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The Second Vatican Council, to quote the opening words of its first document, "set out to impart an ever-increasing vigour to the Christian life of the faithful" (SC 1). The renewal envisaged by the Council was to be pastoral; in other words, it was to be a renewal of the Church's role in caring for souls, as it carries on the work of Christ the Eternal Pastor (cf. CD 1). A pastorally renewed Church, according to the mind of the Council, should therefore be a Church where souls are cared for better, where the care they receive is more according to the fullness of Christ's design.

            Not everyone today is content with the progress of renewal. Some people -some pastoralisis in particular— say that if pastoral renewal has not gone as rapidly or as effectively as desired, a main reason is the rigid and antiquated concept of law which the Church —or some elements in the Church— still seek to maintain. The traditional inflexibility of the law is, for them, an anti-pastoral force. Instead of caring for people, it harms them. It seeks to keep Christian life in set molds, so stifling initiative, spontaneity, experimentation, the use of personal charisms. And, very particularly, it penalizes those whose lives do not conform to its strict norm, even to the extent of excluding them from a full share in the Christian community.

            Law, so understood, has no positive contribution to make to pastoral action. On the contrary, its role is essentially negative; so much so thai it becomes a major obstacle to pastoral renewal.

            A "law-versus-pastorate" mentality has come to characterize many post-conciliar approaches. It seems to be axiomatic for some people today that if a person thinks in juridical categories, he is no longer thinking pastorally. For them, "pastoral" and "juridical" have come to be opposed and even incompatible terms. It follows —within this logic— that insofar as Vatican II emphasized the pastoral aspects of the Church's life, it initiated —and its spirit still countenances— the current de-emphasis on law and on all the canonical aspects of ecclesial life.

            All of this suggests several questions. Which, if any, justification do these ideas have in conciliar thinking? What is the relationship between law and pastoral care? Must we see opposition or can we find harmony between them?

Vatican II was personalist

            If we are to answer these questions properly, I think we have to highlight —and to harmonize— two major features of Vatican II: the personalist note that characterizes its thinking, and the new understanding of authority that it offers. First let us consider the personalism of Vatican II. The Council is of course personalist, in a primary sense, in that it is centered on the Person of Jesus Christ. But it is also personalist in the very important sense that it stresses the dignity and inviolability of each human person. Now, in stating that Vatican II is personalist in this latter sense, we need to keep some points clear:

            a) Personalist is not the same as individualist. Vatican II is not individualist; in other words, it does not accentuate the individual above the community. It is community-centered; it accentuates the community (at the same time as it accentuates the person). "Communio" is its main theme: the main basis it proposes for a renewed Church (cf. the Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, no. 1 and passim).

            b) Vatican II is therefore both personaiist and community-centered. There is no contradiction. Personalism stresses the dignity and rights of each person seen in his value as God's creation and in his calling to divine sonship in Jesus Christ. However, in stressing rights, personalism also stresses duties (any genuine philosophy of rights is also a philosophy of duties). It stresses duties towards other persons —towards the community— and sees the fulfillment of these duties as a means of personal growth and self-fulfillment, in the fulfillment of the community. Individualism, in contrast, stresses the interests and advantage of the individual regarded as an end in himself, unrelated to any community. The individualist may at times pay lip-service to duties, but has no real concern for them. Selfinterest is his rule. Where individual interests and common interests seem to clash, the individualist will always put what he considers his own interests first.

            One can be personalist and community-centered. One cannot be individualist and community-centered. The failure to keep this basic truth in mind has largely bedevilled renewal over the past 25 years.

            c) To be personalist is not to be anti-law. The individualist spirit can be (and generally is) anti-law. The personalist spirit cannot be anti-law, since a main function of law is precisely to defend the personal rights of each individual and to harmonize the relative rights of different persons.

            If one does not keep the difference clear between individualism and personalism, one may fail to perceive that the use of personalistic language (invoking freedom, rights, conscience, etc.) can at times be simply a cover for individualist anti-community attitudes.

            A second major feature of Vatican II that is of interest to us here is its understanding of authority, and consequently of law. There is no doubt that Vatican II called for a rethinking of the nature of law and authority in the Church, and a new approach in the way in which authority is exercised. Authoritarianism and arbitrariness clearly violate the spirit of the Council. But, to call for a new understanding of law is not to reject law. To call for new modes in the exercise of authority is not to say that there should be no authority or that authority should not be heeded.

Vatican II never deemphasized law

            Vatican II nowhere countenances a deemphasis on law, and less still docs it put an "Ecclesia Spiritus"—of charismatic gifts and pastoral spontaneity— above an "Ecclesia iuris" - of laws and discipline.

            On the contrary, when Vatican II seeks to reduce the theologically pregnant (but broad and somewhat vague) theme of "Communio" to a more concrete image, it chooses "People of God," a term which necessarily carries with it  a juridic emphasis in a way that other traditional descriptions of the Church —such as "Body of Christ" or "Bride of Christ"- do not. It seems fairly obvious that while an ecclesiology of the Body of Christ can be developed without any special emphasis on the reality or necessity of law, an ecclesiology of the People of God cannot, since the very notion of a "People" necessarily stresses inter-personal rights and duties, and therefore questions of justice and law.

            This point is surely elementary and offers an all-important key to renewal. Nevertheless, certain attempts at renewal over the last 25 years have not only totally ignored it, but have contradicted it and sought to generate a renewal movement based on an anti-law mentality. Now —and this needs to be stated with strong emphasis— an individualist anti-law mentality can not lead to renewal It can only lead to the dissolution of community, to a lawless situation where rights are not respected, duties are not fulfilled, and the many —the people— are exploited by the few. I have tried to develop this point at greater length elsewhere (Authority and Freedom in the Church, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1987).

            At this stage let us try to pinpoint the connection between pastoral concern, as Vatican II understands it, and juridical function or system.

            Communion with Christ, and with others in Christ: this is the great pastoral theme and aim of Vatican II. This pastoral concern evidently presupposes not only a possibility of communion, but a right to communion; a right of access to Christ. Here we see how quickly the pastoral and the juridical interlink, because once we speak of rights we are of course speaking in juridical terms. Rights, after all, need to be defined, so that people know their own rights and the rights of others; so that they know what is owed to each one and what each one owes to others. Rights also need to be defended, so that each one is in fact given what is due to him. And this is where law and authority necessarily enter since, without law and authority, there can be no proper definition, and especially no proper defense, of rights.

            It will help our exposition if we take a deeper look into the content of the right to "communio."The right to "communio" is the right to find the Grace, Truth and Will of Christ in and through his Church, using the means that Christ himseif has instituted and left us. Canon 213, one of the most basic canons in the new Code, says tersely: "Christ's Faithful have the right to be assisted by their Pastors from the spiritual riches of the Church, especially by the Word of God and the Sacraments" (cf. c. 682 of the old Code). Canon 762 further stresses part of this, also in terms of a right: "the People of God are first united through the word of the living God and are fully entitled" —they have the full right— "to seek this word from their priests."

            There are some important points to be noted about these canons, which are taken word-for-word from the conciliar documents Lumen Gentium (no. 37) and Presbyterorum Ordinis (no. 4). In the first place, the canons, in underlining the rights of certain persons, necessarily underline the obligations of others (one person's right always implies another person's obligation). Secondly, while the terms "Christ's Faithful" and "People of God" in themselves include clerics as well as laity, nevertheless in these passages —which emphasize what the people are entitled to seek from their pastors— the Council is evidently speaking in particular of the rights of the laity.

Duties come with rights

            Renewal in fact, as the Council presents it, depends very largely on the laity's becoming aware of their ecclesial rights (and, of course, duties) and exercising them. This special stress on the rights of the laity is undoubtedly something new. It is also something with an immediate consequence, for it evidently puts special stress on the obligations of those who are called to be ministers to the people, i.e., of the clergy.

            That is why it is not a healthy sign for renewal when some clerics today, who do talk emphatically about ecclesial rights, do not speak with equal emphasis about ecclesial duties, when they do not seem aware that, within the People of God, it is the laity who have more rights than duties and the clergy who have more duties than rights; when they are vague about clerical duties, whereas the Council is specific (as is the Code), or when they are negative about them —about obedience or celibacy, for instance— whereas the Council is totally positive (cf. Lumen Gentium, 24, 36, 41, 42; Presbyterorum Ordinis, 15, 16; and cc. 273, 277, 284, etc.).

            After "communio," one of the other great themes of Vatican H is of course that of "diakonia," of service, with particular reference to clerical service. To serve is the great task, privilege and duly of clerics. A great part of church law is in fact aimed at safeguarding and enforcing the proper service by the clergy of the whole People of God.

            I wish we could keep this in mind as we evaluate protest and complaints about ecclesiastical law being a burden that still, 25 years after Vatican II and even after the introduction of the new Code of Canon Law, echo through sectors of the Church. How should one judge such a situation?

            It could be that some aspect of the law or its administration has been and remains notably unjust, or it could simply be that "diakonia" has remained a jargon word, an unassimilated conciliar concept, while the spirit of service has become notably weak, particularly among those in the Church whom it should most characterize.

            The priest whose spirit of service towards his people is strong will readily fulfil the ecclesiastical laws designed to protect their rights. But if a priest does not keep this service role uppermost in his mind, he can easily come to abuse the rights of the faithful, without perhaps even realizing it, and can do so in the very name of renewal: of spontaneity, of charismatic approaches, etc. Possible instances readily come to mind.

Priests can abuse rights

            The priest who disregards the norms governing worship or the administration of the sacraments, or who imposes a particular form of liturgical observance where the Church leaves freedom... The priest who is seldom available for Confessions (cf. c. 986) or who puts parents off when they request baptism of their new-born child (cf. c. 867) or who is unduly absent from his parish or diocese (cf. cc. 395, 533)... The priest who neglects preaching or who preaches politics or economics in a context that is totally lacking in faith or in supernatural criteria, or whose preaching does not follow (in words of the opening paragraph of the Vatican II Constitution Dei Verbum) "the true doctrine on divine Revelation and its transmission," or who bases his preaching on Scripture alone without reference to Tradition, forgetting (again in the words of Dei Verbum) that "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God" (DV 10), or who does not teach his people that for an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, given in the name of Jesus Christ, they have the right to look to the living Magisterium of the Church (DV ibid.). Such a priest is not serving, he is not being responsible, he is not fulfilling his obligations, and therefore —since he is not respecting the rights of the people entrusted to his care— he is being neither just nor pastoral. It follows as a matter of course that the people, in the face of such failure to respect their rights, are entitled to look to ecclesiastical law and authority for the effective vindication of these rights.

            If then we ask what is the pastoral role or function of law, the answer is clear: it is the defense of ecclesial and personal rights. Without law, these rights are not defined, are not clear, are not safe. Without law, violations of rights go unchecked. Without law abuses creep in, pastoral abuses included, abuses by clerics included.

            Some pastoral theorists nowadays not only accept the view that law is meant to defend persons, but would seem to have taken it on themselves to vindicate this view in the face of those who, they say, see the function of law as the defense not of persons but of institutions. The matter has come to a point where a whole area of canon law has become for them a battlefield between what they would call a conservative legalistic-canonical school with a pre-conciliar mentality, which defends institutions as against persons, and a progressive post-conciliar pastoral-canonical school (their school) which defends persons as against institutions.

            The presuppositions underlying this approach seem to raise two questions: 1) Is it a function of law to defend institutions? 2) If so, does the law, in defending institutions, show a lack of concern for persons and for their rights?

Canon law becomes a battlefield

            The surprising thing about the first question is that it should be raised at all, within a Catholic context. Surely it is elementary to Catholic ecclesiology that Christ did not set up a purely spiritual Church but a Church that, as Lumen Gentium puts it, is a "hierarchically ordered society" and a "spiritual community" at one and the same time (LG 8). In this society there are realities that pertain to the constitutional essence of the Church: the Sacraments, the Deposit of Faith, the Hierarchy, the Magisterium. These institutions were instituted by Christ himself; they are entitled to the defense of the law, and, insofar as the law defends them, it is defending the constitutional will of Christ for his Church and his People.

            If the suggestion that canon law has no mission to defend Church institutions is out of step with the ecclesiology of Vatican II, the suggestion that, in defending institutions, canon law shows a lack of concern for persons and their rights betrays a radical failure to understand the true personalism of the Council.

            Persons, in God's plan of Redemption, need institutions, and access to institutions, for their personal growth in Christ. For instance, this growth would be severely limited without the proper use of the Sacraments. It also enters into God's plan that persons need the concrete demands that institutions at times make on them, if their growth in Christ is to be complete.

            Law, therefore, in defending institutions, is defending persons. It is defending institutions for persons so that, also through them, each member of the People of God is reached by the fullness both of Christ's personal grace and help and of Christ's ambition and particular demands for him or her.

            So, if we have to make choices in the whole matter, the choice is not between defending institutions or defending persons; it is between defending persons by defending the institutions designed for their help and enrichment or failing to defend persons by allowing them to be deprived of the full power and efficacy of Christ's institutionalized gifts to his Church and, through his Church, to each of his followers.

            We would do well to examine our attitude towards the different Church institutions, in this light; for instance, towards the Magisterium. It is an individualistic spirit which harps on how the Magisterium "threatens" people's rights. A spirit more attuned to the ecclesiology of Vatican II realizes that the Magisterium in fact defends people's rights; concretely their right to know the Mind of Christ on major issues.

            This is just as true for the individual theologian as it is for any other member of the faithful. The theologian —precisely because he is a man of faith— knows that the Magisterium is endowed with a particular charism of truth that he personally does not possess. No more and no less than the rest of the People of God, the theologian has the right —and the duty and privilege— of looking for guidance to this institutionalized charism of the Magisterium.

The Magisterium protects rights

            If the Church intervenes in a particular case to say that the ideas of some theologian or other are not in harmony with Catholic thinking, the intervention is not negative, i.e., it is not meant to take from any rights of the theologian. It is positive, for it is intended to safeguard the rights of the rest of the faithful to know what in fact is the Mind of Christ in the matter.

            Our thesis so far, therefore, is that institutions are defended in the Church not against persons but for persons. In another article, I will try to consider how this principle applies to the institution of marriage, with particular reference to the question ofindissolubility.