the ratzinger/kasper debate - Theological Studies

228 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion.” 2 The letter
opened with acknowledging that the concept of communion “is very suitable
for expressing the core of the mystery of the Church and can certainly
be a key for the renewal of Catholic ecclesiology” (no. 1). But the concern
of the document was mostly defensive in that it argues that some present
the communion of the particular churches “in such a way as to weaken the
concept of the unity of the Church at the visible and institutional level” (no.
8). Behind this focus on the particular churches is the conviction that the
particular church “is a subject complete in itself, and that the universal
Church is the result of a reciprocal recognition on the part of the particular
churches” (ibid.). This the CDF labels as “ecclesiological unilateralism,” an
expression of an impoverished concept of communion (ibid.). The CDF
ascribes this ecclesiological deviation, in part, to a misunderstanding of
eucharistic ecclesiology. While the CDF grants undoubted value to the
rediscovery of eucharistic ecclesiology, its proponents have sometimes
placed “a one-sided emphasis on the principle of the local church” in
claiming that “where the Eucharist is celebrated the totality of the mystery
of the Church would be made present in such a way as to render any other
principle of unity or universality inessential” (no. 11). In response to what
the CDF considers an unbalanced presentation of eucharistic ecclesiology,
it proceeds on the assumption that the particular churches are a part of the
one Church of Christ, having a relationship of “mutual interiority” with the
whole, that is, with the universal Church (no. 9). In every particular church
the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ is truly present and
active. The CDF quotes an address of John Paul II to the Roman Curia
where he states that particular churches are formed “out of and in the
universal Church” (ex et in Ecclesia universali). 3 This is why, the CDF
continues, the universal Church cannot be conceived as the sum of the
particular churches or as a federation of particular churches. The CDF then
draws the conclusion: The universal Church “is not the result of the communion
of the churches, but in its essential mystery it is a reality ontologically
and temporally prior to every individual particular church” (no. 9).
Ratzinger had already used this formulation in books published in 1989 and
1991, well before the CDF’s 1992 letter. 4 Obviously, this is Ratzinger’s
personal formulation.
2 Origins 22 (June 25, 1992) 108–12.
3 John Paul II, Address to the Roman Curia, December 20, 1990, no. 9, Acta
apostolicae sedis 83 (1991) 740–49, at 746.
4 Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics (New York: Crossroad, 1989) 75:
“. . . the priority of the universal church always preceded that of particular
churches.” The German edition was published in 1987; see also his Call to Communion
(San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991) 44: “The temporal and ontological priority
lies with the universal Church; a Church that was not catholic would not even have
ecclesial reality . . . ”