ABSTRACT
Reception, as a characteristic mode of communication in a Church which thinks and acts as a communio ecclesiarum increasingly attracted the attention of ecclesiologists after Vatican II. What mattered was to draw the conclusions from the new orientation of the council toward an ecclesiology of the people of God and a communio ecclesiarum. In the early 1970’s, Anton Grillmeier and Yves Congar – both early church experts – took up the extant results of research into the processes of reception in the early church. They placed this subject in ecclesiological discussion with the express intention to push forward the post-conciliar reform movement. The new attention to reception as a reality in the Church as well as to its ecclesiological rank, has, therefore, a concrete ‘Sitz im Leben’: to overcome the counterreformational-ultramontane understanding of the Church and its one-sided structure, communication system, and exercise of authority … .
