Eklezjologia „Mediator Dei” odczytana w kluczu hermeneutyki ciągłości

Abstract

The interpretation of the Church as Christ’s Mystic Body that is present in Pius XII’s encyclical Mediator Dei is an obvious consequence of the earlier encyclical by the same Pope, namely Mystici Corporis Christi, as the encyclical Mediator Dei is an application of this ecclesiological vision for understanding liturgy and living with it. The bond between the Church understood as Christ’s Mystic Body on the one hand and liturgy and the sacraments on the other permeates the whole history of the Church and its teaching. In the New Testament in the center of the teaching on the Church there is St. Paul’s idea of the Church as Christ’s Body. In the patristic reflection the Church mainly signified the embodiment of Christ in the complete man and in the complete mankind. After the eastern schism a breakdown in the Biblical-patristic reflection in the Church’s teaching occurs, and a focus on the visual-organizational elements appears, which then provokes an opposition from the reformers, and leads to further divisions in the Church. In the 19lh century the idea of the Mystic Body is revived. This happens in the Tübingen school, but also in the liturgical movement. The movement, and especially the Benedictine from Maria Laach, Odo Casel, played a great role in developing the idea of the Church as Christ’s Mystic Body. Casel’s interpretation of the Church ranges from the idea of the Church as Christ’s Mystic Body and the Church as Christ’s Mysterious (Sacramental) Body. The idea permeates both the encyclical Mediator Dei, and the whole of the teaching of the Vatican Council II, especially the Constitution on Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, where the idea of the Church as Christ’s Mystic Body is complemented with the understanding of the Church as the sacrament of salvation.