Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T12:34:25.495Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Vatican ll's Model of the Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

“Thou speak’st wiser than thou art ware of’

(As You Like It: Act II, scene 4, 1. 55)

So many hands have sown the ideas in this article, and over such a long period of time, that I have forgotten many of them. I can recall Richard McBrien declaiming from his book, Do We Need the Church? as he strides across the field, so sure and so impatient. I can hear Christopher Butler, in his black habit with the hood up, quietly chanting The Theology of Vatican II. But I cannot remember who it was that planted the most fruitful seed of all: “The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was the first document of the Second Vatican Council. It would have been very different, if it had been the last”.

The ripening, I know, took place in the warmth and light of Avery Dulles’ Models of the Church. But his was the kind of sunshine that forced me to seek the shade of second thoughts; and once there, I wondered if I dared to disagree with him.

In this article, I present an argument which is made up of three suggestions about how we are to understand Vatican II’s ideas concerning the Church. To illustrate the point I am trying to make, I raise some questions about how this affects our view of the sacraments. And I ask whether this is not a case of the famous sensus plenior, the ‘fuller sense’ which appears to have been discussed only by scripture scholars up to now, but is surely relevant to the interpretation of council documents.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers