David Schindler explains to ZENIT the new Pope's ecclesiological vision. Or, another way to put it would be: Read Chapter 5 of Why the Church? by Msgr. Luigi Giussani.
Q: The idea of "communio" is, obviously, a key idea behind your magazine. But what is the theological significance of the word? And how does it figure in Benedict XVI's outlook?
Schindler: The term "communio," in its fundamental meaning, seeks to recover the nature of the Church as a communion of persons. This loving communion includes the hierarchical-Petrine structure that guarantees the objectivity of love.
There was much discussion following the Second Vatican Council of the notion of the "People of God" as the dominant understanding of the Church.
"Communio" does not so much contradict this notion as transform it, emphasizing the initiative of God, who established and maintains the unity of the Church through Jesus Christ with the cooperation of his mother Mary, whose fiat made her person the first home of God on earth -- hence the basic "figure" of the Church.
The notion of the Church as "communio" thus contrasts with the notion of the Church as "congregatio." While "communio" emphasizes the nature of the Church as a gift from God, established "from above," "congregatio" indicates a community that comes to be "from below," by virtue of the decision of the individual wills of the community, in the manner of a democratic body.
This theocentric understanding of the Church as the sacrament of Christ's love has been an abiding feature of Cardinal Ratzinger's life. I think one can safely say that ecclesiology has always been at the center of his theological concerns, and was already indicated in his significant work at the Council itself, though he was only in his mid-30s at the time.Q: How is "communio" the core from which the life of the Church unfolds, as Cardinal Ratzinger has said?
Schindler: The communion of persons that makes up the Church is an icon of the divine Trinitarian communion of Persons. The life of the Church is drawn intrinsically from the life of God, in and through Christ and the promise of his abiding, vivifying presence in the Church.
The Church springs from the bosom of the Trinity, from the life of divine love, revealed in and through Christ by means of the loving obedience of Mary's fiat.
Comments