Yves Congar Quotes

Consistently, [Yves] Congar emphasized the distinction between Tradition and traditionalism. The latter was an unyielding commitment to the past. The former was a living principle of commitment to the Beginning, a process that required creativity, inspiration, and a spirit of openness to the present as well as respect for the past. Two of Congar's works, on reform in the church and on the theology of the laity, proved especially controversial...Congar believed that reform was a vital and necessary dimension of the church. This was rooted in the distinction between the church and the kingdom of God and in the intermingling in the church of both divine and human elements. In light of the church's constant temptation to revert to institutionalism, it was always necessary to allow room for the prophetic voice, issuing from the margins, even though this might mean attending to uncomfortable truths.

Yves Congar has extensively reconstructed Thomas’ train of thought.12 He

En una conferencia con ocasión de los veinte años del Vaticano II, el padre Yves Congar sostiene que el Concilio se esforzó por responder a estas primeras manifestaciones de una crisis que se expandió en los años que lo siguieron. Habla de un «cambio socio-cultural cuya amplitud, radicalidad, rapidez y carácter cósmico no tienen equivalente en ningún otro período de la Historia»[7]

In this, Bergoglio was following the wisdom of Yves Congar’s 1950 text True and False Reform in the Church. True reform came about through the periphery being allowed to shape the center; “reforms that have succeeded within the Church are those which have been made with concern for the concrete need of souls, in a pastoral perspective, aiming at holiness,” the French Dominican had written. What upset reform, leading to division and schism, was ideology—a partial interpretation in which some values are extolled and others demonized.