The institutional model of the church has fallen into disfavor as a means for ecclesiological investigation because Avery Dulles, SJ, regarded it with suspicion because of its association with the notion that the church is a perfect state and the ways that institutionalism encourages clericalism. At the same time, there has been an ongoing debate as to the value of models for addressing the concrete reality of the church and for engaging the social sciences. Engaging economics as a dialogue partner, the author considers how the institutional model can be understood in terms of a fragile state instead of a perfect society to explain the persistence of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and to suggest a strategy for institutional reforms.

The aim of this paper is to appreciate more deeply the ecclesiological and missiological perspectives of synodality and thus to suggest that synodality is not something new or created as the whim of Pope Francis but that it is rooted in the Church's ecclesiology from its earliest times and as such finds an expression in the Church's life and mission. In this paper I will demonstrate that the Church has always been a synodal Church and what we are witnessing now is a valid theological development which takes us into the third millennium. I wish to set my examination of synodality in its ecclesiological and missiological perspectives and thereby posit that these two branches or routes lead into the one synodal pathway. I will show that as we examine the ecclesiological perspective of synodality we shall see that it is set in a renewed sense of mission. For this, we will need to co-operate with God and each other, as Pope Francis hinted at in 2015.

This paper works from the ITC document, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (2018), to outline four essential components of an emergent theology of synodality: the claim that synodality is constitutive of the Church, an ecclesiology of communion, the ecclesial title People of God, and the sensus fidei. The paper then critically assesses the interplay of these four elements in the ITC document, along with the Vademecum and the Preparatory Document which were disseminated with the beginning of the synodal process itself (2021). Certain issues from this interplay, it is argued, require further reflection as this emergent theology develops: the theological weight of consensus, the degree to which belonging to the Church is (or is not) essentially discursive in character, how the sensus fidei seems to imply that the practice of the faith is an integral element of meaningful synodal participation by Catholics, and indeed, finally, the participation of those who do not bear the name of Christian.

In light of current debates and historical precedent, this article rejects polarized approaches to growth in the Church of England. Instead, it points towards the significant numerical growth experienced by English cathedrals as evidence for the fruits of a mixed practice approach. Analysing the growth experienced by cathedrals in recent years, it is posed that, combined with rootedness in place and local identity, a mixed practice approach could be a model for a well-functioning mixed ecology, and a growing Church.

This article explores the limitations of theological reasoning that have attempted to reconcile the claim of faith that the church is holy with the experience of a broken and sinful church. A recent case study from an Easter Vigil celebration shows how attention to liturgical practice can challenge assumptions that scholars have made about the church's liturgies and reframe the fundamental theological question at stake in this conversation in such a way that the declaration that the church is sinful does not necessarily negate or preclude the declaration that the church is also holy.

Augustine's understanding of the church as part of the totus Christus – the ‘whole Christ’ – has become an important resource in contemporary theology, offering a robust vision of the church's union with God. Yet a key critique maintains that it threatens to elide the distinction between the perfected Christ and the created church. This article addresses this issue by asking how the totus Christus doctrine relates to the doctrine of participation. For Augustine, participation is a metaphysical category that expresses the creature's dependent, non-divine status, its essential being out of nothing. The totus Christus doctrine is most explicitly an exegetical, not metaphysical doctrine. Nevertheless, by putting these two facets of Augustine's thought together, we can see the way in which they mutually reinforce the view that the astonishing claims of unity in the totus Christus are structured by a larger theological grammar that distinguishes God and creature.

This essay explores the corporate and social dimensions of discipleship by examining the theological vision of the Parish Communion movement of the last century. It outlines what the Parish Communion movement sought to achieve liturgically and how that was undergirded by its underlying ecclesiology. Elements of the theology underpinning the movement are examined, including its corporate Body theology and its social theology. How these themes contribute to contemporary elaborations of discipleship are then explored, including a reflection on the legacy of the movement in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the United States, there is growing awareness of violence against women in the aftermath of media coverage of numerous cases of high-profile men implicated in sexual harassment or assault and the viral spread of the “#MeToo” movement. There has not been, however, a corresponding degree of ecclesial attention to the child abuse, sexual harassment, domestic violence, and rape prevalent in our society. The authors recommend the establishment of opportunities for ecclesial listening to women who are survivors of sexual violence. This listening will strengthen the communion of the church and generate constructive recommendations for pastoral ecclesial action. As the ecclesial Body of Christ, the church has both a graced capacity through the power of the Holy Spirit and a moral responsibility to act in response to the body's violation.

In recent decades, the use of metaphor in ecclesiology has been broadly critiqued on the ground that metaphors are too abstract and idealized to advance our understanding of the concrete church in history; consequently, ecclesiology has embraced an “empirical turn,” incorporating fields like ethnography and social sciences. In this article, the author argues for a positive function of metaphor in ecclesiology drawing from the work of Janet Martin Soskice. Metaphors link various associative networks of meaning and in doing so open up new imaginative horizons. This theory allows ecclesial metaphors to be examined for their adequacy in light of other empirical or nontheological fields of knowledge. In turn, this invites the theologian to explore other associative networks of meaning such that a metaphor leads to new insights into the nature and mission of the church. The metaphor of the church as the body of Christ serves as a test case.

In “its deepest intuitions,” Vatican II was a missionary council whose stated purpose was to renew the church spiritually and institutionally and so prepare the Catholic community to evangelize a changed, more complex world. Church leaders’ subsequent failure to correctly understand the council's biblically sourced, trinitarian view of mission's object, its method and agency, led to a failure to implement Vatican II's practical pastoral aims. Although the conciliar vision was committed to and embedded in the reformed liturgical rites where it continues to nourish and inspire Catholic life today, the absence of the institutional, ministerial supports needed to complete what the liturgy instills forever blocks achievement of the council's aims. The experience of the US church provides a ready example of how Vatican II's pastoral vision was waylaid and goes unrealized yet today.

This article will consider James K.A. Smith’s proposal for Christian educational reform by examining the historical animating principles and the contemporary embodied practices of Episcopal boarding schools in the United States. Drawing on historical accounts of the early years of Episcopal boarding schools, this paper will surface resonances between Smith’s vision for Christian education and the hopes of the first rectors of Episcopal boarding schools. Moving from the founding of these schools to their contemporary configurations, this paper will draw on ethnographic accounts of Episcopal boarding schools to complicate Smith’s vision of the formative Christian school. Ethnographic accounts of Episcopal schools offer further support for Smith’s cultural liturgies paradigm; at the same time, the concrete realities of Episcopal boarding schools will call into question Smith’s convictions regarding the potential for Christian schools to operate counter-liturgically. A consideration of the Episcopal Church’s ecclesial mission will demonstrate how it departs from Smith’s post-liberal ecclesiology to suggest realistic ways forward in the negotiation of Christian identity and practice in the context of Episcopal boarding schools.

This article analyzes the complex processes of modernization and individualization, as well as how the church has structurally fostered individualization despite its public criticism. First, the article demonstrates how modernization and individualization have gradually restructured human self-understanding into an economic image of humanity: the human person as homo oeconomicus. Second, this article examines the church's relation to modernity, and specifically its critiques of liberalism and economic individualism. However, the church has often generated the conditions and structures for individualization, and by extension the processes of acceleration and economization of the life-world that it criticizes. Three areas in intra-ecclesial discourse that foster individualization are examined: the interiorization of faith, ecclesial centralization and clerical bureaucracy, and the promotion of corporatism and digital immediacy. The article concludes by examining recent papal efforts at structural reform and the degree to which they address previously entrenched problems and point toward a renewed, non-economic anthropology.

An extended homily or meditation that focuses on some aspects of the life and work of Percy Dearmer. Dearmer, in his pastoral attentiveness, irenic prophetic action, and practical Christianity, sought to continue a distinctive English Anglican tradition of faithfully fulfilling his vocation through a richly incarnational ministry.

There are four Anglican jurisdictions in continental Europe. Two are national churches, Spain and Portugal; two are non-geographical jurisdictions serving persons not geographical regions. These four have overlaps among themselves; they also overlap with full-communion partners. The Episcopal Church’s Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe is not officially a diocese, though it acts like one. Like the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe, its mission is not limited geographically. The competition unwittingly engendered creates conflict that detracts from the part of God’s mission accorded to each Church. This essay argues that creating an official Episcopal diocese in Europe is not the way forward, if common care for that mission is and should be the primary concern of all.