Vigils Reading

A reading from

FR KARL RAHNER

◊◊◊

The doctrine of the Church of sinners is found explicitly or implicitly in

other documents of the Second Vatican Council. In the Decree on Ecumenism it

is admitted that for the separated brethren and for the world the face of the

Church is “less” resplendent because of the lack of Christian zeal and so the

growth of God’s kingdom is retarded. The Church must everyday be ‘purified

and renewed’ until she can present herself to Christ as the end ‘glorious and

without spot or wrinkle’.

Therefore there is no hesitation in addressing the church herself as the

subject of purification and renewal, even if that from which she must be purified

is indicated in somewhat too careful and mild a way (as a want of that ‘fervor’

which gives rise to the duty of striving after ‘perfectio christiana‘). But…an

indication is also given that the want of ‘zeal’ and the necessity to strive after

‘perfection’ have as their reason the sin within the Church. This becomes all the

clearer when it is emphasized in this decree that this reformation must begin

with the ‘inner conversion’ to a ‘new mentality’.

It is true that a certain timidity becomes evident when the decree

explicitly speaks of the sins against unity and of the prayers for forgiveness,

where the subject of the sin and of the prayer for forgiveness is ‘we’ (no longer

the Church!). Similarly… the decree only speaks of the fact that the separations

from the Catholic Church took place ‘not without the fault of men on either side’.

Hence there is fault also on the Catholic side, but it is expressly laid at the door

only of her ‘men’, which does not of course exclude a fault on the part of the

Church herself, particularly since the persons immediately concerned in this

fault are the officials of the Church who act juridically in the name of the

Church, so that their fault affects the Church as such in a very palpable way.

The Church is indefectibly holy and therefore is repeatedly called with the

Creed simply ‘Holy Church’. It is stated that the Church on earth has a true

holiness though imperfect. One could be led from this into thinking simply that

the same is true of her holiness as is true of the holiness of the justified

individual: he is truly holy through the grace of justification but his holiness is

still in danger and has still to find its fulfillment and perfection. This holiness

must still be “actualized”. One could add that the decree furthermore explicitly

presupposes that there are in the Church as a matter of fact such justified

persons, even persons in a state of great perfection.