The Church’s Pilgrimage

According to Christopher Dawson

(1) There is a period of growth, in which there is an intense apostolic creativity, when the
Church is faced with a new historical situation.

(2) This is followed by a period of achievement, when the Church seems to have
conquered the world and is able to create a new Christian culture.

(3) The last period is characterized by retreat and decay. The Church is attacked by new
enemies from within and from without, and her achievements are lost or depreciated.
This retreat did not take place during the first age, which is wholly creative.

A. The First Age: The Beginnings of the Jesus Movement

 Growth: Its initial phase, the Apostolic Age, apostolic creativity, the main figures were
Peter and Paul, described in the Acts of the Apostles and in the other New Testament
Writings. They took the revolutionary step of extending the apostolate from the
Jewish to the Gentile environment.

 Achievements: The 2nd and 3rd centuries, Christianity succeeded in penetrating the
dominant urban Roman Hellenistic culture. Although the Church was subjected to
intermittent persecutions, she nevertheless became the greatest creative force in the
culture of the Roman world. Important figures of this period are the martyrs who
sealed their Christian witnessing with their blood. (Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of
Smyrna and Justin Martyr). Teachers-Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria,
Origen, and Cyprian. Renunciation and Contemplation-monks of the desert in Egypt
(Anthony and Pacomius) became the founders of monasticism.

 Persecution of Roman Empire, heresies- Gnosticism became a threat because it

questioned the very core of the Christian faith, the gift of salvation offered by God in
the person of Jesus. (Salvation according to the Gnostics, had to be found in gnosis- in
a secret knowledge through which the believer could escape from the material world
and ascend to spiritual. The creativity of the first great teachers of the faith was able
to overcome the challenge of this heresy and of other heresies.

 Retreat: Emperor Diocletian started a general persecution of Christians which

threatened to destroy the very existence of the Church. It ended up in the Church’s
triumph.
B. The Second Age: The Christian Empire (325-640)

 Growth: Conversion of Emperor Constantine (312) and the foundation of the new
capital of the Christian Empire, Constantinople (founded by Emperor Constantine,
formerly Greek city of Byzantium, hence the name of Byzantine Empire. Constantinople
is now the Turkish city of Istanbul)

 Constantine moved to the East, where he soon controlled the affairs of the Church and
gathered the bishops in a first general council (Nicea 325)

 The bishop of Rome assumed more and more control over the West, which explains the
development of the papacy. Emperor Theodosius made the Christianity the “official”
religion of the Empire (380), marked the beginning of Christendom. Christendom
became the underlying structure of the Christian West and East in the next two stages of
history. It led to a dead-end street at the end of the Middle Ages. It somehow, survived
in what we called earlier the “second dream’ of the Church, which was to restore the
papal world.

 Constantinian Coalition of the Church and the Empire brought mixed blessings to the
Church. It ushered in some splendid achievement, but it also unleashed bitter discords.
Popes and emperors struggled for their freedom and autonomy.

 Church became a powerful and rich institution with clerical positions, which often
grabbed by the nobility looking new sources of power and income.

 The clergy started to dress up like imperial officials, made them stand above everyone
else. The pyramid of pope, bishops, priests, religious and laity was born.

 Achievements: 2nd age is known as the “Age of the Church Fathers” because the Church
produced some of her greatest teachers and spiritual masters during the 4 th and 5th
centuries.

 Confirmed the doctrine of Trinity by Council of Constantinople (381) (Clarified the

doctrine- by Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory
of Nazianzus)

 Augustine of Hippo in the Father of the West. He is the author of the “City of God”, “The
Confessions” and so many other treaties and sermons. He became one of the
masterpieces of Christian literature. He is the defender of Orthodoxy. In his controversy
with the monk Pelagius, who stressed the human initiative in obtaining salvation, he
became doctor of grace and predestination (all creatures are preordained to eternal life
or death- indicated God’s gracious initiation of salvation for those who believe in Christ)
 Augustine versus Pelagius remained conflict throughout Church history.

 Father of the West was Jerome, the translator of the Bible to the Latin of his time (the
Vulgate-Latin translation of the bible)

 Monasticism, started in Egypt with the hermits, foundation of monasteries, Benedictine

and Scholastica.

 Arianism, Arius was presbyter in Alexandria who appeared to question the divinity of
Christ. He was condemned during the Council of Nicea (325) but his doctrine already
spread, questioning the divinity of Christ. (God’s son had not always existed and
consequently was not divine by nature but only the first among creatures.

 Retreat: Power and riches weakened her spiritual vitality. Barbarians overran the West
and the Roman Empire came to an end in 476. In the East, a new era started with the
birth of Islam (622). The successors of Mohammed conquered, with an incredible speed,
a substantial part of the Byzantine Empire, which never fully recovered in subsequent
centuries.

C. The Third Age: The Conversion of the Barbarians in the West (640-960)

Growth: The coalition of apostolic forces, monasticism and the papacy, created a new
Christian culture in the Western world after the fall of the Roman Empire.

 Radically rethought by Pope Gregory I the Great (590-604). He sent Augustine of

Canterbury to England. The Benedictine monk, St. Boniface, was called the “Apostle of
Germany” Gregory had also become the actual ruler of Rome.

Achievements: Benedict received the title “Father of the West”

 The new center of Christian culture became the monasteries, which brought the cross
(Christian Message), the book (Western Culture) and the plow (Promotion of civilization
and new settlements) to the barbarians tribes. It is astonishing how quickly the
Germanic tribes were won over the Christianity.

 Successors of Pope Gregory strengthened their contracts with the Franks, leading to the
alliance of the Frankish monarchy, the papacy, and the Benedictines.

 Charles the son of Pepin continued the policy of his father became the unifier of the
Western Europe and was finally crowned “Emperor of Romans”, by Pope Leo III.
Charlemagne and his immediate successors brought a certain measure of order and
welfare.
 There was awakening of studies, strengthening monastic life, renewal of liturgical and
theological activity.

Decline: The renaissance of the Church was short lived. Partly due to the advance of Islam,
trade declined. Money practically disappeared. The only source and expression of wealth was
now land, give rise to the feudal system.

 Bishops became feudal lords and participated in the constant and complicated intrigues
and warfare. Moreover, Roman families contested the papacy, with the emperors as the
final arbitrator. One pope after another was murdered by contending a family. The
emperor intervened and added more violence. It ended up with a twelve-year old boy
occupying the papal throne.

 Western Christianity experienced its darkest age.

D. The Fourth Age: A United Christian Europe (960-1517)

Growth: The Church recovered from darkest age because of monastic reform. She began
with the foundation of the monastery of Cluny (903) in France. A large number of
monasteries joined ranks with Cluny, this created a powerful spiritual forces against lay
investiture (the right of the king or nobility to appoint and to install bishops and other
prelates).

 Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most powerful spiritual leaders of Christianity. He

became the counselor of popes and kings, monastics had taken hold of the papacy and
started to lead the reform movement.

 Pope Gregory established the judicial structure of the Church.

 The Church came to be seen as a visible, hierarchically structured organization with

supreme power vested in the pope.

Achievement: 13th century is often described as the “Golden Age of the Church”

 Papacy reached the height of its prestige and power in the person of Innocent III (1198-
1216)

 Monasticism continues to develop, with the birth of two mendicant orders. Franciscans
(St. Francis of Assissi) and Dominicans (St. Dominic of Guzman) these new orders
penetrated the universities and produced some of the greatest theologians of the
Church. (Thomas Aquinas (Dominican) and Bonaventure (Franciscan)

 Cities became centers of economic wealth, culture, and learning. They developed the
Gothic architecture, with its cathedrals, city halls and houses of a new class of people,
 the bourgeoisie (social class between aristocracy and working class, in Marxist doctrine,
pro- capitalist middle-class)

 The Catholic Church, who was later joined by the Reformation, hunted, tortured, and
burned thousands of heretics, Jews and witches, Church sponsored terrorism.

Retreat: Nationalism supported by the growing bourgeoisie, while spelling the end of
feudalism, also marked the end of the medieval dream of a single people under one emperor
or one pope.

 Decline of papacy was clear and rapid. Pope Boniface VIII, who declared “that for every
human creature to be submissive to the Roman pontiff is absolutely necessary for
salvation” (The Bull Unam Sanctum, 1302), was imprisoned by the French King. His
successors moved to Avignon France, where they stayed in Babylonian captivity.

E. The Fifth Age: A Ghetto Church (1517-1830)

Growth: The hope for a reformed Church that was based on poverty, fidelity to the Bible
and Imitation of Christ remained unfulfilled.

 Luther an Augustinian monk renewed the Church in 1517 by posting his famous 95
theses. Luther came to the conviction that salvation is by grace, through faith.

 Protest against the sale of indulgences and against other Church abuses. His
theological debated gradually shifted to a controversy with the pope and bishops.
Luther got the cooperation of the greedy nobility of Germany, who wanted to free
themselves from the power of Emperor Charles V.

 After long years of political and armed conflict, the Peace of Augsburg was finally
reached, whereby Protestant princes were guaranteed the right to determine their
own religion.

 Another Protestant movement appeared in Switzerland, under the direction of Ulrich

Zwingti, and then John Calvin. Birth to the Churches that we now call “Reformed” and
“Presbyterian”.

 England, the Reformation started under Henry VIII, who got in conflict with pope
about the annulment of his marriage. Under one of his successors, Queen Elizabeth,
England adopted a moderate form of Protestantism. 30 years War “War of Fronda”
(1618-1648) bloodiest war that Europe had ever suffered.

 Catholic Church arrived at her own reform, called “Counter Reformation”

  Council of Trent (1545-1563) condemned various Protestant position, reaffirmed
Catholic doctrine, and took several steps towards a moral and administrative
reformation of the Church.

 The Apostolic creativity of the 5th and 6th Ages can be attributed to St. Francis Xavier,
Matteo Ricci (He was a scientist and Jesuit missionary to China. He adopted the
controversial missionary method of adapting his teaching to the Chinese culture and of
promoting the use of Chinese Rites. This led to the Chinese Rites controversy), Roberto
De Nobili, best –known missionaries in Asia , in this period. scientist and Jesuit
missionaries in Asia.

 Spanish Colonization- Union of Church and State.

 Protest in the 19th century of our National hero Jose Rizal known exposed the abuses
and immorality of some Spanish friars in his novels. GomBurZa- martyrdom

 Second Vat. Council (1962-65) Followed by the Second Plenary Council of the Phil.
(1991) Meetings of the Federation of the Asia Bishops’ Conference (FABC)- lead to the
full development of the local Filipino Church.

Achievement: The Tridentine reform and the revival of Religious life, through the
foundation of new religious order, brought a short period of renewed creativity in the Church.

 New creativity led to the great outburst of missionary activity.

 Catholic revival found expression in the New Baroque culture, and in the intense
search for devotional life and mystical experience.

 King Louis XIV (1643-1715) of France, other monarchs, declared himself lead of State
and Church. Rome was helpless.

 France became the home for Jansenism (Bishop Cornelius Jansen, strong sense of
sinfulness, taught by Augustine who wrote the Augustinus), a distorted form of
Catholicisms. Augustinus-became the source of inspiration for the Jansenist
movement in Frances. Jansenists preached and practiced a strict morality and a
scrupulous approach to the reception of the sacrament. Church turned to appreciate
the development of Philosophy and science which started at the time of Renaissance.
Condemned the work of Copernicus and Galileo Galilei.
Retreat: Monarchies and the Church questioned by the leaders of the Enlightenment, who
attempted to set people free the use of reason

 The revolutionary movement in France toward against the Church and evolutionary
promulgated the “worship of reason”

 Revolution in Latin America clashed with the Catholic hierarchy and became strongly
anti-clerical.

 The independence movement in the U.S. did not turn against the Church, however
created a new paradigm for the Church State relationship which was separation.

F. The Sixth Age: Our Age (1830 to the Present)

Growth: After the onslaught of the French Revolution, which swept the whole of Western
Europe, the Church recovery was slow. She had to learn a new way of life, since she was
stripped of her riches and privileges. Churches, monasteries and schools were destroyed and
landholdings were taken by the state.

 European Churches were not yet ready to try the new system of total separation of
Church and State. Still mourning the older order, they carved out concordats (it is n
agreement between civil and ecclesiastical authorities. It refers specifically to the
agreements, which popes made in the 19th and 20th centuries with governmental
leaders, in order to establish the rights of Roman Catholics in an area) with different
governments, in order to establish a sort of modus Vivendi.

 The Church appeared as a beleaguered citadel that had to be defended against the
attacks of the modern world. A Catholic revival during the long papacy of Pius IX an
internal revival that was partly kept alive by his successors.

Achievements: France and Germany regained some of her former glory. An intense of
devotional life invaded the Churches. All kinds of new religious families were founded, and
each promoted particular Christian practices. Some of them became new missionary forces
that reached out to Africa and Asia.

 Romanticism extolled the Church as the mother of art and the guardian of patriotism.
Some attempts were made to reconcile Catholic faith and modern teaching.
Englishman, John Henry Newman stands out, almost all alone, as the exceptional great
mind who centered his interests on the problems of faith in a modern world.

 Church leadership lapsed into a fortress mentality that reacted to modern thought,
with authoritarian condemnation and restrictions, instead of a badly needed dialogue
and clarification.
 Pius IX, who made a Syllabus of Errors of modern times. He declared papal primacy and
infallibility (First Vat. Council, 1869-70) but became the prisoner of the Vatican, when
the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel, unified the whole of Italy. His traditionalism was
continued by the Pius popes, especially Pius X, who condemned “Modernism” (as the
sum of all heresies. (Can refer to being sympathy with modern practices, trends, ideas
and so on. In Catholicism, it refers to the movement in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries that aimed to interpret Christianity, in the light of modern knowledge of
scripture, history, science, etc. Its leaders were Alfred Loisy and George Tyrell. Pope
Pius X condemned it in 1907.

 Pope Leo XIII produced a first encyclical, Rerum Novarum on the Condition of the
Workers. Liberation theologians of the present day Church, development of local
hierarchies and Churches.

Retreat: Pope John XXIII has been the Catholic surprise of the 20th century. A Church, who
was basically in a defensive mood, was suddenly challenged to start a new dialogue with the
world. Second Vision Council (1962-65) theologians and bishops conference took up the
challenge.

 Pope John Paul II, seems to dedicate himself to a strategy of restoration, supported by
Cardinal Ratzinger and a Roman gerontocracy.

 Church’s leadership is back in a boundary-setting