Originally published at National Catholic Register
Lumen Gentium (The Light of Nations), the Vatican II constitution on the Church, marks its 60th anniversary Nov. 21.
As a “dogmatic constitution” of an ecumenical council, it is officially one of the most important magisterial texts of the last century. It also remains a high-water mark for theology in our time.
Nothing in the Church is ever entirely new. Lumen Gentium built upon the theological reflections on the Church during the 19th century, the teaching of Vatican I and Pope Pius XII’s 1943 encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi, on the mystical body of Christ. Nevertheless, Lumen Gentium marked a different style of theological writing, nourished more directly by Sacred Scripture and expressed in a more beautiful literary style. The document was important not only for what it taught, but how it taught it.
Over the course of this year, Opus Dei Father Joseph Thomas provided an overview of Lumen Gentium’s teaching for the Register.
“With this solemn document, the Church sought to respond to a key question that the Council Fathers wanted to answer,” Father Thomas wrote. “What does the Church have to say about herself?”
What the Church thinks about herself is called “ecclesiology,” the branch of theology
