The Council and the Missions

THE COUNCIL AND THE MISSIONS SINCE the announcement of the convening of Vatican Council II, many books and articles have appeared dealing with aggiornamento of the Church and with the ecumenical movement for reunion with our separated fellow Christians. In these writings the focus of attention has been centered principally upon the life and activity of the Church in the western world. Very little has been written, except in passing, about the mission apostolate in Africa and Asia. Yet Pope John XXIII has declared that one of the most pressing topics will be the spread of the Catholic faith.1 Elsewhere he had written," We have never ceased to give Our most lively concern to the missionary problem in all its vastness, beauty and importance." 2 How are we to explain this apparent neglect? I say 'apparent neglect' because I am sure that the relative inattention to the missions in current literature concerned with the Council is not due to lack of interest or to a deliberate intent to ignore them. Rather, I believe, it should be attributed to the difficulty involved in locating the missions properly and accurately within the Church's apostolate in this transitional period in her history. Despite this difficulty, and even because of it, I shall attempt to offer some general guidelines for the orientation of our thought upon the subject of missions today. There is need for a considerable readjustment of our thinking with regard to foreign missions to bring it up to date. The political, social, economic, and cultural changes in recent years have been more rapid and more radical in Africa and Asia than in the western world. It has become commonplace to hear that "the age of the missions " is over and that WC\ have embarked upon a new and as yet unnamed and uncharted era in world1 Pope John XXIII, Ad Petri Cathedram. AAS, LI (1959), 511. 2 Pope John XXIII, Princeps Pastorum, AAS, LI (1959), 834. 537 538 RONAN HOFFMAN wide Christianity. Pope Pius XII pointed this out in a significant passage: In other days the life of the Church, in its visible aspect, extended its force-especially in those countries of old Europe from which she spread-toward what could then be called the limits of the world; today, on the contrary, she presents herself as an exchange of life and energy between all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ upon earth.3 The significance of this statement for the missions, and indeed for the life of the entire Church, is far-reaching in its implications. Not the least of the problems concerning a proper conception of the foreign mission apostolate is a semantic one, for " missions " and " missionary " are highly equivocal terms. Since, however, there is no ready terminology to substitute for them, we are compelled to use them, ambiguous as they are, in referring both to the international apostolate of the colonial period, which is now all but a thing of the past, and to its radically changed modern counterpart. This is one of the reasons for a growing tendency to avoid the use of the term "missions," a tendency which is not to be regretted, for the term has little theological significance. In its plural form it entered into use in the early seventeenth century without any direct or immediate reference to the theological notion of " mission." For the past four centuries the foreign mission apostolate has been generally regarded as a pastoral activity of a small segment of the Church. Only rarely, and only by relatively few even in our day, has the possibility been considered of developing its underlying theory as a section of sacred theology. Moreover, the missions have commonly been presented in terms of activity, and greater emphasis has been given in missionary writings to the external, visible activity designed to establish a visible Christian community. Less frequently have writers given attention to the internal, invisible, spiritual and supernatural activity leading toward the aedificatio Corporis Mystici Christi. Granted there is no real opposition between these two 3 Pope Pius XII, Christmas Radio Address, AAS, XXXVIII (1946), 20. THE COUNCIL AND THE MISSIONS 539 types of activity, still there is...