[A number of years ago, I wrote an article in which I tried to briefly state the essence of what I learned concerning authority in the Church from the writings of the French Dominican, Fr. Yves Congar, while doing my doctoral dissertation on that topic.I never did much with it.What follows, in parts, is that article.]
Conclusion
What has been outlined here is a brief introduction to the main lines of thought within the extensive theological labors of Père Yves Congar as they relate to the nature of ecclesial authority.Clearly, for Congar, the great Tradition of the Church reveals an understanding of that authority as an essentially theological reality that has its ultimate principle in God the Father who builds up the Body of his Son by the action of the Holy Spirit.Because authority in the Church is a theological reality—sharing in the life of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit—it is at the same time decidedly anthropological in that it engages persons as subjects, with a diversity of charisms, in the fundamental plan of God which is the building up of the Body of Christ and the growth of the kingdom of God.
What this theological and anthropological foundation shows is ecclesial authority’s profoundly evangelical nature.As an evangelical reality, authority in the Church always calls for the conversion of all the baptized and finds its ultimate direction in the building up of the Body of Christ and the advancement of the kingdom of God.Because ecclesial authority is an evangelical reality in its very nature it far transcends any purely secular expression and practice of authority.Authority radically grounded in and flowing from the Trinitarian nature of the living God allows “that the measure of [authority] remain very evangelical, pure of pretensions of a temporal sort of power” (Yves Congar, « L’Avenir de l’Église, » in Avenir et éternité, ed. M. Olivier Lacombe, Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1964, 211).It is precisely the inner-Trinitarian relationships by which authority is measured.In other words, the unique authority of each person of the Church is lived in relationships of love, generosity and receptivity directed at the common conforming of life to Christ, in docility to the action of the Father concretely present in the charisms of each by the action of the Holy Spirit. This evangelical authority finds its ‘glory’ in self-emptying love and its end in the mutual ‘lifting up’ of each into the very glory and life that is the Father’s (cf. Phil. 2: 5-11; John 17: 1-3).Through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all the disciples ‘gathered together’ (cf. Acts 2: 1ff.) each one is filled with the authority of Christ, each in his or her own order, for the glorification of the Father. Because ecclesial authority is evangelical its exercise can only be based “within the fundamental religious relationship of the Gospel” which will always demand of Christians nothing less than “radical conversion” (Congar, Power and Poverty, 98-99).
In conclusion, Congar’s witness to the theological and evangelical nature of the Church’s authority serves to highlight the ultimate doxological character of authority within the Church.Ecclesial authority as given expression in the writings of Père Congar is ultimately from God the Father in Christ the Son through the Holy Spirit and back again by the diversity of charisms inspired by the Holy Spirit uniting all the faithful into the one Body of Christ for the praise and adoration of God the Father (Yves Congar, Esprit de l’homme, Esprit de Dieu, Paris: Cerf, 1983, 42-43).The absolute goal of ecclesial authority, whether in its hierarchical or life expression, is life in and the praise of the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.