Cavadini - Church is the Sacrament of Christ's Solidarity, Sacrifice, and Love for the World

To understand the baptismal vocation properly, then, one must understand what it is a call towards, and, as I have been saying, that is towards the mystery of the Church. Indeed in my many years of teaching undergraduate theology, I find that apart from the problem of evil (and it is related) perhaps the hardest thing for young people to negotiate, is the Church herself. Why the Church? Why is it worth belonging? What’s the point of that vocation? . . . Can’t I just be a good person? . . . 

If you would like an answer, I propose a test. If you are familiar with the [Catechism's] article on the Church, you will know that it cites the Shepherd of Hermas. Ready? Here’s the test: “The world was made for the sake of the Church,” or so the Shepherd (2.4.1) tells us. . . . [Catechism §760]

To claim that “the world was created for the sake of the Church” just seems, well, narrow to us, more than a tad triumphalist. Of course, if we stopped a minute to think about it, we would realize that “the world was created for the sake of the Church” would mean nothing unless the reverse of the statement were also true, that is, that the Church was created for the sake of the world, or, with an echo of John 3.16, for the love, of the world. But the reason the statement is so shocking to many contemporary readers, if they pause over it at all, is that we moderns, and this includes Catholics, tend to hear the word “Church” in a very one dimensional way.

Judging from the way most of my students seem to think, the Church is a kind of club, perhaps invented by Jesus, but otherwise much like any other club. It’s an optional association of like-minded people who come together to engage in mutual support, in certain ceremonials used to define the identity of the club. It is fully reducible to the will of its members to associate together. Being baptized just means joining this club. The club has certain core teachings which one may hold, for example, the existence of God or the excellence of Jesus Christ, even if one is not a member of the club. Most of the club’s shared beliefs are detachable from any given club structure and as such are portable; they can be taken elsewhere or even entertained on one’s own. One could even establish one’s own club. . . . In any event, to hear that such a club is the very reason the world was created, or is the goal of the universe, sounds at best quaint and at worst triumphalist, delusional and destructive.

Let’s move on to another passage that might help us recover the meaning of this first one. . . . 

The Church was born primarily of Christ’s total self-giving for our salvation, anticipated in the institution of the Eucharist and fulfilled on the cross. “The origin and growth of the Church are symbolized by the blood and water which flowed from the open side of the crucified Jesus” [Lumen Gentium §3; cf. Jn. 19.34]. “For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth the ‘wondrous sacrament of the whole Church’” [SC §5]. As Eve was formed from the sleeping Adam’s side, so the Church was born from the pierced heart of Christ hanging dead on the cross [cf. Ambrose, In Luc 2:85-89, but also Augustine, City of God 22.17-18, etc.].  [Catechism §766]

This is not a passage about a club. It is a passage about a mystery of love. Meditating on the mystery of the Church is not meditating on a written constitution or club charter, but on the only constitution the Church has: the Wounds of Christ from which his Precious Blood flowed, from which the communion constituting the Church flowed. Meditating on oneself as a baptized member of the Church is meditating on one’s dwelling near, at, and even in, the Wounds of Christ, an intimacy of love that is of such an infinite depth and so unspeakable a closeness that one’s only response is THANK-YOU Lord for this love! You can see how Baptism orders us towards the Eucharist here, the sacrament of gratitude.

Funny, but the more this THANK-YOU is said, the more it causes a great depth of gratitude it to well up in one’s heart and this enlarges it, makes it deeper and deeper and roomier and roomier for all the people you know and meet, for all people you do not know, for all people. This THANK-YOU burns away or melts away the hatreds, jealousies, fears, contempt and disgust we have for other people in the Church for suddenly we find ourselves intimately bound to them, as deeply as to ourselves, each one, by a communion in an intimacy we did not deserve, earn, merit or create, one which has nothing to do with whether we like other people or not, and whether they are friends or enemies, whether they are virtuous, exemplary or petty and mean.

It is not that we become unaware of such differences, but instead become aware of a basis for communion that is not a function of these things, as it is in every other human grouping, and therefore a new, real, true possibility for human union dawns on us, possible because actual, one with a future that is limitless even if not actually perfected yet, even if it is “on pilgrimage” as [Lumen Gentium §7] puts it. A new possibility for universal communion opens up and is actually present.

Through love of this communion, one is not distanced from the rest of the people in the world, but brought closer and to them and to all of their “joys and hopes” and to everything that is human. The one who loves the Church loves the love that had no contempt for anything human, but did not spare himself. Loving this communion is loving the love of the sinless one who mixed himself in with sinners at his own Baptism, jumping right in the water with tax collectors and prostitutes as though he were one of them . . . 

[H]e didn’t back away from that solidarity when the time came to pay the penalty for solidarity with sinners, namely death. Instead of backing away . . . he received the blow, and so transfigured the whole of human solidarity into that Love which did not back away, such that being human no longer meant solidarity in sin but in him, in the Second Adam, in his self-gift, in his blood, in his love. The Church is the sacrament of that solidarity in the world (see Lumen Gentium §1), a solidarity which the world cannot give itself, which does not come from the world and yet which paradoxically is for the world.

In fact, the closer you get to the Catholic Church, the closer you get to the Wounds of Christ, the result of his Baptismal solidarity, and thus the closer you get—to everyone. “In order to guard against the gradual weakening of that sincere love which requires us to see our Savior in the Church and in its members, it is most fitting that we should look to Jesus Himself as a perfect model of love for the Church. And first of all let us imitate the breadth of His love. For the Church, the Bride of Christ, is one; and yet so vast is the love of the divine Spouse that it embraces in His Bride the whole human race without exception” (MC 95-96), a dramatically beautiful passage from Pius XII’s Mistici Corporis.

[T]he Church, born from the pierced side of Christ, is like Eve, taken from the side of the sleeping Adam (see: CCC §766). She is indeed the Bride, the Spouse, because she is without remainder defined by his love. The real, visible Church, truly in history, is a mystery but a derivative mystery, a mystery of Christ’s love, truly the continuing presence of the self-emptying love that constitutes her. Loving Christ means loving the love that SO emptied itself that it mixed in with sinners and took their punishment in order to transfigure their solidarity into himself. That is what you love when you love the Church, the self-emptying love that did not disdain mixed company.

In fact, if we don’t love the Church, we don’t love Christ fully. If we don’t “see” the Church, we don’t fully “see” Christ and we don’t fully “see” even ourselves as baptized and called thereby into but one Body, one Flesh. You cannot see the Bridegroom unless you see the Bride. Yes, this thoroughly unprepossessing mixed group of sinners of various levels is the Bride. If we learn to see her with the right vision, with “spousal vision,” the loving vision of the Bridegroom, we will also truly see the Bridegroom Himself, and be able to utter more and more a deeper and deeper “Thank-You.” This vision of the Church is sacrificial, because it renounces a view of the Church that would see her as merely an “it,” an object, a collection of people bound by physical and moral ties, a club, and not by the mystical ties of Christ’s love, “We the People” and not “The People of God.”

Contempt for the Church is always a moment of self-righteousness, for of course we could have done it better, we know how the Church should look, what achievements and traits and attitudes should define this community. But where is our vision correction so we can see this way? “The Eucharist [not Baptism] makes the Church” (CCC §1396), because the Eucharist is the total self-giving of Christ, his sacrifice, made truly present to form us by the same Church-making Spousal love that poured out of his side with his blood. When we go to Communion, we receive the divine Bridegroom, we are configured to his sacrifice, and we begin to see as he did and as he does. . . . 

Teaching the meaning of the baptismal vocation, and of the individual vocations which may flow from it, thus means fostering, encouraging, explaining, and speaking affectionately about that communion in which the Baptismal vocation is ultimately fulfilled. It means teaching Love of the Church, and thus the mystery that such love means living life as one continual “Thank-you” that only makes the heart larger and larger and does not rest until, in a way, the Wounds of Christ, the Wounds of Love, are our own, and are equally open to all.

From John C. Cavadini, "The World Was Made for the Sake of the Church", in Church Life Journal.

Rowland - Balthasar and Ratzinger on Marian ("Feminine") vs. "Masculine" Church

When he criticized what he called the “masculinization” of the Church Balthasar was in no way criticizing the reservation of the priesthood to men, but rather, the trend toward an excessive bureaucratization of the Church. When Balthasar speaks of a “masculine” church he means a church obsessed with its own governance structures, a church obsessed with committees and meetings and talk-fests. He called this the “photocopying Church.”

Paradoxically, it is precisely the increased bureaucratization of the Church that is a popular project for feminist activists. It is they who are, according to a Balthasarian analysis, seeking to masculinize the Church by setting up new boards and committees and angling to get themselves appointed to such bureaucratic structures. . . .

Balthasar and Ratzinger and other academics in their Communio journal study circles were acutely aware of the situation in Germany with its stark contrasts between the wealthy Church agencies or “Catholic Inc.” and the Church lived and understood as the Body and Bride of Christ. Catholic Inc. runs on secular corporate governance principles, the Body and Bride of Christ runs on a sacramental economy. The former is, in the idiom of both Balthasar and Ratzinger, “masculine,” while the latter is “feminine.”

There is some theological and scriptural backstory to the use of these descriptions. Balthasar suggested that the network of figures surrounding Christ during his life on earth were prototypical of future ecclesial leaders. There is thus the Petrine charism associated with St. Peter and hence with ecclesial governance, the Johannine charism associated with St. John the beloved apostle and hence with the contemplative life of the Church, the Jacobine charism associated with St. James and hence with guarding the tradition and teaching it to new generations uncorrupted, and the Pauline charism associated with St. Paul and hence with prophetic insight and in our own time with ecclesial renewal movements. Only one of these charisms, the Petrine, is focused on ecclesial governance, and only this one is exclusively masculine. There are plenty of contemplative women with the Johannine charism, plenty of scholarly women trying to teach the faith that was handed down from the apostles to new generations, and plenty of women involved in the new ecclesial movements that have mushroomed over the past century. So then, three out of four of these charisms are found equally in men and women.

Further, Balthasar spoke of the Marian charism. Its hallmark is its receptivity to divine will. It is a kind of overarching charism that all members of the Church, male and female, should exhibit. Receptivity to the divine will includes respect for Sacred Scripture, especially the teachings of Christ. With reference to the arguments of those who contend that Christ may have decided not to ordain women simply because the Jewish people of the time had psychological barriers to the acceptance of such a practice, Balthasar commented: “[E]ven though we might always assume that the Sovereign God could have acted differently from the way he actually deigned to act, we nevertheless are by no means licensed to relativize his logic – he being absolute Reason and Logos itself – by imagining other courses of action which he could have taken.”¹ In other words, a high level of humility in the face of revelation is part of the Marian charism along with the gift of the Holy Spirit described as “Fear of the Lord” or reverence and awe before the divine majesty. . . .

When Balthasar talks about masculinizing the Church he therefore means something like a myopic focus on the Petrine charism and on governance structures to the neglect of the other charisms, a church obsessed with institutional maintenance. Thus, in his Elucidations, he wrote:

Since the Council [i.e., Vatican II] the Church has to a large extent put off its mystical characteristics; it has become a Church of permanent conversations, organizations, advisory commissions, congresses, synods, commissions, academies, parties, pressure groups, functions, structures and restructurings, sociological experiments, statistics: that is to say, it is more than ever a male Church, if perhaps one should not say a sexless entity, in which a woman may gain for herself a place to the extent that she is ready herself to become such an entity.²

Balthasar concluded that “the masses run away from such a Church.”

Similarly, in his Church, Ecumenism and Politics, Cardinal Ratzinger declared:

The Church is not some piece of machinery, is not just an institution, is not even one of the usual sociological entities. It is a person. It is a woman. It is a mother. It is living. The Marian understanding of the Church is the most decisive contrast to a purely organisational or bureaucratic concept of the Church. We cannot make the Church: we have to be it. And it is only to the extent that faith moulds our being beyond any question of making that we are the Church, that the Church is in us. It is only in being Marian that we become the Church.³

Ratzinger concluded that: “a Church which is nothing but a manager is nothing at all; she is no longer tradition, and, as an intellect that knows no tradition, she becomes pure nothingness, a monster of nothingness.”⁴

In summary, when Balthasar suggested the Church should be more feminine and less masculine, he did not mean that we needed women priests or more women on governance boards. To misuse his comments in that manner is to show a high-level of ignorance of his ecclesiology.

What we need now is an affirmation of the feminine dimension of the Church. For Balthasar this in some sense would entail a heightened interest in the operation of the Johannine, Pauline, and Jacobine charisms. Instead of a craze for committees and quangos there might be a focus on deep monasticism and consecrated virginity, on family ministry work, on Catholic scholarship and beautiful liturgy, including beautiful liturgical music. There might also be a heightened interest in fostering the sense of sacramentality, a deepening of the faithful’s understanding of the role that each of the sacrament’s play in the economy of our salvation. There would certainly be a heightened interest in the Eucharist.

My favorite quotation from Balthasar appears in his Theology of History. It reveals a lot about what he thinks or who he thinks are the most important members of the Church and they are not necessarily priests. He wrote:

Those who withdraw to the heights to fast and pray in silence are, as Reinhold Schneider made so vividly credible, the pillars bearing the spiritual weight of what happens in history. They share in the uniqueness of Christ, in the freedom of that nobility that is conferred from above, that serene untamed freedom which cannot be caged and put to use. Theirs in the first of all aristocracies, source and justification for all the others, and the last yet remaining to us in an unaristocratic age.⁵

Of all the charisms categorized by Balthasar the Marian is the most important. It takes priority even over the Petrine, because the Petrine itself must be Marian in the sense that it must be receptive to divine revelation. What really matters is receptivity to the divine will. This is what is most noble and thus aristocratic, where aristocratic is understood as an adjective meaning desiring only the highest and most excellent. In contrast, the fixation on structures and committees, and who sits on the committees, and who does the paperwork, is not aristocratic but gauchely petite-bourgeois!

1  Hans Urs von Balthasar, “How Weighty is the argument from ‘Uninterrupted Tradition’ to Justify the Male Priesthood?” in The Church and Women: A Compendium, edited by Helmut Moll (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 154; cf. 153–160.

2  Hans Urs von Balthasar, Elucidations (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), 70.

3  Joseph Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays in Ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 20.

4  Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987), 101.

5  Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994), 124.

From Tracy Rowland, "Spinning Balthasar" on the What We Need Now substack.