Lumen Gentium: The Mystery of the Church (32)

Chapter IV of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, is entitled “The Laity.” It continues as follows:

“32. By divine institution Holy Church is ordered and governed with a wonderful diversity. ‘For just as in one body we have many members, yet all the members have not the same function, so we, the many, are one body in Christ, but severally members one of another’.(191) Therefore, the chosen People of God is one: ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’(192); sharing a common dignity as members from their regeneration in Christ, having the same filial grace and the same vocation to perfection; possessing in common one salvation, one hope and one undivided charity. There is, therefore, in Christ and in the Church no inequality on the basis of race or nationality, social condition or sex, because ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all ‘one’ in Christ Jesus’.(193)”

(191) Romans 12:4-5

(192) Cf. Ephesians 4:5.

(193) Galatians 3:28; cf. Colossians 3.11.

 

To access the complete document, please visit:

Dogmatic Constitution on the Church - Lumen Gentium