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Communio |
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Communio is the central ecclesiological idea of Vatican Council II. The opening paragraph of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, describes the Church as “a sign and instrument of communion with God and of unity among all men” (1). The Church is a living communion, drawing people into the life of Christ. She lives by that life and communicates it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “In the Church this communion of men with God . . . is the purpose which governs everything in her that is a sacramental means” (773). The communion of the members of the Church with Christ and one another draws its life-giving source from the sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist (cf. CCC 790). In becoming man, God has sought communion with us. “All men are called to this union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and towards whom our whole life is directed” (Lumen Gentium, 3). It is up to each one of us to respond freely to this call, to accept or neglect or reject communion with Christ. A positive response is an expression of charity: love for God that is necessarily love for all others, and so becomes an ecclesial charity. But charity alone is not enough to enter and live within communio. We also need faith, precisely an ecclesial faith: “ ‘[T]he invisible God . . . addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company [DV 2].’ The adequate response to this invitation is faith” (CCC 142). Just as one loves within the community of the Church, so also one believes within the same community. It is necessary to think with Christ and with others in Christ. Christ wants his followers to be at one, not only in charity – in love for him and for one another – but also in faith and government. Any merely human community has a limit in time; it inevitably comes to an end in death. The Christian communio transcends time and death. It means oneness of heart and mind with all those who have shared the spirit of Christ throughout the ages. Hence derives the Catholic sense of Tradition as something living. In a certain sense, following G.K. Chesterton, we can say that Catholicism is the truest democracy because it excludes no one; it gives a vote also to those who have gone before us, who belong not to the past but to a present much more permanent than ours, who are not dead but much more living than we. Communio cannot be lived in an exclusively spiritual or disincarnated way. In the plan of Christ, full, life-giving communion is achieved in and through the Church. It is therefore essential for each individual to maintain communion with the universal Church: by praying for others, by participating in the Church’s sacramental life, especially the Eucharist, by knowing Church teaching as presented by the Magisterium, by following authoritative directives, etc. Especially this communion is realized and maintained through one’s bishop, whose “authority must be exercised in communion with the whole Church under the guidance of the Pope” (CCC 895). It follows that each bishop has a special responsibility to defend and foster communio: to ensure that his particular church is one with the Holy See and his people one in Catholic faith, worship, and essential discipline. One should understand how communio harmonizes with the Christian philosophy of personalism, also strongly present in Vatican II. The Council is in fact both community-centered and person-centered. There is no opposition. Personalism, as the Church presents it, is not inward-looking. Its thrust goes out to others, emphasizing that it is “only in a sincere giving of self that one can fully discover one’s true self” (Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 24). Personalism understands that self-fulfillment lies in responding to values to be found outside oneself: in the world, in others, in God. By contrast, secular individualism is opposed to communio, putting the individual self at the center of affairs and wishing to subordinate all else to “self-expression” or “self-fulfillment,” with little or no regard for the rights and freedoms of others. It is important to be able to recognize the difference between true personalism and individualism. Individualistic approaches are incapable of renewing persons or the ecclesial community.
See: Church, Nature, Origin, and Structure of; Communion of Saints; Holy See; People of God. |
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