Catherine E. Clifford

REFORM AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE: AN ECUMENICAL ENDEAVOR

These words are written almost fifty years to the day that the small, rotund, and unassuming man of faith, Pope John XXIII, chose against all expectation to convene the Second Vatican Council. Vatican II will go down as one of the most momentous events in the history of the church in the second millennium. Fifty years on, and having passed the threshold of a new millennium, we are still receiving the advance of that council, still interpreting, and yes, still debating its meaning. Indeed, the context of the church has changed since the close of Vatican II, and many new questions have emerged, questions not anticipated by the council. While we cannot look back naively at the conciliar teaching for answers to all questions facing the contemporary Church, we can and indeedmust find there some insights that can serve us as the churches continue to grow together toward full, visible unity. The council marked a decisive and authoritative entry of the Catholic Church into the modern ecumenical movement. The manner in which the Church moves forward in its ecumenical engagement continues to be shaped, for better or worse, by the manner in which we receive and interpret the theological groundwork laid at Vatican II for its engagement in the common search for ecclesial unity.

The Local Church and its Bishop in Ecumenical Perspective

1 As historians of Vatican I are aware, there were many hopes that this council would also give careful consideration to the office of bishop in its constitution on the Church, but these were not realized due to the interruption of the council in 1870. The result was a truncated ecclesiology, centered primarily on the pope. 2 All citations from the documents of the Second Vatican Council are taken from: Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Volume II. ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press / London : Sheed and Ward, 1990). 3 Hervé Legrand, “Les évêques, les églises locales, et l’Église entière,” in Le ministère des évêques au concile Vatican II et depuis, Hommage à Mgr. Guy Herbulot (Paris : Cerf / La Croix, 2001) 201–260 at 209. Legrand’s assessment is confirmed by recent magisterial interpretations of Vatican II, which reflect a universalist notion of collegiality: “In fact, the power of the College of Bishops over the whole Church is not the result of the sum of the powers of the individual Bishops over their particular Churches; it is a pre-existing reality in which individual Bishops participate.” John Paul II, “apostolic letter motu proprio, Apostolos suos: On the Theological and Juridical Nature of Episcopal Conferences,” (May 21, 1998) 13: AAS 90 (1998) 650–651; also in Origins 28 (July 3