Ecclesia Sui Iuris and the Local Church: An Investigation in Terminology

Abstract

* Faculty of Theology, University of Erfurt, Germany. 1 The author thanks especially Professor Dr. John Huels as well as Professor Dr. Thomas Green for correcting this paper. 2 For the problem of how to envision the structure of the Church see Ton Van Eijk, “The Structure of the Church: Dyadic or Triadic?” in Of All Times and of All Places. Protestants and Catholics on the Church Local and Universal, ed. Leo Koffeman and Henk Witte (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2001) 143–169 and Jan Jacobs, “Beyond Polarity. On the Relation Between Locality and Universality in the Roman Catholic Church,” in ibid., 49–68. 350 The Jurist 68 (2008) 350–360 ECCLESIA SUI IURIS AND THE LOCAL CHURCH: AN INVESTIGATION IN TERMINOLOGY Verena Feldhans* 1. Introduction This study1 deals with the problem of an inconsistent terminology in the documents of the SecondVatican Council and its consequences in the years afterward. The council did not elaborate a complete ecclesiological description of the Church but initiated a new paradigm for conceiving ecclesial structures. It stood at the threshold between the past and the future . The council fathers presented a vision of Church without providing a fully developed, concrete plan to realize that vision. The author will look especially at the notions of ecclesia sui iuris and “local church.” These concepts show how difficult it is to distill adequately the ideas and intentions of the council fathers into a clear map for the future. In discussing the notions of ecclesia sui iuris and “local church,” one encounters a delicate problem, namely, which of the two is the appropriate and theologically correct designation in relation to the Catholic Church. Does the Church consist of two poles,2 the one pole being the local church around its bishop and the other pole the universal Church guided by the college of bishops and the bishop of Rome? Or, between these two poles, is there to be perceived another level with its own theological foundation, the church sui iuris? The following investigation will first touch on the council’s terminology for “local church,” for the moment using the English term, as there is more than one Latin expression for this reality.After that, the author will considerVatican II’s assessment of the theological and ecclesiological value of what today are more tech- 3 See also John D. Faris, “At Home Everywhere—A Reconsideration of the Territorium Proprium of the Patriarchal Churches,” which will appear in the next issue of The Jurist. 4 See LG 23. Also Arturo Cattaneo, “Der konziliare Beitrag zur Theologie der Teilkirche,” in Communio in Ecclesiae Mysterio. Festschrift für Winfried Aymans zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Karl-Theodor Geringer and Heribert Schmitz (St. Ottilien: EOS, 2001) 41–45. 5 The following discussion prescinds from the question of what ecclesia (church) means and what is the ecclesiological implication of this designation. See Joseph Komonchak , “The Local Church and the Church Catholic. The Contemporary Theological Problematic ,” The Jurist 52 (1992) 420–426; Winfried Aymans, “Die Communio Ecclesiarum als Gestaltgesetz der einen Kirche,” Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht 138 (1979) 70–75. 6 See Cattaneo, “Der konziliare Beitrag,” 47. ECCLESIA SUI IURIS and the local church 351 nically called churches sui iuris.3 With this as a foundation, the author will then examine how the terminology used in the council’s documents affected the post-conciliar reform of canon law. Finally, there will be some brief concluding points. 2. Structuring the Church—an ecclesiology to be envisioned The major emphasis of the First Vatican Council was the Petrine ministry ; but the council was interrupted before it had the opportunity to treat of the successors of the other apostles, the bishops. This resulted in a real one-sidedness, an ecclesiological imbalance. By contrast, Vatican II wanted to strengthen the ecclesiological foundations of the episcopal ministry. It envisioned the people of God as constituting the Church. The council made visible a Catholic Church that was diverse in its unity, not only diversity within the Latin church but also a diversity due to the existence and contributions of the Eastern Christians in communion with the bishop of Rome. The Church was shown to be a plurality of churches “in which and from which...