Part I: Vatican II's "Lumen Gentium" where the Church takes a hard look at itself

There have been several Church Councils devoted to the very identity of the Church, though such councils did not become necessary until someone or some movement or some crisis came along to challenge its identity or authority. The first such challenge led to the Ecumenical [worldwide] Council of Nicaea [modern Iznik, Turkey] in 325 A.D. and the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople [modern Istanbul, Turkey] in 381 A.D. The challenge came from “Arianism,” the theory that while Jesus was unique, he was not “of one substance” or ‘consubstantial” with the Father as we say every Sunday. St. Jerome, the first translator of the full Bible into Latin, wrote in 357 A.D. that “The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.” The fourth century was a determining moment of Church self-understanding as it was called upon to state for the record its basic belief in the Trinity.
 
The Nicaea-Constantinople [or “Nicene”] Creed professes every Sunday the phrase “one, holy, catholic, apostolic.” The next time you attend Mass, notice that the word “catholic” in the Creed is not capitalized. Evolving from a Greek work, the original meaning of “catholic” was worldwide, broad, multi-faceted, or universal. Even in modern English, the word is sometimes used in literature without Christian overtones, such as “he is a reader with catholic taste,” meaning he reads deeply from many diverse sources.
 
Under the guidance of the Spirit, the fourth century Council fathers at Nicaea/Constantinople identified its full understanding of the reality of the Christian Church in their day. In John’s Gospel we have the clearest statement in the New Testament [John 17: 21-23] of the unity or oneness of the Church with God. At the Last Supper Jesus states, “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.” A united church, then, is God’s outreach to the world until the end of time as well as its greatest witness to the world.
 
The fathers go on to call the church “holy.” Today this attribute or “mark of the Church” is understood in several ways. Wikipedia puts it this way: “The word holy in this sense means set apart for a special purpose by and for God. The Church is holy because it has been set apart to do God's work, and because God is present in it. Christians understand the holiness of the Church to derive from Christ's holiness.” Paragraphs 824 and 825 of the Catechism attribute the holiness of the Church to God’s plan and presence within it, but it adds, quoting from Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, that it is premature to say that the Church on earth—in its members—has reached perfection just yet. "The Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is real though imperfect." In her members perfect holiness is something yet to be acquired: "Strengthened by so many and such great means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state - though each in his [sic] own way - are called by the Lord to that perfection of sanctity by which the Father himself is perfect." Consider Jesus’ words: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
 
As we have seen, the term “catholic” in the Nicene Creed is a geographic adjective and thus not capitalized. God’s plan for the Church was not parochial. St. Matthew’s Gospel records Jesus’ last words to his disciples: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
 
The term apostolic in the Creed defines the patrimony of Jesus if you will. We are dependent upon the eyewitness and preaching of those closest to the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and through the Pentecost events [there are several in the Gospels]. The wonder of the Incarnation is God’s passage from pure spirit to material reality: substances, time, space, and human interaction. The apostles witnessed this in their unique place in history, and by the Spirit were empowered to pass down this body of religious experiences through their consecrated successors, bishops.
 
Interestingly, during Vatican II [1962-1965] the world’s bishops forcefully confronted the Roman Curia on this very issue of apostolic succession. The bishops argued that they were treated as little more than field reps for the pope and the Roman Curia or centralized Vatican administration. They fought for their rightful authority to lead their dioceses based upon the witness of the New Testament. Or, put another way, their authority is not reduced to carrying out papal housecleaning mandates, but rested on the authority of the apostles, whose successors they were. This keynote address of the bishops received a ten-minute standing ovation on the floor of the Council. The head of the Curia, Cardinal Ottaviani, was insulted and absented himself for two weeks.
 
When one includes the Council of Ephesus [modern Selçuk, Turkey] in 432 A.D. which declared Mary the Mother of God, and the Council of Chalcedon [modern Kadiköy, Turkey] which defined that Jesus is fully God and fully man with one operational personality, the primary credal self-identity of the Church was established. However, it has probably crossed your mind that the first major doctrinal councils were held in the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire, in the Turkey/Greece region. Not only that, but all these councils were also convoked by Roman emperors, most notably the Council of Nicaea where the bishop of Rome did not attend. St. Leo, the bishop of Rome during the Council of Chalcedon, participated by mail. [The office of pope had not evolved to its full stature in these early times.] And, after the Council of Nicaea, the capital of the Roman Empire was moved to Byzantium [modern Istanbul] and renamed “Constantinople” [by whom, do you think?]
 
Where I am headed here is the irony that in the years when the Church was unifying its doctrines into creed, there were obvious signs of division on the horizon; in fact, they were already in play. The fourth century saw a blossoming of the eastern Roman Empire and the shift of the Roman Army away from the Italian peninsula toward Constantinople and the East. Today’s historians no longer use the term “Dark Ages,” [a victim of “wokeness,” some say] but when the term was in play, it referred to the abandonment and decay of just Western Europe, not the entire civilized world. Attila the Hun’s famous attack on Rome in 451 never took place because, due to famine, there was nothing in Rome to steal. In 476 A.D. a “barbarian” became “emperor” of the Italian peninsula. Old Rome was licking its wounds and transitioning.
 
Although there was no formal division, the thriving Eastern Church was the center of Christendom for a time in terms of intellectual and cultural life. The British historian R.W. Southern, in writing about Rome in the Dark Ages, observed that visitors might pay their respects to the bishop but then proceed to venerate the bones of St. Peter. Outbursts of faith and works in the West were sporadic but powerful in their own ways. The Italian peninsula’s St. Benedict [480-547], the founder of the Benedictines and western monasticism for men and women, was such an exalted figure in those troubled times that during Vatican II Pope Paul VI declared him the patron of Europe. The most noteworthy bishop of Rome in the “Dark Ages” was easily St. Gregory the Great [r. 590-604] who instilled a measure of civil order and even theological writing into the bleak Christianity of the West. If you reflect upon the outstanding growth of monastic life in Ireland beginning around 400, what begins to emerge is a picture of Western European Christianity that is less mystical than in the East, but considerably more muscular. Good thing, too, because the seventh century saw the march of Islam.
 
Next: as the Dark Ages receded, Church councils returned to the West and the Western Roman Church identified itself as protector of the Faith on the battlefields and in its Medieval Councils, the latter shaping much of the Church we know today.