A journey with Joseph Cardijn & the Jocist Network (1959-65)
On 6 December 1962, Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro of Bologna, Italy, made another much-remarked intervention appealing to the Council to adopt an ecclesiology of a “Church of the poor.”
SOURCE
Stefan Gigacz, The Leaven in the Council, Chapter 7, The Council opens without Cardijn (Australian Cardijn Institute)
On 5 December 1962, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini of Milan, Italy gave another strong speech endorsing Suenens’ proposal for a Church-world framework.
SOURCE
Stefan Gigacz, The Leaven in the Council, Chapter 7, The Council opens without Cardijn (Australian Cardijn Institute)
On 4 December, a day full of significant interventions, yet another Jocist bishop, Gerard Huyghe of Arras, called for the Church to apply the Socratic maxim ‘know thyself’. ‘It happens that the Church, far from leading souls to Christ, turns them away from him,’ Huyghe warned.
‘The world expects that the Church will question itself’ and ‘discover its true face,’ he continued, adding that the documents to be drafted would ‘commit the Church for centuries.’
SOURCE
Stefan Gigacz, The Leaven in the Council, Chapter 7, The Council opens without Cardijn (Australian Cardijn Institute)
On 4 December 1962, Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens of Malines-Brussels made a powerful intervention calling for the Council’s work to be organised around a binomial Church-world framework.
SOURCE
Stefan Gigacz, The Leaven in the Council, Chapter 7, The Council opens without Cardijn (Australian Cardijn Institute)
On 28 November 1962, another former JOC chaplain, Léon-Arthur Elchinger, called for an ecclesiology inspired by ‘pastoral concern’ based on the Church ‘as a communion’ rather than as ‘an institution.’
‘In the past, theology affirmed the value of the hierarchy,’ Elchinger noted, ‘now, it is discovering the People of God.’ Moreover, where ‘in the past, the theology of the Church considered its internal life above all; now it sees the Church turned towards the world,’ he added.
SOURCE
Stefan Gigacz, The Leaven in the Council, Chapter 7, The Council opens without Cardijn (Australian Cardijn Institute)
In one of the first speeches on the De Ecclesia schema, Bishop Emile-Joseph De Smedt hit out at what he characterised as the dangers of “hierarchism, clericalism, episcopolatry and papolatry.”
In the first chapters of the Draft the traditional picture of the Church predominates. You know the pyramid: the pope, the bishops, the priests, who preside and, when they receive the powers, who teach, sanctify, and govern; then, at the bottom, the Christian people who instead receive and somehow seem to occupy second place in the Church.
We should note that hierarchical power is only something transitory. It belongs to our status on the way. In the next life, in the final state, it will no longer have a purpose, because the elect will have reached perfection, perfect unity in Christ. What remains is the People of God; what passes is the ministry of the hierarchy.
In the People of God we are all joined to others and have the same basic rights and duties. We all share in the royal priesthood of the People of God. The pope is one of the faithful; bishops, priests, lay people, religious: we are all the faithful. We go to the same sacraments; we all need the forgiveness of sins, the eucharistic bread, and the Word of God; we are all heading towards the same homeland, by God’s mercy and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
But as long as the People of God is on the way, Christ brings it to perfection by means of the sacred ministry of the hierarchy. All power in the Church is for ministering, for serving: a ministry of the Word, a ministry of grace, a ministry of governance. We did not come to be served but to serve.
We must be careful lest in speaking about the Church we fall into a kind of hierarchism, clericalism, episcopolatry, or papolatry. What is most important is the People of God; to this People of God, to this Bride of the Word, to this living Temple of the Holy Spirit, the hierarchy must supply its humble services so that it may grow and reach perfect manhood, the fullness of Christ. Of this growing life the hierarchical Church is the good mother: Mother Church.
SOURCE
Stefan Gigacz, The Leaven in the Council, Chapter 7, The Council opens without Cardijn (Australian Cardijn Institute)
A Tidbit from Vatican II: Reflecting on the “Hierarchy” (Deacons Today: Musings on Diakonia and Diaconate)
The final schema up for debate in the First Session was De Ecclesia with debate taking place from 28 November – 4 December was De Ecclesia.
Again, the Jocist bishops took the lead. In fact, trouble had begun inside the Doctrinal Commission when Léger and Garrone refused to endorse the proposed schema, Léger even threatening to resign from the Commission if he were not free to criticise it in the plenary.
SOURCE
Stefan Gigacz, The Leaven in the Council, Chapter 7, The Council opens without Cardijn (Australian Cardijn Institute)