Thoughts and Excerpts: Receiving the Council by Ladislas Orsy, Post 9, Conclusion

We all need to become conversant in canon law; it’s the operating manual of the Church.

“The Spirit of God is the one who brings the church into existence and sustains it. The church, however, by divine design needs visible structures to be a community of human beings and to operate in a human way. This need is the foundation of the ecclesial vocation of canon lawyers: they are called to be partners of the Spirit in building structures for the unfolding kingdom of God in human history.” (p. 143)

“If laws are for the well-being of the community, as they should be, then all laws, secular and religious, are more than justice. They are manifestations of the love that the scholastics called amor benevolentiae, ‘love that wants to give,’ or ‘love that wants to enrich the other.’ Virtues do not exclude each other: they blend and integrate … Thus justice becomes love.” (p. 144)

“We know in retrospect that the reception of every major council has been slow and painful. So is the reception of Vatican Council II, all the more so because its insights have consequences in the practical order and postulate a conversion in the habits of human thoughts and operations. This is the price the community must pay in exchange for a deeper understanding of the mysteries and a more intense participation in them–and a blessed price it is.

“Yet there should be no doubt: it shall be a fruitful time. As the energies latent in our dedicated laity, in the episcopal college, and in the church of Christ (now suffering from disunity) are given scope, there will be an abundant harvest of good fruit for the benefit of all. Our hope is well founded: the Spirit has taken the initiative.” ” (p. 147-8)

We have the insights from Vatican II but need to build the structures and norms that will give full scope to those insights.

Tags: canon law, Orsy, structures of governance