Vatican II

The document wants to see how far we are in the program of reform initiated by the Council. It tries to discover the history of its effect.
There are achievements brought by the Council. There is a shift in Liturgical celebration of the Eucharist from giving importance to the structured community (or the Church) who celebrates the Eucharist over the person presiding the celebration. The opening of the door of the Catholic Church, in dialogue with other religion, is developed and achieved. The council shifts towards social thinking, the preferential option for the poor- carrying out the evangelization of the entire community from their point of view. The major documents of the council (Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium) are put into right order. The magisterium in Die Verbum is primarily the people of God followed by the leaders of the Church then the Theologians. In the case of Lumen Gentium, it sees the mystery of the church and the church as the people of God and then considers the structures and offices that the pilgrim people need.
There are also failures in the council. There is proclamation of Episcopal collegiality, meaning bishops form a college and govern the church together with the pope as their head, but this is a failure. Still there is centralization of ecclesial power. The church is controlled by the pope. The Curia remains unaccountable for to the episcopate and the synod, in their present form, have become little more than further instruments of papal power. Another is the polarization within the Church. There are preferred terms that somehow divide the Council. Pope John XXIII called the reform aggionamento or bringing-up-to-date while Pope Paul VI preferred the name renewal. But scholars used ressourcement which means refreshing of Catholic thought, liberating it from the arid juridicism of the late neoscholasticism, drawing once again upon the richness of its biblical and patristic source. But still the former Cardinal Ratzinger now Pope Benedict XVI put this term into political terms, aggiornamento is a liberal impulse and ressourcement is more conservative. Modernism, which is condemned by the council causes to delay all the programs of renewal. The church tries to seek security by disengagement from the world. The conciliar message did not begin to get through to the Catholic community as a whole, it seems not to speak to the felt concerns and expectations of the people. The crisis of authority comes out when Pope Paul VI rejects the official report of the commission which he convened to consider the question of birth regulation and priestly celibacy and his promulgation of Humanae Vitae and Sacerdotalis coelibatus. Most of the bishops wish the council to consider the matter but the pope insists to reserve it to himself. The church should tackle this issue not for its own sake but for the sake of the society in which the gospel of God’s friendship is to be proclaimed.
These failures are the unfinished business of the council. Overturning of centralization of power and restoring the episcopal authority to the episcopate is more urgent task of the church because the result of inappropriate structures is obviously inappropriate evangelization. Collegiality and solidarity of the people of God (Church) at every level is indispensable for the health and liberty of each particular instance and expression of the Catholic church. The flourishing of new movements after the council is seen as new justification of Church ministry but still under the authority of the pope. The ministry of women and the issue of ordination is still underdeveloped. Their capacity and role is reduced and defined, as the Declaration Inter insigniores stated, to martyrdom, virginity and motherhood. The Church holds the position of the patristic and medieval authorities that the church cannot ordain women because our Lord did not do it, and running things inside the church is what men do. The world-church cannot be sustained if the structure of control is from a single Roman center. What is needed to attained this koinonia is the collegiality of the worldwide episcopate. And the last is the reform of papacy. What we need is a synodal government, a synod or local government composed of bishop, clergy and with the participation of the laity. The curia now will be transformed into a resource centers, a service of administration. And by means of these the crisis of authority will hopefully be eliminated.

RECONSTRUCTING JESUS FOR A DYSFUNCTIONAL CHURCH

The structural system within the church is seen as the reason for the abandonment of some of the members of the Christian community. Michael Crosby, ofm suggest that the church is involved in denial and cover up in its addiction to controlling power and authority, and the co-dependency of the faithful allows the focus on maintaining to dominate and overshadow community mission and authentic spirituality; and this he calls “dysfunctional church”. Other authors like Larson and Parnegg say something about the “recovering catholic” who refers to the struggle facing many Christians who seek to overcome the shame and pain they feel as a result of their experiences in an authoritarian church of secrets and controlling power. Their “religious experiences” means shame on you. These authors also see the possibility of healing if the institutional church recognizes her limits and open herself for criticism than as divine and infallible, above all criticism.
The church declares herself as a divinely-instituted organization that must be distinguished from any other human institution. The priest are considered as metaphysically elevated and ontologically changed. Their function is seen as brokering of grace and salvation to a humanity so wounded by original sin. This self-understanding of the church is radically challenge by the theologians. Grace is not seen as a dualistic concept as Tridantine theology, but instead defined as, is given with human existence itself, meaning humans are capable for this grace even without being baptized or being a member of the Christian community or having faith in Christian belief and so therefore explicit faith is what necessary. The church is just one of the support groups for the transcendent experience; Jesus as both sacrament of God’s self-gift and model for human transcendence. The church understanding must shift from within, from hierarchical and judicial brokerage to pilgrim people who bear the memory of Jesus and celebrate their existence in communion with his searching for personal and corporate transcendence within the context of lived experiences and historical transformation.
The dysfunctional church finds its foundation to dysfunctional Christology. Dysfunctional Christology is caught up in the denial of Jesus’ humanity and giving more emphasis on his divinity that lead to become Docetism. Jesus is seen as God who came down from heaven to die and save us from sins. His death makes satisfaction (St. Anselm Theory of Satisfaction) to an angry God, who now rather reluctantly offers forgiveness and salvation through the church and its sacrament. Only through returning to historical Jesus as a ground for a contemporary theology and the separation of literate and nonliterate sources of Jesus tradition can help us see the true Jesus of Nazareth. In Latin American liberation theology, they see the need for a shift in understanding the concept of Christology from traditional Christology (paschal mystery as the salvific act of God, iconization) to Jesus’ historical existence and his meaning, first within his own contexts, then in our own. Liberation theology has intuited an image of Jesus from their own historical contexts, their own experiences of oppression and poverty. Faith in Jesus is not having fear or threat but taking responsibility for one’s own body and sitting at the table with whoever is hungry, refusing to honor the proper hierarchies and discriminations, overcoming the polarities that segment and separate. To believe is to be set free from pretentions, to overcome one’s codependent status.
The reconstruction of Jesus provides a scholarly, historical basis for codependent Catholics who have grown up with a shame-based imperative theology and seek internal liberation from shame and guilt. Codependent Christians are those Christians that cannot stand on their feet. Catholic spirituality somehow also made the faithful numb and develops and even maintains the false-self because of the suppression of feelings, thinking, and acting. They are not allowed to dissent but to believe what the church is teaching. This kind of spirituality is dysfunctional. Only through looking at historical Jesus can set us free from tyranny and false self identity. Real Jesus can heal our shame and set us free from the prison of our false selves. He calls us to take responsibility of our own lives, to live an uncontrolled life whether from state of church. Grace is the most profound ground for self esteem (with humility) and personal empowerment (admitting powerlessness). It is our capacity for transcendent openness and our actually acting on the impulse to go beyond. A new Christology can help if one can dispels any false flights beyond our humanity, one that sees and feels the real pain of suffering in history, one that activates our imagination by listening to our deepest hungers and our most passionate drives, one that tolerates ambiguity and imperfection and shadows, and finally, one that heals, empower, and liberates because it is grounded in real healing, empowering, and liberating. This can be found in the historical reconstruction of Jesus of Nazareth.