67. Such understandings and images must also be understood in their historical, sociological and psychological dimensions, for these contribute to their effect upon persons and communities. Moral formation, too, has its "genes" and this means that the process of formation and discernment must take seriously the experience of the church in each place. At issue is how Christian teachings and values have related to wider cultural patterns, and have actually been embodied in daily life. This involves the consideration of what patterns of daily life, what values, virtues, obligations and visions actually developed as the church interacted with the wider society; how what was taught as "the Christian life" was actually put into practice day by day; and what was the concrete moral substance of sin, salvation and redemption as experienced in daily life.

68. We take now a concrete example to show the potential of moral inquiry as an ecumenical language for understanding the ethical dimensions of church. This is the relation between moral formation and discernment, and the various ways in which churches of the oikoumene are "ordered".
 

a) Such inquiry assumes that the ordering of a church is already both a creation of, and a reflection on, its ethos and way of life: a polity is already an ethic. How gifts (charisms) are ordered, and roles assigned and carried out, is already a way of being people of God together and a way, as church, of being in the world. So if the perennial Christian "strategy" is (1) to gather the people, (2) to break the bread, and (3) to tell the stories, then certain questions follow.

b) These questions include the following: What shape does the gathering take? Do some sit in designated seats in carefully arranged spaces while others sit elsewhere? Who breaks the bread? If only some, for what reasons? Who tells the stories? Do the gathered speak in turn, with some speaking first or foremost in accord with some teaching, tradition, or practice? Are some designated "proclaimers of the word" and others "hearers" of it? Do all perhaps take a turn, without regard for status or office? Or are there no "turns" at all, and each speaks as the Spirit prompts in the midst of the congregation? Are some stories "more" stories than others, holding formal or informal canonical status? Are some interpretations and interpreters more authoritative than others? If so, on what grounds?

c) Whatever answers are given, there is a further and more basic level of questions: what are the reasons for such differences among Christian communities? what moral ethos and substance belongs to each of them?

The point is that how church is ordered has consequences for spiritual and moral formation and discernment, and thus is subject to scrutiny of the kind we propose. Practices, structures and roles (like moral exemplars and like catechesis) are morally potent.

69. There are, of course, reasons other than moral ones for ordering church the way we do - the understanding of scripture, the witness of tradition, historical experience - and these are vital. Yet they do not remove the need for a moral assessment of how the church "is" a way of life of its own, and a way of life within the world. For how church is manifest as a way of life indicates what it regards as good, right and fitting.

70. Moral assessment is also an important means by which the church can make its presence felt in society. For these same questions can be posed by the churches to the world in which they live, in the interest of fostering the moral formation of the human community (and of exposing its malformation). This is because communities, too, live from explicit and implicit understandings of the good life; they nurture some virtues, values, obligations and visions more than others; they shape, for better and worse, human character and conduct. And the way in which they are ordered and governed in all arenas of life is morally potent, and subject to assessment and correction.

71. These reflections on moral formation have important implications for our understanding of the church. While affirming the transcendent reality of the church we recognize that the church is not yet, in its empirical historical manifestation, fully what it is in God. In this sense we can say that the church as historic institution is itself undergoing a process of "moral formation" guided by God, a process which will continue until the full eign of God dawns. Thus the tasks of spiritual and moral formation and discernment will always be part of the church's life and mission. This is to say yet again: in the church's own struggles for justice, peace and the integrity of creation, the esse of the church is at stake.29

72. A further implication is that the boundary between moral formation in the church and moral formation in the world is fluid. We noted in paragraph 16 above some important results of the churches' common struggle with ethical issues (for example, the affirmation of the fundamental equality of women and men, and the need to exercise a responsible stewardship of the environment). Yet these results have also come as the churches interacted with moral struggles in society, struggles in which the church has learned as much as it has taught. In this sense the efforts for moral formation in society have had an ecclesial significance: through these efforts the church has learned how better to be church.

73. Here the language of moral formation and discernment relates to our earlier discussion of "koinonia-generating" engagement in ethical issues. We see that moral struggle, discernment and formation are not optional "extras" alongside the understandings of church which come from our various traditions. They also challenge those traditional understandings, helping us learn from God's world how better to be church. As noted in paragraphs 35-42 above, the community born in the cooperation of people of goodwill working for a peaceful, just, and sustainable world may not be ecclesial per se. But it has ecclesial consequences insofar as it is the agent of God's process of moral formation for the church itself.

74. We feel that the language of moral formation and discernment can be helpful in reflecting on many more areas of the faith, life and witness of the church: for example, the empowerment of the laity, catechesis directed to the formation of Christian conscience, a content and form for the church's social witness, and the linking of koinonia, diakonia, martyria and leitourgia. At the same time, this language can help re-weave the "moral fibre" of society and contribute to its moral and spiritual health when both are in disarray. These matters need to be developed through a more thorough analysis of the process of moral formation and discernment. That task lies before us.

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