FINAL DECLARATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS: "'DISCLOSING' THE COUNCIL"

6–8 December 2015 at the Catholic Academy of Bavaria, Munich

On the fiftieth anniversary of the solemn closing of the Second Vatican Council, some two hundred theologians gathered from 6 to 8 December 2015 for an International Congress in Munich. Their concern was to reflect on the impulses of the Council regarding the tasks of German Catholic theology in the twenty-first century and to think further ahead. Theology sees itself in a special way challenged to interpret the signs of the times: it thereby follows the Council's mode of operation, given by Pope John XXIII, to bear witness to the gospel in a pastoral way responding to the joys and hardships of the people today: to be theology in the service of humankind and the contemporary world (aggiornamento).

1. Freedom and Faith

In recognizing religious liberty as a human right, the Second Vatican Council for the first time takes the claim to liberty of modernity positively. But as long as freedom of conscience, freedom of opinion, and the rights of the participation of the faithful are not fully recognized in the church, the nature of faith as an act of freedom is only incompletely taken into account. Human rights, based on the dignity of the human being, must be implemented within the church for the sake of the church's credibility. Theology is faced with the task of articulating concerns about freedom from the center of its understanding of faith for the church's life and for the global social and political reality and to argue for its realization in concrete contexts. To understand the faith as the fulfilment of freedom, as a scientific form of reflecting the faith, requires that theology can claim this necessary freedom.

We are committed to taking seriously the conditional relationship between faith and freedom. In today's global conditions this demands that we look for alliances comprising denominations, religions, and ideologies in favor of free conditions of life, among other things, to search for religious liberty and freedom of conscience, and to vigorously carry them forward. Theology herewith takes part in the responsibility of the church to the world.

2. Theology as a Science

The Council has been prepared by theological developments of the early twentieth century and has set central impulses even for theology. Theology is understood in the sense of tradition alongside the teaching office of the bishops as an indispensable scientific teaching authority in the church and as an important space of understanding-oriented discourse in the public sphere.

We are committed to looking, for the sake of a deeper knowledge of the truth, for interdisciplinary debate with all sciences as well as exchange with the wisdom traditions of different cultures and the lived practice of faith. For this, theology itself must make efforts to clarify its self-understanding as a science and to provide for an intensive exchange between its individual branches.

3. Theology and the Episcopal Teaching Office

The Second Vatican Council has in a model way implemented the task of the pastorally understood teaching office of the bishops to moderate the interpretation process of tradition and the experience of faith. In this process, which implies self-relativization, including the courage of revising doctrinal statements, theology plays an important role. The congress is recommending that those responsible in the church attach particular importance to theological science, especially in view of today's educational societies. Despite recurrent and inevitable tensions in the relationship between the theological and episcopal teaching office, the discourse about the interpretation of faith needs to be open-ended. Only in this way can the freedom of theology be guaranteed as a science. In particular, it must be a concern of the church in this context to promote scientific theology at state universities.

We are committed to further developing such a process along the lines of the Second Vatican Council. Care must in the future be taken so that the people of God shall be free to speak in their many voices.

4. Reform of Ecclesial Structures

The Council finds a renewed self-conception of the church by, among other things, moving back to the center the image of the church as the people of God as well as by collegiality and by engaging in a human rights–oriented hermeneutics. Theology has to work toward overcoming the tensions between the hierarchical and communal ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council in returning to the dialogical understanding of revelation in Dei Verbum. Synodality needs to become again a structural principle in the church. It is the consequence of a pneumatological ecclesiology and finds expression in the discernment of minds. It must be legally implemented and be enforceable; it also needs to be studied at all levels of the church.

We are committed to assisting in the development of a synodal church...