Synod theologian lashes out at Church in United States, upholds German Church as model
August 09, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: Rafael Liciani, a lay Venezuelan theologian who is a member of the Synod of Bishops’ Theological Commission, lashed out at the Church in the United States, describing it as “basically dysfunctional” and contrasting it with the Church in Germany and Latin America.
Liciani also criticized the Church in Asia and Africa, as well as the pontificates of Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
“Anyone who looks to Africa, Asia or North America will recognize that the reception of the [Second Vatican] Council did not take place by means of the ecclesiology of the image of the people of God,” he said in an interview with the German bishops’ news ageny. “In Africa or the Middle East, the concept of the ecclesial assembly, in which the voice of the laity is equal to that of the bishops, is unknown.”
Pope Francis “has a double task to fulfill: he must promote the change in the understanding of the Church and also ensure that this innovation reaches all local churches,” Liciani added. “If, at the end of the synod, we have a document that makes this ecclesiological leap and establishes the understanding of the Church as the people of God, there will be further developments in the areas of ministries and doctrine.”
The fathers of the Second Vatican Council discussed the Church as the people of God in one of the eight chapters of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. In the chapter that followed, the council fathers emphasized the hierarchical nature of the Church. Nowhere does the document call for ecclesial bodies in which “the voice of the laity is equal to that of the bishops” in establishing changes in “ministries and doctrine.”
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Posted by: feedback -
Aug. 09, 2024 9:25 AM ET USA
This is exactly what makes me very hopeful about the Catholic Church in the United States, and also in Asia and in Africa. If Mr. Liciani were not invited by the Vatican to join the Synod of Bishops’ Theological Commission, he would be just another guy with an opinion.
