ABSTRACT
Yves Congar (1904–95) was one of the foremost Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. He was part of a brilliant generation of French churchmen that also included such gargantuan figures as Henri de Lubac (1896–1991), Marie-Dominique Chenu (1895–1990), and Louis Bouyer (1913–2004), to mention just some of the most illustrious. Congar was one of the chief architects of an exceptional renewal in Catholic ecclesiology. He contributed to the recovery of the biblical images of the Church which emphasise its mystical nature rather than the hierarchical and societal aspects that had been given such prominence in the previously dominant post-Tridentine ecclesiology. Congar’s vision for ecclesial renewal led to a profound transformation of the Catholic Church, its relationship with the other Christian churches, and the world. Vatican II became the catalyst for this change, and its documents gave authoritative expression to his most important ideas on the Church. Congar was extraordinarily prolific: he published more than thirty books and approximately one thousand six hundred articles. In November 1935, he founded and directed a new series called Unam Sanctam that was to become an ecclesiological library running to seventy-seven volumes, published by Éditions du Cerf in Paris. In one of his last works, Entretiens d’automne (Paris, 1987), he offers an incisive analysis of the place of religion in European society: ‘Europe was made by Christianity. It is impossible to see modern Europe without Christianity.’ Congar viewed the twentieth century as ‘the century of the expansion of Islam, but among the minority of faithful who truly believe, it is a really evangelistic century’.
