HG-5

At the outset, an investigation into the institutional and communitarian elements of the Church in coexistence; the Basic Church Community, as a living experience. Moves toward a broader understanding of the ecclesiality of the basic Community--ways of Being Church. Under Reinvention.

Oppressed people organizing for Liberation, facing the new barbarians.

Sets up Quaestio Disputata: I - Did historical Jesus will only one institutional form of Church? Hermeneutical suppositions, image within the "theology of tranquility". Jesus' ultimate intent is not the Church, but the Kingdom of God.

Death and Resurrection of Christ as sine qua non for the existence of Church. [55] Kingdom comes to us via Church. Possible Ecclesiogenesis. The primitive church, in its apostolic character, reflected prevailing styles, adapting a synagogal style. Primary concerns were to render the risen One and his Spirit present to the world, "to make his liberating message of grace, pardon, and unrestricted love heard". They created when they thought they should create, they preserved when they thought thtey should preserve, and in all things they kept uppermost in mind the triumph of the gospel and the conversion of human beings. The church...ever old and ever new, it has never lost its identity. "Christ used all available mediations to render himself present, to reach human beings and save them."[60]

Women's ordination and priesthood is scrutinized. Noting that "the permanence of a custom does not imply a doctrinal tradition, in the absence of scripture. "From the hermeneutical-exegetical point of view, there is no decisive scriptural argument to exclude women from priestly ordination." [88] Customs are susceptible of alteration. Each one has his or her own gift (charisma). [94] The whole community is one body in Christ. Rom 12:5. In the prophetic words of Saint Paul, who verified this in living history, "There does not exist among you...male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus." [96]

Addendum to include Karl Rahner. As to the 1976 Sacred Congregation on the question of Admission of Women to the Priesthood, the document affirms traditional doctrine. However, it does so in a "not infallible" manner. [96] Rahner concludes that the argument is not theologically convincing or convicted. The discussion is continuing, the question remains open, and theology is in service to the unity of the church at all levels, in other words, subject to the changing context.

Examines whether Catholicism should be adapted to suit an individual country's culture and analyzes the structure of the Catholic Church