Richard R. Gaillardetz.  Ecclesiology for a Global Church:  A People Called and Sent, Revised 2nd Edition.  Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 2023.  pp. 360 + xxxi.  $40.00 pb.  ISBN 978-1-62698-538-4.  Reviewed by Stephen S. WILBRICHT, Stonehill College, Easton, MA 02357.

            One of the readings that appeared on Father Richard McBrien’s introductory graduate course on ecclesiology at the University of Notre Dame in the early-1990s was Karl Rahner’s 1979 article “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II” (Theological Studies, 40:4).  This essay will forever stand as a landmark for its ushering in of the term “world Church” into contemporary theological parlance.  More than forty-five years since the publication of that seminal article, the universal Church continues to learn and wrestle with what it means for the Roman Catholic Church to be truly global.  Richard Gaillardetz’s second edition of his 2008 Ecclesiology for a Global Church helps to expand this ongoing investigation.

            Quite tragically, Gaillardetz died of pancreatic cancer in early November of 2023, shortly after the publication of this book.  Throughout his renowned academic career, Gaillardetz championed the cause of ecclesial reform and was an ardent believer that the work of the Second Vatican Council remains “unfinished.”  This updated edition of Ecclesiology for a Global Church continues the work of breaking the stranglehold that envisions the Church’s premier gift of unity as necessarily verified in uniformity rather than in diversity. 

            The major contribution of this book for the promotion of a “world Church” lies in a fresh assessment of the traditional “four marks” of the Church, namely  “one,” “holy,” “catholic,” and “apostolic.”  Gaillardetz argues that these “qualifiers” of ecclesial identity are both a gift and a challenge, surely to be “enriched by a greater awareness of the diversity of inculturated forms flourishing in the world today” (xxiv).  Each of the book’s chapters, minus the eighth and final chapter on Pope Francis’ ecclesiology, begins with the two words “a People.” These simple words are intended to demonstrate a departure from the examination of institutional structures of the Church towards exploring “The People of God” as an incarnational mystery addressed to believers themselves.

Thus, after the opening chapter, in which the author contends that the desire for a communal life, in which the call to discipleship was never really answered by the production of a uniform theology of community, is the very historical foundation of the Church, chapters two through seven represent Gaillardetz’s rereading of the four marks from a global perspective.  Chapter Two, “A People Sent in Mission” begins where most ecclesiologies end, namely with the Church’s “catholicity” and its mission to the world.  This is precisely because Gaillardetz wants to emphasize that the Church is itself a mission, for as he beautifully writes in the introduction:  “the church does not so much have a mission as Christian mission has a church” (xxv).  The chapter proceeds to examine ways in which new forms of Christian life emerging daily throughout the world shape and reshape the Church as a pilgrim people.  Chapters Three through Seven rehearse this global mission-grounded agenda with “a People” called to “Communion,” “Ministry,” “Discipleship,” “Sustained by Memory,” and “Led by a Ministry of Memory.”  Throughout all of these chapters, Gaillardetz expertly interprets official magisterial teaching in relation to the living Church’s worldwide diversity of gifts in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Chapter Eight represents the fundamental innovation of this second edition of Ecclesiology from a Global Perspective.  Entitled “The Francis Pontificate—A New Phase in the Becoming of a Global Church,” this chapter contains both Gaillardetz’s articulation of the fundamental questions that remained to be addressed when he concluded the first edition in 2008, as well as his portrayal of the way in which Pope Francis’ understanding the Church as “A People Called and Sent” has contributed to answering those urgent questions.  These challenges include:  1) the recovery of the “full theological significance of the local church,” 2) the call for “greater diversity in ministerial structures,” and 3) “interreligious dialogue” that truly facilitates ecclesial transformation.  As he proceeds to sum up Francis’ initial years of contributing to the work of ecclesiology, Gaillardetz writes:  “A full decade into the Francis pontificate, whatever else may be said about our Argentine pope, his pontificate has offered us a remarkably fresh and more comprehensive reception of the council, one that is bringing about a fuller realization of the global church that Vatican II was just beginning to imagine and which was tentatively limned in these pages” (307).

In the contemporary Catholic milieu, in which Pope Francis calls the universal Church to embrace the way of synodality, Ecclesiology for a Global Church:  A People Called and Sent helps to reinforce a theology of the Church that is based on the call to discipleship as it unfolds in a multitude of ways throughout the world.  First and foremost, this book underscores that the Church is about people, people who are sent into the world in all its wonder and lack of homogeneity.  So much of the tragedy of the death of Richard R. Gaillardetz is that he will be unable to witness how the Church, especially in the months to come, seeks to listen to a great diversity of voices in the synodal process.  Nevertheless, the vision of this great ecclesiologist will surely continue to penetrate and spur on the mystery of a people that strives to be a “world Church.”