Metamorphosis and the Post Vatican II Church

The Monarch butterfly is a magnificent creature. It lives to migrate as many other creatures do, following the milkweed bloom and spending the winters in Mexico. The migration is never really complete though, it is both continuous and mysterious. If we begin our observation with the Monarch leaving Mexico and heading back towards Canada, we will see them fly into Texas after reproducing, lay eggs and die. From this point it takes 2-3 generations to reach the migrations most northern point with each generation living 1-3 months. When the Monarchs head back to Mexico to complete their migration, however, there is born what scientists have dubbed the “Super Generation,” which live for up to 9 months completing the entire journey south to Mexico and living in Mexico for the entire winter season before reproducing and beginning the flight back north.

• http://www.flightofthebutterflies.com/life-cycle/

I have argued from the first work on my site, The Universal Creature, that the Church is a living and unified organism descending from the person of Christ, that is vocationed to regulate the crucial relationships that form our reality; with the sharing of the Eucharist placed at the center of our unified reality. In this piece we shall do the daring and discuss the changing nature of this mystical organism. The butterfly provides for us the perfect example. With a continuity in identity the creature completes a metamorphosis with the end being beauty and flight. Therefore, when discussing how the Church changes we look to the Butterfly, particularly the Monarch Butterfly in the paradigm of its “Super Generation.”

In the Central Highlands of Mexico, every year in time for the Day of the Dead (November 2) the Monarch’s arrive. The natives have thought them to be their ancestors returning to bless them. This natural phenomenon becomes for us a mystical observation: the Super Generation has been waiting in the potential-becoming of the generations that came before it but found only limits. It was in their short lifespan that they preserved the way of the Monarch and completed what they could of the journey. When the appropriate natural circumstances befall the Monarch, with enough sunlight and food in the right time of the year, the potential of their entire species that was laying in wait emerges.

So we begin by illustrating the Church as a butterfly, the Monarch in particular. Emerging from every development, every Council, every paradigm-shifting observation, as a caterpillar metamorphosizing into a butterfly and emerging from its cocoon our Christian species continues in its pilgrimage toward communion with God. We can contemplate the Church with her Theologians and Religious as a caterpillar eagerly consuming all of the knowledge in front of her, followed by a period of digestion in which the creature spins a cocoon to change herself, emerging from the cocoon to become completely adapted to her journey while offering a continuity to her ancestors and lineage all in an effort to take flight and complete what she can of the necessary pilgrimage.

Prior to the Second Vatican Council we encountered a Church that held immense social, political, and institutional power. Extending from the ancient world, by the time we reach the 21st century the Church encountered a world that was vastly different and in a variety of ways extended far beyond the borders of Europe. If the Church is to provide the same function in the universe that Christ had commissioned, she must undergo a metamorphosis. Vatican II was an emergence occasion. The Church emerged from her most recent cocoon with the potential of all her ancestors: the Communion of Saints, Mary standing as the Saint Exemplar, and Christ as the Church’s origin. This Super Generation encounters the natural circumstances to live out a great portion of our pilgrimage: we are fortunate.

The Church after Vatican II has emerged not as a European politcal powerhouse attempting to participate in the crowning of rulers and the overthrowing of political renegades. But instead it is a worldwide and accessible revelation that offers the reality and perfection of Christ’s resurrection into eternal life.