The holy spirit and the Church : some recent developments in ecclesiology

Abstract

It is a commonplace, and to a large extent deserved criticism of much of Catholic ecclesiology, that it has concentrated too much on the Church's institutional structure, and has paid too little attention to its inner, spiritual life. Another way of expressing this criticism (frequently heard from our Orthodox brethren) is that Catholic ecclesiology is too exclusively Christocentric, not sufficiently pneumatological. The typical Catholic treatise on the Church spends most of its time on such questions as the institution of the Church by Christ, his choice and commissioning of the Apostles, the special mission given to Peter, the succession in the episcopacy and the primacy, etc.