The Role of Affectivity in the Theology of Yves Congar

Abstract

Yves M.-J. Congar (1904-1995) was the foremost French theologian of the twentieth century. The severe trials to which he was subjected by Roman Catholic Church authorities, notwithstanding, Congar loved the Church. As he explained to Jean Puyo in 1975: I am of the Church. I love the Church.’ This love is based on a simple yet profound truth that he recognised the Church as the Mother, the hearth and the homeland of his spiritual being. Congar’s love for the Church, motivated by his love for Christ, is situated in the wider setting of his love for humankind. It is difficult to avoid an admiration for his shrewd insistence on the need to locate the maternal and fraternal dimensions of the Church’s nature, seen as perfectly compatible, in a communion ecclesiology. A communitarian, ecclesial milieu is correctly identified as essential for the formation of Christians: Maternal, the Church is also fraternal. It is a fraternity. The two qualities are perfectly compatible, evangelically speaking, because in the spiritual plan, they are united in communion: as in a text like Matthew 12. 50 (Mark 3. 35; Luke 8. 21). Better: it is the fraternity which exercises here a maternity, as it is said so often by Saint Augustine and many others. This does not take away anything from a particular paternity of priests and pastors who can say with Saint Paul: ‘It is I who, through the gospel, begot you in Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 4. 15). This signifies that if, taken individually, we are sons of the Church, we form collectively or rather as a community, this ecclesial milieu which we have seen is the generator and educator of Christians.