The Church Since Vatican II: Prophetic Sign of Hope
Gregory Baum

Chicago Call to Action Benefit and Conference, McCormick Place, Chicago-November 20, 1982

Gregory Baum is professor of theology and religious studies at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto. He received his doctor of theology at the University of Fribourg and served at the second Vatican Council. He is the editor of the Ecumenist and has authored many notable books.

 

This talk is about the church since Vatican Council II. Before we take a look at the church, however, we have to examine the contemporary world to which we belong. We follow here a theological principle derived from the Vatican Council. It is impossible to understand the church's presence and mission unless we have a critical understanding of the world in which this church exists. The title of the most innovative conciliar document was "The Church in the Modern World." To gain an adequate understanding of what Christian salvation means we have to know the evil that threatens us and from which we are to be redeemed. The power of Jesus Christ is concrete: it is exercised in history.

A WORLD IN TURMOIL

Looking at the world today makes us sick. We are shocked by the change that has taken place. We remember a world that seemed to be getting better and better. Americans look back over the past decades, as a period of growing prosperity. Ordinary people and the affluent recall that from World War II on, the economic conditions gradually improved. Every year meant more progress. Upward mobility became the expected pattern. We moved into larger homes, we sent our children to better schools, we ate a more imaginative diet, we took vacations, possibly even abroad. Our own upward mobility appeared to us as a principle of history itself. We had a sense of evolution. We tended to think that the whole world would follow the upward swing. Other countries, even the poorest, would eventually mature and, possibly with American help, become wealthy societies just as we are. In this period of cultural optimism we blinded ourselves to the fact that significant sectors of American society were excluded from the growing prosperity. Courageous voices tried to give visibility to the "other America," but their influence was not strong enough to shatter the optimistic evolutionary imagination.

Today the picture has changed. The world we know has become unsettled. We are face to face with massive unemployment and inflation, we read of the closing down of industrial and commercial companies, big and small, we witness the shifting of large industries to other continents, we see the advent of new technologies that eliminate for good thousands upon thousands of jobs, we observe the industrial decline of America and the success of Japanese and European competitors; and we are afraid that the gains which American working people have made over the last decades will be lost, and that America will again become a society visibly divided into two classes, the rich and the poor.

In the Third World, we see misery of new proportions. Agricultural populations are being pushed from the land recently bought by transnational corporations: these people now gather In vast slums of destitution and despair surrounding the big cities. In many countries a small comfortable class is faced by the great majority of the people, disinherited, marginalized, impoverished. We see liberation movements in these countries, often supported by church groups, exposed to the fury of military regimes, acting out of an ideology of national security. While at one time dictatorships existed mainly in Second World countries, protecting an oppressive Communism, we now see dictatorships spreading in the Third World protecting an oppressive capitalism. There are even political leaders in North America who believe in the ideology of national security.

Where do we find a fearless analysis of American society and of the world situation? The cultural and educational mainstream tends to cover up the old cultural optimism, giving us hope that after the crisis we shall return to normal. We find a fearless analysis only among minority groups and minority trends: and we find it today in the documents of the Christian church. Papal encyclicals, pastoral letters of the American and Canadian bishops, ecclesiastical statements made by the other Christian churches -- these offer us a critical perspective on the contemporary situation and reveal the direction in which the struggle for justice must take us.

How do Americans react to the shift in the world situation and the industrial decline plus unemployment at home? Many of us are frightened. Some of us argue that things are not as bad as they seem: The decline is only temporary, the economy will take an upward swing before too long. Many of us have become very cautious, we learn to cling to what we have, we are ready to defend our own privileges and bracket questions of justice and human rights. Some liberals have become neo-conservatives. Words like "social justice" frighten them. Many middle class Americans have an inkling of what the introduction of social justice would cost the country, and they believe the price is too high. So they look away from the people humiliated by unemployment, discrimination and exploitation: they become insensitive to the violation of human rights in many parts of the world. They hope that strong-arm governments in these parts will protect American interests abroad. Many Americans do not object to the support their government offers to military regimes in Central America which try to crush the people's struggle for a new, more just economic order. Under the influence of this political trend, we find more and more Christians, some even in the Catholic Church, who cultivate a religion that abstracts from social justice. Jesus is for them no longer the savior of the world and the first-born of a new creation: Jesus is for them the savior of America, a free enterprise Jesus, a Jesus who allows us to close our eyes to the structures of oppression and discrimination.

Behind this unsettling shift of the world scene stands a gigantic threat, connected with the economic crisis, but so much larger, in fact so much more fundamental that it tends to dwarf the weight of economic exploitation and racial oppression: namely the nuclear arms race. As the destruction capacity of our nuclear weapons increases and the strategic responses to perceived nuclear threats are increasingly computerized, we shall soon live in a world that can be destroyed many times over by a decision, possibly an erroneous one, of the computerized defense system.

THE CHURCH: SIGN OF HOPE

Faced with this frightening reality where do we find signs of hope? I wish to argue in this talk that the contemporary churches, in particular the Catholic Church, have become extraordinary signs of hope. In the Christian churches has emerged a new spiritual movement, beginning at the base but already touching the leadership, a spiritual movement that retrieves the social dimension of the Gospel, reveals Jesus Christ as the protector of the poor and oppressed, makes social justice central in the church's mission, and releases energy for the social struggle against domination. Thanks to this spiritual movement at the base, we have today popes and bishops -- and Protestant church leaders -- who stand apart from society, take a critical look, declare their solidarity with the people at the bottom, and offer us guidance in the Christian struggle for holiness.

The first point I wish to make in my talk is that the contemporary church has become a prophetic sign of hope. As a second topic I shall deal with the ecclesiastical failures that cause headaches to so many Catholics and produce great discouragement. Despite these failures, 1 shall argue, the church has become a marvelous sign of Jesus Christ in the world. In the conclusion I shall discern where this sends us. How shall we move forward?

THE FAITH-AND-JUSTICE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Something new has happened in the Catholic Church since Vatican II. A new movement has emerged that is based on the achievement of the Council but that also transcends its teaching. Over the last twenty years there has emerged in the church a spiritual movement generated and nourished by new religious experiences, that recognizes In the Gospel a socio-political thrust toward justice. In many parts of the world, including the United States, Christians who stand against the oppressive features of their society and struggle for emancipation have had new religious experiences: they have heard the Word of God as judgment on a sinful world and as promise for new, emancipated life. They discover in Jesus Christ that God is partial, that God is in solidarity with the victims of society, that God is on the side of the marginalized and exploited presently struggling for greater justice. For these Christians, faith and justice have become inextricably intertwined. The encounter with the living God in Jesus Christ initiates them into a new perception of society and creates in them solidarity with the poor.

We have always been taught that faith has a charity dimension. Fully formed faith is generated by love and expresses itself in greater love. "Fides caritate formata" is what our scholastic texts called this. What vast number of Christians have discovered in our times is that in a society in which exploitation and oppression have been institutionalized, charity transforms itself into justice. Loving the neighbor in such situations means standing up against domination. For these Christians then faith in Jesus Christ has acquired a justice dimension. Fully formed faith is generated by the commitment to justice and expresses Itself in solidarity with the people at the bottom. We could speak here of "fides justitia formata."By one and the same spiritual orientation Christians open themselves to God's Word in Jesus Christ and link themselves in solidarity with the people suffering oppression. The Christian faith experience has a socio-political thrust.

Christians who have these new religious experiences have recorded them for us. Books on the spiritual life coming from Latin America and other Third World countries describe these new experiences and try to initiate the American reader into them. These religious experiences can be shared by Christians who while not suffering the same oppression are in profound solidarity with the oppressed. In the United States, we have a growing spiritual literature which communicates the new experience of faith-and-justice gained through active commitment to the poor. Some of this material comes from struggling minority groups, from blacks, from Mexican-Americans, from native peoples; some of it comes from women; and some of it comes from middle class Christians deeply troubled by the oppressive character of American society. The work of Michael Crosby comes here to mind. Prayer, discipleship, social justice -- this is the spiritual current that underlies the new movement in the church.

The new religious experience of faith-and-justice differs from pietist experience and from the experience of the sacred as described in phenomenological studies such as Otto's "The Idea of the Holy." In pietism, religious experience mediates the soul's encounter with God, the Alone with the Alone, an experience from which other people and the world are excluded. In contrast to this, the new experience of which I speak explodes the soul's aloneness. Here the encounter with God in Jesus Christ reveals the inauthentic nature of the self and creates an identification with humanity, especially with the poor and oppressed. What takes place is the abrupt widening of personal consciousness, an expansion to global dimension, through which other people, especially the poor, become grafted onto fibers of a person's own self-understanding. Here God makes it impossible that a divine-human encounter brackets the victims of society. It becomes impossible to have a spiritual experience that excludes the others. Every prayer, every ecstasy, every surrender to the gracious God has here a social dimension. Contemplation is part of praxis.

The new religious experience also differs from the encounter with the Sacred described by Otto as the "tremendum et fascinans." Here God is more than just the great unfathomable mystery before which we tremble in awe and to which we are inescapably attracted: Here God is the Holy One of Israel whose presence condemns the sinful world and turns right-side-up a society that has been turned upside down by oppression. The sacred as described by Otto is not transcendent at all in the full biblical sense. For the sacred is only transcendent if its presence empowers people to transcend the snares and prisons in which they are caught. Here again ecstasy and contemplation reveal their authenticity in the strengthening of the faith-and-justice orientation.

This new religious experience in the church has been tested by the Scriptures. Catholics tend to be suspicious in regard to religious experiences: they know how easy it is to fool oneself and imagine things. For this reason, they are ready to submit their religious experiences to a spiritual norm, especially to the Scriptural witness itself. What the Christians committed to justice have found is that their new religious experience stood up under the scriptural test. They did not look for a few passages to justify their position, nor did they turn immediately to biblical scholars for help; they were led by the conviction that the Bible is a book of the people, and hence when read with faith, Scripture speaks to the heart not just through a few passages here and there but through extended themes that recur and pervade the biblical books. The biblical themes that became important for these Christians were,the Exodus story as paradigm of salvation, the classical Hebrew prophecy, the yearning of the people of Israel in Babylonian captivity, the poetry of Israel depicting the ideal of the simple life, and the Messianic promises for the remaking of society. In the New Testament it was above all the person of Jesus, critic and troublemaker in Israel, friend of the outcasts, persecuted by the powerful and influential, that spoke to them. They read the teachings of Jesus In the context of a society that stood against him. And the resurrection in which God vindicated the innocent victim became for these Christians the divine pledge for the vindication of all the innocent victims of history. The persecution of the apostolic church, the apocalyptical imagination of the early Christians and their yearning for eschatological fulfillment-- these were biblical themes that also confirmed contemporary Christians in their new faith-and-justice experience.

This new religious experience tested by the Scriptures, gave rise to theological investigation. Theologians who shared the same social justice commitment explored the meaning of the Christian message from-this new perspective. What do the sacred texts of Scripture and tradition mean when they are read out of an identification with the poor and oppressed? What emerged in the church was a new theological school, referred to as "liberation theology" or " political theology," which argued that social commitment is the starting point for theological reflection and that in turn the norm of truth operative in theological reflection is the justice praxis which flows from it. While this theology in its various manifestations has been controversial and sometimes even provoked ecclesiastical disapproval, it has nonetheless been enormously influential in the church. It has confronted all theologians and scripture scholars with new questions, it has created a new intellectual atmosphere where social justice issues are taken seriously, it has obliged the theologians who repudiate liberation theology to deal with the justice issue in some other way, and above all, it has strongly influenced the official teaching of the Catholic Church.

A SHIFT IN CATHOLIC TEACHING

The new spiritual movement at the base has significantly affected Catholic social teaching at the top. In fact since 1971 there is a noticeable shift to the left in the social teaching coming from Rome. The declaration, Justice in the World, made by the 1971 Synod of Bishops, clearly acknowledged that the redemption which Jesus Christ had brought included the liberation of people from oppression and that a constitutive part of the Christian preaching was public witness to social justice. The declaration recognized that faith and justice were inextricably intertwined. In the same year Pope Paul VI's letter, Octogesima Adveniens, recognized that many Catholics, out of fidelity to their Christian conscience, had become socialist. The Pope acknowledged that there were many different kinds of socialism. Only those socialisms were out of bounds for Catholics which were wedded to a world interpretation or total ideology. The reference is here to orthodox Marxism as defined by Soviet Communism. In his discussion of Marxism, Pope Paul VI distinguished between Marxism as total ideology and political strategy, both of which he repudiated, and Marxism as a form of social analysis, which he found useful within limits. This shift to the left in the Roman documents profoundly affected the social teaching of various national episcopal conferences, in particular the American and Canadian bishops.

While it would be interesting to offer an analysis of the new social teaching of the North American bishops, we have no space for this here. What is important is that Pope John Paul II has totally endorsed the new ecclesiastical movement based on the religious experience of faith-and-justice. Because of the Pope's conservative views on many ecclesiastical topics -I shall deal with them further on -- he is often presented as a great conservative. The mass media usually create this impression. This Is an error. Pope John Paul II's social teaching is radical.

In his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, he argues that the Christian Church has a single mission which includes at one and the same time proclamation of the Gospel and witness to human rights and social justice. He argues in this encyclical that Jesus Christ has united himself in some way with human beings everywhere in their historical conditions, and that the dignity of these human beings is therefore in some way derived from the Lord himself. For this reason, the encyclical tells us, the church's social mission has a Christological foundation. In the past, we distinguished between the "supernatural mission" of the church, which meant Christian preaching so that the world may believe, and the ,.natural mission," secondary and subordinate to the first, which meant the promotion of social justice. Since then a doctrinal development has taken place. According to the encyclical, the church has a single, Christologically-grounded mission, a mission that includes two dimensions, Inextricably intertwined: the preaching of Jesus Christ and the public commitment to social justice and human rights.

The recent encyclical on labor, Laborem Exercens, is an altogether remarkable document. I have analyzed its radical teaching in a little book, called The Priority of Labor. In this talk, I simply wish to recall the high point of the encyclical. The Pope argues that the dynamic element of modern history Is the struggle of the people at the bottom for social justice. In the industrialized world we have the struggle of workers for greater justice, and in the underdeveloped countries the dispossessed masses are beginning to struggle for justice and recognition. The encyclical argues that all who love justice, and hence the church itself, must be in solidarity with these emancipatory struggles. We are told that the church must preach the solidarity of workers and the solidarity with workers. Laborem Exercens makes the 1981 justice struggle of the Polish union, Solidarity, the paradigm for understanding the dynamic element of contemporary history. In Third World countries too, we are told, the church must preach solidarity of the poor and solidarity with the poor. Faith implies a socio-political commitment. The commitment to Jesus Christ in faith includes solidarity with society's victims.

This new spiritual movement is not the only spiritual current in the Catholic Church. There are several others, some conservative and some liberal. But the spiritual movement of which I speak, the new faith-and-justice orientation, is gaining importance. The social teachings of the American and Canadian bishops point in this direction. In our times the North American Catholic bishops' conferences have become sources of biblical prophecy. Through their bishops, and the spiritual movement at the base which they represent, the Catholic Church has become a sign of hope in contemporary society. In their joint declarations, the bishops were able to step back from society, take a critical look at the present, detect the multiple oppression operative in contemporary society, and then come to practical conclusions at odds with the directives of the government and in opposition to the neo-conservative mood of the public. The new approach of the bishops is legitimated by the Pope's social teaching and paralleled by the approach of the ecclesiastical leaders representing other great Christian churches on this continent. I regard the emergence of a critical stance in the church created by its identification with people at the bottom an extraordinary historical phenomenon. There are few parallels for it in church history. In a world society characterized by domination and preparation for war, the church has become a sign of hope. Through it the message of Jesus Christ shines brightly.

Perhaps the most remarkable manifestation of prophecy is the willingness on the part of the Catholic bishops to face the nuclear madness of the age. Whatever the final version of the joint episcopal statement on nuclear arms will be, the important thing has already happened. Reflecting a significant peace movement at the grass roots, the Catholic bishops have spoken out against nuclear war, nuclear deterrents and nuclear weapons. A hierarchy that has been characterized by conformism and subservience to the established order has, under the impact of the grass roots movement, come out with a vision of peace that rejects nuclear arms and repudiates the cold war reasoning promoted by the administration and a considerable sector of public opinion. Where is sanity today and where Is hope? Among minorities, among them especially the Christian church.

In speaking of the new social justice movement in the church I have greatly emphasized its spiritual foundation. The critics of the bishops, theologians among them, have argued that in matters of social policy the bishops are dealing with purely secular matters, that they have no competence in this area and should leave these issues, important though they be, to technical and scientific experts. Some critics even say that the new emphasis on social justice secularizes the church itself, that the new movement is not a symbol of the church's vitality but a sign of its decline. Against these critical voices I have shown that the new movement in the church, reflected at this time even in the episcopate, is rooted in religious experience. It is nourished by a new form of prayer, a new religious sensitivity, a new reading of the Bible, and new theological reflection. It is out of this new religious perspective that the Catholic bishops approach the problems of modern society: they look upon them from the viewpoint of society's victims. Social scientists of the mainstream look upon society from the perspective of their own class, from the perspective of the successful. The church's approach is different. Because of their fidelity to Jesus Christ, Christians want to gain an understanding of their society from the viewpoint of society's victims. The social teaching of the contemporary church, secular and this-worldly on the surface, is in fact an expression of religious commitment to Jesus Christ.

There seems to be a return to religion and its socio-political meaning all over the world. In many countries of Africa and Asia people want to enter into modernization, but they want to avoid the pitfalls of American Capitalism and Russian Communism. They see themselves as struggling for their own, original way of becoming modern societies. Since in many instances the one great tradition which is truly theirs is their religion, they turn to this religion, reinterpret It In the light of contemporary pressures and use it as source for defining their collective identity and their common goals. Some of these returns to religion are rather frightening. Others are admirable and humane. In Latin America, the Philippines and other former Catholic colonies, we find a similar phenomenon: Catholic faith, interpreted under the pressure of contemporary history, becomes for the people a source of identity and strength thanks to which they hope to escape American Capitalism and Russian Communism in their struggle for a self-reliant, equitable society. Even in Western societies, Christians wrestling with the problems of the day have been more willing to reveal and clarify the hidden socio-political dimension inevitably associated with religion. The new faith-and-justice movement is a case in point, even though it is the movement of a minority. In this context it would be interesting to look at other Christian trends in the USA that understand the meaning of the Gospel in political terms, in particular the New Right represented by Mr. Jerry Falwell and the Neo-Conservatives symbolized by Mr. Richard Neuhaus.

THE NEW RIGHT AND THE NEO-CONSERVATIVES

Since I do not have the space to give a detailed account of these two right-wing Christian movements, let me at least offer some summary remarks. Both movements operate out of a socio-political analysis: both movements understand the Gospel of Jesus in the light of this analysis. In this formal sense, then, they have a certain similarity with the new social justice movement. The social justice movement, as we have seen, operates out of a social analysis that presupposes identification with Jesus and solidarity with the people at the bottom. What are the socio-political analyses of the two right-wing Christian trends? As we shall see, both of them are nationalist, both of them put America first, both of them are forgetful of the people at the bottom.

For the New Right, the United States of America is threatened in several ways. America is losing its soul. First, America is ceasing to be a Christian republic (what we need, therefore, is prayers in school). Secondly, America is losing its position as the first power in the world (what we need, therefore, is a more determined nationalism). Thirdly, America is endangered through the break-up of family life (what we need, therefore, is a return to the sexual prohibitions of the past and the domestication of women in traditional roles). Finally, America is threatened by socialism and government intervention in the economy (what we need, therefore, is the ardent defense of private enterprise). Jesus Christ is here understood as the savior of America: in his name we must wrestle for prayer in the schools, aggressive nationalism, the domestication of women, strict sexual prohibitions, and opposition to government planning of welfare and economy. Here Jesus is more interested in America than in other countries. Here Jesus remains indifferent to the minorities, the Blacks, the Mexican-Americans, to the poor in the cities and the poor in the country. Here is no attempt to look at America from the viewpoint of society's victims. The socio-political analysis of the Neo-Conservatives is quite different. The Neo-Conservatives, organized around the Institute on Religion and Democracy, look upon the global scene. What they see there is not a struggle between masters and servants, dominating powers and people wrestling against domination; what they see instead is the conflict between totalitarianism and freedom, where totalitarianism is embodied in and promoted by the Soviet Union, and freedom is embodied in and promoted by the United States of America. Contemporary political problems are understood in terms of the conflict between communism and capitalism, between Russia and the United States. The problems of other countries, and in particular the problems of the Third World must also be interpreted in the light of America's struggle against Russian Communism and its evil influence. Where must Christians stand in this struggle? What does Jesus call them to do? The answer Is simple. With all people of good will, Christians must identify themselves with the cause of the United States and its power in the world. This socio-political analysis demands that all opposition to capitalism must be seen as subversive communist influence. The peoples struggling for self reliant development in Latin America and other former colonies are seen as agents of a totalitarian ideology. What America must do, in the name of freedom, is to support the military regimes in the Third World, despite their violation of human rights, despite the reign of terror they unleash upon their people they are seen as agents of freedom. This socio-political analysis demands, moreover, that the critical movements in the United States, be they against nuclear weapons or for the reconstruction of society in terms of greater justice, be attributed to communist influence. The individual people who advocate these critical trends may be sincere and of good will, yet unbeknownst to them they have succumbed to Russian influence. Again, Jesus calls us to stand behind American power in the world.

The New Right deserves sympathy from us because the people who support it are largely ordinary, lower middle class people, who live in middle America and see their simple culture destroyed by trends coming from the center. They no longer recognize their world. Government regulations, economic developments and cultural ideals coming to them from the center of society have made them into strangers in their own towns and villages. More than that, the upward mobility of minority people, Blacks and Mexican-Americans, as well as the participation of women in public life have created competitors which they regard as threats to their material existence. Because their socio-political analysis of these conditions Is wrong, their religio-political movement has a reactionary thrust. But because they are ordinary people and often losers, they deserve our sympathy.

By contrast the Neo-Conservatives organized around the Institute of Religion and Democracy and other centers of this kind represent the interests of the powerful in America. From their slick, air-conditioned offices they send us their handsomely printed material free of charge. The style in which they organize their meetings breathes money. They represent the rich. For them Jesus' identification with the victims of society is uninteresting.

Let me return, then, to the main point of my presentation: in the darkness of the present world situation the Catholic Church is a prophetic sign of hope: it has become a prophetic institution, it proclaims God's judgment on a sinful world and God's promise for new, emancipated life.

DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE CHURCH

After affirming that in today's divided and threatened world the Catholic Church is a sign of hope, we must turn to aspects of church life that disturb us greatly. There is a long list of them. Let me mention a few. There is the exclusion of women from full membership in the church. There is the lack of dialogue in the exercise of authority in the church, apart from occasional invitations from generous and spiritual bishops. Since there are no checks and balances, Catholics may be exposed to arbitrary rule. There is in the church the absence of the division of powers, especially between legislative and judicial powers, that is universally accepted in Western society. In the church the law-makers are also the judges of whether the laws are appropriately applied. There are no independent courts. The church suffers from an extraordinary centralization. The present system, in violation of the principle of subsidiarity, prevents regional churches from exercising their mission in the mode that seems appropriate to them. Finally we have in the church a legal tradition according to which those who govern are also the official teachers: with the result that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is often taught in a way that protects at the same time the interests of the ecclesiastical government. The whole church apparatus is a little strange. It appears to us as pre-modern, expressive of an earlier European culture prior to the advent of modern theories of justice.

How shall we react to this historical anomaly? Some Catholics are so unhappy about the premodern character of the ecclesiastical society that they leave. I personally can understand this. Since our contemporary ethos is created through the democratic institutions of modern society, the authoritarianism of the church, unless mitigated by a generous bishop, bears a touch of immorality. In the church, master servant relationships seem to be sacralized, symbolically protecting all sorts of master servant relationships in the secular world. Some Catholics, while faithful believers, feel that they must leave.

This is not the position I recommend. On the contrary, in today's hostile and divided world the Catholic Church is a prophetic sign of hope. We must develop a greater sense of humor in regard to the church's pre-modern juridical structure. At the same time, we must look for a strategy of social change, in society and in the church, that does not lead to perpetual conflict with those in power.

First, then, I want to argue that the Catholic Church is a recent convert to the appreciation of democracy, and that it will take much longer than one or two generations to translate this appreciation into ecclesiastical norms.

The Catholic Church, in part inspired by Romans 13, has always regarded governing authority as derived from God. God created the people, and because the common good of the people demanded it, God created a governing authority. Governments derive their authority from God. For this reason, it has been taught that monarchy was the most suitable form of government. The single ruler clearly symbolized that authority came from on high. The Catholic Church always rejected any theory of popular sovereignty, that is to say the theory according to which the people themselves were empowered to deal with the requirements of their own society and hence could create the kind of government they needed and wanted. Even when the Catholic Church declared, with Pope Leo XIII, that the church was able to reconcile itself to any form of government, signifying that the church no longer wanted to defend monarchy, papal social teaching itself did not change on a fundamental level. Elections were indeed approved, but these elections were understood as designating the bearers of authority, while the authority itself came from God. This is the reason why the Catholic Church found it so hard, if not impossible, to accept human rights, civil liberties, and religious freedom. Since the government's authority was derived from God the duty of citizens was to obey. According to this theory, ordinary people sought their own private good, while the government protected the common good which surpassed private goods. There was no room here for speaking of human rights.

The theory of popular sovereignty is quite different. Here the people are seen as gifted with the power to construct their entire social life. They are able to produce a constitution which they then invest with authority, and then elect a government which is to rule in accordance with the constitution. Here government is always constitutional: it is never total, never arbitrary, never unlimited. The constitution provides for checks and balances. The constitution establishes courts to which even the elected legislators are subject. This is the republican understanding of society.

Since Americans live in a republic they are not aware how deeply the monarchical theory is embedded in Western consciousness. Let me give an example. While Canada is a democracy, it is not a republic. The origin of governing authority comes from on high, from the British Crown. Last year the Canadian government introduced a new constitution. To do this the government might have called a constitutional assembly, representing the different sectors of Canadian society, for the purpose of producing a constitution which then would be submitted to the people by referendum. The government did not do this. Such republican thinking is not possible In Canada. Instead, after a good deal of debate the government itself composed the constitution and submitted it to the British government; after approval, the constitution received its authority from the British Crown. In Canada theories of popular sovereignty are not acceptable.

The church, I wish to argue, has only recently, only since World War II, been willing to accept theories of popular sovereignty. Usually Pope Pius XII's Christmas address of 1944 is given as a turning point. In an address given in 1945, Pius XII recognized "democracy's main postulate, namely that the original upholder of the God-given authority of the State is the people," and then adds, rather curiously, that "there have always been excellent Christian thinkers who maintained this." If there were such excellent Christian thinkers in the 19th century, they were certainly condemned by the church's official teaching. During the 1950s the Vatican still had difficulties with human rights and religious liberty. It was really only Pope John XXIII and Vatican Council II that ushered in a new phase, the church's willingness to recognize popular sovereignty and the notion of limited government that goes with it.

Since the conversion to the democratic principle is so recent, we cannot expect that It has had wide implications for the church's own self-organization. We are just at the beginning. We are now in the curious situation where the church's own teaching on the norms for a just society are not applied by the church to its own societal existence. There is something ludicrous about this. In his marvelous encyclical, On Labor, Pope John Paul II defends what he calls "the subject character of society." He argues persuasively that a society is oppressive when it does not allow people to remain "subjects," i.e., to remain responsible, self-creating agents in the economy and in society. The Pope polemicizes against centralization. The right to dissent and open dialogue must at all costs be protected. What amazes the reader is that the encyclical does not apply this teaching to the ecclesiastical organization.

Are there doctrinal obstacles that prevent the overcoming of the monarchical theory of authority in the Catholic Church? Since the church is a supernatural society, created in the power of the Holy Spirit, and since therefore it is symbol and sacrament of humanity's high destiny, the church is meant to be a kind of model for a just human society. Virtues recommended for secular societies must "a fortiori" exist in the church.

What about ecclesiastical dogma? Is there anything in divine revelation that binds the church to the monarchical theory? Among Christian writers we find two different interpretations of the Christian tradition. The theory that dominated in the Catholic Church is that Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit appointed apostles and their successors as the divinely guided hierarchy, and then through the same Spririt gathered men and women around the apostolic hierarchy to form a single people. This is the monarchical reading. Other Christians have argued that Jesus Christ, in the power of the Spirit, created for himself a community of believers, a chosen priesthood, a royal people, and created some of these believers as authoritative supervisors, such as bishops and popes, over the Christian people.

In the first theory the primary empowerment by the Spirit is that of the hierarchy, while the spiritual power of the laity is derived. In the second theory, the primary empowerment by the Spirit is that of the Christian people, and the supervising authority of the hierarchy is intended to enhance the people's power and mission in the world.

In Lumen Gentium, the Vatican II document on the church, the first two chapters pursue for the most part the theory that the primary empowerment is that of the people, while the third chapter seems to take it all back and insists on the older theory that the primary empowerment is that of the hierarchy. In both theories, the power comes from Jesus Christ in the Spirit; in both theories, popes and bishops have received the power to exercise ecclesiastical authority. But in the first theory the hierarchy is set over a people that is powerless out of itself and only receives power from the hierarchy, while in the second theory the hierarchy is set over a people that has already received power from the Spirit, a power that is to be served and enhanced, not to be weakened or taken away. The second theory recognizes the jurisdictional primacy of popes and bishops, but their power is limited. From a dogmatic point of view, the Catholic Church is open to a theory of limited government. But realization of this will take a very long time. For this reason I personally recommend respect, patience, stubbornness and a sense of humor. The primary activism of Christians is to change society, not church organizations!

In today's world of injustice and domination, the Catholic Church has become a prophetic sign of hope, except in its self-organization. The church's witness stirs people to become more faithful to the message and mission of Jesus Christ. The question I wish to deal with at the end of this talk is what we are to do now? How shall we act? If we go directly against the establishment, secular or religious, we discover very quickly our impotence and before long fall into despondency. What we need, therefore, is a theory of social change, applicable to society and church, that reveals the power of ordinary people.

A MINORITY STRATEGY

According to Max Weber, social change in society is initiated through countervailing trends. The dominant structures of society, firmly established as they are, give rise to patterns of alienation, and around these alienations and frustrations countervailing movements occur. Often they are sparked by charismatic personalities. The countervailing current lives out of a new vision of society. This new vision helps people to recognize what is wrong in the present order, and it provides them with clues in regard to social reconstruction following a higher principle. Sometimes the new vision that generates a countervailing movement is false, at odds with reason and justice: then the current can become dangerous to society. At other times, the new vision that sparks the movement is foolish: then the trend will decline before long. At other times, the new vision is rational, based on a correct analysis of the causes of alienation, and promises to overcome the historical predicament. The movement may then become an important bearer of social change. Sometimes such movements are crushed by those in power; at other times they thrive, converge, and through certain unforeseeable circumstances, are able to assume power, significantly change the dominant structure and create a new direction for public policy.

All significant change in society and church is prepared by countervailing trends! The theory applies to the Jesus movement itself. The theory applies equally well to the social change produced by Vatican Council II: the Council relied on the countervailing trends operative in the church in the earlier part of the century. I wish to argue that Christians in North America must pursue what I have called a "minority strategy."

It would be a mistake to work for transformation of institutions in their totality, to anticipate the speedy transformation of the parish, the diocese, the theological faculty, the Catholic college, the teachers' association, and so forth. The dominant structures are too firmly established. If we try to change the whole, we only exhaust ourselves, we prepare despair, we make needless enemies. What we want instead is to follow a minority strategy, the promotion of countervailing movements. We look for a few people, a small group, in the parish, in the diocese, in the theological faculty, in the Catholic college, in the teachers' association and so forth, a minority of Christians who share the faith-and-justice experience. With them we form small groups and create communication networks with other, similar groups, locally and throughout the country. These networks will be sustained by a common spirituality. These networks will be nourished by papers, publications, mimeographed material, newsletters and other means of communication. These networks will be strengthened by joint programs or projects involving Christians in common action. Thanks to this communication and cooperation, these Christians , even though a minority, will not feel isolated, at odds with church and world, but experience themselves as part of a grass roots movement in the church that has already been validated by significant documents of popes and bishops. In a pastoral letter of the Canadian bishops, we are told that the Catholics who follow the justice path of the Gospel constitute "a minority" but, the bishops claim, they constitute a "significant minority" because they summon the whole church to greater fidelity. The Canadian bishops defend this minority against the accusation sometimes leveled against them "by the more powerful and affluent sector" of the church.

These Catholic groups also link up with similar groups in the other Christian churches -sometimes these groups are organized from the start In ecumenical fashion -- and even set up links with secular groups that pursue the same goal of social justice and human rights.

According to Max Weber's theory of social change, the future transformation of church and society is generated by countervailing trends. Hence the energy we put into the minority strategy is not a waste of time. We have here an approach Oat does not condemn us to impotence. Nor does it oblige us to oppose directly those in authority. We are able to organize countervailing trends without permission from above. In the Catholic Church the social justice movement has already the blessing of some bishops. We are grateful for this. Countervailing trends, I wish to add, do not lead to sectarianism. They do not cut themselves off from the mainstream, they remain in dialogue with the mainstream, and they will never let go of the central symbols of the Christian community. The countervailing trends in the church regard themselves as at the center. They gather around the Eucharist. They trust that they are bearers of the Spirit, for without the Spirit they would not exist. We note that these countervailing trends do not regard themselves as strictly activist while leaving spirituality and worship to more conventional Christians. On the contrary, as I have shown at the beginning, the grass roots movement struggling for justice and liberation is grounded on new religious experience, on faith-and-justice, on the explosive presence of God in the community, on an ecstasy that sees the whole of humanity reconciled in God.

Dorothy Day is here a model for us. She was the charismatic leader who Initiated a significant countervailing trend in church and society. Through her fidelity and the fidelity of those who followed her, the Catholic Worker movement had an impact on the church as well as on society. Dorothy Day followed what I have called a minority strategy. Another example is the grass roots communities which have been so successful in parts of Latin America: sometimes they thrive with the blessing of the bishops and sometimes without it. The Charismatic Movement is a countervailing trend. While there are some Christians in this movement who entertain an excessively spiritual concept of the Christian mission and who for this reason make themselves Insensitive to social injustice, racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression, there are other Christians deeply committed to the Charismatic Movement who experience the Holy Spirit as the divine empowerment to worship and to act in the world. For these too, faith and justice have become inseparable.

It is possible to make a long list of the countervailing movements in the church, all alive In the power of the Spirit -- the women's movement in the church; Christians in solidarity with labor; the movements for Black emancipation and the emancipation of Mexican-Americans and other Hispanic peoples in the United States; the movements concerned with social justice and human rights in Latin American and other parts of the world; the movements critical of capitalism, aiming at a more socialist organization of production, in line with the recommendations of Pope John Paul II and many Latin American bishops. The list is long. The vitality of the church lies in these grass roots movements which, as I have shown, have already influenced popes and bishops and helped to make the church a prophetic sign of peace and hope. Christian vitality is in countervailing trends. The Gospel has always been partially underground. It has always been proclaimed and translated into action out of a situation of distress. It is there, pushed Into the margin, while remaining at the center, that Jesus Christ has become powerful.