UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
by Robert McClory on Jun. 08, 2012 NCR Today
The roots of the boiling conflict between U.S. Catholic sisters and the Vatican can be understood, I think, as an unfortunate assault by advocates of one image of the church on the proponents of another image. It is a case of outright ecclesiastical bullying, I believe.
In his classic book, Models of the Church, the late Avery Dulles proposes five legitimate ways of viewing the Catholic church: as institution, as community, as sacrament, as herald or proclaimer of the good news, and as servant. When asked what comes to mind when the word “church” enters a discussion, many Catholics immediately choose institution — church as organization founded by Christ and directed through the centuries by popes and bishops who have divine authority to teach, sanctify and rule the faithful. It’s what was handed down, preached, put into catechisms and memorized for ages. But other models are not of lesser value, Dulles says. They express other aspects of the church that church as institution does not express.
Among these others, the idea of church as servant is most intriguing and perhaps the most powerful because its practitioners mirror precisely what Jesus did in his public ministry. It is also the only one of Dulles’ models in which the agenda, the object of its activity, is not set and determined by the church itself, but by the needs of human beings, especially the poor and suffering.
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