Vatican II
documents:
Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity
Declaration on the Relationship of the
Church to Non-Christian Religions
Reflection by John Lee
Vatican II
documents reflect a genuinely new vision of the world, which supplies
all-encompassing framework within which Roman Catholic views of the church and
its mission are undergoing notable transformations. The major theme of the
reading is mission, which confirms that
“the church is mission,” which speaks that the Church’s vision is the messianic
pilgrim people of God, the sacramental sign to the kingdom which has begun and
will be consummated in Christ.
1. “Decree on the Church’s
Missionary Activity”
The critical
points of argumentation is in the doctrinal statement, “The pilgrim Church is
missionary by her very nature” with its origin in the mission of the Son and
Holy Spirit in accordance with the decree of God the Father. This principle is
based on the Church as universal sacrament of salvation and developed in the
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church; and grows out of the Church’s renewed
consciousness of its own nature. The trinitarian basis of mission is a vital
principle: the Father as the foundation of love, sends forth the Son into the
world to draw it into the community of divine life. Ad Gentes gives striking recognition to the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit sent by the Father to ensure the world, which recognizes the Spirit’s
work in the world even before Christ was
glorified.
The missionary
Church is expected to walk with the same road which Christ walked- poverty,
obedience, service, self-sacrifice, as well as resurrection. Decree asserts
that missionary activity is a temporary Church vocation until the Gospel has been
preached to all the nations before the Lord’s return. A significant point of
the doctrine here is that mission is the task of converting humanity through
proclamation of the Gospel and summoning people to turn to Christ; and the
founding and the building of indigenous churches are important.
Decree develops the “People of God” theology into a more
creative synthesis of mission ecclesiology. Mission activity is founding the
will of God, who bound up with human nature and its aspirations, and Christ ought
not to be presented to such aspirations as a complete foreigner. The Church
does not consider it to be under divine condemnation but called to further
transformation. The Gospel is not a force for cultural destruction, but one of
transformation and fulfillment. Therefore whatever goodness is found in the
minds and hearts of men, or in the particular customs and cultures of peoples,
far from being lost, is purified, raised to a higher level and reaches its
perfection.
Decree deals with
actual mission work; formation of its community with the discussion on the
“point of contact” between the Gospel and local cultures; training of
missionaries, the role of bishops, and the people of God as the sign of all
nations. Mission work’s call to missionaries is to be familiar with their
national and religious traditions and uncover with gladness and respect those
seeds of the Word which lie hidden among them.
Decree points out
that without Christ, the other religions remain not only “imperfect,” but
“truncated” and “distorted” and advocates a training that emphasizes both
strong and special spiritual preparation as well as formation in cultural and
linguistic studies: the missionary’s basic handbook is the Bible. Bishops,
while consecrated for one diocese, are called
for the salvation of the whole world, they therefore bear the task
primarily of leading world evangelization.
2. “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church
to Non-Christian Religions"
The declaration
uses an underlying image of pilgrimage which God himself initiated. The
declaration asserts that “the Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and
holy in non-Christian religions.” It states that Christ, who is our peace, has
through his reconciled Jews and Gentiles and made them one in himself. This declaration
indirectly implies that Christ’s suffering could be charged against some of the
Jews by saying that the Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed by
God. The entire discussion about the declaration reveals prejudice against the
Jews by saying, as an example, the Church deplores all hatreds, persecutions,
displays of anti-Semitism leveled at any time or from any source against the
Jews.
The declaration
speaks favourably about non-Christian religions that the beliefs and moral
codes of the Hindus, Buddhists and Moslems have positive elements, hence
non-Christians are by no means strangers to the divine truth; the peoples of
the world have always had a certain perception of that hidden power hovering
over the events of human life; and non-Christian religions often reflect a ray
of that truth which enlightens all men. It urges Christians to acknowledge,
preserve and encourage through dialogue the spiritual and moral truths found
among non-Christian religions. Christians may relate to non-Christians through
dialogue presupposes a genuine respect in the part of Christians for
non-Christians and their beliefs.
3.
Conclusion
These documents
speaks that the essence of the church and its mission is to be a sacramental
sign or witness to God’s saving work in all that it is and does: in its diackonia to secular service of the
world; its koinonia or communal unity
expressed both interpersonally and in institutional structures. Inspired by the
Council, many Catholics have zealously pursued dialogue with non-Christians
over the last thirty years, only to find the tensions involved in the Church’s understanding
of dialogue, by interpreting the interest of the Church in dialogue as a
disguising for carrying on her missionary work, now that overt evangelization
is impossible in many lands; and by seeing the Church’s interest in dialogue as
a search for tolerance for itself, a tolerance which it has never extended to
others. It was mainly because that they perceived the Church’s understanding of
dialogue as aimed not at an exchange of views but rather the expansion of the
influence of Catholicism. However, by the recent development of dialogue that
emphasizes on the a genuine respect on the part of Christians for
non-Christians and their beliefs, it marks a significant turning point in the
history of the Church’s relation with those outside its boundaries.
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