Jaarboek Thomas Instituut 1995 - Thomas Instituut te Utrecht

38 H.W.M. RIKHOF
different pictures of the church: Gaudium et Spes and the final
documents of the special synod of the Dutch bishops (1980).
Remarkable in Gaudium et Spes, De Grijs writes, is "the generosity of
faith" and "the equally magnanimous attention for what happens in the
world" (40, p. 79). Characteristic and typical is the conclusion of part
one of Gaudium et Spes, where the council declares that the purpose
and the intention of the church is only the coming of God's kingdom
and the salvation of everybody. "What has happened to the church?"
De Grijs asks and he answers that the church "is so full of God and
the human world, so preoccupied with God's plan with people that it
overlooks itself. A self-forgetting church is something special" (40, p.
80). The tone and attention of the final documents of the synod are
rather different. God-words are rare and biblical quotations sparse.
"The attention .. .is fully concentrated on the church ... What is being
said about God is being said in function of the church" (40, p. 81).
Again De Grijs asks what has happened to the church and his answer
this time is that the church "appears to be an institution; only
concerned about its existence, survival, expansion". At the synod the
church is not "magistra ... but a board meeting of a daughter company
with the top of the omninational" (40, p. 81). In one phrase: "the
church has become world, socialised, secularised". The church has
become "makeable and breakable" (40, p. 82). De Grijs does not
think this development to be a bad thing. "It is a blessing that
everything is now clear, because now we can speak about the chances
and possibilities of this institution, about its governability, its finances
and scandals, its organisation and its purposes" (40, p. 82; cf. also 8,
pp. 174-180; 11, pp. 126-129).
In the article about power in the church the first phase
consists of an answer of "who are we in fact". De Grijs points to
what we have in common: "the confession of our faith", "the mission
to witness", "the history of the church characterised by the way we
have dealt with our God: listening and deaf, obedient and resisting,
willing and unwilling" (23, p. 106). This leads to the introduction of
the terms that play a central role in the following analysis: holiness
and sin (cf. also 15, pp. 131-135). History shows our sins and the
holiness we have received from God. "Holy sinners we are, sinning
saints" (23, p. 106).
But in each case this first description is not sufficient, be it