RELIGIOUS BOOKS HILMAR PABEL
DIFFICULT BUT ENDURING TASK
True and False Reform in the Church Yves Congar, trans. Paul Philibert
LITURGICAL PRESS, 400PP, £32.50 ■Tablet bookshop price £29.25
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he first edition of Yves Congar’s irrepressible Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Église appeared in 1950. It remains a seminal work
on church reform, a classic of twentieth- century Catholic theology, especially nouvelle théologie.
Congar (1904-95), a prolific Dominican theologian with a passion for ecclesiology and ecumenism and one of the most influential theological experts at Vatican II, welcomed the reformist ferment in the French Church that he saw developing around him immedi- ately after the Second World War. In 1952, the Holy Office forbade the translation and reprinting of the book. But this did not silence Congar’s message or obscure his reputation. A Spanish translation appeared in 1954 and a second French edition in 1968. In 1994, Blessed John Paul II named Congar a cardi- nal. Now for the first time, thanks to another Dominican theologian, Paul Philibert, True and False Reform in the Church, a translation of the second edition, is available in English. Philibert captures the vibrant style of Congar in an accessible translation that exacting readers would correct in only a few places. For the sake of brevity and affordability and because Congar never managed to revise in light of ecumenical developments the sub- stantial third and final part – some 180 pages in the first edition – Philibert omitted Congar’s analysis of “Reform and Protestantism”. The omission of this most vigorously theo - logical section of the book is regrettable. Part 3 offers a penetrating exposition of Catholic ecclesiology and flickers with powerful insights. Years before Vatican II enunciated the principle of episcopal collegiality, Congar took for granted that the “corps épiscopal that has its centre in the Apostolic See of Peter” constitutes the Magisterium of the Church. His brief but trenchant warning that “evocations” of a Church consisting of a holy remnant are “dangerous” and “lead to error”
Fr Joseph Ratzinger is seen with Fr Yves Congar during the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Photo: CNS
Church. This includes ratification by the Church’s hierarchy. Thirdly, reform must be patient, but the hierarchy must not try the patience of reformers through inattention or unneces- sary delays. Finally, reform must operate from a profound fidelity to Catholic tradition. This trad - ition is not merely static, the accumulated treasury of the past,
is germane to recent musings about a Church confined to fewer faithful. Philibert underlines the book’s value for
today’s Catholic Church: “Its message is sorely needed for a Church divided not only over the value of the [Second Vatican] council for the present and future but also over the mean- ing of the Church.” In general, this assessment is correct. The large themes that Congar took up decades ago remain relevant. Theologians, clergy and parish study groups will benefit from a careful reading of True and False Reform.
Congar clearly emphasises his primary
focus: the life of the Church rather than its structure. That life embraces the Church as an institution endowed with and communi- cating grace, as the hierarchy, and as “the community of the faithful”. The Church’s life is not monolithic but displays the dynamism of “healthy” contrasts. Deliberately avoiding a plan of reform, Congar answers two large questions: in what respect may the Church undergo reform and how should reform proceed? Irreformable are the divinely established constitution of the Church and its “essential structure”. What is amenable to reform is the Church’s life or its “state of affairs”, namely “the historical form that the Church as a community of the faithful expresses in its inherited practices”. Reform can encounter two dangerous types of resistance: the conversion of means into spiritual ends and “an excessive attachment to the historical forms that give the Church its cultural expression”. Congar unfortunately identifies the former danger as Pharisaism and the latter as the Synagogue. Four conditions apply for the discernment and realisation of genuine reform, a reform that does not result in schism. First, it must make charity and pastoral care a priority and thus avoid purely rational system-building. Secondly, it must demonstrate an abiding commitment to communion with the entire
but dynamic: “the continuity of development arising from the initial gift of the Church”. Some aspects of Congar’s book do not ring or no longer ring true. The comparison between Luther and Hitler is as unnecessary and appalling today as it should have been 60 years ago. The repeated references to Pharisaism and the Synagogue, even though they are metaphors, risk discrediting Judaism as a defective religion in itself. Some of Congar’s many and useful historical references will elude the general reader and lack the precision of more recent interpretations. Distinguishing between the hierarchical centre and the local periphery in the Church is eminently valid. But Congar’s assumption that prophets, the agents of reform, emerge from the periphery leaves little room for prophetic popes, for change initiated from the centre. Furthermore, how practical does the distinction remain when a powerful centre holds sway over the periphery? Congar only briefly considers what has
emerged as a conspicuous obstacle to reform: the diversity and even division among Catholics. He would have doubtless elabor - ated on this topic had he written his book at the end of his life. A quotation that he pro- duces from an address in 1946 by Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard of Paris to his priests is instructive. “Mutual concessions”, not “mutual excommunications”, should resolve the strife between the proponents and opponents of reform. From Congar we learn that the task of church reform is as enduring as it is difficult and necessary. The new translation, although it offers only two-thirds of the original book, gives a wider audience tools for conceptual- ising and evaluating reform. If it revitalises among anglophone Catholics a prophetic stewardship of the Church’s tradition and development, the Englishing of Congar’s thought will make an important contribution to the life of the Church.
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