6 Components of a World Changing Church

I don't think I need to stress the importance of religion in society, but I will anyway.  Religion can and has inspired both a great amount of good and a great amount of evil in the world.  The way that churches relate to the world is therefore extremely important.  As I was reading Communion Ecclesiology by Dennis Doyle, I stumbled upon these six factors that would make for a truly world changing Catholic Church.

1. A doctrinal factor that emphasizes the priority of the Church universal and the importance of certain visible church structures.
2. A Rhanerian factor that emphasizes the sacramentality of the world and the communion with God that exists within all humankind.
3. A Balthasarian factor that emphasizes the uniqueness of the Christian revelation and its aesthetic character.
4. A liberation factor that emphasizes an option for the poor and the political implications of communion.
5. A contextual factor that emphasizes gender, ethnicity, and social location as the context for appreciating relationality.
6. A reforming factor that emphasizes the need for Roman Catholics to challenge radically their own ecclesiological presuppositions in the interest of ecumenical progress.

Doyle then offers two frameworks that we can use to include the above 6 factors into the church:

A. The idea that to be Catholic is to be inclusive.  "Both Johann Adam Mohler and Henri de Lubac find such an understanding of catholicity in the patristic scholars.  They argue that the errors of the early heretics were not simply falsehoods, but partial truths.  The heretics were often condemned not for what they affirmed but for what they denied.  To be inclusive here does not mean that no one can ever be excluded; rather, it means, paradoxically, that the only reason to exclude someone would ultimately be for their own lack of inclusivity.  The intent is not to marginalize people or views, but simply to acknowledge that certain positions themselves marginalize what should be central.  The Catholic impulse is to favor the "both / and" over the "either / or."  It is to be open to the truth whereever it may be found.  It is to opt for unity, sometimes at the cost of other goods."

B. The sacramentality of the Church.  "Drawing upon several twentieth-century thinkers such as Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, and Bernard Cooke, I use sacramentality to refer to an awareness of the presence and activity of God simultaneously both in the sacraments and in the context of everyday life.  I find this principle expressed in a distinction that Thomas Aquinas made in his Summa Theologiae.  There are two kinds of sacraments: those whose grace represents something incommensurable with what human beings can achieve in their own lives, and those whose grace is more in proportion with what human beings are naturally inclined to achieve on their own.  As examples of the first type, Aquinas mentions baptism, confirmatino, and anointing of the sick.  For the second type, he mentions matrimony and reconciliation.  The first type has as their matter (material cause) external bodily substances such as water and oil.  The second type have as their matter perceptible human actions, such as expression of commitment or of repentance.  This distinction brings out a crucial point: there is a sense in which sacramentality offers to the world that which the world lacks; and there is a sense in which sacramentality blesses and enhances what the world, through God's grace, already has."

Which factors do you feel are missing in your church?  Which do you think you can help your church move towards?  How can you use the two frameworks to do so?