As a saying goes "Church pursues continuous repentance and renovation," (Ecclesia … poenitentiam et renovation continuo proseqitur.) goes, church has always lived among challenges of the world. Before 313, early church survived in the enormous perse...
As a saying goes "Church pursues continuous repentance and renovation," (Ecclesia … poenitentiam et renovation continuo proseqitur.) goes, church has always lived among challenges of the world. Before 313, early church survived in the enormous persecution with the poor mind that loves the neighbors for the God's nation. Even though the persecution disappeared in today's church, the values of materialism and individualism separate the church from the early mind. While the persecution by violence disappeared, other challenges behind brings about realization to come back to the early mind.
This study contemplated how the church in this challenged situation keeps itself like the early spirit through the history of the church. The church during 8th and 9th centuries maintained growth and stabilization after persecution period. However, this period was in another challenge that all the church matters were under secular power. The class with power those days, who were at the center of feudal society, abused church for their interest expansion causing scandals such as simony, inappropriate love affairs, and decline of monastery. In this context, the church carried out reform to establish real God's nation in the world escaping from the rule of secular power of 10 to 11 centuries. This historical fact is shown through documentation describing nations' history involved in the church or books containing historical situations. This study comprehended the characteristics of reform of those days through the above materials.
The reform was made up of two specific directions. The first is 'L'Abbaye de Cluny reform', which is inner reform. The characteristic of this reform is the spirit of the founder. The founder's spirit, which can be characterize by repentance from the secular power, abandonment and transfer of power, direction of power execution, obedience of Benedictus asceticism rules and connection with the popedom, was specified with the activity of abbot. That is, through formation of life's base focusing on strict divine service and continuous connection of the popedom with other monasteries, it intended to reinforce the early church mind in the ceremonial way. The second is Gregorian Reform, the outside reform. As the popedom got strong with the connection with L'Abbaye de Cluny monastery, the reform was expanded outwards. The renovative popes reorganized the church organization focusing on College of Cardinals with the purpose of recovering the church's roles, which was lost by the secular power. Especially the college of Cardinals made efforts to recover the right of sacred profession appointment. This was the fundamental measure to prevent and stop further negative effects. In addition, common people outside of the church protested those who had the secular power, so the church's reform had universality, establishing the ground that the church could be free from the world as the authority of the pope was revealed to the world.
Through the above matters, this study suggested the basic directions for the church that constant attitude of reform is required. First, for "continuously reforming church(Ecclesia semper reformanda)”, the church must give up the desire to have secular power by relying on the power of materials through accumulation of wealth. As the examples of the early church that had the spirit of honest poverty, the church must exist for gospel proclamation to the world.. Therefore, today's church that has mission of reform must abandon the desire to have secular power, but try to live with repentance for God's nation and with dedication. Second, the authority of the church should be revealed to the world in gospel proclamation life, and the church's intervention from the outside world should be excluded continuously. For this, concord among church members is important. As shown in this study, L'Abbaye de Cluny or College of Cardinals became critical elements to get strong in reform. If the church is equipped with these two directions for reform, effective reform in the future is expected.