Recherche – Detailansicht

Ausgabe:

November/2018

Spalte:

1196–1198

Kategorie:

Ökumenik, Konfessionskunde

Autor/Hrsg.:

Wald, Berthold [Hrsg.]

Titel/Untertitel:

Krise und Erneuerung der Kirche. Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil.

Verlag:

Paderborn: Bonifatius Verlag 2016. 331 S. Kart. EUR 22,90. ISBN 978-3-89710-688-8.

Rezensent:

Paul Silas Peterson

There could hardly be a better time to reevaluate the legacy of the Second Vatican Council than today, and this is what this excellent volume from Berthold Wald, professor of systematic theology at the University of Paderborn, accomplishes. The title of the volume in English translation is »Crisis and Renewal of the Church: The Second Vatican Council.« The book is a collection of lectures held in 2012–2013 in Paderborn to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the council in 1962.
The first chapter by Michael Bredeck is a thorough introduction into the history of the council and its reception. This is especially insightful because it includes important biographical information on Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, with a special focus on the controversial term he used in his opening speech at the council: »aggiornamento« (modernization, bringing up to date). Five years before the council, in 1957, as Patriarch of Venice, Roncalli (who was deeply influenced by Charles Borromeo) used the same controversial term in an opening speech at a diocesan synod in Venice. There he clearly associated the concept with moderniza-tion, with the correcting of past errors, and with adjusting to the times and improving and renewing the church for a new age. The volume also provides a general overview of the major impulses of reform by evaluating the four constitutions ( Lumen Gentium, on the church; Sacrosanctum Concilium, on the liturgy; Dei Verbum, on revelation; Gaudium et Spes, on moral issues and the church in the modern world) in four essays in the first part of the volume (from Dieter Hattrup, Michael Kunzler, Josef Meyer zu Schlochtern and Günter Wilhelms respectively). The second part is a group of five essays addressing continuity and transformation in the Council. These are concerned with 1. the theological principle of development, 2. the Church’s relationship to Judaism and the Old Testament, 3. the Church’s relationship to people of Jewish faith, 4. the priesthood of all believers, and 5. human dignity (from Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, Michael Konkel, Maria Neubrand, Dorothea Sattler and Bernd Irlenborn respectively). The third section is a group of four essays concerned with contemporary developments. These address 1. the Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church from 2011 (Michaela Freifrau von Heereman), 2. theology and holiness (Karl-Heinz Wiesemann), 3. theology of missions or evangelization (Christian Schmitt), and 4. the »Night-fever initiative« (a new out-reach movement among Catholic youth), from Hanns-Gregor Nissing and Andreas Süß. The volume builds upon theological developments and provides a new forward looking approach to contemporary challenges. It is a good example of the abiding energy in Catholicism that should encourage other churches in their work of reform and mission.
Since the election of Pope Francis, we have witnessed a new and rigorous debate about reform in the Catholic Church. As Wald’s superb volume shows, these impulses of reform can already be seen very strongly in Vatican II, and, indeed, the roots seem to go much deeper than this too. Yet a sober analysis of the contemporary situation should not fall into paradigms of naive optimism. The legacy of Vatican II remains highly questionable in many parts of Catholicism today. There are also many new forms of re-confessionaliza-tion and anti-ecumenism throughout Christianity today. Furthermore, virtually all forms of Christianity today in the Western world (w ith the one exception of liberal Protestantism) are becoming more foreign to their cultural contexts. Liberal Protestantism is adapting, but also shrinking very quickly. Even though the Chris-tian religion continues to grow in the non-Western world, the Western cultures surrounding most of the old churches and traditions in the Western world tend to view them as somewhat antiquated and parochial. Wilhelms tried to counter this in his essay with reference to Gaudium et Spes (esp. Art. 93) and a valiant call for more openness to the world outside the church walls. As we know, less and less Germans are willing to become priests today, in part because they do not want to choose this path of radical separation from the culture and lifestyle of their broader social context.
This issue is, of course, massively compounded by the scriptur-ally untenable requirement of celibacy. As multiple studies in Wes-tern countries demonstrate, many young people today view the Catholic Church (and many Orthodox and Protestant churches as well) as premodern on issues of sexual ethics. For many Western youth today, the Catholic Church’s internal authority structure is a mysterious stratosphere of hierarchical authoritarianism, reflecting an anti-democratic culture that excludes women and encourages all the known vices of an »old boys’ club.« Some of the groundwork for reform in these areas has already been done, as especially Sattler’s essay shows, but the resistance to this reform, and espe-cially to the elimination of the official ecclesial discrimination against women, has been too strong among the men in power (men who were not democratically elected by their congregations from below, but selected by other men from above). The Catholic Church, and many Protestant churches as well, are, for many young people in the Western world today, a place to go when grandma dies, not a place to go to celebrate everyday life as a gift of God. Time is short, and the list of reforms is long. At the top of this list – now well over a half a century after the 1960s – is still the status of women in the Catholic Church. As Sattler argues, who is a professor for theology at the Catholic faculty of theology of the University of Münster: »Neither the competencies for leadership nor the sensibilities for pastoral questions can be denied women. In the long run, prohibitions on thinking will not lead to the desired end.« (210)
Vatican II and its legacy of reform provide a positive example, but today’s challenges demand more than even the fathers of Vatican II were willing to acknowledge. Beyond the public enthusiasm about Pope Francis’s potential for reform from above, there is a need today for a full scale Scripturally grounded reform of the Catholic Church from below. This would transform the top-down author-ity structure to a bottom-up authority structure, one with the full empowerment of the laity, the »royal priesthood« (1Petr 2:9; cf. Acts 15:22, »with the consent of the whole church«). It would also entail the elimination of the discrimination against women in the church (cf. Rom 16, especially regarding Paul’s highest praise of the woman apostle »Junia«, 16:6). The fathers of Vatican II were not willing to go this far, but today these reforms seem to be necessary. Wald’s vol-ume convincingly shows how the texts of the council, which are also ultimately »non supra verbum Dei« ( Dei Verbum, 10), can still be drawn upon to work towards »aggiornamento.«
Perhaps it is, indeed, not too late for an institutional »Erneuerung« (renewal), to use the title of the book. Yet a study of history would raise questions here. Institutional renewals are actually the exception, not the rule. Usually, renewals require new wineskins, that is, new institutions that can withstand the dynamics of transition, and steer them to a good end. From a pragmatic perspective, perhaps a new form of Roman Catholicism can be established within the Roman Catholic Church, one that is capable of embracing these dynamics of reform, including full communion at the Lord’s Supper with other churches (or »ecclesial communities«, in the terms of Dominus Iesus, 17). As Hattrup’s essay shows, the »subsistit in« concept from Lumen Gentium 8 allows for very creative interpretations of ecclesial self-understanding today, in which »the foreigners, indeed, even the adversaries of the church can contri-bute to the mission of the church« (52). This would not require a new church, or a split from the Roman communion, for the other traditional form could continue to commune with and intercede for the liberal form, and vice versa. There could thus be two ways of being Catholic. Yet if the reform from above does not work, perhaps reform will come from below in the coming generations.
Such reforms according to the Scriptures could be welcomed by many Christians in the apostolic tradition, for the apostolic writ-ings have supreme authority above all later councils, papal decrees or existing ecclesial hierarchies.