Dear Brothers and Confreres in the Episcopate,

Just a few words of introduction to this conference, given on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Congrégation de la Mission by the great Saint Vincent de Paul.

First of all, let me say that I’m both pleased and honored, but also very honored, to be addressing you here and today on such a subject.

Secondly, you should know that, as Father de Lubac used to say, I shall be offering you a theological “meditation”. In other words, I will speak to you from my Christian conviction, which is this: the Church is invited to understand and organize itself, to live as “the People of believers who have responded to the call that God has addressed to them through and in Jesus Christ, so that together they may bear witness to the world that salvation is open to it.”

Finally, you should know that my talk will include the following four stages:

1. Believing that, understood as I have just said, the Church and her mission cannot remain at the level of abstraction and pure theory – even if they are those of a venerable Tradition and Magisterium – I will devote Part One to what I designate here as “the situation” in which the Church is in any case obliged to live – and therefore to seek to understand and present herself.
2. My Second Part will then present what I’ll call the fundamental decision that the Church and all its members have to make and always make again, if they want to be effectively faithful to what they are called to be.
3. In Part Three, I’ll then be able to specify what they are called to be, by presenting the structures, the organization – let’s put it bluntly: the “institution” – called “Church”. I’ll do this under the title: “A well-typed gathering”.
4. In what will then be my Fourth and final Part, I’ll come to the very concrete practical level of both general and particular functioning. I will do this by proposing a reflection on the question – which has become very topical, as we know – of what is known as synodality.

Mons. Joseph Doré, CM

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