Yves Congar - True and False Reform in the Church

True and False Reform in the Church

Yves Congar, O.P.
TRUE AND FALSE
REFORM IN
THE CHURCH
Translated and
with an Introduction by
Paul Philibert, O.P.
A Michael Glazier Book LITURGICAL PRESS
Collegeville, Minnesota www.litpress.org

A Michael Glazier Book published by Liturgical Press

Cover design by David Manahan, OSB. Photo courtesy of PhotoSpin.com.

A translation of Vraie et fausse rforme dans lglise , revised edition. 1968 by Les ditions du Cerf (Paris).

2011 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, microfiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the previous written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint Johns Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500. Printed in the United States of America.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Congar, Yves, 1904-1995.
[Vrai et fausse rforme dan lglise. English]
True and false reform in the church / Yves Congar; translated and with an introduction by Paul Philibert. Rev. ed.
p. cm.
A Michael Glazier book.
ISBN 978-0-8146-5693-8 ISBN 978-0-8146-8009-4 (e-book)
1. Church renewalCatholic Church. I. Title.

BX1746.C6313 2011
262.02dc22

2010031330

Contents

PART THREE
The Reformation and Protestantism [omitted in this translation]

Translators Introduction

You are about to explore one of the transformative masterpieces of twentieth-century theology. Cardinal Avery Dulles once called Congars True and False Reform in the Church a great work [that lays] down principles for authentic Catholic reform. Following Vatican II, Congar released a second and revised edition of True and False Reform in 1968. It is that edition that has been translated here.

It is clear that Archbishop Angelo Roncalli (later to become Pope John XXIII) discovered and read True and False Reform during his years as papal nuncio in France. He asked in response to reading it, A reform of the church: is such a thing really possible? A decade later, he presided over the opening of the Second Vatican Council which he had convened. In his opening address at the council, he described its goals in terms highly evocative of Congars description of authentic reform. Pope John called the council not to reform heresy, not to denounce errors, but to update the churchs capacity to explain itself to the world and to revitalize ecclesial life at the periphery and to open the doors to ecumenical conversation. For us today, this book fills in the blanks of what we have been missing in receiving the council and its call to true reform.

Congars own life, however, is an incredible witness to the very principles that he lays down in this book. In 1954, in part because of Vatican reaction to this book, he was sent into exile from his home, his books, his colleagues, and his friends in Paris. He suffered genuine anguish because of the interruption of his intense theological work and because of the injury to his freedom and his reputation. Eventually, however, Congar was vindicated by Pope John. He was one of the first theologians to be appointed by the pope to the councils preparatory theological commission.

It remains to future historians to trace the exact influence of Congars True and False Reform upon John in advancing the idea of a council. But it is already clear, as Avery Dulles put it, that Congars ecumenical ecclesiology permeates the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium , and the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio . Much later, Pope John Paul II created him a cardinal some months before his death, in recognition of his contributions to the council.

What did not become integrated into the councils documents, however, is precisely what is found in this book. Its message is sorely needed for a church divided not only over the value of the council for the present and the future but also over the meaning of the church. As you will discover, Congar was at pains to clarify the equally necessary roles of the center (hierarchical leadership) and the periphery (local churches with their prophets, their people, and their pastoral geniuses). He draws upon an astonishing array of historical examples not only to clarify his meaning but also to demonstrate how the church dealt with specific challenges in the past. Church leaders will find here what Avery Dulles calls the dialectic between structure and life in the church; pastors will find a penetrating challenge to understand their ecclesial mission as essentially prophetic; and laity yearning for a church more in tune with their own experiences as Christians in the world will find both encouragement and light for their roles. Ecumenists will receive important direction from a theologian who believed that the catholicity of the church needs to be enriched by the cultural and theological genius of Greeks and Russians, Scandinavians and British, indeed, all the rich diversity of the various peoples of the earth.

It is remarkable, then, to discover that the vision, the theological principles, and the arguments for effective catholicity and unity that suffuse Congars writing from half a century ago ring so true to the cultural and pastoral situation of today. In many ways, despite changed circumstances, the restlessness of the early twenty-first century Roman Catholic Church mirrors the ferment that Congar described in the churchs yearning for renewal following the Second World War in Europe. A great many ordinary Catholics feel that they are not understood or being listened to, priests are facing the problem of a gap between parish life and the spiritual hungers of an increasingly disaffected laity, bishops are facing painful administrative choices in the light of a shortage of ordained pastors, and the Catholic Church as a whole is sliding further away from the innovative and creative elements of the scientific, cultural, and artistic evolution of a globally mediated world.

Maintenance or missionnostalgia or aggiornamento? This question immediately becomes ideologically charged today with the competitive ambitions of traditionalists and progressives. In just such a world, Congars book is an apology, among other things, for daring to believe in Gods promise: See, I am making all things new (Rev 21:5). Many Catholics who want to remain Catholic are waiting for just such a deep and authoritative theological analysis of their church in a state of cultural transformation.

In 1950 when Congar wrote the first edition of this book, as now, the tension between the Roman Curia and the renewal initiatives of the prophetic voices in the church was not only palpable but painful. Congar paints the picture of this tension in careful detail. His analysis of the complementary roles of the center and the periphery contributes lucid insight into what we are experiencing today. Further, his clear defense of the role of the center, the apostolic authority of the Holy See and its responsibility to govern the church for the sake of the churchs unity, is fulsome and articulate. This principle was evidently important to him.

However, Congar likewise describes the periphery as having an equally important complementary function of bringing the churchs preaching and witness into every culture, adjusting the life and practices of the church to the human dynamics of linguistically, culturally, and historically diverse nations and devising initiatives to bridge the gap between what is familiar and what is urgently needed.

In the service of this understanding of the church, Congar describes what he calls two levels or kinds of fidelity. While apostolicity means for him that the church will never depart from the deposit of faith that it received from Christ and the apostles, it also means that the apostolic witness simply must come alive in new cultures and that the church is obliged to explain itself in the languages and sensibilities of those cultures. The church will never abandon or distort the divine gift of revealed truth, but in order to express it in a new age the church must be conversant with and articulate in the habits and perspectives of that newness. To cling to formulas that have become outdated and dry for the sake of preserving the past is a kind of fidelity, perhaps. But Congar calls this flat or superficial fidelity. It is incapable of entering realistically into dialogue with the very areas of culture that the church has the duty to evangelize.