilege of the college of bishops 
when that body is united with Peter and among themselves. 
Infallibility is protective of apostolic teaching, but such teaching 
is not a lifeless handing on of doctrines made known to the 
Apostles; it keeps alive among the faithful the self-revelation of 
God given us in Jesus Christ. 

Infallibility is thus always subordinate to revelation and 
somehow includes the witness of all the Church's people. In-
fallible teaching in the Church, however, receives its clear 
expression and definition only in that magisterium which speaks 
when the bishops exercise their office in harmony with Peter 
or when Peter defines. 

Thus understood as the Church presents it, infallibility has 
no overtone of the pretension presumably meant by "trium-

69 



phalism." It is a provident service for the Church, a fulfilment 
of the promises of Christ and of His own provision for preserv-
ing the faith itself from the attrition of changing times or from 
compromise with special pressures in or outside the Church. 
Through the collegiate episcopate, the local Churches benefit 
from the gift of infallibility given His Church by Christ; through 
it, they share in the perpetuity of identity and doctrine with 
the apostolic Church; through it the local Churches are 
afforded the possibility of cherishing their differences without 
danger of defection; through it they maintain the Catholicism 
that leaves room for every variation consistent with the faith. 
Infallibility does not mean unilateral or monolithic approaches 
to Christian life and thought; quite the contrary, it sustains and 
even invites diversity, excluding only disunity; it draws strength 
from indigenous traditions, refusing only to be limited to 
particularisms which impair catholicity. 

By the official teaching of the Church, we are given an 
authentic understanding, clarified when needed by doctrinal 
definition, of the faith. Infallibility in the Church is a grace 
given for the well-being of the whole body, its growth in holi-
ness and its progress in truth. Infallibility cannot be separated 
from the pastoral mission of the Church; its object is not 
academic precision or linguistic perfection in doctrinal formu-
lations (this is a function, not the objective of Church teach-
ing); its object is the setting forth of the truths of the faith in 
such a way and at such a time that communion among the 
members of the Church is strengthened and awareness of 
Christ's saving Revelation is clarified. Both in its nature and 
purpose, infallibility involves the entire believing community, 
but not as if it were the result of a community consensus or 
dependent upon some explicit community acceptance of apos-
tolic teaching. Rather, infallibility is, in its ordered exercise, an 
evidence of the effective presence of that Holy Spirit Who is 
the soul of the Church, the principle of her life and her unity. 

This is why, without the gift of infallibility, the Church 
would lose identity with her own origins, would preach herself 
rather than Christ, and would bewilder the world with an am-
biguous Gospel rather than illumine God's People with a faith 
strong in its unity and clear in its apostolic origin. Unless the 
Church is faithful to a well-founded awareness of what her 
infallibility means and exists to accomplish, unless she exer-
cises and lives by it with fidelity, then indeed does her trumpet 

70 



sound the uncertain note to which no one will bother t; 
spond; then is her voice, intended to be so distinct, lost q 
discord of voices which speak with only their own authority 
1 Cor 14:8-10). 

To the authentic voice of the teaching Church all the 
ful, bishops included, owe the response that has come \ 
called "religious assent." The Church is not, as we have 
a gathering of those who decide in their own minds or 
consciences what the Church must be and teach. The Clj 
does not preach the faith through arbitrary processes; 
through such institutional structures and charismatic inte 
tions as take into account the entire community and CI 
revelation of the Spirit. 

The Church assembles, then, in obedience to Christ a 
the teaching of the apostles as well as in love and in the | 
ing of the bread. Though an enlightened, truly Catholic; 
science is something the Church both instructs and need! 
Church is not the collective consensus of individual conscij 
on some point. There is much more. Conscience becomes (! 
lie when genuine apostolic doctrine enters into its forn 
and finds expression in its decisions. If this be not true, 
the Church is left with nothing to say, conscience is left wi, 
norm, and community in faith is scattered. A Catholic bej 
in the Church as a source of freedom, beginning with r 
from the bondage of the powers of darkness. If he doe; 
then the intervention of either the Gospel or the ted 
Church in the formation of his conscience will be seen b 
as servility or tyranny rather than as the guarantor of frej 

RELIGIOUS ASSENT 
Religious assent is not passivity but a positive conseq 

of discipleship in Christ. This assent is required of all ; 
bishops and clergy as well as laity, when a doctrine is sol; 
and publicly defined by the Bishop of Rome or the epii 
college together with the Pope. It is required of us, fu 
more, though not definitively, in that ordinary teaching 
everyday Church which underlies our common faith and i 
A Catholic abides not only by the extraordinary decisions: 
Church but by its ordinary life as well where faith an 
cipline are concerned. 

Such an assent, which follows from and builds comni 
is required for decisions touching on dogma (like the dej 



Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, for example), 
is also required for certain decisions bound up with the 

ordering of the Church. Thus, the renewed insistence by 
Paul VI upon the requirement of priestly celibacy in the 
rn Church, a decision with which the vast majority of the 
pal college concurs, should be seen by clergy and laity 

God's Will for His Church at this time. These and like 
nces, freely given within a community subject to an 

j recognized às authentic, indeed as the instrument of 
re expressions of Christian freedom. 

ven if it be true that the received order prevailing in the 
h (the "discipline" as distinct from the teaching on faith 
orals) is not, of its nature, irreformable, nevertheless it 
part of authority in the Church finally to determine when 

what degree the received order may be modified or 
d. That the teaching Church consult clergy and laity in 
atters or even in the formulation of decisions may often 
uired as a means by which statements of doctrine or 

are made more intelligible or more pastoral. But this con-
on cannot annul the teaching authority in the Church by 
uting one structure for another. Such a confusion of min-
would be alien to the spirit of the Gospel and to the 

ive content of the Church's constant Tradition. 

s well as being central to the Teaching Church, the mem-
f the episcopate form part of the Church consulted when 
man Pontiff or other members of the collégial body seek 
tation. In addition, each bishop coordinates the faith of 
cal Church, speaks authentically in virtue of his own 
and enters into the teaching authority of the collegiate 

pate. No defect of communication, personalities or pro-
s changes the fact that the Christian community never 
with finality until the authentic teaching voices in the 
have spoken. 

bedience to the teaching Church is an obedience required 
of bishops, priests and laity, in matters of doctrine and 
ty. This implies no disposition on the part of the Church 
rant on the part of her bishops to enforce uniformity or 
e in arbitrary judgment; the liberty of the children of 
ven when they constitute the visible Church, remains 
te. Liberty takes into account, of course, the acceptance 
's Will for our salvation. The laity and, even more, the 

Church lei 
she gives.1 
future w l 
power anil 
the Churcl 
deeds the! 
history oil 
yet to be J 

The 1 
sponsibilitl 
demands tfl 
duties as • 
its capacitl 
ressed, wel 
and the 1(1 
century, w 
the humail 
presence (I 
counsel dei 
of Christ's! 

In alii 
isters of a J 
something ] 
and the rrl 
We pray till 
our inadeq 1 
work of tM 
one anothfl 



clergy by reason of their particular offices, are called to con-
tribute their opinions on what concerns the good of the Church; 
their call to do so may even oblige in conscience. All under-
stand, however, that humility and responsibility are imperatives 
not only for those who exercise authority but also for those who 
seek improvement of that exercise. Each one must express not 
only his conscience but also the sense of community which 
unites him to every member of the Church. Otherwise, instead 
of Christ ruling and His community prevailing, a chaos of a 
quite contrary inspiration takes over and engulfs God's People. 

M P 
9 or o 

Concluding Reflections 
In the five years since the Council opened, the Church has 

undergone many changes, some the most rapid in her history 
and perhaps the most profound. Such a period is no time to lose 
patience, above all with the Church, or to attempt to decide, on 
the strength of one's own insights alone, what things are to be 
believed or what values are to be affirmed for salvation. Neither 
can one undertake in such a season to decide on his own, with 
any reasonable hope of success, what structures are necessary 
to make the Church a sign of Christ, indeed, an effective, grace-
giving sign. Modern man is as prone to sin and as capable of 
religious error as man has ever been. 

We may be tempted to forget that the Church is spirit and 
life. At a time when it is asserted that men show less interest in 
the formal expression of religion, we must remember that the 
Church's message is much more than mere talk, her structure is 
not simply that of just one more society. The Church transforms 
the meaning and enlarges the horizon of history; she changes 
man in the depths of his interiority; she re-interprets his every 
concept of self and of community. 

Harnack, the German historian, once remarked that there 
is no other fact in all history which mankind needs so much to 
have brought home to it as this: a man by the name of Jesus 
Christ once stood in our midst. The Church is a sign to all the 
world that Jesus Christ still stands in our midst. The Church 

73 



speaks to man, more forcefully than anything else in his experi-
ence, concerning what he is, what he is for and why he yearns 
to attain something beyond, something outside himself. The 
Church speaks to man, clearly and unequivocally, of the grace 
of Christ at work within him, within even the man who never 
heard of grace but who nonetheless pleads for it in the un-
spoken, wordless longing of his heart. 

The Church reminds man that the grace of Christ seeks 
always to become tangible in the Church where uniquely it 
achieves its concrete, historical and sacramental expression. A 
Catholic can never see Christ as but one more deity in a modern 
Pantheon; neither can a Catholic see the Church of Christ as 
just another of the religious structures on the perplexing fair-
ground of life. Rather, he sees the Church as a mystery, the 
mystery of that Christ Who alone is holy, Who alone is Lord, the 
norm essential for the ultimate interpretation of all reality. 

A Catholic then has an especially critical task to perform in 
contemporary history. He believes that the Church has answers 
which no other religious community has. He values, of course, 
every Christian witness, every valid human experience, every 
man. Yet he well knows that his Christ must always be found in 
the holy, visible, Catholic Church. Once he has shared in the 
Mystery of the Church he is forever a man signed and sealed, 
a man with a mission. He may default his mission or turn a deaf 
ear to his vocation, but he knows it is there and he knows what 
it is. His mission is to witness to God in a special way. He is 
called to serve his fellow-men as a Catholic, to seek their salva-
tion as much as his own and, in both, the glory of God. Those 
who have heard the call to the Catholic Church and have closed 
their hearts to it forfeit their identity and deprive their con-
temporaries by abandoning a work God called them to accom-
plish in time. 

There is an eschatological dimension to the Church even as 
a community of service; as a community of love, of worship 
and of faith at work in service, it is primarily holiness the 
Church promotes, a holiness that cannot be easily measured or 
arbitrarily dismissed. When all is said and done, it is ultimately 
holiness that God requires of us; it is holiness that Christ gives 
and the Church exists to nurture. 

In these unsettling times, God may not always speak to us 
of the need and the nature of holiness in the tranquil terms 

74 



which we, perhaps naively, tend to associate with sanctity. There 
are times, of course, when He simply bids us to be still and see 
that He is God; at other times, ours is one of them, His voice is 
once again in the tumult, the tempest, the thunder and the 
sound of flooding waters. 

GOD'S PROVIDENCE 

In this Year of Faith, we commend meditation on God's 
Providence over the lives of men and of nations. Reliance on 
God's Providence does not mean the fond expectation of divine 
interventions, as if by magic, to prevent the consequences of 
folly or irresponsibility. Neither does it mean blind, unthinking 
and impotent passivity in the face of eternal decrees, despoti-
cally pre-determined without reference to the human condition 
or the use of human freedom. Christ, of all men the most re-
sponsible, accomplished His freedom in His acceptance of the 
Father's Providence. By God's Providence, we mean a compre-
hensive dominion by which God, never losing sight of us, in-
cludes all events within His purposes, never ceasing to love us, 
and never failing to guide and preserve His Church. 

Of all the dispositions of God's Providence, none is more 
merciful or more generous than that by which He so loved the 
world as to send His only-begotten Son and so loved us as to 
perpetuate the presence of Christ among us through His Church. 
As we have stressed in this letter, there is such an identity 
between Christ and His Church that the attitudes we have to-
ward the Church should be those which relate us to a person. 
If we have spoken of the Church as a community, even as a 
family, and have tried to penetrate the Mystery of her life 
under other figures, it has been so that we might the more 
surely come to an understanding of her relation to Christ Whose 
Bride, Whose own Body she is. 

It is of the Church as at once a community and yet some-
how a personality that the Scriptures most often speak to us; 
under both concepts Christians have found it easiest to express 
their attachment to her. Maritain explains this double aspect of 
the Church when he describes the personality of the Church, 
transcending any conventional notion of personality, as unify-
ing a multitude spread out through the whole world and through 
all ages, yet possessing in supreme degree the marks of per-
sonality: unity of being and of life, consciousness, memory, 

75 



perception, voice and a task to accomplish which, also, is one, 
through all times and places (cf. Maritain's Commentary on 
Lumen Gentium, in Le Paysan de la Garonne, pp. 256-258) . 

Thinking of the Church as a person we can better appreci-
ate the needs of the Church and how these needs are met. Pope 
Paul, speaking of the Church after the Council, describes her 
needs as pressing, urgent, even crying. He reminds us of her 
need for the filial attachment of all to whom she has given life, 
her need for their fidelity, collaboration, prayer, the gift of their 
time and support, the testimony of their lives to her power, her 
need for generosity, patience, defense, love. 

Some of these needs of the Church we can reduce to the 
needs of the persons who constitute the Church or whom the 
Church exists to serve: the members of our families, our fellow 
parishioners, the citizens of our communities, our neighbors but 
also our enemies, above all, those to whom apply the words in 
which Christ describes how the needs of the brethren are also 
His: "All that you have done for these, the least of my brethren, 
you have done for me" (Mt 25:40). 

Remembering the sense in which we think of the Church as 
a person, we can more easily understand how she is the object 
of faith. The ultimate object of faith is, of course, God. But the 
Church speaks for God; she teaches by God's authority. Christ is 
the object of our faith; the Church is Christ's living Body in 
history. Because faith gives substance to all the things we hope 
for, being the evidence of things that are not seen (Heb 11, 1), 
faith touches on the Church at every turn; the Church walks by 
faith; she is sustained by faith, responding to God by her faith. 
But the Church is also the object of faith, the living pledge, 
within history and in the world, of eternal things that are not 
yet seen, those things which are the ground, the substance of 
our hope. 

The Church is therefore the object of our gratitude, a 
gratitude which should be fervently expressed in the incessant 
prayers we offer for her. Few practices are more conducive to 
the sense of community than prayer for all the intentions of the 
Church, the whole Church and all her people: her saints, that 
they may persevere; her sinners, that, repenting, they may be 
her consolation and her glory; her poor, her sick, all her chil-
dren known and anonymous; our Holy Father, the Pope, that he 
may serve with courage and wisdom, being fortified by the 

76 



• great love; her missionaries, that they may spread 
3nt influence; her bishops, priests, religious, laity, 
In a word, our grateful prayers should be for "all 

Church." 
prayers we offer with the Virgin Mother of Christ, 
3loved in our country under the title of the Immacu-
tton, addressing our prayers through her the more 
because of our grateful awareness of Mary's privi-
>|s to the Church as these have been proclaimed by 
the Holy Father and the piety of the people. 

i»rch is the object of our loyalty. Loyalty includes 
n|>t the merely exterior obedience which could be 
limply carry out instructions, but an inner, spon-
rit of obedience which continues among His mem-
idamental act of Christ, His unqualified "Yes" to the 
Father. It is this "Yes" which dominates the whole 
salvation, the Incarnation and the Redemption 

ich, by His obedience, Christ won for us our place in 
and our restoration to the friendship of God. The 

he Church of which we speak is therefore loyalty to 

rHE CHURCH 

jllfective pastoral has had for its theme the nature of 
J the central theme of the Council, as she emerges 
bulent world of today. That world confronts her with 
le task: that of formulating the Catholic faith in 
hy speak to modern mentalities, particularly in the 
««religious and secular problems. This she must do 
¡tending that the mysteries of faith can be made any 
igible to men in one century or culture than to those 
the act of faith is eminently reasonable but the faith 
ines rather than explains. It is a light by which we 
ltlwhose source is God and therefore inaccessible to 
telligence. 
s Ifhy it was the business of the Council, as Pope 
ibed it, to make the faith shine with new splendor so 
[J continue to be "the true light that enlightens all 
1:9). The work of refreshing the faith so that, again 
ohn's phrase, "the teachings of the Church are 
new" cannot be accomplished by impetuous applica-

77 



tions of the Council, its message or its implicatioi 
ress of the realm of the spirit, the Kingdom of Goi 
not less arduous after the Council than it was befoi 
be advanced by yielding on what human thought c 
stand or does not choose to accept. 

Responding at once to the voice of the Spil 
realistic appraisal of the needs of the Church and • 
ask all, scholars and simple faithful alike, for honel 
to the teachings of the Council. Such adherence mil 
panied in each of us by greatly increased love for t l 
love which rejoices, humbly but candidly, in belo» 
"elect people and royal priesthood" who are the CB 
impelling us to share with others, generously andl 
the good fortune of the faith so that, with all His bfl 
ing their place in the Mystical Body which is His c f l 
may be all and in all (cf. Eph 1:22-23). 

With the Holy Father, we ask that the same lovfl 
shown toward the Church which called the CounB 
to the Church which must now interpret the Council 
its reforms and give direction to the spirit of renej 
its heritage. 

We have limited this first collective pastoral M 
visible structures of the Church and her pilgrim jou« 
history. This we have done conscious, of course, thai 
on earth is a Church of those who, though they • 
promise, "have not yet appeared with Christ in gl<fl 
Gentium, 48). Thus "we are exiled from the Lord« 
and look forward to that day "when Christ shall apfl 
the glory of God will light up the heavenly cil 
Gentium, 51). In brief, we still seek a city, but I 
already its citizens; we know the road, however • 
leads home. It is the Church. 

Therefore, we must love the Church as we • 
else, save only God, if the Spirit of God is to dwell i l 
redeeming the times and renewing the face of til 
Augustine says it exactly and unforgettably: • 

"We too receive the Holy Spirit if we M 
Church, if we are unified by charity, if we e n 
Catholic name and faith. Let us believe it, brettl 
the measure that each of us loves the Church, 1 
the Holy Spirit" (In Jn. tract. 32,8). 

78 



DOCUMENTS OF VATICAN COUNCIL II 

Gaudium et Spes 

Lumen Gentium 

Optatam Totius 

Presbyterorum Ordinis 

Christus Dominus 

Dignitatis Humanae Personae 

Constitution on the Church in the 
Modern World 

Constitution on the Church 

Decree on Priestly Training 

Decree on the Ministry and Life 
of Priests 

Decree on the Pastoral Office of 
Bishops in the Church 

Declaration on Religious Freedom 

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