Journal of Sr. Carla Mae Streeter, O.P.

Hidden in the last days of the Second Vatican Council is a jewel. If asked what the Council had to say about the Church, readers point to Lumen gentium. Here professors and students alike will find the Church’s reflection on her own inner life. But precious as this is, it is not the jewel. There is a second document on the Church, written almost as an afterthought. Approved just as the Council was coming to a close, Gaudium et spes slipped in the door at the last moment, shaped by bishops who were convinced of its importance all through the Council. The Church must be understood not only in itself, they argued. It must be understood in its relation to the world. In its English title, The Church in the Modern World, we immediately sense this outward thrust.

I suggest we are at a point in history that gives us the opportunity to view the Church as it has evolved. Joseph Holland of the Center of Concern inWashington D.C. offers us three stages in this development. We might describe the medieval Church as Christ on the offense. By this I mean the Church in its golden age, a time when its influence was felt everywhere. It presence was felt politically and socially. Its power was unmistakeable.  Its image is the Christ Pantocrator, the regal stern Christ surrounded by angels and holding the earth in his hands. With the Enlightenment and the rise of rationalism we find the Church as Christ on the defense. Maligned and insulted, robbed of its property and ridiculed in its beliefs, its image is the crucified. With the Council we sense yet a third stage of development. It is the Church as servant of the nations. The image is that of the foot-washing Christ, bent over the resistant Peter, armed only with towel and basin.

After the age of colonization, we are still learning how to be a Church in the world, a community with, in, and among the nations of the world so hungry for truth and compassion. This is a Church that dialogues to the point of dialectic…to the point of real and honest difference. This is a Church that listens as well as speaks, to the stories of faith of those very different from itself. This is the Church that meets with scientists, with doctors, with politicians, with economists. This is the Church of the towel and basin, the Church, in its great dignity, on bended knee. The Church is that part of the world that has gone public in its commitment to following the Jesus of the towel and the basin.