The late Ruth Benedict, a twentieth century anthropologist known for her remarkable contributions to cultural anthropology, once wrote that “the purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.” From what has been covered in this course about Catholic ecclesiology, it can be easy to conclude that the Church frequently spent its Classical Essentialist years enabling the opposite of Benedict’s description.
However, as with any deep exploration into history, the whole story is often much more complex than, say, boiling the Church down to a once institutional big brother that spawned a mixed life of God’s visible grace and bouts of cringeworthy corruption. Choose any time period within the past 2000 years, and it becomes abundantly apparent that the Church has almost always been intertwined with the scientific, social, economic, and political circumstances surrounding it. In just the nineteenth and twentieth centuries alone, the Church witnessed the rise of Marxism, Socialism, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, massive achievements in technology, and the Civil Rights movement…just to name a few (Tkacik Module 7 Slide 7).
And as with prior periods in the Church’s history and ecclesial development, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries caused the Church, yet again, to sort through a wide array of social, scientific, economic, and political situations – across most of the planet. The Church also witnessed incredible advancements in military weaponry, which caused a colossal amount of death and destruction under tyrannical governments and during the World Wars and through the spread of Communism (Tkacik Module 7 AVP).
Also during this period, the Church held Vatican I in the nineteenth century, followed by Vatican II in the twentieth century, to reassess its role in world that had so quickly modernized, that modernity itself was fast replacing traditional notions of morals and values. With Marxism, Socialism, and atheism on the rise, the world had grown increasingly apathetic about the Gospel (Tkacik Module 7 AVP).
Gaudium et spes, a central document for the Church’s ad extra role in the world, lays the groundwork for revitalizing the Church’s importance in the world and how its new, mission and service focused ecclesiology can embolden the People of God to live out the Gospel in the modern world and, like the Church overall, be a visible sign of God’s grace (Tkacik Module 7 Slide 6).
No longer is the Church to promote the idea of “outside the Church, no salvation” (McBrien 228); instead, the Church is to promote salvation through Jesus Christ, while continually seeking ways to best adapt the Gospel message to the modern world. In addition, the Church is to communicate Gospel values to various political and economic systems, though it is not to be involved in creating and/or maintaining these systems. Rather, because, as Tkacik puts it, “the heart of ecclesiology ad extra is the Church’s anthropology,” the Church is to emphasize that because humans are made in the image of God, human dignity must be valued. This, in turn, can help the systems build themselves upon peace, justice, and righteousness (Tkacik Module 7 AVP).
All of this leads to the Church’s ecclesial relationship with culture, which goes hand-in-hand with Christian anthropology. As anthropology looks at how human societies develop, Gaudium et Spes proclaims that “man comes to a true and full humanity only through culture” (#51). But what are Vatican II’s exact views on culture? Tkacik summarizes Vatican II’s foundational response as follows: Culture is tightly connected to human dignity, and culture enables the freedom to be more fully human (Module 7 Slide 8).
When including the Church’s influence on Christian anthropology, the Church must learn how to interact with diverse cultures and acknowledge that many cultures have the same goal as the Church: the betterment of humanity. Therefore, the Church’s relationship with cultures is to be symbiotic – that is, one of the Church’s roles is to help enrich human culture, while human cultures, in turn, help enrich the Church’s mission (Tkacik Module 7 Slide 8).
Moreover, as the Church builds a strong, meaningful relationship with other cultures, it finds effective ways to evangelize said cultures while keeping to the Gospel message. When sharing the Gospel, and because of differences between different cultures, evangelists are then challenged to adapt the Gospel message, yet without distorting it. Additionally, evangelists to live as examples of kenosis, that they have fully embraced God’s grace, redemption, and the power of the Holy Spirit to work through their relationships with other cultures (Tkacik Module 7 Slide 8).
Lastly, the Church is not to be wed to any particular culture (Gaudium et spes #58) – not only because the Church is no longer operating in a Classical Essentialist form, but also because no culture is above recognizing its sins and the need to repent. What is more, this perspective helps the Church understand its own need to reform wherever and whenever necessary; and that it must actively find the most effective ways to address the world’s concerns, needs, and questions about the human condition (Tkacik Module 7 AVP).
Works Cited
McBrien, Richard P. The Church. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008.
Tkacik, Michael J. Module 7 Lecture Slides. THY-565. Saint Leo University, 2023.
Gaudium et spes. https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html