A Bride Adorned: Mary–Church Perichoresis in Modern Catholic Theology

Starting in the early to mid-nineteenth century, Catholic theology witnessed a profound retrieval of patristic reflection on the interrelationship of the Virgin Mary and the Church. This dynamic reached a doctrinal high point with the declarations of Vatican II and Pope Paul VI concerning Mary as “type of the Church” and “Mother of the Church,” and it also provided the impetus for further theological exploration of the deeper unity of the Mother of Christ and his mystical body.

In A Bride Adorned, John L. Nepil examines how this interrelationship has been formulated in modern theology in terms of perichoresis, a notion of unconfused reciprocity or interpenetration drawn from Christology and Trinitarian theology first applied to Mary and the Church by the nineteenth-century German theologian Matthias Scheeben. In the first part of the study, Nepil treats the foundations of this formulation, outlining its historical background and creative articulation by Scheeben. The second part tracks developments of Scheeben’s insight in the thought of twentieth-century theological luminaries Charles Journet, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, and Leo Scheffczyk, each of whom distinctively articulate the shared conviction that neither Mary nor the Church can be understood apart from each other. The third part draws out the far-reaching doctrinal and pastoral implications of this deepened account of the Mary–Church relation, establishing its vital importance for ongoing theological and ecclesial renewal.

Through his careful engagement with these figures, Nepil shows how Mary and the Church are to be understood as two realizations of a single mystery. This vantage on Mary and the Church sheds new light on the vision of the Council Fathers at Vatican II, and it charts a course for the Church’s flourishing via a return to her Marian heart.