A Church Fully Engaged: Yves Congar’s Vision of Ecclesial Authority by Anthony Oelrich

Abstract

642 BOOK REVIEWS extensive pastoral experience. Nonetheless, she might do well to let her recovery depend more on the Augustinian and Thomistic traditions in interpreting the relations between this world and the world to come. MICHAEL DAUPHINAIS Ave Maria University Ave Maria, Florida A Church Fully Engaged: Yves Congar’s Vision of Ecclesial Authority. By ANTHONY OELRICH. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 2011. Pp. 176. $30.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8146-5797-3. Anthony Oelrich, a priest of the Diocese of St. Cloud, Minnesota, has provided a useful and accessible text on Yves Congar’s vision of ecclesial authority. This book, the published version of his doctoral dissertation submitted to the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, consists of a helpful introduction and conclusion, as well as five chapters on Congar’s vision of ecclesial authority. Chapter 1, “The Life and Work of Yves Congar, OP” provides an introduction to Congar’s life’s work, as well as an account of his contribution to theology and to the Church. It highlights the importance of his ecumenical vocation and of his 1935 study of unbelief published in La vie intellectuelle (3). The chapter also draws attention to the role of the “cult of Truth” in Congar’s life and work (4). Oelrich concludes the chapter with reference to Congar’s place in the “profound renewal of ecclesiology, and in particular his explicitly stated intention to move the presentation of the Church beyond mere ‘hierarchologies’” (9). It is this element of Congar’s ecclesiology which, in Oelrich’s view, makes his theological treatment of authority particularly worthy of study. Chapter 2, “Historical Foundations for the Understanding and Practice of Authority in the Church” places the subject matter of this work within the essential context of the return to the sources, the indispensable role of history, and pneumatology—foundational concerns of Congar’s thought (11-12). Oelrich provides a helpful outline of the history of authority in the Church by means of a careful exposition of Congar’s historical works. In a significant and insightful analysis, Oelrich remarks: “The various ecclesiastical, spiritual, and sociological trends that marked the entire period of the Middle Ages came to full development, often violently and destructively, in the sixteenth century and the centuries that followed” (29). Confronted by the two powerful forces of the Protestant Reformation and secularization, Church authorities adopted a defensive attitude. It would take a long time for dialogue and engagement to BOOK REVIEWS 643 displace the old entrenched defensiveness. Oelrich’s comment is apposite: “Losing religious ground to the Reformation, intellectual ground to science and secular humanism, philosophical ground to the Enlightenment, and political ground to the often violent forces of democracy, the Church found itself always on the defensive” (33). The breakthrough to change was, of course, effected at the Second Vatican Council. This chapter concludes with the assertion that authority in the Church is both hierarchical and communal. These two principles are the subject of the next two chapters of the book. Chapter 3, “The Community or Life Principle of Authority” brings us to the heart of Congar’s thought on authority. The theme of structure and life is fundamental to Congar’s ecclesiology. In his seminal work on Church reform, True and False Reform in the Church, he underlines its importance unambiguously: “Nothing would be more dangerous than to work to reform something in the domain of the ecclesial life without being assured of a very solid ecclesiology, that is to say a theology of the structure of the Church.” Oelrich rightly begins his treatment of authority in Congar’s thought by first setting out precisely how he understands the terms “structure” and “life” by means of a comparison with the thought of Hans Küng (43). Oelrich’s analysis of Congar’s articulation of the theological foundations of the community principle of authority includes the following elements: “Church as Communion ,” “Ontology of Grace,” and the relationship between “the Church and the World.” The profound influence of St. Robert Bellarmine was felt up to the First Vatican Council and resulted in an overemphasis on external structures at the expense of a true spiritual anthropology, an imbalance that...