I'm a Protestant, why should I care about Vatican II?

This week in the New College, I've been studying the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and in particular the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, also known as 'Lumen Gentium.'

The Roman Catholic Church had inherited a rather secular view of what the Church is: it is a visible institution, 'as visible as the Kingdom of France' as Reformation polemicists once fained to put it, and in particular, a kind of monarchy, the Pope its King. After Vatican I closed in 1870, certain of the Church's earthly powers were increasingly in the hands of the Pontiff: not only monarchy, but an absolute one at that.

In the 1960s, the bishops deemed this inadequate. One particular concern was ecumenism, then in fashion. It is hardly possible to form cordial relations with other ecclesial organisations so long as one is officially bound to describe them as not real Church. Another concern was the Jews: it is hardly possible in a post-Holocaust world to pronounce the Jews nothing more than traitors against God. The bishops demanded a new understanding.

Once I understood this much, I stopped. Why carry on? I'm not Catholic. This isn't 'my' doctrine. I'm not at all tempted to view the Church as nothing other than a visible institution. If anything, I'm more tempted to say, 'the Church is just the collection of all the Christian people – that's it! Why bother getting all metaphysical?'

So, I set myself a challenge: I'd try and persuade myself to care about Lumen Gentium. What follows is my best case.

My case rests on this claim: if the Church is nothing more than all the Christians, then Christ died for nothing.

Here's the wedge: who does Christ save?

Just the Christians, of course! Is that your view? Sounds sensible. Good Catholic doctrine. It was put like this at the 11th session of the Council of Florence-Ferrara, on the 4th of February, 1442:

It firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the catholic church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the catholic church before the end of their lives.

Perhaps you wouldn't have put it with quite that degree of extraordinary pastoral sensitivity. But is that basically your view? It is untenable! It is cruel, and it makes God out to be cruel. It is also unlivable. It is not possible to go about treating your brother, your friend, your colleague, your local shopkeep as if they're on a one-way train to eternal hellfire, and you're waving at them from the other track. If you do, you will be perceived as dangerously insane, and rightly so. In fact, almost nobody does behave as if this doctrine is true, and good thing, too!

Perhaps another Roman Catholic Council can suggest something more irenic?

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel.

That, of course, is Lumen Gentium.

Yet, if this is true, what role does Christ play after all? If Christ's Church isn't strictly necessary for salvation, then why did God bother sending his Son? We proclaim that Christ is the only way that God saves the world, but if we admit that some Jews and Muslims and all the rest might just be saved too, don't we deny that Christ is the only door?

So, if Christ only saves the Christians, then his salvation is cruelly limited. If he saves some non-Christians too, then the salvation isn't really from him.

Lumen Gentium attempts to get us out of this bind. Do you care yet?

According to Lumen Gentium, the Church is the 'budding-forth' of the kingdom of the heavens:

From this source [Jesus] the Church, equipped with the gifts of its Founder and faithfully guarding His precepts of charity, humility and self-sacrifice, receives the mission to proclaim and to spread among all peoples the Kingdom of Christ and of God and to be, on earth, the initial budding-forth of that kingdom.

What strikes me about this 'budding-forth' image, is that a budding is both a promise and a foretaste of a coming flowering. See why this budding-forth matters:

Its end is the kingdom of God, which has been begun by God Himself on earth, and which is to be further extended until it is brought to perfection by Him at the end of time, when Christ, our life, shall appear, and "creation itself will be delivered from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God." So it is that that messianic people, although it does not actually include all men, and at times may look like a small flock, is nonetheless a lasting and sure seed of unity, hope and salvation for the whole human race.

This is what the budding-forth is a promise and a foretaste *of*: the liberation of the whole world. That's how it can be hope for all people, not only Christians. One more for the hat-trick:

God gathered together as one all those who in faith look upon Jesus as the author of salvation and the source of unity and peace, and established them as the Church that for each and all it may be the visible sacrament of this saving unity.

You poor Protestant schismatic, you probably never heard the word 'sacrament' before. Let me explain: a 'sacrament' is an effective sign. Effective: it does what it says. Sign: it says what it does. It's also a mysterious unity of not-two-but-one events. Take communion: no, take communion. When you do, notice, it is effective: it actually brings you together with the rest of the body of Christ into communion with Christ the head. It is a sign: the bread and wine represent Christ's body and blood and point to his Passion which makes that communion possible. It is a physical reality: it is bread and wine. It is a spiritual reality: it is the flesh and blood of Christ. It is not two realities: it is mysteriously one.

Describing the Church as a 'sacrament,' in my opinion, is a stroke of brilliance. It is effective: not to say that the Church is perfect, it is a foretaste now of God's final redemption of the whole creation, and actually can bring forward flashes of light in the darkness, however flawed the earthly Church may be. It is a sign: as a gathering of followers of Christ, it points forward to the time when 'every knee shall bow, whether in the heavens or on the earth or under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.' It is a physical reality: a gathering of people, bound together by various organisational structures and other physical binds, like shared buildings, rituals, sacred objects. It is a spiritual reality: the body of Christ, one in his headship, the holy communion of saints refusing from age to age to respect boundaries of time, space, or even death. It is not two realities: it is mysteriously one.

Does this help you to loosen the bind you're in? At least credit it with the attempt.