Abstract
William Cavanaugh’s critique of Catholic Action and pre-conciliar ecclesiology is used in this chapter to consider how Vatican II understands the church’s presence and mission in the world, especially through its lay members. The aim is to argue that it is in these aspects of the Council’s teachings that we will find further evidence of the problems identified in sections four and five of the previous chapter, and the ecclesiological origins of those problems. Moreover, looking at how the Council’s ecclesiology affects its more explicit teachings about politics and church-state relations in Apostolicam Actuositatem and especially Gaudium et Spes will enable us to arrive at last at a position to summarise and make a judgement upon the totality of the problems besetting the Council's teaching on church-state relations.
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Notes
- 1.
In many ways the Popular Party was similar to the Catholic parties created in other countries with papal support in the nineteenth century, but the Popular Party in Italy was created much later in 1919. Catholic involvement in political life in Italy had been prevented for decades by the Holy See’s policy from 1868 to 1919 of urging Catholics to abstain from political elections in protest against the conquest of the Papal States by the unified Kingdom of Italy.
- 2.
In the words of Maritain: in our time the Christian ‘finds himself engaged more and more not as Christian or as member of the church, but as member of the temporal city, I mean as Christian member of this city’ (Maritain 1938, p. 113).
- 3.
- 4.
The overemphasis on the intellectual formation of the laity’s consciences in values and principles may seem to be denied by one section: ‘Training for the apostolate cannot consist in theoretical teaching alone’ (AA 1975b, p. 79, n. 29). Yet this is belied by what follows: ‘[O]n that account there is need, right from the start of training, to learn gradually and prudently to see all things in the light of faith, to judge and act always in its light, to improve and perfect oneself by working with others, and in this manner to enter actively into the service of the Church’ (ibid.). The text’s reference ‘to see … to judge and act’ (ibid.) tells us that it is adding to doctrinal instruction a method by which to discern how those general values and principles learnt can be applied here and now using the ‘Catholic Action methodology of See-Judge-Act’ (Cavanaugh 1998, p. 142). The appended footnote to the text referring to the encyclical Mater et Magistra confirms this because that encyclical explicitly recommends the method of ‘look, judge, act’ (Pope John XXIII 1981, p. 84). In other words, even the way that AA tries to avoid a purely intellectual conception of the laity’s formation reveals its continuity with pre-conciliar conceptions of how the faith should shape the layman.
- 5.
Cf. ‘Despite the emphasis on the importance of Scripture in Gaudium et spes, this Vatican II document accentuates the autonomy of earthly affairs—meaning that human realities and societies have their own laws and values, which human beings of all and no religious beliefs must decipher and use’ (Curran 2002, p. 43).
- 6.
Cf. ‘Is there a unique Christian content regarding social justice in the world and the transformation of human society that is not shared by non-Christians and all people of good will? … The documents of Catholic social teaching answer this question by indicating that Christians should work with all others for the same basic human rights and common good and imply that there is no unique content that calls for Christians to act in different ways from non-Christians’ (Curran 2002, p. 40; emphasis added).
- 7.
It is to be noted that in an earlier section of GS we read: ‘The Council appeals to Christians, citizens of both cities, to spare no pains to carry out their earthly duties faithfully and in the spirit of the Gospel’ (GS, 1966, p. 42, n. 43). This is either a misunderstanding of Augustine, for whom one is a member of one or the other city, never of both at once (O’Donovan 2004, p. 58), or it reveals GS’s confusing use of the Augustinian language of Two Cities to mean in fact a Thomistic distinction between the temporal and spiritual communities. Either way, this section shows us again that GS conceives of Church and state not as two mutually opposed, yet intermingled societies, but rather as two complementary parts of the same society.
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Ciftci, M.Y. (2024). Reading LG, AA, and GS Through the Lens of Ecclesial Ethics. In: Vatican II on Church-State Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56706-3_5
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