Communion ecclesiology, the central characteristic of the Second Vatican Council, is very explicit in the constitution on the Church. The basic idea of the communion ecclesiology is rooted in the Trinity and the Eucharist.69 The ecclesial sense of the Eucharist, which was very strong in the early centuries,70 was brought to the foreground in the documents of the Council. The Council affirmed that the universal Church is in communion with the Eucharistic
communities or local churches by the Spirit (LG 23). “[F]or the early Christians,” Joseph Ratzinger says, “the first and predominant meaning of the word ‘Church’ was the local Church.”71 The emphasis on the communion ecclesiology upholds the importance of the local churches. The local churches were not administrative branches of a large organization in the early Church, instead, “they were the living cells, in each of which the whole mystery of the one body of the Church was present, so that each was simply called Ecclesia, Church.”72 The
Liturgy Symposium (Notre Dame Seminary, New Orleans: Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, August 20, 2015); Jesus the Bridegroom: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told (New York: Image, 2014).
68 Cf. Lubac, The Motherhood of the Church, 75-84; Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the
Idea of Christianity, 340; Vellanickal, Church: Communion of Individual Churches; Biblico-Theological Perspectives on the Communion Ecclesiology of Vatican II, Chapter 2.
69 Ouellet; Vellanickal, Church: Communion of Individual Churches; Biblico-Theological Perspectives on the
Communion Ecclesiology of Vatican II, 100. Cf. Paul McPartlan, A Service of Love: Papal Primacy, the Eucharist and Church Unity (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013).
70 Cf. Ouellet.
71 Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights Vatican II (New York/Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist Press, 1966), 121; Prusak, 283.
72 Ratzinger, Theological Highlights Vatican II, 121. Zizioulas. Zizioulas argues that the starting point of the historical search of the unity of the Church must be the unity of the Eucharist (the supreme incorporation of the
Eucharistic celebration of the community was the most appropriate moment of the realization of this oneness of the community:
[T]he Church of Christ is present each time the people of God gather together in the local Church to hear the Gospel of Christ and share in the mystery of the Lord’s Supper. However small and poor they may be, Christ is active in each local church to ensure that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church is realized in each place (LG 26). In the Eucharist, we are built up into Christ’s body the Church.73
In this sense, the early Church was a communion of liturgical communities and communion ecclesiology is an affirmation of the Eucharistic ecclesiology.
Instead of the preconciliar pyramidal structure of the Church with the Pope at its top, the communion ecclesiology presents “a single Church with the Pope as its earthly head, the Church universal is a communion of local churches (regional, national, diocesan, and parochial), each of which is the Body of Christ in that place” (cf. LG 26).74 However, the fathers of the Council are aware of the importance of a hierarchically structured Church for the functioning of the various ministries of the Church and it helps the Church to work as a body (LG 18-9).75 Chapter 3 of Lumen Gentium presents the hierarchical structure as a divine plan in which Jesus placed Peter as
the head of the apostles, and today, bishops as followers of the apostles are called to work for the unity of the Church working with the Pope, the successor of Peter. It is to be continued until the end of the world (Cf. Mt 28:20) through the apostolic succession in the Church (LG 20). The
Church in Christ in space and time) and the Bishop that leads us to the sacramentality of the Church and the Eucharistic ecclesiology. (p.19 or before that).
73 Gaillardetz and Clifford, 73. 74 McBrien, 172-3.
75 Prusak, 283-4. Cardinal Ratzinger, few years after the council, saw the insertion of the concept of the hierarchy into the imagery of the Body of Christ in the document of the council as an important theological result. See Joseph Ratzinger, "Review of the Postconciliar Era: Failures, Tasks, Hopes," in Principles of Catholic Theology: Building
Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 370. “[T]he Council reinserted into the
Church as a whole a doctrine of primacy that was dangerously isolated; it integrated into the one mysterium of the Body of Christ a too-isolated conception of the hierarchy; it restored to the ordered unity of the faith an isolated Mariology; it gave the biblical word its full due; it made the liturgy once more accessible; and, in addition, it made a courageous step forward toward the unity of all Christians.”
college of the bishops, who are the successors of the apostles and heads of the local churches and the “visible source and foundation of unity in their own particular Churches” (LG 23), work as a corporate body to minister the Church. The local bishops represent their churches, the college of Churches, and “in communion with one another and with the Bishop of Rome, these local churches constitute the Church universal,” and the collegiality of the bishops is an expression of the communal nature of the Church (cf. LG 24-5).76 At the same time, the Council also upheld the lay apostolate, which is conceived not as a participation in the ministry of the hierarchy, instead “a direct sharing in the mission of the Church through Baptism and Confirmation, and then ‘communicated and nourished’ by the Eucharist.”77