French Dominican Yves Congar, probably the most influential theologian at the council, helped shape a new understanding of the “poor Church” with his 1963 book, For a Servant and Poor Church (republished in several languages since the election of Pope Francis). Congar described the essential vocation of the Church as service to a neighbor, in direct connection with a love for poverty. He referred to the contrast seen through history between a Church destined to be poor, like Christ, and one that through its representatives manifests outwardly as rich. But his was not a materialistic concept: Congar understood the idea of poverty in the Church as Christological (the only wealth of the Church is Christ) and ecclesiological (the poor are a sacrament of our encounter with God). Congar never really addressed what it means in the literal financial sense to be a “poor Church.” Rather, Church-and-poverty was to be understood in a universal sense: all members of the Church are the poor.
The unresolved tension between “rich Church” and “Church for the poor” is evident in the conciliar constitution Lumen Gentium, paragraph eight:
“Just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and persecution, so the Church is called to follow the same route that it might communicate the fruits of salvation to men. Christ Jesus, ‘though He was by nature God...emptied Himself, taking the nature of a slave,’ and ‘being rich, became poor’ for our sakes. Thus, the Church, although it needs human resources to carry out its mission, is not set up to seek earthly glory, but to proclaim, even by its own example, humility and self-sacrifice.”
The Church needs to follow Christ in poverty and persecution, but it also needs human resources to carry out its mission. The “both and” that is typical of Catholicism helps in articulating how the idea of “poor Church” can be understood.
As interpretations of Vatican II changed during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, there was less emphasis on the idea of the poor Church, paralleling Vatican disavowals of liberation theology that had begun in the early 1980s. But suddenly, in 2013, the election of Pope Francis helped bring back the idea of a poor Church. The name the new pope took was itself an indication of this. “Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor,” he said a few days after his election, confirming he would resume the interrupted discourse of Vatican II. Francis’s relationship with liberation theology might be complicated, but he clearly speaks a different language than his predecessors on the idea of a poor Church.
And yet he also shows some ambivalence. There is, for instance, his recent appointment of Mario Draghi to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Draghi earned his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was president of the European Central Bank from 2011 to 2019. His appointment signals the non-ideological pragmatism Francis sometimes embraces, even on the issue of the modern economy. Though his teaching on the capitalist system can be summed in his statement “this economy kills,” he also believes in the necessity of compromise on social and political issues.
It may be hard to believe in the possibility of compromise in today’s polarized ecclesial culture, but compromise is of course a significant feature of the Catholic tradition. Even at the magisterial level, there is compromise—even about the concept of money, which cannot be addressed definitively and infallibly once and for all. That’s how it is in a global Catholic Church, where very different historical, political, and social situations are at play. And yet, there are some post-Vatican II dilemmas to deal with. In many countries, including the United States, the Catholic Church is not only an important advocate for the voiceless, but also literally a lifeline. What are the costs for the poor of having a poor Church? Though the Church cannot afford to be politicized, it retains the right and duty to be political, as is necessary for its prophetic mission. To be prophetic means renouncing the privileges granted through concordats or other unwritten clauses and edicts. But a radical withdrawal from the public square would mean losing the platform to speak in favor and on behalf of those excluded from or suffering under the economic system.
Ultimately, this comes down to intellectual and ecclesial contradictions in the theological and political culture of Catholics. The libertarian ideology of small government is incompatible with the Catholic social tradition. But neither does the Catholic social tradition support the ideology of a small Church that renounces help in the form of taxpayer money for its work for the common good. A sectarian turn in the Catholic understanding of the relations between Church and government would be paid, as usual, by the people who can least afford it.
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July 25, 2020 at 02:42AM
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A Church That Is Poor? - Commonweal
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