16 PART ONE: INTRODUCTION emerging tasks to be included), but the Secretariat soon became involved in drafting several of the Council’s schemata. Although initially no separate statement on ecumenism was anticipated, the need for such a document emerged as the Council proceeded. The SPCUwas assigned the task to draft one, which became the decree eventually known as Unitatis Redintegratio.24 Another document, the constitution on the church Lumen Gentium, laid the necessary foundations for the Catholic Church’s ecumenical engagement through its ecclesiological presuppositions. While reflecting on the ecumenical commitment of Vatican II, it is important to note that Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio should be considered together and in the context of the other conciliar documents, since all the documents together reflect fully the ecumenical program of the Council.25 This program is explicated in Unitatis Redintegratio, but the implications of the Council’s ecumenical intentions are also represented in other documents and embedded in the ecclesiology as expressed in Lumen Gentium; the reciprocal complementarity of the two documents is strikingly demonstrated in their joint promulgation on 21 November 1964. Defending the value of Unitatis Redintegratio against critics of ecumenical commitment, Cardinal Kasper insists: [T]here is no opposition between the doctrinally binding character, on the one hand, and the pastoral or disciplinary character on the other. Rather, any wish to discredit the theological aspect of the Decree on Ecumenism would be contrary to the overall ecumenical intention of the Second Vatican Council.26 One of the most significant and revolutionary concepts of Lumen Gentium is its rephrasing of the Catholic Church’s identification with the church of Christ. Lumen Gentium, section 8, famously states that the church of Christ subsistit in the Roman Catholic Church. Unlike the originally intended verb est, this phrase leaves space for ecclesiality outside the confines of the Catholic 24 Cf. Thomas F. Stransky, “The Foundation of the SPCU,” in Vatican II by Those Who Were There, ed. Alberic Stacpoole (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986). 25 As such, the conciliar documents represent the movements that also inspired the ecumenical movement: the liturgical movement (Sacrosanctum Concilium), the Biblical movement (Dei Verbum), the missionary movement (Gaudium et Spes, Ad Gentes, Nostra Aetate), a growing awareness of ecumenical relations (Unitatis Redintegratio, Orientalium Ecclesiarum), combined with a growing need for a coherent ecclesiological selfunderstanding (Lumen Gentium) and a definition of the internal life of the church (Christus Dominus, Presbyterorum Ordinis, Perfectae Caritatis). 26 Walter Kasper, That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity (London/New York, NY: Burns & Oates, 2004), 8.
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