People of God

Overview

"A powerful call for the retrial of Vatican II's central teaching that the Church is the whole People of God...."--Richard P. McBrien, University of Notre Dame

The church as "People of God" was one of the most striking images to emerge from Vatican II. It set in motion a dynamic revolution in Catholic self-understanding, opening the church to the role of the laity, the dignity of the poor, and the unfolding of history. Yet many sectors of the church preferred fairly quickly to shelve this term, favoring instead the image of the church as "communion." With decades of pastoral and theological experience, Comblin eloquently restates the case for the "People of God" as the ultimate expression of what it is to be church.

Acclaimed as one of the most creative theologians of the twentieth century, José Comblin (1923-2011) was born in Belgium and spent most of his life in Latin America, teaching and doing grassroots work with the rural poor in Chile and Brazil. One of the founders of liberation theology, Comblin was a Roman Catholic priest and earned a doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of Leuven, in Belgium. His many books include Cry of the Oppressed, The Holy Spirit and Liberation, and Called for Freedom: The Changing Context of Liberation Theology.