FEBRUARY 2006 - ISSUE 6 - ISSN 1448 - 6326
“RECEPTION” OR “SUBVERSION” OF VATICAN II BY THE ASIAN CHURCHES?
A NEW WAY OF BEING CHURCH IN ASIA
PETER C. PHAN
Abstract
Although the contribution of the Asian Catholic Church to the Second Vatican Council would best be described as modest, the author traces growth in Asian Catholic identity and self-confidence that represents reception and transformation of Vatican II. Led by the Federation of Asian Bishop Conferences (FABC), the Church has initiated significant changes in liturgical reform, inculturation, interfaith dialogue and in its relationship to the poor. The 1999 Asian Synod is a watershed with its focus on the Asian way of being Church. In turn, this challenges the dominant European paradigm of Church in favour of a more radical appreciation of the Church as a communion of local churches. Structural implications for the future of the Church are considered. (Editor)
Forty years is a long time in a person’s life and may be sufficient to offer a perspective on its significance, but it is nothing more than a minuscule speck in the two-millennia history of the Catholic Church. Four decades would not even afford enough distance to assess the impact of an ecumenical council, especially one of such magnitude and complexity as Vatican II, which has been rightly described as the most important event of the twentieth century, both in secular and ecclesiastical history. Any current assessment of Vatican II therefore can be nothing more than fragmentary and provisional, pending the Archimedean viewpoint available perhaps at the eschaton.
The difficulty in presenting the impact of Vatican II on the Asian churches is compounded not only by the vastness of the field of inquiry and the scarcity of theological data but also by the fact that in many countries, particularly those under the communist regime (e.g., China, North Korea, and Vietnam) accurate information on the churches’ activities is practically impossible to obtain. But even in other Asian countries, detailed empirical studies of the churches are almost non-existent, so that available data should be viewed with circumspection.
Furthermore, the two realities under investigation, Asian Churches and Vatican II, are themselves hard to circumscribe, and of course unless it is clear what is meant by them, our discussion will be unfocused. By “Asian churches” are meant here the members of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, a transnational organization comprising 14 full members (i.e., Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos-Cambodia, Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei, Myanmar [Burma], Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam) and ten associate members (i.e., Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macau [Aomen], Mongolia, Nepal, Siberia, Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan).[1] By “Vatican II” is meant not only the general council (1962-65) convoked by Pope John XXIII and concluded under Pope Paul VI, with its 16 documents, but also the official post-conciliar commissions and documents (e.g., the Council [consilium] for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, numerous new liturgical books, the 1983 Code of Canon Law, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, etc.)—in sum, the entire pontificates of Paul VI and John Paul II.
Vatican II was the first ecumenical council that the Asian bishops took part in, though many of them were not Asian-born but expatriate missionaries. Nor did their voices carry much weight, since Vatican II—though the first general council truly represented by the oikoumene and hence ushering in what Karl Rahner famously called the “world church”—was still very much an European affair, dominated by European prelates and the preoccupations and agenda of the Western churches.[2] This lack of influence was due to the fact the number of Asian bishops at Vatican II was relatively small and many Asian churches were then still in so-called mission lands.
The title of my essay contains two theologically significant terms, i.e., reception and subversion. The former has a respectable pedigree and constitutes an essential element in Catholic theology of tradition and the sensus fidelium. It refers to the ongoing process by which the community of faith acknowledges that a teaching or a practice enjoined by church authority is a genuine expression of the church’s faith and therefore true and binding, and makes that teaching or practice its own. Contrary to conciliarism and Gallicanism, reception is not to be understood as a juridical ratification by the community of such a teaching or practice whose truth and validity would derive from such ratification. Rather, it is an act whereby the community affirms and attests that such teaching or practice really contributes to the building up of the community’s life of faith.[3]
Such process of reception however is not a simple act of obedience. It is not always an acceptance or at least a full acceptance of what is enjoined. It may at times involve rejection, total or partial. At any rate, it is always a re-making, or to use the title of the book of one of our colleagues, an “inventing” of the tradition. As Terrence W. Tilley puts it, if tradutore is traditore, “it is not only necessary but good that, from one perspective, a traditor [i.e., the one handing on the tradition] is a traitor.”[4] This second, inevitable aspect of reception is alluded to by the word subversion, which has gained currency in the theological discourse on tradition by feminist, minority, and post-colonial voices. The question mark at the end of the title of my essay is not intended to convey a disjunction between “reception” and “subversion” of Vatican II by the Asian churches but rather to raise the question of how far these churches have and have not recognized the faith-building power of Vatican II and its aftermath in the last forty years, and in the latter case, what alternatives they have proposed for the life and mission of the church.[5]
Perhaps an anecdote will illustrate the two aspects of reception/subversion under discussion. At the end of the 1998 Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for Asia (the Asian Synod, for short), one frustrated participant complained that many of the issues and proposals broached by the Asian bishops in the discussion groups at the synod were not incorporated into the final summary and that their ideas have been “filtered” by the Roman Curia, one Asian cardinal is said to have consoled him with the advice: “Don’t worry about this filtering. When we go back to our churches, we will filter the official document ourselves.”[6]
I will begin with a brief account of the contributions of the Asian churches at the Second Vatican Council. Next I present the current situation of the Catholic Church in Asia and examine the various areas of church life in Asia in which Vatican II has been positively received, with special reference to the activities of the FABC. In the third part I discuss the challenges as well as the contributions of the Asian churches to the church universal by focusing on the Asian Synod.
THE ASIAN CHURCHES AT VATICAN II
Announced by Pope John XXIII to the consternation of his advisers on January 25, 1959 and formally convoked on December 25, 1961, the Second Vatican Council, the twenty-first general council of the Catholic Church, opened on October 11, 1962. Suspended by Pope John’s death on June 3, 1963 and continued by Pope Paul VI, the council met in four sessions and concluded on December 8, 1965. The council promulgated 16 documents of various levels of authority (4 constitutions, 9 decrees, and 3 declarations).[7] Of these documents, it is generally agreed that dogmatically speaking, the most important is the dogmatic constitution on the church (Lumen Gentium). In terms of immediate impact on church life, the constitution on the liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) is the most significant; and in terms of the influence on the society at large, the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world (Gaudium et Spes) is the most influential. In addition, for Asia, given its multireligious context and the Church’s minority status, the decree on the Church’s missionary activity (Ad Gentes) and the declaration on the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate) are of particular relevance.[8]
In Preparation for Vatican II
As is well known, to prepare for the council and to minimize the Curia’s opposition to it, John XXIII established an “antepreparatory commission” and assigned it not to the powerful Holy Office but to the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs under the presidency of Cardinal Domenico Tardini.[9] The task of the commission was to consult with the episcopate worldwide, the Roman Curia, and Catholic universities to draw up a broad outline of the subjects to be discussed at the council, and to suggest membership of the preparatory groups. Tardini sent a letter to the bishops eligible to attend the council asking them to send to the commission “critiques, suggestions, and wishes” that had to do with “points of doctrine, the discipline of the clergy and Christian people, the manifold activities of today’s Church, matters of greater importance with which the Church must deal nowadays, or, finally, anything else” the bishops thought it good to discuss and clarify.[10]
Of the 2594 bishops who were sounded out, 1998 replied (77%), an astonishing response rate for any poll.[11] Of all the continents, Asia produced a relatively weak response (70.2%), lower than Central America (88.1%), Africa (83.3%), Europe (79.9%), though higher than Oceania (68.5%). Several factors accounted for the weak response from Asia: many of the Asian churches were still in mission territories;[12] responses had to be in Latin;[13] and in several countries, e.g., China, North Korea, and Vietnam, the bishops were silenced by the communist regimes.
While many responses from Asia were short and formal, there were happy exceptions: Cardinal Valerian Gracias of Bombay (India) sent two rather lengthy replies; Cardinal Thomas B. Cooray of Colombo (Sri Lanka) did the same. Many bishops objected to the use of Latin as the official language of the council. Bishop Louis M. La Ravoire of Krishnagar (India) bluntly stated (in Italian!) that Latin was no longer the unifying element of the church. As expected, most Asian bishops, particularly the Chinese and the Vietnamese, strongly demanded an unequivocal condemnation of communism. Characteristically, many asked for a stronger devotion to Mary and even a definition of certain Marian privileges such as Mary’s spiritual motherhood and her role as co-redemptrix and co-mediatrix, and a greater devotion to St. Joseph.
Theologically, the Filipino bishops, mostly of Spanish origin, were more conservative, in contrast to the more open Indonesian episcopate, who were of Dutch origin, and the Indian episcopate, whose Cardinal Gracias wanted a fairly radical reform of the Roman system. The Indonesian bishops made wide-ranging proposals regarding the adaptation of church law and worship to the local situations, stronger collaboration among local churches, participation of the entire church in its central government, dialogue with the World Council of Churches, more active roles for the laity, and reform in liturgy, law, and catechesis. Another interesting suggestion, which reflected the religious situation of Asia, concerns the need for dialogue with Buddhism. Archbishop Victor Bazin of Ragoon (Burma), proposed that the council not regard Buddhism as an atheistic religion but as an incomplete religion.[14]
Asian Presence at Vatican II
When the council opened on October 11, 1962, of the 2,449 participants of the first period (October 11-December 8, 1962) 298 came from Asia. In the second period (September 29-December 4, 1963), of 2, 488 council fathers, 302 came from Asia.[15] In the third period (September 14-November 21, 1964), of 2,466 council fathers, 297 came from Asia. In the fourth period (September 14-December 8, 1965), of 2625 participants, 311 came from Asia.[16] Given the preponderant number and role of European bishops and periti at the council,[17] Vatican II was essentially an European council. As Bishop Vicente Zazpe of Argentina noted in his diary: “The Church and the Council have remained in the hands of Central Europe. The only thing that counts is what they say. On the other hand, there is no current of thought or any group to hold them back or provide a balance. Even the pope is not a containing force. Neither America nor Africa nor Italy nor Spain counts.”[18] That Zazpe did not even mention Asia in his list of insignificant voices at the council confirmed the fact the Asian bishops did not exercise a noticeable influence on it.
This does however not mean that the Asian bishops did not have their own contributions to make to the council. A survey of their interventions shows that consistent with their pragmatic outlook, their main concern was not with doctrinal issues but with practical church reforms. One area to which they contributed significantly is liturgy.[19] Cardinal Gracias asked that local episcopal conferences be given sufficient authority to implement liturgical reform.[20] A Chinese bishop requested the inclusion of St. Joseph in the eucharistic prayer.[21] Bishop Nguyen Van Hien of Saigon (Vietnam) asked on behalf of the Vietnamese bishops that episcopal conferences be permitted to introduce liturgical feasts on certain civil feast days in order to give them a Christian dimension and to show non-Christians that Christians respect ancestral traditions. He also requested permission to celebrate Asian martyrs with a liturgical feast in order to hold them up as models of Christian life appropriate to the Asian context.[22] Bishop Yoshigoro Taguchi of Osaka (Japan) pointed out that the splendor of the liturgical vessels gave offense in Japan because the Japanese love simplicity. He added that his people had trouble understanding certain Western rituals such as putting on and taking off the miter, kneeling to kiss the bishop’s ring, and so on. He also proposed that liturgical vestments conform to local tastes and customs.[23] Along the same line, Bishop Paul Seitz of Kontum (Vietnam) said that sacred art should be marked by simplicity, integrity, and poverty.[24]
Another area on which the Asian bishops focused their attention is inculturation. Bishop Stanislaus Lokuang of Tainan (Taiwan) emphasized that every people have their own culture and that the church must respect all of them and use them as means for evangelization.[25]As we will see in detail below, the Asian bishops energetically initiated this process of inculturation in liturgical matters immediately after the promulgation of the constitution on the liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium) at the end of the second period (December 4, 1963). Given the fact that Asian Catholics live in the midst of other religions, one of the central concerns of the Asian bishops during the council was interreligious dialogue and religious freedom.[26]
Furthermore, since the Asian churches were in mission lands, the Asian bishops showed a marked interest in mission. Here the greatest contribution was made by Bishop Lokuang, vice president of the Commission for the Missions. After the schema on mission by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (whose prefect was Cardinal G. Agagianian) was rejected by the council fathers, in spite of Paul VI’s appearance in person to the 116th general congregation on November 6, 1964 to publicly support it, a five-member editorial team was selected to do the revision, with Lokuang receiving the most votes. With Lokuang’s shepherding of the revised document on mission, it was eventually approved by the council.
Another practical matter that drew the attention of the Asian bishops is priestly training and mandatory celibacy. During the fourth period of the council, the Indonesian bishops challenged the statement that “major seminaries are necessary for priestly formation” and suggested that new organizations, more suitable to contemporary needs, be adopted. In addition, they urged a reconsideration of the requirement of priestly celibacy.[27]
In sum, the contributions of the Asian bishops to Vatican II, while not as extensive as that of other bishops, were not insignificant. They focused less on doctrinal formulations than on how the Christian faith can be effectively practiced in their socio-political and religious locations. It is in this pastoral direction that their reception of the council must be evaluated.[28]
THE ASIAN CHURCHES: WITH AND BEYOND VATICAN II
Before discussing how the Asian churches received Vatican II, it would be useful to take a brief look at the current situation of the Catholic Church in Asia. In Asia, Catholics (105.2 million in 1997) represent only 2.9% of the nearly 3.5 billion Asians. Moreover, well over 50% of all Asian Catholics are found in one country—the Philippines. Thus, if one excludes the Philippines, Asia is only about one percent Catholic. Despite its extreme minority status, the Catholic Church in Asia continues to grow. In 1988 there were 84.3 million Catholics. By 1997 they had reached 105.2 million (an increase of 20.9 million or 25%). It is also interesting to note that most of the Asian clergy and religious are indigenous: In 1997 Asia had 617 bishops (out of 4,420 bishops in the world) and 32,291 priests (17,789 diocesan and 14,502 religious). Two-third of all religious priests are Asian; the vast majority of religious sisters (88%) are also Asian.[29] This minority status and the attendant lack of resources of all types no doubt limited the scope of Vatican II’s influence on the Asian churches. This situation did not however deter the Asian churches from an immediate implementation of the council.
Immediate Implementation of Vatican II
The first way in which the Asian churches received the Second Vatican Council was to translate its 16 Latin documents into their own languages. While this task was somewhat easy for countries where English is by and large the second language (e.g., the Philippines and India), it posed formidable challenges to translation into languages in which even a basic Christian vocabulary was not yet available, let alone highly technical theological and canonical terms, and where experts in both theology and the local languages were in short supply. For example, Chinese translation of such basic terms as ‘God’ was, as is well known from the seventeenth-century disputes among missionaries, a matter of serious and prolonged controversy.[30] Thus, the translation of Vatican II documents was in itself an appropriation and inculturation of the theological orientations of the council and constitutes a major theological achievement of the Asian churches.
It is universally agreed that the most immediate and visible impact of Vatican II was its liturgical reforms, not only with its encouragement of the use of vernaculars in liturgical celebrations but also thanks to a slew of post-conciliar new liturgical books (e.g., missal, liturgy of the hour, sacramentary, and pontifical) composed by the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy established by Pope Paul VI in 1964. The goal of the reforms is to promote a “full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations.”[31] Once again, the task of translating these liturgical books was a daunting one, but there is no doubt that with the use of vernaculars and the new rites, the faithful in Asia were enabled to achieve a full, conscious and active participation in the liturgical celebrations that had not been possible before the council.
The reception of Vatican II’s liturgical reforms in Asia, however, went far beyond the translation of the liturgical books composed by the Roman authorities into vernaculars. It included also an explicit effort of liturgical inculturation by bringing elements of the local cultures into sacramental and liturgical celebrations. This inculturation occurs at many levels. On a more superficial level, it includes the use of local music and songs, vestments, gestures, rituals, sacred objects, architecture, etc. On a deeper level, it involves the composition of new sacramental rituals for significant events in a person life such as marriage and funerals. It sometimes includes the use of sacred writings of other religions in addition to the Christian Scriptures. In some countries, sacred rituals such as the cult of ancestors are incorporated into the liturgy.
This process of liturgical inculturation in Asia began even before the end of Vatican II. During the intercession after the council’s second period (December 1963-September 1964), following the promulgation of the constitution on the liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium), various Asian churches initiated new models of liturgical celebration. In India, under the dynamic leadership of Bishop Patrick D’Sousa, liturgical inculturation was vigorously pursued in different areas. In Sri Lanka, as part of liturgical innovation, Catholics collaborated with Protestants on a translation of the Bible into Sinhalese. In Japan, the bishops did away with the genuflection to bishops and the kissing of episcopal rings and replaced the genuflection before the Blessed Sacrament with a deep bow. In Taiwan, a study was made of the feasibility of introducing some Chinese feasts and usages into the liturgical year. In Hong Kong, work was done on liturgical hymns based on traditional Chinese music. In Vietnam, an attempt was made to incorporate the rites of ancestor and hero veneration into the liturgy. The Indonesian episcopate was the first to issue a decree on the implementation of Sacrosanctum concilium and during the Holy Week of 1964 the Indonesian language was used in the chants, readings, and prayers.[32]
The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences
These liturgical reforms, albeit still superficial and piecemeal, helped Vatican II have an immediate and extensive impact on the Asian churches. Nevertheless, the reception of Vatican II in Asia was not undertaken systematically and comprehensively until after 1972 when the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences was brought into being. In a sense, it was Vatican II that made the FABC possible, and in turn, as will be shown, it is mainly through the FABC that Vatican II’s reforms—and much more—were implemented in Asia. Prior to the council, Asian bishops had more relationships to Rome than to one another. Vatican II brought them together and gave them a corporate identity as bishops of the “Asian Church” and impressed upon them the need for a structure like the Consejo Episcopal Latino-Americano for pastoral effectiveness.
It was during Pope Paul VI’s visit to Manila in November 1970, where 180 Asian bishops had gathered for what was then called “the Asian Bishops’ Meeting,” that the idea of a federation of Asian bishops’ conferences was broached. Two years later, on November 16, 1972, the structures and statutes of the FABC were approved. These were later amended and each time were approved by Rome.[33] The FABC’s stated purpose is “to foster among its members solidarity and co-responsibility for the welfare of Church and society in Asia, and to promote and defend whatever is for the greater good.” However, the decisions of the Federation are “without juridical binding force; their acceptance is an expression of collegial responsibility.”[34] In terms of the reception of Vatican II, it is interesting to note that among the FABC’s manifold functions one is “to study ways and means of promoting the apostolate, especially in light of Vatican II and post-conciliar official documents, and according to the needs of Asia.”[35]
The FABC works through a series of bodies consisting of the Plenary Assembly (which meets every four years), the Central Committee (which meets every two years), the Standing Committee (which meets once a year), and the Central Secretariat with seven Offices, each responsible for a particular area of Christian life.[36] The Plenary Assembly is the supreme body of the FABC, and so far there have been eight plenary assemblies, at the end of which a Final Statement was issued. Each assembly focused on a theme, and a look at these themes will give us a sense of the major concerns of the Asian churches: evangelization in modern Asia, prayer as life of the church in Asia, church as a community of faith in Asia, the vocation and mission of the laity in the church and in the world of Asia, the emerging challenges for the church of Asia in the 1990s, discipleship as service to life, renewed church—mission of love and service, and the Asian family toward a culture of integral life. In addition to the authoritative Final Statements of the Plenary Assemblies, over a hundred papers of various length and importance by the FABC’s seven Offices and individual Asian theologians, published under the auspices of the FABC, bear witness to the emergence of a vigorous Asian theology during the post-conciliar era.[37]
How has the FABC, itself the most important product of Vatican II, contributed to the reception as well as subversion of the council? Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to examine how well the Federation has fulfilled the principal functions it has set for itself. Beside the one already mentioned above, i.e., to study ways and means of promoting the apostolate, the other functions include: “to work for and to intensify the dynamic presence of the Church in the total developments of the peoples of Asia; to help in the study of problems of common interest to the Church in Asia, and to investigate possibilities of solutions and coordinate action; to promote inter-communion and cooperation among local Churches and bishops of Asia; to render service to episcopal conferences of Asia in order to help them to meet better the needs of the People of God; to foster a more ordered development of organizations and movements in the Church at the international level; to foster ecumenical and interreligious communication and collaboration.”[38]
“A New Way of Being Church”: Reign of God and A Triple Dialogue
These seven functions contribute to forming what the FABC calls a “new way of being church,”[39] an ecclesial mode of being which is inspired by Vatican II’s vision and at the same time goes beyond it to respond to the various contexts of Asia. While taking a cue from Vatican II’s self-understanding in Lumen Gentium, the FABC has expanded and in a sense subverted it, by replacing the council’s potentially self-absorbing focus on the intra-church matters with a consistent and thoroughgoing concern, and one might say, obsession with the kingdom of God.[40] While the theme of rule or kingdom of God is not absent in Vatican II, especially in Gaudium et Spes, nowhere in the council has it achieved the kind of theological and pastoral preeminence that it has with the FABC. Indeed, it is interesting that no document of the FABC and of its various Offices in the last three decades has ever focused on the institutional elements of the church such as the papacy or canon law, which have consumed much of the theological energy in the Western churches and which, albeit legitimate, run the risk of ecclesiastical narcissism.
This Copernican revolution—placing the kingdom of God rather than the church at the center of the Christian life and letting basileia determine the shape and mission of ecclesia—is no abstract theological musing but has radical implications for the church’s mission and its modus operandi, implications which were not anticipated—at least not fully—by Vatican II. This reversal of theological hierarchy is reminiscent of liberation theologies of all stripes,[41] but in Asia it was fueled principally not by politico-economic considerations but by the confluence, peculiar to Asia itself, of three intimately intertwined factors, i.e., massive poverty, cultural diversity, and religious pluralism.
Because Asian Christianity is present in the midst of the teeming mass of people with dehumanizing poverty yet immensely rich in diverse and ancient cultures and religions that continue to give them dignity and freedom, the mission of the church, contrary to some, even official, interpreters of Vatican’s decree on mission Ad gentes, can no longer be conceived as saving souls (salus animarum) and planting the church (plantatio ecclesiae).[42] Not that soul-saving and church-planting have ceased playing a role in the church’s mission; rather, they no longer occupy the central position they enjoyed in mission theology and practice from the time of Augustine to Vatican II.[43] Nor is conversion eliminated as a possible response to evangelization.[44] However, soul-saving, church-planting, and conversion cannot and must not constitute the goal and objective of the church’s mission.[45] Rather they are only means to the church’s end, which is the establishment of God’s reign. As the FABC’s Fifth Plenary Assembly states: “Our challenge is to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God: to promote justice, peace, love, compassion, equality and brotherhood in these Asian realities. In short, it is to work to make a Kingdom of God a reality.”[46]
Making the reign of God the sole raison d’être of the church entails important changes in the way the church carries out its mission. Here, going further than Vatican II, the FABC makes dialogue the comprehensive modus operandi of the church in Asia. It is vitally important to note that for the Asian churches dialogue is not simply one activity among many others that the church performs, but rather the basic and overarching modality in which the church’s entire mission with all its manifold and complex activities—witness, proclamation, conversion and baptism, building up local churches, forming basic ecclesial communities, catechesis, worship, incarnating the Gospel in peoples’ cultures, promoting social justice and peace, interfaith dialogue, theologizing, to name a few—are carried out.
Furthermore, this dialogue is not primarily an intellectual exchange among experts and religious leaders of various religions, as the term ‘dialogue’ often suggests. Rather it involves a fourfold presence, a presence demanded by the fact Asian Christians live as a minuscule minority among other Asians:
a. The dialogue of life, where people strive to live in an open and neighborly spirit, sharing their joys and sorrows, their human problems and preoccupations.
b. The dialogue of action, in which Christians and others collaborate for the integral development and liberation of people.
c. The dialogue of theological exchange, where specialists seek to deepen their understanding of their respective religious heritages, and to appreciate each other’s spiritual values.
d. The dialogue of religious experience, where persons, rooted in their own religious traditions, share their spiritual riches, for instance, with regard to prayer and contemplation, faith and ways of searching for God or the Absolute.”[47]
This fourfold presence takes place, according to the FABC, in three dialogues, corresponding to the three contexts of Asia mentioned above: massive poverty, cultural diversity, and religious pluralism. Again, with but moving far beyond Vatican II, the FABC insists repeatedly on the necessity of a threefold dialogue—with the Asian poor, with their cultures, and their religions.[48] Conceiving Christian mission as a deeply intertwined and simultaneous threefold dialogue, the affirmation of which has become something of a mantra among Asian theologians, is no doubt unique to the Asian churches. These three dialogues, i.e., liberation, inculturation, and interreligious dialogue were at first conceived of and practiced as three distinct activities. Gradually, by 1990, at the fifth Plenary Assembly in Bandung, Indonesia, it became clear that these three dialogues form but the three-pronged single approach to Christian mission in Asia.
The necessity of doing these three dialogues together has been argued most forcefully by Asian theologians such as Sri Lankan theologian Aloysius Pieris and Indian theologian Michael Amaladoss and has been repeatedly affirmed by the FABC. These three dialogues must be practiced together; only then can each guarantee the authenticity and success of the others. Indeed, theoretically, it is impossible to draw a clear dividing line among these three dialogues, since not rarely it is, as Jesus’ ministry has made it abundantly clear, the poor and marginalized people who are most religious and most attached to their cultures.
What kind of Christianity then would emerge from this new way of being church? At the seventh Plenary Assembly in 2000 the Asian bishops took a retrospective glance at the FABC’s teachings and activities in the previous three decades. They noted that the Asian churches have adopted “eight movements that as a whole constitute an Asian vision of a renewed Church”: a movement toward a Church of the Poor and a Church of the Young; a movement toward a truly local church; a movement toward deep interiority; a movement toward an authentic community of faith; a movement toward active integral evangelization; a movement toward the empowerment of lay men and women; a movement toward active service of life; and a movement toward the triple dialogue with the Asian poor people, with Asian cultures, and with Asian religions.[49]
In these eight movements the influence of Vatican II can easily be discerned. At the same time it is no less clear that the Asian churches have done more than just receiving the council. In many ways they have moved beyond it, precisely because they want to be not simply churches in Asia but churches of Asia, that is, truly and authentically local communities, radically committed to making the reign of God present in Asia through the triple dialogue.[50]
THE ASIAN SYNOD: THE ASIAN CHURCHES BRINGING GIFTS BACK TO ROME
One of the signs that guests are on an equal footing with their hosts is that they can return the hospitality by bringing gifts of their own to their hosts. They no longer just receive their hosts’ favors but also give back something of their making, a dish of their own recipe, a bouquet of rare flowers, or an exotic bottle of wine perhaps, something different that would add beauty to their hosts’ home and enliven the time hosts and guests spend together. Better still, the guests will in turn become hosts, inviting the friends who have entertained them into their own home and share with them their own foods and drinks.
In the post-Vatican II era, for almost three decades, the Asian churches functioned mainly as unequal guests. For the most part, they received what Vatican II offered, in doctrines as well as in practical reforms. But because they carefully attended specific contexts of Asia, the Asian churches could not but adapt, modify, go beyond, and even subvert Vatican II in order to meet the needs of Asia, just as any American tourist would find that McDonald hamburgers and Coke do not taste the same in Beijing as in Mobile, Alabama, because these foods have to be modified to delight the Chinese palate.
The Asian Synod
Sooner or later, however, the guests will feel confident enough to invite their former hosts into their own homes. The occasion arose for the Asian churches when Pope John Paul II convoked a Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for each of the five continents to celebrate the coming of the third millennium of Christianity. A special theme was chosen for each, the one for Asia being “Jesus Christ the Savior and his mission of love and service in Asia.” According to Cardinal Jan Schotte, the General Secretary of the Synod of Bishops, this theme was supposed “to respond to the unique set of circumstances within the Church in Asia as well as to address the actual state of affairs affecting all the peoples and cultures on the Asian continent. In highlighting the centrality of the Person of Christ, his Mission as Mediator and One and Only Savior in God’s Eternal Plan of Salvation, the Church in Asia and all Her members will be better prepared to fulfill Christ’s Evangelizing Mission of love and service in Asia.”[51]
At times, hosts, sensitive to the dietary needs of their guests, would ask in advance what they like to eat and cannot eat. In preparation for the Asian Synod, no such sensitivity seemed to be uppermost in the minds of the Roman organizers to ascertain the real concerns of the Asian churches. They thought that making the person of Christ and his mission as “mediator and one and only savior” central to the work of the synod would respond to “the unique set of circumstances within the Church in Asia” and would prepare Asian Christians “to fulfill Christ’s Evangelizing Mission of love and service.” This imposition of Christology with its claim of Jesus as the “mediator and one and only savior”on the Asian Synod’s agenda and conceiving it as the panacea for what may ail the Asian churches constitute, to judge from all the documents of the FABC, a massive misdiagnosis of the situation of Asian Christianity. As we have seen above, neither Christology nor ecclesiology are at the center of the Asian churches’ concerns but God’s reign or a new way of being church. It is most interesting that the FABC’s seventh Plenary Assembly, which took place shortly after the synod on January 2-12, 2000, adopted the second part of the theme of the synod, i.e., “mission of love and service” but replaced the first part “Jesus Christ the Savior” with “A Renewed Church,” thereby subtly but unmistakably subverting the Roman-imposed focus on Christology.[52]
Part of the preparation for the synod included the drafting of a document called Lineamenta [Outline] which laid out the themes for discussion at the synod. True to the intention of the Roman organizers, the Lineamenta focuses on Christology. While appreciative of various Asian Christologies intended to make Jesus relevant to the sociopolitical and religious situation of Asia, the document warned against the danger of partial Christologies, especially those that raised questions about the “uniqueness of Jesus Christ in the history of salvation.”[53]
The Lineamenta was then sent to the Asian episcopates for responses and suggestions. Unlike the anemic reactions of their predecessors prior to Vatican II, this time the Asian bishops went into full action. Despite shortness of time and numerous difficulties of various sorts, the Asian Bishops’ Conferences took the task of responding to the Lineamenta very seriously. They organized study sessions and discussion groups to ponder over this preparatory document and provided lengthy and detailed answers to its questions. Besides offering helpful thumb-nail sketches of the Asian churches, these responses highlighted the real concerns confronting Asian Christians, sometimes in contrast to those perceived by the Roman Curia. Again and again, almost ad nauseam, under various guises, the inculturation of the Christian faith into Asia emerged as the central and neuralgic issue: How can Asian Christians present Jesus Christ and the Church with an authentic Asian face? Or, to put it in the words of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, how can the church become “truly Indian and Asian”?
Even from a cursory reading of these responses, it is clear that the uniqueness and universality of Jesus as the Savior was never placed in question by the Asian churches. Rather, the burning issue for the Asian churches, a tiny minority in Asia, is how to proclaim this truth about Jesus credibly in the midst of crushing poverty, competing religious systems, and cultural diversity. The unanimous answer to this problem was found to be dialogue: dialogue with the Asian poor, with their religions, and with their cultures. As the Indian bishops put it, “This dialogal model is the new Asian way of being Church, promoting mutual understanding, harmony and collaboration.” The Asian Bishops’ reports were surprisingly frank. While humbly recognizing their churches’ strengths, the bishops bluntly highlighted their weaknesses which revolved around the absence of genuine inculturation by means of the triple dialogue mentioned above.
With regard to interreligious dialogue, many Asian episcopal conferences called for not only a respectful dialogue with non-Christians but also an explicit recognition of the salvific value of non-Christian religions, not as independent from or parallel to Christ, but in relation to him. The Indian bishops affirmed: “ ... For hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings, salvation is seen as being channeled to them not in spite of but through and in their various socio-cultural and religious traditions. We cannot, therefore, deny a priori a salvific role for these non-Christian religions.” The Korean bishops asserted: “We have to study and re-evaluate the meaning and role of the great traditional religions in Korea. They too play a part in the salvific economy of God. This understanding is essential for the inculturation of the Gospel.” The Filipino bishops urge an exploration “in a open and humble way” of the “‘revelatory’ nature of the great ancient religions in Asia and its impact on the church’s proclamation of the truth of Jesus.” In this connection, the Japanese and the Vietnamese bishops found the Christology of the Lineamenta with its insistence on the uniqueness and universality of Christ too defensive and apologetic.[54]
Concerning the dialogue with the poor, the Asian bishops pointed out that Asia is the continent of massive poverty and systemic oppression and that the church cannot fulfill its evangelizing mission unless it walks with the poor. The Indian bishops put it starkly: “Clearly India’s Christian Community is now being called to an ecclesial conversion: to be a Church of the Poor.” In particular, the bishops call for an end to the discrimination against women, both in society and church.
Regarding the dialogue with Asian cultures, the Asian bishops decried the foreignness of Christianity to Asia and urged a systematic inculturation of the Christian faith in all its aspects, from worship to theology to ministerial formation. The Sri Lankan bishops called for a “divesting of the Western image of the Church in the liturgy, style of life, celebrations, and trying to overcome the present image of a powerful, affluent and domineering institution.”
In order to carry out this triple dialogue with Asian peoples successfully, the Asian bishops believed that certain degree of autonomy and freedom for the local churches is necessary. They lamented a lack of dialogue and even trust between the Asian churches and Rome. This lack was exemplified, according to some episcopal conferences, in the composition of the Lineamenta itself. The Japanese bishops spared no words to express their deep disappointment with the Eurocentric focus of the Lineamenta and the lack of serious consultation in the way the synod was planned: “Since the questions of the Lineamenta were composed in the context of Western Christianity, they are not suitable. Among the questions are some concerning whether the work of evangelization is going well or not, but what is the standard of evaluation? If it is the number of baptism etc., it is very dangerous. From the way the questions are proposed, one feels that the holding of the synod is like an occasion for the central office to evaluate the performance of the branch offices. That kind of synod would not worthwhile for the church in Asia. The judgment should not be made from a European framework, but must be seen on the spiritual level of the people who live in Asia.” Speaking of the goal of the synod, they said: “We do not hope for a Synod aiming at discovering how the Asian Church can be propped up by the Western Church, but one where the Bishops of Asia have an honest exchange and learn how they can support and encourage one another.” [55] True to Asian hospitality, several episcopates suggested that the synod be held on their continent, with Roman representatives coming as guests.
All in all, the responses of the Asian Episcopal Conferences to the Lineamenta evince a remarkable sense of collegiality and maturity. The Asian bishops appreciated the pope’s convocation of a special synodal assembly for Asia but they made it clear that they wanted an Asian synod. As the bishops of the Philippines put it: “Ensure that the Synod is truly Asian, with an Asian reflection, with an Asian output, reflecting the Asian perspective of evangelization.”[56]
As the result of the Asian bishops’ responses, the Instrumentum laboris [Working Document] of the synod was composed in such a way as to reflect the pastoral concern for a new way of being in church in Asia. Despite its tile, “Jesus Christ, the Savior and His Mission of Love and Service in Asia,” the central focus of the Instrumentum laboris is not Christology but how the church must carry out the mission of Jesus today in Asia.[57]
The Church as Communion of Local Churches
During the synod, which began on April 19 and concluded on May 14, 1998, there were 191 “interventions” on the floor, of eight minutes each. Needless to say, there is a great diversity in the contents of these mini-speeches as they represented the vastly different faces of the church in the immense continent of Asia. Nevertheless, on the whole, the Asian bishops did speak with a remarkably consistent voice about the basic needs and tasks of Christianity in Asia. As the FABC has repeatedly insisted, Christian mission in Asia can only be carried out in the form of dialogue in three intimately interrelated areas: with Asian cultures, Asian religions, and Asian poor. Furthermore, to perform this dialogue successfully, the Asian bishops believed that a legitimate autonomy of the local churches, which is proper to and required by the principle of subsidiarity, is necessary. This autonomy enables the local churches to decide, in consultation with the other churches of the same region, what pastoral policies and practices are most effective for their evangelizing mission and for the life of the Christians, without undue control by or interference from the Roman Curia. This autonomy, the Asian bishops believed, is not opposed to the supreme authority of the bishop of Rome. On the contrary, it promotes collegiality and communion among the bishop of Rome and the other bishops and thus brings forth the manifold riches of the universal church.
Another oft-repeated point in the interventions refers to the need to expand the roles of the laity, especially women, in the life of the church. The ecclesiological model which the Asian bishops tried to promote is what has been called “participative church,” namely, a church in which all members are fundamentally equal in dignity and share responsibility for the whole church, though with different functions and duties.
Gifts given by guests to their hosts are of course not always welcome, perhaps because they do not fit the hosts’ tastes, or because they may be positively dangerous to the hosts, as the warning “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” testifies. Some of the theological gifts the Asian bishops brought back to Rome were regarded as the Trojan horse. One of these was the contribution of Francis Hadisumarta, the Carmelite bishop of Manikwari, Indonesia. Referring to Vatican II’s ecclesiology of communion, Hadisumarta said that “the Catholic Church is not a monolithic pyramid. Bishops are not branch secretaries waiting for instruction from headquarters! We are a communion of local churches.” He pointed out the absurdity of the practice of the having liturgical translation and adaptation of the Asian churches approved by Roman officials, “who do not understand our language.”[58] The English-speaking discussion group H later said quite bluntly: “The attitude of the Roman Dicasteries in regard to the inculturation of liturgy is not all positive. The Latin liturgy is a purely westernized liturgy translated verbatim into the local languages. Even the translations are to be approved by the said Dicasteries, which sounds paradoxical.”[59]
Another gift, intimately related to the way of being church based on communion and solidarity, is collegiality rooted in the ancient tradition of patriarchate. Again it was Hadisumarta who was the bearer of the gifts. After speaking on behalf of the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference on collegiality and the synodal nature of the church, Hadisumarta urged that the church “move from adaptation to inculturation and create new, indigenous rites.” He went on to suggest that “in many crucial pastoral areas we need to adapt church law. We need the authority to interpret church law according to our own cultural ethos, to change, and where necessary, replace it.” To achieve this inculturation, the bishop asked pointedly:
Do we have the imagination to envisage the birth of new patriarchates, say the Patriarchate of South Asia, of Southeast Asia, and of East Asia? These new patriarchates, conciliar in nature, would support, strengthen, and broaden the work of individual episcopal conferences. As the episcopal conferences, in communion with neighboring conferences in the same (new) patriarchate, move forward in mission, new Catholic Rites would come into existence. Thus, we envisage a radical decentralization of the Latin Rite—devolving into a host of local Rites in Asia, united collegially in faith and trust, listening to each other through synodal instruments at parish, deanery, vicariate, diocesan, national/regional, continental, and international levels. Then, almost four decades after the Second Vatican Council, we would truly experience a “great synodal epoch.”[60]
Using the traditional language of “patriarchate” and “rite,” what Hadisumarta, and with him many Asian bishops, were driving at is a “radical decentralization” of the Roman Catholic Church. As has been remarked by several church historians and ecclesiologists, whereas during its first millennium the ecclesial paradigm was bearing faithful witness to the apostolic tradition with collegiality and communion as the modus operandi, in the second millennium this paradigm shifted to that of actively shaping the church tradition by means of a monarchical papal supremacy.[61] The names of popes such Gregory VII, Innocent III, and Pius IX immediately come to mind. The affirmation of the papal plenitudo potestatis reached its apogee at Vatican I, where papal primacy and infallibility were defined as dogmas over against conciliarism, Gallicanism, control by the State, and the threats of modernity. While re-affirming the two papal dogmas, Vatican II made collegiality and communion its central ecclesial vision. However, during the post-conciliar years, church leaders bent on centralizing power in the papacy and the Roman Curia gained the upper hand and have successfully prevented the implementation of collegial structures.
What is urgently needed now, according to the Indonesian episcopate, is a radical decentralization, and one way to initiate this process is by organizing what Hadisumarta called new “patriarchates.” This church structure, Hermann Pottmeyer points out, is rooted in three theological principles: catholicity, collegiality, and subsidiarity, and implements the triadic church organization of the first millennium: the particular church with its bishop; the regional ecclesiastical units, especially the patriarchal churches with their patriarchs; and the universal church with the pope as its head.[62] The importance of the “ancient patriarchal Churches” was recognized by Vatican II when it said: “It has come about through divine providence that, in the course of time, different Churches set up in various places by the apostles and their successors joined together in a multiplicity of organically united groups which, whilst safeguarding the unity of faith and the unique divine structure of the universal Church, have their own discipline, enjoy their own liturgical usage and inherit a theological and spiritual patrimony” (Lumen Gentium, 23)
Unfortunately, when in the West there was only the Latin patriarchate of the bishop of Rome, this triadic structure was lost, resulting in the dual structure of the local church/bishop and the universal church/pope and the eclipse of the character of the church as a communion of churches. As a result, the roles of the pope as the patriarch of the Latin West and the pope as the head of the universal church were fused together. Given the merging of the two roles of the bishop of Rome and the current excessive centralization of power in the papacy and the Roman Curia, it is high time to separate clearly the competencies of the bishop of Rome as the patriarch of the Latin West and the universal pastor and to create new patriarchates and separate them from the Latin church. This is exactly what Joseph Ratzinger strongly suggested shortly after the council as the “task for the future,” namely, “to separate more clearly the office proper to the successor of Peter from the patriarchal office and, where necessary, to create new patriarchates and separate them from the Latin church.” The reason for creating new patriarchates is that “a uniform canon law, a uniform liturgy, a uniform filling of episcopal sees by the Roman central administration—all of these are things that do not necessarily accompany the primacy as such, but result only from this close union of two offices.”[63]
When Pope John Paul II came to New Delhi to promulgate his Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia on November 6, 1999,[64] the churches to which he brought the final gift of the Asian Synod were no longer guests of Rome. Now they played hosts to the Patriarch of the West and the Universal Pastor. Almost forty years had elapsed between Vatican II and the Asian Synod, and a lot of water had passed under the ecclesiastical bridge since the time the Asian bishops as timid participants in Vatican II demanded a condemnation of communism and a greater devotion to Mary and St. Joseph to the beginning of the third Christian millennium when their successors proposed a new way of being church, with self-confidence and boldness, in front of the pope and the Roman curia.
“If the Asian Churches do not discover their own identity, they will have no future.”[65] So declared the Asian Colloquium on Ministries held in Hong Kong on March 5, 1977. This search for self-identity, the Colloquium went to suggest, consists in “the process of re-discovering that the individual Christian can best survive, grow, and develop as a Christian person in the midst of self-nourishing, self-governing, self-ministering, and self-propagating Christian community.”[66] This self-discovery by the Asian churches as Asian churches capable of self-government, self-support, self-propagation, and self-theologizing was achieved by both “receiving” and “subverting” Vatican II, by following the council’s inspiration and going beyond it, under the guidance of the FABC.
