The Idea of Church

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

“Herein lies the cause of a good part of the misunderstandings or real errors which endanger theology and common Catholic opinion alike.
“My Impression is that the authentically Catholic meaning of the reality ‘Church’ is tacitly disappearing, without being expressly rejected. Many no longer believe that what is at issue is a reality willed by the Lord himself. Even with some theologians, the Church appears to be a human construction, an instrument created by us and one which we ourselves can freely reorganize according to the requirements of the moment. In other words, in many ways a conception of Church is spreading in Catholic thought, and even in Catholic theology, that cannot even be called Protestant in a ‘classic’ sense. Many current ecclesiological ideas, rather, refer to the model of certain North American ‘free churches’, in which in the past believers took refuge from the oppressive model of the ‘State Church’ produced by the Reformation. Those refugees, no longer believing in an institutional Church willed by Christ, and wanting at the same time to escape the State Church, created their own church, an organization structured according to their needs.
“For a Catholic the Church is indeed composed of men who organize her external visage. But behind this, the fundamental structures are willed by God himself, and therefore they are inviolable. Behind the human exterior stands the mystery of a more than human reality, in which reformers, sociologists, organizers have no authority whatsoever. If the Church, instead, is viewed as a human construction, the product of our own efforts, even the contents of the faith end up assuming an arbitrary character: the faith, in fact, no longer has an authentic, guaranteed instrument through which to express itself. Thus, without a view of the mystery of the Church that is also supernatural and not only sociological, Christology itself looses its reference to the divine in favor of a purely human structure, and ultimately it amounts to a purely human project: it Gospel becomes the Jesus-project, the social-liberation project or other merely historical, immanent projects that can still seem religious in appearance, but which are atheistic in substance.”
(During Vatican II there was a great emphasis - in the interventions of some bishops, in the statements of their theological advisers, but also in the final documents - on the concept of the Church as “People of God”, a conception which subsequently seemed to dominate in the post-conciliar ecclesiologies.)
“That’s true. There was and there still is this emphasis, which in the Council texts, however, is balanced with others that complete it. A balance that has been lost with many theologians. Yet, Contrary to what the latter think, in this way there is the risk of moving backward rather than forward. Here indeed there is even the danger of abandoning the New Testament in order to return to the Old. ‘People of God’ in Scripture, in fact, is a reference to Israel in its relationship of prayer and fidelity to the Lord. But to limit the definition of the Church to that expression means not to give expression to the New Testament understanding of the Church in its fullness. Here ‘People of God’ actually refers always to the Old Testament element of the Church, and one is a member thereof, not through a sociological adherence, but precisely through incorporation in this Body of the Lord through baptism and the Eucharist. Behind the concept of the Church as the People of God, which has been so exclusively thrust into the foreground today, hide influences of ecclesiologies which de facto revert to the Old Testament; and perhaps also political, partisan and collectivist influence. In reality, there is no truly New Testament, Catholic concept of Church without a direct and vital relation no only with sociology but first of all with chirstology. The Church does not exhaust herself in the ‘collective’ of believers: being the ‘Body of Christ’ she is much more than the simple sum of her members.”

Taken from the Ratzinger Report, Ignatius Press, 1985