Challenge for Catholics to defend their faith

Sydney
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Challenge for Catholics to defend their faith

Some of the 900 who attended the forum – Vatican II: Unfinished Business

By Marilyn Kerjean

The dichotomy between the faith that many profess and the practice of their daily lives “is one of the major challenges” the Church faces today, says Fr Joseph Komonchak.

It was deplored by Vatican II as “one of the most serious errors of our time”, the US theologian and historian said.

“If this dichotomy were to characterise our lives, then the faith we profess would play no part in the forging of history to which we contribute, in what the world will be like, in determining our future.

“And it would not simply be the Church that ceases to make a difference; Jesus Christ would cease to affect how history unfolds.

“What the Church is as a genuine Church is precisely what the world needs.”

Fr Komonchak was addressing a national forum, Vatican II: Unfinished Business, held by the Aquinas Academy and Catalyst for Renewal at Hunter’s Hill.

He based his address on his recent article, The Church at the Threshold of a New Century.

He said that, 40 years on from Vatican II, there was a challenge for all Catholics to develop an adult comprehension of their faith and to be able to give reasoned grounds for their positions in public discussions.

“I would like to see more committed and educated Catholics involved in the forefront of such discussions,” he said. “I don’t think anything serious can be done – in politics, economics, foreign policy, culture – without the laity undertaking the task, there where the laity live, at the heart of modern life, working in its engine-rooms.”

He highlighted the challenges and opportunities that affect the Catholic Church’s inner integrity and its existence in and for the world – two dimensions that theologians have tried to distinguish but that cannot be separated, he says.

“The Church that is supposed to make a difference in the world is composed, 99 per cent of it, of lay people,” he said, “and it will be through them, above all, that a difference will be made, if one is made at all.”

Fr Komonchak shared his views on a number of areas:

Catholic identity

The young may have an “appalling lack of literacy” on elementary points of the Catholic worldview, but “I sense ... a real interest in and desire to learn more about their Catholic identity.

“The concern here is not for dogma for dogma’s sake; (but as) one expression of the vision of faith.”

Centralisation

The Second Vatican Council acknowledged “the fundamental equality in dignity of all members of the Church”.

The establishment of the Synod of Bishops and of pastoral councils within dioceses and parishes was a positive move, but “there is a greater centralisation of authority in Rome today” than there was before the council – “a great increase, at every level, in the size of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy, a paradoxical effect of a council that placed such emphasis on local community and responsibility ... this is an area in which we have to try to recover the spirit of the council’s call”.

Vocations

“There are few signs that the vocations crisis is going to end soon ... members of parish communities will have to assume more and more responsibility for the health, and even survival, of their communities.

“Some future pope may allow the ordination of married men ... but, in the meantime, encouraging vocations is a responsibility that falls on us all; it is in some respects a debt of gratitude.”

Fr Komonchak was ordained in 1963, received his Licentiate in Sacred Theology at the Gregorian University, Rome, in 1964 and his PhD at Union Theological Seminary, New York, in 1976. He is an expert in ecclesiology and the history and theology of Vatican II and holds the John and Gertrude Hubbard Chair in Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America.