The Church of Christ

The Church of Christ

A Collection of Essays by

Monsignor Joseph C. Fenton

Edited and with an Introduction by

Christian D. Washburn, Ph.D.

cluny media

Cluny Media Edition, 2016

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ISBN: 9781944418083

Cover design by Clarke & Clarke

Cover image: Pentecost, c. mid-13th century (detail)

miniature on vellum, Germany

Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: Life and Works of Joseph Clifford Fenton

Primary Source References for The Church of Christ

The Nature of the Church

I. Towards an Adequate Theological Treatise De Ecclesia

II. Our Lord’s Presence in the Catholic Church

III. The Mystici Corporis and the Definitions of the Church

IV. The Use of the Terms Body and Soul with Reference to the Catholic Church

V. The Communion of Saints and the Mystical Body

Magisterium

VI. Christ the Teacher and the Stability of Catholic Dogma

VII. Requisites for an Infallible Pontifical Definition According to the Commission of Pope Pius IX

VIII. The Humani Generis and the Holy Father’s Ordinary Magisterium

IX. The Doctrinal Function of the Ecumenical Council

The Church and Salvation

X. The Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Catholic Church: Part I

XI. The Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Catholic Church: Part II

XII. The Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Catholic Church: Part III

Notes of the Church

XIII. The True Church and the Notes of the Church

XIV. Factors in Church Unity

XV. Holiness as a Note of the Church

XVI. St. Augustine’s Use of the Note of Catholicity

XVII. The Apostolicity of the Roman See

Church-State Relations

XVIII. Principles Underlying Traditional Church-State Doctrine

Appendix

Bibliography of Msgr. Fenton’s Works

This book is dedicated to Fr. David Carter

C. D. W.

Acknowledgments

My interest in Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton began while pursuing my doctorate at Catholic University of America. Msgr. Fenton had taught at Catholic University for 25 years, eventually becoming Dean of Theology and editor of American Ecclesiastical Review. I am grateful for being taught by two men who had known Msgr. Fenton while he was still a professor at CUA. The first was my professor of ecclesiology, Rev. Dr. Patrick Granfield, O.S.B., who had been acting editor while Msgr. Fenton was in Rome at the Second Vatican Council and succeeded Msgr. Fenton as editor-in-chief when he retired due to poor health. The second was my professor of Patristics, Fr. Robert B. Eno, S.S., who had helped Msgr. Fenton with the American Ecclesiastical Review. I remember very fondly the stories of Fr. Eno, who was a great raconteur. During breaks he would often regale us with stories of Msgr. Fenton and John Tracey Ellis, affectionately imitating their idiosyncrasies so that these great lights in American Catholic history were brought alive. Through these stories, which were both hilarious and delightful, one could see that Fr. Eno’s affection for Msgr. Fenton was real and palpable. During my research, I occasionally ran into Msgr. Fenton’s articles and found them theologically and historically engaging. Many years later Fr. Jared Wicks, S.J., shared with me copies of Msgr. Fenton’s diaries covering his tenure as a peritus at the Second Vatican Council.

I would like to thank Fr. Eno and Fr. Granfield for helping to form me as a theologian and for introducing me to Msgr. Fenton, the man. I would also like to thank Fr. Jared Wicks for sharing with me the diaries of Msgr. Fenton and for being a theological mentor. I owe a debt of gratitude to Msgr. Aloysius Callaghan for his encouragement and assistance. Mr. Matthew Kuettel, Mrs. Cara Stuchlik, and Fr. Neil Bakker have helped me with proof reading and tracking down citations. Finally, I would also like to thank my wife, Gretchen, for her patience and for helping to edit this text.

~Christian D. Washburn

Abbreviations

AAS

Acta Apostolica Sedis

AER

American Ecclesiastical Review

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

DB

Heinrich Denzinger, Clemens Bannwart, and Johann Baptist Umberg. Enchiridion symbolorum. Freiburg in Breisgan: Herder & Co., 1937. References section number.

DH

Heinrich Denzinger, Peter Hünermann, Helmut Hoping, Robert L. Fastiggi, and Anne Englund Nash. Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012. References section number.

PL

Jacques-Paul Migne. Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Latina. Parisiis: Apud Garnieri Fratres, 1844–64.

PG

Jacques-Paul Migne. Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Latina. Parisiis: Garnier, 1857–1891.

Life and Works of Joseph Clifford Fenton

Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, now largely forgotten, was once a towering figure in the American theological landscape. A professor of theology at the Catholic University of America, the editor of the influential American Ecclesiastical Review from 1944 to 1963, and co-founder of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA), he also served as counselor to the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities (1950–1967). Given his outstanding service to the Church, Pope John XXIII appointed him first as a member of the Preparatory Theological Commission for the Second Vatican Council and then as a conciliar peritus or theological expert of the council.

Joseph Clifford Fenton was born January 16, 1906, in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he attended parochial schools, graduating in 1922.[1] In 1926 he graduated with a B.A. from Holy Cross, a Jesuit college in Worcester, MA. After college, Fenton attended the University of Montreal where he earned his S.T.L. and J.C.B. degrees in 1930. Only a year later he earned an S.T.D. degree from the Angelicum in Rome in 1931. His doctoral dissertation, De Natura Theologiae Catholicae, was directed by Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (1877–1964).[2] On June 14, 1930, Bishop O’Leary ordained him a priest in St. Michael’s Cathedral, Springfield, Massachusetts.[3] He then served as a curate at Immaculate Conception Church in Easthampton, Massachusetts (1931–1932), and at St. Joseph’s Church in Leicester, Massachusetts (1933–1934).[4] Fenton first taught philosophy at St. Ambrose College, Davenport, Iowa (1934–1935), and then taught dogmatic theology at St. Bernard’s Seminary in Rochester, New York (1936–1938).

In 1938, Fr. Fenton became an Instructor of Fundamental Dogmatic Theology at the Catholic University of America, where he would continue to teach until 1963.[5] In 1944, Fr. Fenton succeeded Fr. Joseph N. LaRue to become editor-in-chief of the American Ecclesiastical Review (AER), the offices of which were housed at CUA.[6] Fr. Fenton saw the journal as a tool to assist the Church in America by helping to create a well-educated clergy. He therefore excluded those matters which were “of no immediate use to priests in the tasks of ministry.” He wanted the work of the journal to “foster that enthusiastic and complete solidarity with Our Lord in His Church.”[7] His work did not go unnoticed in Rome, and in 1954 Pope Pius XII bestowed on him and the associate editors of the American Ecclesiastical Review the papal medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice “in recognition of the commendable activities provided in the direction of the Review.”[8] Later when Fenton went to Rome for the Second Vatican Council, Dr. Patrick Granfield served as acting editor, ultimately replacing him as editor-in-chief.[9]

Msgr. Fenton also played a pivotal role in the foundation of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA). In October 1945, after a meeting of the editorial board of The American Ecclesiastical Review, Fr. Fenton’s colleague, Fr. Eugene Burke, C.S.P., first suggested to Fr. Edmond Benard and Fr. Fenton the creation of an American Catholic theological association. The three men concluded that Fr. Francis Connell, C.S.S.R., who taught theology at CUA and was rector of Holy Redeemer College, would be an excellent scholar “to take the lead in preparing the formation of an American Catholic theological association.” The following morning, Fr. Fenton contacted Fr. Connell, proposing to him the idea of the new society and suggesting that he lead it.[10] Fr. Connell was enthusiastic, and a series of preparatory meetings were held first in Washington, D.C. and then in New York, where Fr. Connell was named president and Fr. Fenton named secretary of the CTSA.[11] Fr. Fenton was an active participant, and at the second annual meeting in July 1947 he delivered a paper on “The Theology of the Church and the State,” a topic which had been originally assigned to his future theological opponent, Rev. John Courtney Murray, S.J., who was unable to attend the convention due to illness.[12]

Fr. Fenton’s academic career was remarkably productive. Not only did he edit AER, but he also managed to write over 175 articles and six books. His work covers almost every area of theology, including fundamental theology, modernism, spirituality, priesthood, Mariology; but the bulk of his work was in the area of ecclesiology.[13] As a professor at CUA Fenton was directly involved in the formation of seminarians and the education of priests, and his early work reflects these concerns. His first book was The Theology of Prayer (1939), followed by two works on fundamental theology: The Concept of Sacred Theology (1941) and We Stand with Christ (1943). He then wrote two books on the priesthood: The Calling of a Diocesan Priest (1944) and The Concept of the Diocesan Priesthood (1951). His articles at AER during this period reveal the same interests.

By the mid-twentieth century, however, Catholic theology was in crisis. Some theologians such as Henri Boulliard (1908–1981) questioned the ongoing adherence to medieval terminology and argued for a new and robust rethinking of the faith that would attract the “modern” man. This new theology presented not only the disciplinary life of the Church but also Christ Himself and His revelation as needing to be adapted to the conditions of time and the needs of society. Other theologians such as Pietro Parente (1891–1986),[14] Marie-Michel Labourdette (1908–1990),[15] and Garrigou-Lagrange[16] saw in this “new theology” the repudiation of Christ’s revelation and the doctrines of His Church. These men, who had lived through the modernist controversy and its immediate aftermath, saw very clear similarities between modernism and la nouvelle théologie. In many respects, one is tempted to see Garrigou-Lagrange as prophetic since many of the celebrated practitioners of this new theology, such as Hans Küng (b. 1928), Karl Rahner, S.J. (1904–1984), Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P. (1914–2009), and Bernard Häring (1912–1998) went on after the council to engage in radical theological dissent.

Pope Pius XII clearly agreed with this basic assessment of the new trends in theology and so in 1950 published Humani generis in which he condemned a number of “new opinions.” He specifically condemned as “dogmatic relativism” those who thought that dogma is “never expressed by truly adequate concepts, only by approximate and ever changeable notions.”[17] He also went on to criticize those who simply wanted to strip “theology of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation” and “to restore the Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church.”[18] The encyclical went on to reject a number of specific doctrinal errors such as polygenism and the denial that “the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing.”[19]

Fenton too, like his Doktorvater and Pope Pius, had come to see in the new theology a series of grave defects. In a number of articles published in AER, Fenton repeatedly noted that modernism and the new theology contained “the same tendency” and “the same type of disloyalty to the Catholic Church and the Catholic faith.”[20] Fenton showed that Pius XII’s Humani generis condemned a number of the same theses as those in St. Pius X’s Pascendi and Lamentabili sane exitu.[21] Moreover, Fenton also saw that the new theology often was involved in implicit rejection of the doctrinal authority of the ordinary papal magisterium and the assent owed to this teaching.[22] On this issue Fenton proved particularly prescient given the theological controversy surrounding Humanae vitae after the council. For Fenton, the issue was not about whether one should loyally submit to the teaching of the magisterium; rather it was about Christ Himself. Christ, Fenton maintained, did not simply give to the Church a body of doctrine at some point in the distant past; but His doctrinal activity continues today when He speaks to the Church through the voice of those men He has commissioned to teach with His authority and in His name in order to protect and guard that same teaching contained in revelation. Ultimately, for Fenton the work of the magisterium is a task which Christ “is actually performing within the Church at every moment.”[23]

Fenton also engaged in the controversy of the teachings of Fr. Leonard Feeney (1897–1978) who was a Jesuit priest and author. In 1945, Fr. Feeney became the chaplain at the Catholic Saint Benedict Center at Harvard Square. While there he began a controversy over the doctrine “outside the Church there is no salvation.” Feeney argued that only sacramental baptism could save and that both baptism of blood and baptism of desire were not salvific. On August 8, 1949, Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani (1871–1951), secretary of the Holy Office, sent a letter to the Archbishop of Boston, Richard Cushing, giving an authentic interpretation of the dogma “outside the Church there is no salvation.” Feeney refused to accept this interpretation and was then excommunicated in 1953.[24] In Humani generis, however, Pius XII did not turn his ire to the views of Feeney but rather to those who “reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation.”[25] In 1952 Fenton published an English translation of the Holy Office’s letter in AER, clearly showing that he was not sympathetic to Feeney’s interpretation.[26] Fenton began writing a series of articles in AER on this topic, culminating in his book, The Catholic Church and Salvation, published in 1958.[27] While he was convinced that Feeney erred through excess, he was equally convinced that a number of the adherents of the new theology evacuated the dogma of any meaning.

The picture that is often painted about theologians like Fenton on the eve of the Second Vatican Council is that they were trying to maintain the status quo at the expense of the spiritual and pastoral needs of the people of God. Fenton, of course, praised the standard pre-conciliar theological manuals for setting forth clearly both all of the divinely revealed truth and the magisterium’s authoritative explanations of these formally revealed truths; however, he was not an ossified manualist and considered ecclesiological manuals used in seminaries prior to the council to be “a tragically inadequate affair.”[28] He lamented the lack of scripture, the separation of spiritual or pastoral theology from ecclesiology, and the neglect of “the obligation…whereby the men and women of the true Church are bound to have a special and active supernatural affection for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.”[29]

Msgr. Fenton and Vatican II

Fr. Fenton was well-known in Roman circles for his work on behalf of Christ and His Church. In recognition of his work, he was named a papal chamberlain July 23, 1951, and a domestic prelate on Oct. 30, 1954.[30] He belonged to the Pontifical Academy of Theology and served as counselor to the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities (1950–1967).[31] It is therefore no surprise that he was appointed in 1960 a member of the Preparatory Theological Commission for the Second Vatican Council.[32] Members of this commission were recommended by papal representatives and were then selected personally by the pope.

On October 26, 1960, Msgr. Fenton attended the first meeting of the preparatory theological commission, headed by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani (1890–1979) and with Sebastian Tromp, S. J. (1889–1975) as its secretary. He described it as in “some ways the most important meeting of the twentieth century.”[33] On October 27 at another meeting of the preparatory theological commission, Cardinal Ottaviani named Fenton a member of the sub-commission which was tasked with writing a schema on the Church.[34] As a member of the commission and subcommission, Fenton spent much of his time working on theses for inclusion in this schema in the offices of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office.

In 1962 Pope John XXIII appointed Msgr. Fenton conciliar peritus or theological expert of the council, and he remained one for all four periods of the council.[35] At the council, there were two kinds of periti: conciliar and private. Conciliar periti, appointed by the pope, had no vote but were permitted to attend general congregations in the aula, while private periti were advisors to bishops.[36] Later he was also present as a peritus for meetings of the Doctrinal Commission on Faith and Morals (Commissio de Doctrina Fidei et Morum).[37] Fenton was present at a number of important events at the council, such as the meeting where subsistit in was introduced into Lumen gentium 8.[38] Unfortunately, as the council progressed Msgr. Fenton’s influence waned, largely due to declining health and repeated hospital stays due to a series of heart attacks. During a particularly severe illness, Msgr. Fenton was visited by a number of dignitaries in the hospital, including Cardinals Franz König (1905–2004), Paolo Marella (1895–1984), and Ottaviani; Ottaviani visited him no less than eight times in the hospital.[39]

With his health in decline, Fenton left the Catholic University of America in December 1963 to become pastor of St. Patrick’s Church, in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. Msgr. Fenton later confessed that he had “a good deal of deep personal regret” at leaving CUA, admitting that he “did a stupid thing in asking for the parish.”[40] Parish life must have been difficult for him, as he had spent virtually his entire priestly vocation serving the Church as an academic and theologian. He died in Chicopee Falls on July 7, 1969.

The Present Work

The goal of this book is to bring to a wider audience some of Msgr. Fenton’s important theological writing. Without doubt, Msgr. Fenton’s works mark him as a man of his time, and these need to be read in light of the theological developments that took place during and after the council that he attended as a peritus. Nonetheless, his work remains of considerable historical and theological importance. Historically it represents the thought of one of America’s leading theologians on the eve of the council. Furthermore, his work remains of considerable theological importance since he often treated in depth topics in ecclesiology that are now treated superficially. Fenton’s treatment, for example, of the necessity of the Church for salvation is a good corrective to a glaring lacuna in contemporary theology.

This book contains eighteen articles written for the American Ecclesiastical Review, published between the years 1944 and 1956. Rather than arranging these articles chronologically, I have organized them by subject so that the reader can see the general landscape and drama of the ecclesiology of the period prior to the council. Thus this book begins with an article on the nature of ecclesiology, then it moves to a treatment of the Church as a mystery. These articles are succeeded by articles on the magisterium, the Church and salvation, the marks of the Church, concluding with a short article on the relationship between the Church and the state. Finally, I have also added a bibliography of Msgr. Fenton’s works so that the reader who wishes to know more about them may easily consult them.

I have made a number of minor changes to Msgr. Fenton’s articles to bring them more into conformity with modern usage. I have, for example, added colons in front of some block texts and have reduced the size of block quotes. I have also reformatted some of the footnotes and have added authors’ names to them. Names have been modernized, such as “Valentia” to “Valencia” and “Turrcremata” to “Torquemada,” and the occasional British English has been converted to American English. Finally Msgr. Fenton frequently cited from Denzinger. I have retained Fenton’s references to Bannwart’s edition of Denzinger, but I have also added the corresponding numbers to the 43rd edition, edited by Hünermann, for the contemporary reader.

~Christian D. Washburn

St. Paul, Minnesota

Solemnity of the Assumption

August 15, 2016

1.There is very little written on the life of Fenton. Joseph A. Komonchak, “Fenton, Joseph (1906–69),” Encyclopedia of American Catholic History (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 505–506. Dorothy Dixon, “Reverend Joseph C. Fenton 1906–,” in Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches, 1930–1947, ed. Matthew Hoehn (Newark, NJ: St. Mary’s Abbey, 1948), 243–244. Patrick Granfield, “Fenton, Joseph Clifford.” New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 5, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 684–685.

2.Dixon, “Reverend Joseph C. Fenton 1906–,” 243, 244. This was later published as Joseph Clifford Fenton, The Concept of Sacred Theology (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co, 1941)

3.Dixon, “Reverend Joseph C. Fenton 1906- ,” 243, 244.

4.Official Catholic Directory, 1932, p. 664.

5.Patrick Granfield, “Seventy-five Years of AER,” American Ecclesiastical Review 150 (1964): 31.

6.“Announcement,” American Ecclesiastical Review 150 (1964): 1. Granfield, “Seventy-five Years of AER.”

7.Fenton, “A Statement of Policy,” American Ecclesiastical Review 121 (1949): 332–340.

8.“Pro ecclesia et pontifice of Pius XII,” American Ecclesiastical Review 130 (1954): 145.

9.“Announcement,” American Ecclesiastical Review 150 (1964): 1.

10.Fenton, “The Foundation and Progress of the Society,” Proceedings of the Annual Convention (1946), 5. See also Fenton, “America’s Two Theological Associations.” American Ecclesiastical Review 125 (1951): 449–458.

11.Fenton, “The Foundation and Progress of the Society,” Proceedings of the Annual Convention (1946), 6–7.

12.Augustine P. Hennessy, “Minutes of the Meeting,” Proceedings of the Annual Convention (1947), 9.

13.See Bibliography in the Appendix.

14.Pietro Parente, “Nouve tendenze teologiche,” L’Osservatore Romano 9–10 February 1942, p. 1.

15.Marie-Michel Labourdette, “La théologie et ses sources,” Revue Thomiste 46 (1946): 353–371.

16.Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., “La nouvelle théologie où va-t-elle?” Angelicum 23 (1946): 126–45. Garrigou-Lagrange, “Le Relativisme et l’immutabilité du dogme,” Angelicum 27 (1950): 219–246.

17.Pius XII, Humani generis, title.

18.Pius XII, Humani generis, 14.

19.Pius XII, Humani generis, 27, 37. Peter Hünermann, Helmut Hoping, Robert L. Fastiggi, Anne Englund Nash, and Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd edition (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012) (hereafter DH). DH 3898. Hünermann has inexplicably removed both the passage concerning the identity of the Roman Catholic Church with the Mystical Body and the necessity of the Church for salvation. On Hünermann’s curious edition of Denzinger see my review of Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals by Hünermann, Nova et Vetera 12 (2014): 597–600.

20.Fenton, “The Lesson of the Humani generis,” American Ecclesiastical Review 123 (1950): 360; Fenton, “The Humani generis and its Predecessors,” American Ecclesiastical Review 123 (1950): 452.

21.Fenton, “The Humani generis and its Predecessors,” American Ecclesiastical Review 123 (1950): 457.

22.Fenton, “The Humani generis and the Holy Father’s Ordinary Magisterium,” American Ecclesiastical Review 125 (1951): 53–62.

23.Fenton, “Christ the Teacher and the Stability of Catholic Dogma,” American Ecclesiastical Review 125 (1951): 208–219.

24.DH 3866–3873.

25.Pius XII, Humani generis, 27.

26.“Analecta: A Letter from the Holy Office,” American Ecclesiastical Review 127 (1952): 308–310.

27.Fenton, The Catholic Church and Salvation in the Light of Recent Announcements by the Holy See (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1958).

28.Fenton, “Towards an Adequate Theological Treatise De ecclesia,” American Ecclesiastical Review 135 (1956): 193.

29.Fenton, “Towards an Adequate Theological Treatise De ecclesia,” 195.

30.Annuario pontificio (1953), 1140. Annuario pontificio (1956), 1135.

31.Annuario pontificio (1951), 838–839.

32.Fenton Council Diary, I:1. Annuario pontificio (1961), 1109. Annuario pontificio (1962), 1041. Giovanni Caprile, Il Concilio Vaticano II: cronache del Concilio Vaticano II edite da “La Civiltà Cattolica,” (Roma: La Civiltà Cattolica, 1965) I/I:210–11.

33.Fenton Council Diary, 1:4.

34.Fenton Council Diary, 1:5–6. Alexandra von Teuffenbach, Diarium/Konzilstagebuch Sebastian Tromp SJ, mit Erlduterungen und Akten aus der Arbeit der Theologischen Kommission II. Vaticanisches Konzil, Band 1/1 (1960–1962) (Rome: Editrice Pont. Universita Gregoriana, 2006), 500.

35.Annuario pontificio (1963), 1078. Acta synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1970), Indices, 940 (hereafter AS).

36.John P. McCormick, “Comments on the Council,” American Ecclesiastic Review 149 (1963): 431. On the role of theologians in preparation for and at the Second Vatican Council, see Komonchak, “U.S. Bishops’ Suggestions for Vatican II,” Cristianesimo nella storia 15 (1994): 313–371. Jared Wicks, S.J., Doing Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 2009), 187–223.

37.Fenton Council Diary, 7:19. Alexandra von Teuffenbach, Diarium/Konzil-stagebuch Sebastian Tromp SJ, mit Erlduterungen und Akten aus der Arbeit der Theologischen Kommission II. Vaticanisches Konzil, Band 2/1 (1962–1963) (Rome: Editrice Pont. Universita Gregoriana, 2010), 31.

38.Christian D. Washburn, “The Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, and Subsistit in,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 22 (2015): 1–28.

39.Fenton Council Diary, X:5–6.

40.Fenton Council Diary, XI:15.

Primary Sources for
The Church of Christ

“Towards an Adequate Theological Treatise De Ecclesia.” American Ecclesiastical Review 135 (1956): 183–197.

“Our Lord’s Presence in the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 115 (1946): 50–61.

“The Mystici Corporis and the Definitions of the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 128 (1953): 448–459.

“Use of the Terms Body and Soul with Reference to the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 110 (1944): 48–57.

“Communion of Saints and the Mystical Body.” American Ecclesiastical Review 110 (1944): 378–388.

“Christ the Teacher and the Stability of Catholic Dogma.” American Ecclesiastical Review 125 (1951): 208–219.

“The Requisites for an Infallible Pontifical Definition According to the Commission of Pope Pius IX.” American Ecclesiastical Review 115 (1946): 376–384.

“The Humani generis and the Holy Father’s Ordinary Magisterium.” American Ecclesiastical Review 125 (1951): 53–62.

“The Doctrinal Function of the Ecumenical Council.” American Ecclesiastical Review 141 (1959): 117–128.

“Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 118 (1948): 214–228, 290–305, 361–375.

“True Church and the Notes of the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 114 (1946): 282–297.

“Factors in Church Unity.” American Ecclesiastical Review 119 (1948): 375–383.

“Holiness as a Note of the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 119 (1948): 452–464.

“St. Augustine’s Use of the Note of Catholicity.” American Ecclesiastical Review 118 (1948): 47–58.

“Apostolicity of the Roman See.” American Ecclesiastical Review 118 (1948): 444–457.

“Principles Underlying Traditional Church-State Doctrine.” American Ecclesiastical Review 126 (1952): 452–62.

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST

I

Towards an Adequate Theological Treatise De Ecclesia

Scholastic theology, as we know it, is divided into a number of treatises. The obvious purpose of this arrangement is to include within the ambit of scholastic theology every truth contained within the deposit of divine public revelation. And, if this purpose is to be attained at all effectively, then each individual treatise or tractatus should set forth all of the divinely revealed material directly pertinent to the subject of that treatise. In other words, every treatise in scholastic theology is meant to bring out all that the Catholic magisterium teaches as divinely revealed doctrine about the subject covered by the treatise. It is intended to present this material precisely as it has been taught and is being taught by the ecclesia docens.

Thus, in an adequately formed treatise in scholastic theology there should be a statement of every truth which the Church presents as formally revealed which is directly and immediately on the subject of the tractatus itself. Furthermore, in an adequately organized treatise, there would be contained all of the authoritative explanations which the magisterium has given about these formally revealed truths, whether such explanations are presented as de fide, as doctrinally certain, or as doctrina catholica.

What is properly the work of sacred theology begins with this body of truth. Seeking as it does an intellectual penetration of the teaching Catholics accept with the assent of divine faith, the work of theological science is badly hampered if, in any individual treatise, some elements of God’s supernaturally revealed message about the subject of that treatise are not considered in it. There is always the danger that such incompleteness may lead to inaccuracy in the theologian’s grasp and explanation of what God actually teaches in and through His Church about the topic with which the treatise is concerned. Inaccuracy of intellectual grasp and of explanation of divinely revealed truth constitutes failure in the field of sacred theology.

In the present status of scholastic theology it is quite obvious that the treatise De ecclesia Christi does not contain all of the material it should. To anyone at all conversant with the books of the New Testament it is painfully clear that there are several truths about the Church which are plainly set forth in these inspired writings and which are not dealt with at all adequately in the treatise on the Church as this is now organized in the average manual of fundamental dogmatic theology. As very obvious examples, we may take two statements by Our Lord about His disciples, the members of His ecclesia. One of these refers to the mutual love which should be found in all the members of the Church. “By this,” Our Lord said, “shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.”[1] The other has to do with the reaction which, according to Our Lord, His faithful disciples could expect from the world around them.

These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, know ye that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have kept my word, they will keep your word also. But all these things they will do to you for my name’s sake: because they know not him that sent me.[2]

Again, if we look at the documents of the Catholic magisterium, we find several truths about the Church which are not presented in anything like an adequate fashion in the treatises on the Church in the contemporary manuals of fundamental dogmatic theology. One great example of this is to be found in the truth stated in the opening sentences of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Humanum genus:

The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, “through the envy of the devil,” separated into two diverse and opposite parts of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God.

This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with a subtle brevity he expressed the efficient cause of each in these words: “Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one.” At every period of time, each has been in conflict with the other, with a variety and multiplicity of weapons and of warfare, although not always with equal ardor and assault.[3]

Truths like these are distinct and essentially important parts of Catholic doctrine about the Church itself. The man who knows some of the revealed teachings about the Catholic Church, but who is unaware of these God-given doctrines about it, has an essentially inadequate concept of the ecclesia. And if, as a result of careless teaching, he comes to accept as true certain assumptions incompatible with the doctrines which are actually a part of the Church’s deposit of revealed truth, but which are not considered in a sufficiently adequate and explicit way in the scholastic treatises de ecclesia, he will have fallen into serious error about the Church itself.

This incompleteness of the ordinary textbook treatise de ecclesia has a highly interesting historical background. Even a sketchy knowledge of that background is essential if we are to ascertain how this treatise should be and can be improved by the theologian of our own time.

In the first place, it is important to remember that the treatise on the Church is a comparative latecomer in the realm of scholastic theology strictly so called. Other treatises, like the ones on the Trinity and on grace, developed in the schools at the hands of teachers who employed Peter the Lombard’s Four Books of Sentences and St. Thomas’ Summa theologica as master texts. For generations in the schools of the Catholic Church scholastic theology was de facto the explanation of the topics covered in the Sententiae and the Summa. Neither of these classics included anything like a complete treatise on the Church of Christ. As a matter of fact, much of the material now covered in the scholastic tractatus de ecclesia was covered in the Decretum of Gratian. Thus, in the actual procedure of the schools, a great deal of the material on the Church was covered primarily from a canonical rather than from a theological angle. Of course the material covered by Gratian and the other canonists was perfectly within their own field, the realm of what is now called public ecclesiastical law. At the same time, it was definitely a misfortune that, during the early period of scholastic theology, there was no such things as a properly scholastic treatise on the Church included in the regular course of sacred theology. This treatise did not enter into the literature and the course of properly scholastic theology until almost the end of the sixteenth century.

This is not to say that there was no theological writing on or treatment of the Church until the late fifteen hundreds. Actually we can find a brief but highly competent and illuminating treatise on the Church included in the mid-thirteenth-century work of Moneta of Cremona against the Waldensians and the Albigensians.[4] There is a brief beginning of a treatise in the Commentary on the Apostle’s Creed, written by St. Thomas himself, and much more in the Saint’s Contra errores Graecorum. And in the fourteenth century James of Viterbo published his De regimine christiano, which Arquilliere edited in 1926 and called “the oldest treatise on the Church.” Likewise there is a well-developed tractatus de ecclesia to be found in the fourteenth-century Alvaro Pelayo’s De planctu ecclesiae, and another in Thomas Netter of Walden’s Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei ecclesiae catholicae. And the treatise on the Church may be said to have achieved its classical form in Cardinal John of Torquemada’s great fifteenth-century Summa de ecclesia.

For the most part, however, these pre-Reformation works on the Church, even the Summa de ecclesia itself, were pre-eminently polemical rather than strictly scholastic in orientation. We must realize of course, that polemical and scholastic are by no means completely diverse categories. The Four Books of Sentences are the great classical models of scholastic writings, and they were intended by their author “to defend our faith against the errors of carnal and brutish men with the shields of the tower of David, or rather to show that it is thus defended.”[5] Yet, despite the fact that all theological writing or teaching is to a certain extent argumentative or polemical, it must be admitted that much of the pre-Reformation theological treatises on the Church owed their formation and orientation to some individual controversy. They were written, as a rule, not to bring out all of the revealed teachings on the subject of Our Lord’s Mystical Body, but merely to explain that section of the divinely revealed doctrine about the Church which could serve to prove the Catholic thesis in some individual polemic.

By all means the most perfect and the most influential pre-Reformation writing on the Church was Torquemada’s Summa de ecclesia. This work is divided into four books. The first of these deals with the universal Church. The second treats of “the Roman Church and the primacy of its Pontiff.” The third book has to do with “universal councils and their authority.” The fourth is subdivided into two sections, treatises on schism and heresy.

Torquemada wrote his masterpiece “against the adversaries of this Church of God and of the primacy of St. Peter.”[6] Like Peter the Lombard centuries before him, Torquemada declared his intention to manifest “ecclesiam Christi ex davidica turre clipeis pendentibus tutatam praemunitamque.”[7] Yet, for all of its polemical approach, the Summa de ecclesia was able to set forth the summation of all the previous scholastic teaching about the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. Had the tractatus de ecclesia entered into the fabric of scholastic theology in the status to which Torquemada had lifted it in the Summa de ecclesia, the history of the scholastic treatise on the Church would have been quite different from what it actually has been.

The Summa de ecclesia was written towards the middle of the fifteenth century. The Protestant Reformation began during the last years of that same century. And, in their intellectually triumphant polemic against the heretics of the time, the Catholic Counter-Reformation theologians actually set up the outline of a treatise on the Church which was destined to enter into the fabric of scholastic theology.

By reason of bitterness and the importance of the controversy in which they were engaged, the Catholic writers who opposed the heresies of the Reformers tended to limit themselves to theses actually in dispute. A striking illustration of their procedure is to be found in one of the most important Catholic books of the period, Peter Soto’s Assertio catholicae fidei circa articulos confessionis nomine illustrissimi Ducis Wirtenbergensis oblatae per legato eius Concilio Tridentino. The document Peter Soto set out to criticize was merely a typical Protestant formula of belief.

In his formidably titled book, Soto printed the text of the Protestant formula in the left hand column of the verso page, the one which would be numbered with an even number in a modern printed volume. The right hand column of the same page was devoted to his comments on each individual article of the formula which was opposed to Catholic truth. The recto page contained his organized text.

This formula, like other heretical professions, contained, along with articles contradicting God’s revealed message, many other statements which were simply taken from the teaching of the Catholic Church. Soto and the Catholic Counter-Reformation theologian in general confined themselves to a discussion of the Protestant teachings which were erroneous. And, in the field of ecclesiology, this procedure turned out to have strikingly unfortunate repercussions.

The central ecclesiological controversy at the time of the Reformation had to do with the location or the identity of God’s supernatural kingdom on earth. The Protestant writers did not dispute the existence of a genuine ecclesia Christi in this world. They, like the Catholic theologians, held that there could not be any salvation outside of this true ecclesia. Where they departed from revealed truth was in their contention that this supernatural kingdom of God on earth was not the organized religious society over which the successor St. Peter presides but something invisible, the sum-total of all good or predestined men and women on earth.

Hence, in their polemical writings, the Counter-Reformation theologians tended to pass over the teachings about the nature and prerogatives of the true ecclesia as such and to concentrate on the task of proving that this social unit is actually identified, in the status of the New Testament, with the religious society over which the Bishop of Rome presides as the Vicar of Christ and as the successor of St. Peter. And, since the heretics had denied that the teaching of the Catholic magisterium is actually the immediate rule of Christian faith, brilliant theologians like Stapleton tended to focus their teaching on the Church on the point that its teaching is divinely established as normative for the acceptance of divine public revelation by the act of faith.

For the most part the earlier Counter-Reformation theologians wrote as brilliant polemical pamphleteers. They wrote their doctrine de ecclesia without any special regard for arrangement in the body of scholastic theology. Indeed, as far as most of them were concerned, such teachings were merely located in the order in which the heretics themselves had placed their denials of Catholic truth in their own professions of belief. There were, or course, exceptions. Driedo, to give only one example, integrated his treatise on the Church into his magnificent De ecclesiasticis scripturis et dogmatibus. In this work the first book deals with the catalog of Sacred Scripture, and the second with the various translations and expositions of Scripture, along with the different senses in which the teaching of the inspired books can be understood. The third book is concerned with “certain brief rules and dogmas by which students are aided in understanding the obscure places and in discerning the literal and mystical meanings of Sacred Scripture.” The fourth book is devoted to the study of tradition and of the Church.

The location of the treatise on the Church which had been sketched by Driedo received its lasting classical form in Melchior Cano’s famous De locis theologicis. Cano listed the authority of the universal Church as the third among his ten loci theologici and he devoted the rather brief fourth book of his masterpiece to a study of this source. In this fourth book he studied the definition and the membership of the Church as well as its authority in the field of sacred doctrine.

What was destined to be by far the most influential treatise on the Church yet to appear in the literature of sacred theology was St. Robert Bellarmine’s De ecclesia militante. The first chapter of this book is devoted to various meanings attached to the word “ecclesia.” The second leads to and centers around the famous Bellarminian definition of the Church, a definition which indicates the true kingdom of God of the New Testament in terms of its membership. The next eight chapters are devoted to an analysis and proof of St. Robert’s contention that the true Church militant of the New Dispensation is actually a visible society, the company of those united in the profession of the same Christian faith and in the communion of the same Sacraments, under the rule of legitimate ecclesiastical pastors, and ultimately under the rule of the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth. The last seven chapters of the De Ecclesia militante deal with the indefectibility and the infallibility of the Church.

With St. Robert the allocation of the treatise on the Church in the field of sacred theology went far beyond the beginnings made by Driedo and even the classical order of Cano’s De locis theologicis. The De ecclesia militante is a part of the first folio volume of St. Robert’s Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos. This first volume is composed of seven “Controversies,” each one of which is subdivided into a certain number of “Books.” The seven “Controversies” are, (1) On Scripture and tradition, (2) On Christ, the Head of the entire Church, (3) On the Supreme Pontiff, (4) On the Councils and the Church, (5) On the members of the Church, (6) On the Church in Purgatory, and (7) On the Church Triumphant. The second volume deals with the Sacraments and the third with original sin and with grace.

The arrangement made by St. Robert was in the field of polemical rather than of strictly scholastic theology. After the death of Estius, the last important commentator of Peter the Lombard, the main current of strictly scholastic theology continued along the line of commentaries on the Summa theologica, and of “Theological Courses” based upon St. Thomas’ text. Among the younger contemporaries of St. Robert, some, like Francis Sylvius, relegated the treatise on the Church to the realm of polemical theology. There is no treatise on the Church in Sylvius’ great scholastic work, his commentary on the Summa. Such a treatise is found, however, in Sylvius’ De praecipuis fidei nostrae orthodoxae controversiis cum nostris haereticis. This work considers the definition of the Church, its membership, its visibility and its notes, its origin and its indefectibility, and its doctrinal authority.

The half century that elapsed between the publication of St. Robert’s Controversies (1584) and those of Sylvius (1638) saw the first attempts at inclusion of the treatise on the Church within the fabric of strictly scholastic theology. This was a period of transition between the commentaries in the proper sense of the word, the explanations of the text of the Summa, article by article, and the classical “curus theologici” which developed out of these commentaries, and which finally crystallized into the form of the contemporary manual of sacred theology. Commentaries like those of Bañez and Wiggers included a tractatus de ecclesia as a kind of appendix to the explanation of the tenth article of the first question of the Summa’s secunda secundae. Suarez, Tanner, and Gregory of Valencia integrated treatises on the Church into their scholastic writings on the virtue of faith. Where most of the others treated the Church, the Roman Pontiff, and the Councils in this context, John of St. Thomas contented himself with a treatise on the Roman Pontiff alone. The custom of locating the treatise on the Church within or an appendix to the tractatus de fide was prevalent until late in the eighteenth century. Billuart himself followed this procedure.

Unfortunately, however, the treatise on the Church which finally became incorporated into the course of strictly scholastic theology was, in the last analysis, only the material which had been set forth in polemical theology by the great Counter-Reformation writers. Two points were stressed, the fact that the visible society living under the leadership of the Roman Pontiff is actually the true ecclesia of the New Testament (in the theses on the membership and the notes of the Church), and the position of the Church as the immediate norm of Christian faith. With these there was usually some discussion of the origin and the indefectibility of the Church. And it is interesting to note that well into the seventeenth century, in the Controversies of Sylvius, the teaching on origin of the Church proved that the Church militant as such had started to exist in the days of our first parents, and that the Church militant of the New Testament began in the days of Our Lord’s public life on earth.

The treatise on the Church was destined to appear in the course of scholastic theology under yet another approach, that of apologetics. The section of fundamental dogmatic theology we know now as apologetics or the tractatus de revelatione was the latest entrant into the organization of scholastic theology. The treatise may be said to have assumed its scientific form with the publication of Hooke’s Religionis naturalis et revelatae principia in 1752. It necessarily included material about the foundation of the Church militant of the New Testament, and, during the course of the nineteenth century, it tended to be accompanied by a treatise on the Church as the rule of faith and to be divided into a demonstratio christiana and a demonstratio catholica. Eventually this procedure resulted in the division of the tractatus de ecclesia itself into a pars apologetica and a pars theologica.

During the nineteenth century and during the early days of the twentieth the treatise on the Church assumed the form it now possesses in the manuals. Four tendencies characterized this movement. First, there was a tendency to develop the thesis on the foundation of the Church militant of the New Testament and at the same time to abandon the equally theological thesis about the establishment of God’s supernatural kingdom on earth during the days of our first parents. At the hands of theologians like Dieckmann the thesis on the foundation of the Church militant of the New Testament became somewhat obscured by an explanation of the term “kingdom of God” which took the form of a polemic against Loisy and was not anything like an adequate exposition of the theology of the kingdom.

The second characteristic of the development of the tractatus de ecclesia in the manuals of scholastic theology during the last century has been the tendency to introduce most of the material of the old treatises on the Roman Pontiff and a little of the material of the old treatises on the Councils into the fabric of the scholastic treatise on the Church. The third characteristic has been the tendency to develop the theological teaching on the magisterium of the Roman Pontiff and of the ecclesia docens in terms of distinctions between solemn and ordinary pronouncements and between doctrinal statements which are authoritative and infallible and others which are authoritative without being infallible. The last of these characteristics has been the incipient but still noticeable attempt to supply the manifest inadequacies of the tractatus de ecclesia by inserting material about the purpose of the Church and the relation of this society to Our Lord and to the Blessed Virgin.

Nevertheless, despite these attempts, the scholastic treatise on the Church, as it is found in the ordinary seminary manual of our own time, remains a tragically inadequate affair. Essentially this treatise is still the polemic rather than the properly scholastic study of God’s supernatural kingdom on earth. It still does not represent an attempt to summarize in one section of scholastic theology all of the divinely revealed teaching about the true Church of Jesus Christ.

It would seem to be the task of the theologians of our day to fill out and to perfect this treatise. It will obviously be a work which will demand a tremendous amount of study and of prayer. It will not, of course, call for the composition of new sections of sacred theology. It will, in the main, consist essentially in the process of integrating into the tractatus de ecclesia portions of sacred theology which have already been developed but which have not been dealt with in scholastic theology until now as belonging to the treatise on the Church.

In times past there have always been legitimate sections of theological science which have existed, as it were, in the shadow of or at the periphery of the body of properly scholastic theology. During mediaeval times the treatise on the Church as a whole occupied such a position. The divinely revealed teaching on the true Church, which should have been treated in the regular course of scholastic theology, was relegated to the realm of polemics and of canonical studies. Today there are instances of these being treated in the field of spiritual or pastoral theology when these same teachings actually belong within the fabric of the scholastic tractatus de ecclesia.

One of the outstanding inadequacies in the present-day scholastic treatise on the Church is to be found in the treatment of the purpose of the Church itself. On this subject it is definitely not enough to assure the student that the Catholic Church is orientated towards the attainment of God’s glory through the fullness of Christ in the salvation of souls. It is imperative that there should be incorporated into the scholastic treatise on the Church what God has taught us, in great measure through the Epistles of St. Paul, about the proper and immediate purpose of the society of which His Son is the Head. Today this material is covered to a great extent in theological manuals of spirituality dealing with the obligations of Bishops and of the priests whom the Bishops employ as their representatives and their instruments in the care of souls. This material should be brought into and developed within the scholastic treatise on the Church.

Another field within which most contemporary manuals of theology are inadequate in their treatment of the Church is the teaching about the characteristics of the kingdom of God on earth as such. Older writings, like Torquemada’s Summa de ecclesia, dealt with this material under the heading of the names assigned in Scripture and in tradition to the Church and to its members. In the last analysis, this teaching comes out as a description of the Church in terms of four dimensions: the relations of the Church to God, and to the sacred humanity of Christ, and to Our Lady; to the kingdom of God in the old dispensation; to the Church triumphant, and to the social unit designated by Pope Leo XIII the kingdom of Satan. The absence of an adequate treatment of this section of the theological teaching about the Church in most of our contemporary manuals has had a most unfortunate effect on the theological culture of our times.

Again, it its primarily polemical emphasis on the jurisdictional and doctrinal authority of the Catholic hierarchy, contemporary scholastic theology on the Church has almost lost sight of the tremendous responsibility involved in the care of souls. Since issuance of the encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi it has been common Catholic teaching that diocesan Bishops derive their power of jurisdiction from Our Lord by way of the Roman Pontiff.[8] In other words, there was one sovereign grant of authority by Our Lord to His Church, the grant described in the lines of St. John’s Gospel which tells that Our Lord commissioned St. Peter to feed or take care of His lambs and His sheep.[9] All of the legitimate ecclesiastical authority which has been exercised since that day has been founded on that commission.

In granting that commission, Our Lord certainly endowed St. Peter, and through him the other members of the apostolic college, with genuine jurisdictional authority. At the same time, however, He imposed a heavy responsibility upon them. He charged them with the obligation of taking care of the spiritual welfare of the men and women for whom He died. And it is certainly well within the competence of an adequate treatise on the Catholic Church to study and to state the serious and the extent of that obligation.

Finally, there is the question of the function of mutual charity within Our Lord’s ecclesia. In general, the contemporary manuals of sacred theology tend to limit their explanation of the function of charity within the Church to explanations about the note of unity. The obligation, clearly manifest in the New Testament, whereby the men and women of the true Church are bound to have a special and active supernatural affection for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, has been almost completely passed over in the manuals now in common use in our seminaries. An unfortunate effect of the neglect of this important teaching has been the appearance of writings by Catholics protesting against group consciousness or social solidarity among their co-religionists. Such writings, in the final analysis, harm our people by presenting as an acceptable Catholic attitude what is actually something radically opposed to Our Lord’s teaching about His Church.

Thus, to bring about a more adequate statement of the theological treatise de ecclesia in our own time, several theses now allocated principally within the fields of biblical, spiritual, and pastoral theology will have to be brought within the field of this treatise on the Church. Unquestionably some sections of the tractatus de ecclesia as it exists today will have to be radically re-organized. Thus there must be a renewed study on the notes of the Church, and a willingness to bring together and to explain all of what has been divinely revealed about the unity of the Church. Hitherto the concept of the “note of the Church” has all-too frequently been a kind of Procrustean bed into which all the theological teachings on the unity and the holiness of the Church had to be fitted. In line with this tendency all the material in the deposit of faith on the subject of the Church’s unity has been considered primarily from the point of view of a unity which would manifest the Catholic Church as the true supernatural kingdom of God on earth. Actually the revealed teachings on the unity of the Church can more properly and adequately be studied first for their own sake, without immediate reference to the working of the “notes of the Church.”

Another thesis which should be recast in the interest of a more adequate tractatus de ecclesia in the scholastic manuals of sacred theology is the one on the necessity of the Catholic Church for attainment of eternal salvation. Treated by itself in the works of pre-Reformation theologians like Torquemada, this thesis received scant direct attention in the writings of the Counter-Reformation controversialists, since the Protestant heretics were as willing as their Catholic opponents to admit that there is no salvation outside of God’s true ecclesia. As a matter of fact this essential part of divine teaching about the Church entered into the writings of the classical Catholic polemicists as it were through the back door. St. Robert’s De ecclesia militante first takes cognizance of it in the consideration of an objection against his thesis that catechumens are not members of the Church.[10] In the writings of men like St. Robert the teaching on the necessity of the Church for the attainment of eternal salvation was treated primarily for the sake of showing that a man could be “within” the Church in such a way as to achieve salvation without actually being a member of the Church. And it is in line with this same tendency that the thesis appears in many of the contemporary seminary manuals of scholastic theology.

This teaching is, of course, accurate. It is likewise a necessary part of the Catholic explanation of the divinely revealed teaching that there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless the basic element in any fully adequate presentation of this thesis should be the evidence in the content of divine revelation that, by God’s own institution, a man must pass from this life “within” the Mystical Body of His Son if he is to attain to the eternal glory of the Beatific Vision.

1.John 13:35.

2.John 15:17–21.

3.Translation in Father Wyune’s edition of The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1903), p. 83.

4.Adversus Catharos et Vadenses libri quinque by Moneta of Cremona was published in Rome in 1743. The section on the Church begins with the first chapter of the fifth book.

5.Peter Lombard, Libri IV sententiarum, prologus, in the Quarrachi edition of 1916, I, 1.

6.John of Torquemada, Summa de ecclesia, prologus, in the Venice edition of 1561, p. 1v.

7.Ibid.

8.Cf. Alfredo Ottaviani, Institutiones iuris publici ecclesiastici, 3rd edition (Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1947), I, 413; and Fenton, “The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals,” Part I, in AER, CXXI, 2 (Aug. 1949), 149f.

9.Cf. John 21:15–17.

10.Cf. Robert Bellarmine, De ecclesia militante, c. 3.

II

Our Lord’s Presence in the Catholic Church

The central, the most important fact about the Catholic Church, that which primarily differentiates it from every other religious organization on the face of the earth, is the living presence of Jesus Christ Our Lord within it. This actual indwelling of Our Blessed Lord within the society which He founded is the great and essential glory of the Catholic Church. It is the basic reason why the Catholic Church can be and should be accurately designated as the true Church of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom and the City and the House of God. Because the fellowship and the company of Christ are to be found within this, the society of His disciples, our present Sovereign Pontiff, in his masterly encyclical Mystici Corporis, could correctly insist that “nothing more glorious, nothing nobler, nothing surely more honorable can be imagined than to belong to the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church.”[1]

Certainly no man can begin to realize what the Catholic Church really is until he considers it in the light of the living presence of Christ within it. Unless we become aware of the fact that Our Lord actually resides within the Church, any designation of this society as the Mystical Body of Christ or as the Spouse of Christ is bound, for all intents and purposes, to be practically meaningless to us. Furthermore, in order to love the Church as we should love it, we must also take cognizance of Our Lord’s abiding life and activity within it. Pope Pius XII reminds us of this in that section of the Mystici Corporis in which he exhorts us to love the Church. “In order that such a solid and undivided love [of the Church] may abide and increase in our souls day by day, we must accustom ourselves to see Christ Himself in the Church. For it is Christ who lives in His Church, and through her teaches, governs and sanctifies.”[2]

Catholics today, subject as they are bound to be to the influence of the propaganda and the attitudes of the world around them, are in some danger of failing to appreciate the complete reality of Our Lord’s presence within the visible Catholic Church. Amidst the turmoil of pressure in favor of “inter-faith” movements and the like, there is an almost inevitable tendency to imagine that Christ is in the Church only in a kind of imaginary or metaphorical way. That unfortunate tendency is sometimes aided and increased by books and instructions which, though otherwise creditable, constantly persist in employing metaphors and other figurative expressions in dealing with the Church’s relations to Our Lord. For one reason or another, modern men and women are inclined to discount as imaginary or unreal, and therefore as basically unimportant, any subject which is presented to them in predominantly metaphorical terms.

Failure to appreciate the full reality of Our Lord’s presence within the Catholic Church is responsible for one unfortunate and even dangerous phenomenon in modern religious writing. This is the habit of placing the true Church of Jesus Christ, if not on a level with other religious societies, at least in the same general class with these outside organizations. In some cases this tendency resolves itself into the essentially Protestant tactic of imagining the existence of an invisible church, an assembly of good-intentioned men and women of all religions, which is supposed to constitute the true Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.

Likewise forgetfulness of the fact that Christ really lives and acts within the Catholic Church leads to the mistaken but unfortunately all-too-prevalent belief that the essential difference between the Catholic Church and other religious societies is to be found in the fact that the Catholic Church teaches the entirety of religious truth while these other organizations present only a portion of it. Such a difference does in fact exist, but it is by no means the ultimate and essential distinction. In the last analysis the real reason why the Catholic Church is something apart from and superior to all of the other religious societies in the world is to be found in the fact that Our Lord actually dwells within this Catholic Church and within it alone. Within this society, and in no other way, do we find the fellowship of Christ, our God and our Redeemer.

Christ in His Church During His Public Life

It is quite impossible to appreciate the reality of Our Lord’s presence within the Church today unless we consider carefully His position within the society of His disciples prior to the time of His ascension into heaven. The fact of the matter is that, although Christ’s sacred body is now located in heaven, and hence in a place far remote from that in which His followers do His will in this world, the basic and essential relation of the Church to Our Lord remains unaltered. He lives and acts in the Church, He speaks to the world from out of the Church, in essentially the same way today as He did during the period intervening between His baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan and His ascension into heaven.

The Catholic Church, the Kingdom of God in the New Testament, started out as a band of disciples or learners, gathered around and ruled by Our Lord, acting in His capacity as the Teacher of the divinely revealed public revelation. Men and women were admitted to this group only by personal invitation, issued by Our Lord Himself. The company had neither reason for nor bond of corporate existence apart from Christ. He was not merely present within the group, but the company itself was seen and understood preeminently in terms of its association with Him. Looking back on the days of Our Lord’s public life, St. Peter could refer to the original members of the band as those “who have companied with us, all the time that the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, until the day wherein he was taken from us.”[3]

Knabenbauer notes that the Greek words είσἢλθεν which the Douai renders as “came in and went out” constitute an authentic Hebraism, found in many sections of the Old Testament.[4] The expression signifies an intimate and continual association. The Greek καὶ rendered as “who have companied with us,” involves another form of the word ὲξἢλθεν and gives point to truth that not only the twelve, but the rest of the company of the disciples as well, were continually in the presence of the Master. Thus the Church was originally, as it is now, the group of men and women in the company of Christ.

Long before the ascension, however, Our Lord taught His disciples that He would be present among them even while they were in a place remote from that which He occupied. To the seventy-two whom He sent on a preaching mission during the course of His public life He said: “He that listens to you listens to me.”[5] That notice, as it stands, contains far more than the mere declaration that these men were appointed as His representatives. It implied that these preachers who had received their mission from Him within His Church actually spoke to the people with His voice, in such a way that the persons who heard them listened to the voice of Christ.

Not only did Our Lord speak in and through the disciples whom He commissioned to preach in His name, but He habitually spoke to the multitudes from the midst of the disciples, who formed a group apart. Both St. Matthew and St. Luke make this clear in describing the setting of the Sermon on the Mount. St. Matthew tells us that “seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain. And when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. And opening his mouth, he taught them.”[6] St. Luke writes that “coming down with them [the twelve apostles], he stood in a plain place: and the company of his disciples and a very great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the sea coast, both of Tyre and Sidon”[7] were there to hear Him. Our Lord spoke to the multitudes in parables. He explained these parables to the disciples.

Furthermore, during the course of Our Lord’s public life, His enemies were so aware of the intimate union of the corps of the disciples with Him that they spoke in such a way as to hold Him responsible for the actions of His followers, the members of the Church, and conversely they considered the disciples responsible for Him. When the scribes and the Pharisees saw Our Lord and His disciples partaking of the banquet which St. Matthew had given to celebrate his call to the company of Christ, they angrily questioned the disciples about Our Lord’s conduct and about their own.[8] The question addressed to the disciples was answered by Our Lord Himself. Again, when the Pharisees objected to the disciples’ practice of plucking and eating grains of wheat on the Sabbath, Christ answered for them and defended them.[9]

During the time of Our Lord’s public life, then, He was not only locally present among His disciples, the men and women who then constituted the Catholic Church, the true Church of the New Testament, but He also worked within this group, teaching and ruling and sanctifying the society and its individual members. He taught them directly. He taught the multitudes, the people whom He was preparing for the call into the society of the disciples, in His capacity as the Head of the company of the disciples. Furthermore He taught the multitudes Himself in and through the preaching of the disciples.

Up until the time of the ascension Our Lord was the only visible Ruler of the company of the disciples. It is perfectly true that, as a part of the course of divine instruction which He gave to His followers, He promised and announced that Peter was to possess a real primacy of jurisdiction over his fellow disciples, but even then it was made perfectly clear to Peter and to the rest that the authority was to be exercised over the Church which would always belong to Christ.[10] Thus the governing authority which was promised to Peter was that of Christ’s vicar on earth. Furthermore a definite social authority was promised to the entire membership of the apostolic college, but this, too, was something subject to the power of Peter within the Church of Christ.[11]

It was not, however, until just before the ascension that the jurisdiction which had been promised to the Prince of the Apostles and to the apostolic college as a whole was actually given by Our Lord.[12] Up until the moment of the ascension, the complete rule and direction of the society came visibly from Christ, visibly dwelling and working within that organization. Visibly and truly then, and invisibly though just as truly now, every order emanating from a superior within the Catholic Church was and is the command of Christ. Both the rule within the Catholic Church and the monarchical and hierarchical organization within which the followers of Christ are to be guided and sanctified until the end of time were the personal work of Our Lord.

Christ sanctified His society and its members, not merely by giving them the teaching of holiness, but by communicating the life of grace to the individual disciples within the Church and to the company itself as a whole. He, the Master and Lord, around whom the society itself was constructed, earned the remission of sins and the life of divine grace for men through His death on the cross. He brought that life of grace to His followers through the channels of that sacramental activity which He instituted within His Church. He gave His disciples the gift of newness of life, separating them from the world and sealing them to Himself through the Sacrament of Baptism which He inaugurated. He constituted that sign as the rite of initiation into His company in such a way that it was ready for use as a gateway into the Church and a departure from the generation ruled over by the prince of this world at the very moment of the Church’s first missionary activity after the ascension.[13] Then and now it is Christ Himself who communicates the grace, and Christ Himself who is the principal agent of baptism. “The bodily ministry,” said St. Augustine, “was the contribution of the disciples. His contribution was the aid of majesty.”[14] He was present and He remains present to the Church in the work of baptism.

As the perfective center of the sacramental system within the Catholic Church He instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice. In this rite, which is preeminently the act of the Church as His Mystical Body,[15] He is truly, really, and substantially present under the accidents of bread and wine. Furthermore at every Mass He is present to His Church as the High Priest, offering this true and commemorative sacrifice through the instrumentality of His priest as the ultimate cohesive sign and force of the unity of His society. He was visibly and truly living in the Church when He instituted and first confected this Sacrament. He remains invisibly and no less truly living in the Church through this Eucharistic Sacrifice today. In His Sacerdotal Prayer, set forth in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, He petitioned the Father that the assembly of the disciples might remain one with Him. St. Paul tells us that, even in Heaven, His prayer of intercession for us continues.[16]

The Departure and the Continued Presence of Our Lord

With Our Lord’s ascension into heaven a new status of the Church of Jesus Christ came into being. That society had been gathered together, organized, and conducted in the visible and local presence of its divine Founder. Now, with the ascension, that visible and local presence was taken away, not to be restored to the disciples of Christ as a complete society until that day when the Church will finally see Him again and forever at His second advent. The place in which Christ dwells locally is heaven. Since His ascension, as the epistles of St. Paul especially show so well, the Church on earth labors and struggles against its spiritual and earthly adversaries in order to enjoy the visible presence of Christ once again.

To sustain the society of His disciples during the period in which it suffers the loss of the visible presence of its divine Founder, He promised and gave to the Church the indwelling Spirit of Truth and Love.[17] This indwelling of the Blessed Trinity within the Catholic Church, appropriated by Our Blessed Lord Himself to the Holy Ghost, gives the Church the understanding and the fortitude requisite for its task of acting as the instrument of Christ in calling and aiding men to salvation and in overthrowing the efforts of the world against God. By reason of His divine nature Our Lord thus continues, through invisible, to reside within the Church, to guide and to instruct it, to sustain it and to give it strength. Moreover, in His human nature also, Our Lord remains within the Church. He told His disciples that they would see Him no longer,[18] but He also promised them that He would be with them until the consummation of the world.[19] The promise of His continued through invisible presence and the accomplishment of that promise were given to the disciples as Christ had formed them, organized into a society which is His Mystical Body on earth.

The Indwelling of Christ in the Church According to His Divine Nature

In His divine nature Christ is in all created things according to the three ways which St. Thomas Aquinas designates as essence, presence and power.[20] God can be said to be in all things in so far as He keeps them in existence, in so far as they are visible to Him and subject to His power. In this way Our Lord remains within the Church, sustaining it and preserving it for what it is and what He made it, His true Church and the sole ark of salvation on earth. He sees it, and He is available to the prayers of mankind. Since true prayer is essentially the petition of fitting things from God[21] and since a thing is truly fitting only if it is in line towards salvation and union with God in heaven, the divine work of hearing and answering prayers on earth is in itself a mode of indwelling within the Catholic Church.

This does not mean, of course, that only the prayers of those who are truly disciples of Christ and thus truly members of the Catholic Church are heard and answered by God. It is perfectly true that the prayer of the Church is always answered because this is, in the last analysis, the prayer of Christ Himself. But all true prayer has its efficacy from this central petition to God, and all true prayer is answered in so far as the essential and central good sought in the petition is concerned. This dominant petition is always for God’s glory, to be attained through the granting of eternal life to men. Since, in the providence of God, eternal salvation or the attainment of eternal life is to be achieved only through association with Christ through membership in the Catholic Church or through the sincere desire for that association, the granting of the petition of prayer by God constitutes a divine indwelling in the true Church, drawing men to this society and strengthening them in its life and in its communion.

According to this same divine presence, through the power of God the Church is kept safe from the attacks of its enemies and preserved against the dissolution which would naturally be the lot of any merely human society. The divine protection accorded to the Church is in itself easily visible to mankind. As the recipient of this protection against the forces which naturally tend to overthrow and transform merely human organizations, the Church is visible in the world as a social miracle, and thus, according to the Vatican Council, it stands as a true and perpetual motive of credibility and as a real witness of its own status as the bearer of divine revelation.[22]

There is one, and according to St. Thomas Aquinas, only one, distinctly supernatural and invisible mode of the divine indwelling. It is the divine presence according to the activity of sanctifying grace,[23] according to which God really dwells in those creatures whom He strengthens and renders competent to live the divine life of the Beatific Vision. In this way God is present to a man who is in a position to see God as He is in Himself, rather than merely to recognize the fact of His existence by a recognition of the truth that there must be a First Cause of created things. The man who lives the life of grace in this world possesses charity, and possesses the life to which the Beatific Vision itself belongs, even though, by reason of his status as a viator, he does not exercise the act of the Beatific Vision. Christ, as God, is present in every person who has this life of grace. It is the presence of which He was speaking when He told His apostles: “If any one loves me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him: and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.”[24]

According to this intrinsically supernatural mode of divine presence, Our Lord lives within the Church, drawing men into it and strengthening them in its communion. Those who have the life of grace must be either members of the Church or sincerely, albeit perhaps only implicitly, intend to enter. By dwelling in the souls of those who love Him and the Father, Christ thus lives really and actually within the visible society which He founded and over which He presides.

Moreover there is still another way in which Our Lord can truly be said to dwell within the Catholic Church according to the divine indwelling in line with the life of sanctifying grace. The life of grace and charity is more than a merely individual affair. It is something which has a corporate existence and a corporate expression. The corporate life of grace within the world is that divine charity of which the only authorized and authentic expression is the Eucharistic sacrifice. Although that sacrifice can be performed by a priest not in communion with the true Church, it remains properly and essentially the act of the Church, and the indwelling of Christ in the society of His disciples is thus the source of the Eucharistic liturgical activity, the visible sacrifice within the Church which is the expression and the manifestation of the invisible sacrifice of prayer and devotion and charity among the children of men.

The Indwelling of Christ in the Church According to His Human Nature

According to His sacred human nature, Our Lord remains truly though invisibly resident within the Catholic Church in governing, instructing, and sanctifying this society. He rules the disciples within the Church invisibly and directly. At the same time His divine teaching within the Church makes it perfectly clear that the judgments and the commands of the Church officers who hold their position by reason of the commission which He has given them are to be accepted by the disciples as His judgments and His commands. This presence of Christ in the Church as its supreme though invisible Ruler is the guarantee of and the reason for the Church’s indefectibility. It is manifestly impossible that a society within which Christ governs until the end of time can ever lose its identity or the substantial character which He gave to it.

Now, as during the period of His public life in this world, the Church speaks to the world with the voice of Christ. He it is who teaches within the Church and who, from out of the Church, teaches and calls the men in the world. Furthermore Christ, truly present in the Church, perfects and authenticates the divine message which He preaches through the Church by sealing that doctrine with motives of credibility. St. Mark’s Gospel says of the apostles that “they going forth preached everywhere: the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed.”[25] The presence of Christ teaching within the Church is the cause and explanation of the Church’s infallibility. It is obviously impossible for an institution within which Christ will dwell until the end of time and from which He teaches to do other than set forth His teaching accurately.

St. Clement of Rome in his epistle to the Corinthians speaks of Our Lord living in the Church as “the high priest of our offerings.”[26] In His human nature He continues to sanctify the Church by communicating the life of grace in the channels of those sacraments which He instituted and of which, in His human nature, He continues to act as the principal agent. As the high priest forever, offering the sacrifice of the New Law, He effectuates and expresses the unity of that society which He holds in existence and over which He presides.

Our Twofold Bond of Union with Christ

The classical Catholic ecclesiologists and more recently the Holy Father’s encyclical Mystici Corporis speak of two different kinds of forces which bring us into union with Our Lord within the Church. The first of these, the so-called external or bodily bond of union, includes those factors which together constitute a man as a true member of the society of the disciples. The second, the internal or spiritual bond, is composed of those elements which go to make a man a living member of this society. Both of these bonds bring us into contact with Our Lord dwelling within the Catholic Church. The fault which vitiated many of the earlier twentieth century writings of the Mystical Body was an absolute neglect of the external bond of unity with Christ.

A man is joined to Our Lord within the Church by the external bond of unity when he has the profession of the true divine faith, the communication of the sacraments, and subjection to his legitimate ecclesiastical superiors.[27] The external profession of the true faith involves contact with Christ dwelling within the Catholic Church because it means the visible acceptance of that message which Christ teaches infallibly here and now within the Catholic Church and which men receive only from the Church. Communication of the divine sacraments is available only to one who has the baptismal character, and who, consequently, has been invited or called personally by Our Lord to enter into the company of His followers. Furthermore this communication is open only to those baptized persons who have not been cast out by the Church, and who have not abandoned that society which is the fellowship of Christ. Subjection to legitimate ecclesiastical superiors carries with it the acceptance of that authority which speaks and commands with the voice of Our Lord Himself.

Through the internal bond of union within the Catholic Church we come into vital contact with Christ residing in the Church in possession of faith, hope, and charity.[28] By faith we have in our own minds that truth which Christ comprehends as God in the divine understanding, which as Man, He sees in the beatific Vision, and which He preaches in the Church. Through Christian hope we long for the intuitive vision of the divine essence and for the visible presence of Christ which belongs to, and on the last day will be granted to, the Catholic Church within which He resides. By charity we love Christ who lives in our soul, and who gives us our love for God and our fellow men within the society of His disciples.

It is this life of Christ within the Catholic Church which makes this visible society a mystery of our faith. The mystery of the Church is, as it were, the center of the divine economy with mankind. The Church within which Our Lord lives and works is that visible organization within which bad members will be mingled with the good until the day of judgment. Yet it is the Church apart from which we shall not find Christ. Our Lord’s presence within this visible society is not imaginary but real and active. “Wherever Jesus Christ is,” said St. Ignatius of Antioch, “there is the Catholic Church.”[29]

1.AAS, XXXV (1943), 237.

2.Ibid., 238.

3.Acts 1:21–22.

4.Cf. Joseph Knabenbauer, Commentarius in Actus Apostolorum (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1928), p. 36.

5.Luke 10:16; cf. Matt. 10:40.

6.Matt. 5:1.

7.Luke 6:17.

8.Cf. Matt. 9:11; Mark 2:16; Luke 5:30.

9.Cf. Matt. 12:1ff; Mark 2:23ff; Luke 6:1ff.

10.Cf. Matt. 16:18–19.

11.Cf. Matt. 18:18.

12.Cf. John 20:22–23; 21:15ff.

13.Cf. Acts 2:41.

14.Augustine, In Ioan., XV, c. 3.

15.Cf. The article, Joseph C. Fenton, “The Act of the Mystical Body,” AER, C, 5 (May, 1939), 397ff, and the discussion occasioned by this article, AER, CII, 4 (April, 1940), pp. 306ff.

16.Cf. Rom. 8:34.

17.Cf. John 14:16.

18.Cf. John 16:10.

19.Cf. Matt. 28:20.

20.Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 8, a. 3.

21.Cf. John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa, III, c. 24, and the author’s The Theology of Prayer (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1939), pp. 1ff.

22.Cf. DB 1794/ DH 3013–3014.

23.Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 43, a. 3.

24.John 14:23.

25.Mark 16:20.

26.Prima Clementis, cap. 26, no. 1.

27.Cf. Robert Bellarmine, De controversiis christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos, Tom. I, Quartae controversiae generalis, Lib. III, De ecclesia militante, cap. 2 (Ingolstadt, 1586), col. 1264.

28.Ibid.

29.Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Smyrnaeos, cap. 8, no. 2.

III

The Mystici Corporis and the Definitions of the Church

Ten years ago this month, on June 9, 1943, to be exact, His Holiness Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Mystici Corporis. The publication of this doctrinal instruction was providential, as any comparison between manuals of ecclesiology written prior to its appearance and the texts which have been printed during the last ten years will very easily attest. It is only fitting that Catholic theologians throughout the world should take cognizance of this anniversary, and try, on this occasion, to appreciate some of the great benefits God has granted to His kingdom on earth through this doctrinal letter of Our Lord’s Vicar on earth.

The central pronouncement in the encyclical Mystici Corporis is to be found in the declaration that the expression “Mystical Body of Jesus Christ” is actually a definition of the Church. In the words of the Holy Father, “If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ—which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church—we shall find no expression more noble, more sublime, or more divine, than the phrase which calls it ‘the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.’”[1]

All the rest of the purely doctrinal portion of the encyclical, the sections which deal with the concept of the Church as a “body,” as “the body of Christ,” and as “the Mystical Body of Christ,” as well as the part which describes the union of the faithful with Our Lord, should thus be considered as directed towards a more perfect and detailed understanding of what is basically one of the great classical definitions of the true Church. And all of the pastoral exhortations which make up the remainder of the body of the encyclical are meant to warn the faithful against errors which would militate against their appreciation of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ and to encourage them to give to the Church the tribute of genuine, strong, and supernatural affection demanded by the bonds that join the Church and its members to Our Lord, the Head of the Mystical Body. All of this obviously revolves around the realization that the expression “Mystical Body of Christ” is a real definition of the true Church of God.

Although the Holy Father taught in his encyclical that the expression “Mystical Body of Jesus Christ” is a definition of the true Church, he neither said nor implied that it is the only genuine and accurate definition. Indeed, the literature of scholastic ecclesiology abounds in definitions of the Church, some of which have achieved the status of standard formulae over the course of the centuries. By calling attention to the fact that the expression “Mystical Body of Jesus Christ” is likewise a definition of the Church, and a definition of paramount importance and significance, our Holy Father Pope Pius XII offered to the theologians of the world the opportunity to show how the various types of definitions are mutually complementary and to explain how they combine to bring out the magnificently rich notion of the Church that is conveyed in divine supernatural revelation.

The notion or concept of the Catholic Church, conveyed in God’s supernatural message, is tremendously complex. This society is represented to us basically as the association or group within which alone we may find salvific contact with God in Jesus Christ Our Lord. It is the ecclesia sanctorum, the community or the communion of the Saints. Yet it is so constituted in this world that a man may be a member of it without actually living the divine and supernatural life of grace. It is truly a society instituted directly and immediately by Our Lord during the course of His public life in this world. At the same time, however, it is just as truly the continuation and the ultimate status here on earth of the supernatural kingdom of God which has been in existence, as the militant Church of God in Christ, since the days of our first parents. It lives as the militant company of Our Lord’s disciples throughout the entire world. In the various cities and districts of the world its members gather to constitute organized individual families or households of the faith in Christ. Yet, at the same time, it is always in a condition of pilgrimage in this world and in its cities. Its ultimate and eternal home is to be found only in the courts of heaven.

It is precisely because of the complexity of and the wealth of meaning contained in this fundamental notion of the Catholic Church that the theologians have had to set forth many types of definitions of the Church. There are three main types of definitions which scholastic theology recognizes as applicable to the Church militant. The first of these, the widest or most general kind of definition of the Church, applies to the entire company of those joined to God in Jesus Christ. It takes in the Church triumphant in heaven, the Church suffering in purgatory, and the Church militant here on earth. The second variety of definition is restricted to the Church militant, but it considers this company, not only according to its form and structure under the economy of the New Testament, but according to its conditions under the Old Dispensation also. The third type of definition explains only the Church militant of the New Testament. Within this type there are several subdivisions, all of which contribute powerfully to the explanation of the basic notion of the Church, as this is brought out in the various names and figures used to designate the Church in the inspired books of the New Testament. These three basic types of definitions of the true Church of Jesus Christ have been in common use in sacred theology since the days of the great Jesuit theologian and controversialist, Gregory of Valencia († 1603). And, according to Gregory of Valencia, the broadest type of definition of the Church, the one which applies to this society as it lives in heaven, in purgatory, and on earth, is the formula describing it as “the multitude of those who have been gathered together by the grace of God’s calling into the true worship of God and into the true and God-given knowledge of God, whether that knowledge be obscure, as it is in the case of the knowledge of the faith, or clear and manifest, as it is in the case of the blessed.”[2]

There are, incidentally, certain standard definitions of the Church triumphant, as distinct from the Church suffering and the Church militant. As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, “the Church, according to the status patriae, however, [the condition of those who have already come to the homeland of heaven] it is the congregation of those who possess the Beatific Vision (congregatio comprehendentium).”[3] The Catechism of the Council of Trent, first published in 1566, defined the Church triumphant as “the most glorious and happy assembly of the blessed spirits and of those who have overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil, and who enjoy eternal beatitude, free and safe from the troubles of this world.”[4] Both of these definitions obviously fit within the framework of the broadest type of definition of the Church enunciated by Gregory of Valencia.

The most general or most inclusive type of definition, as it was formulated by Gregory of Valencia, is a description which correctly and effectively shows up the unity of all the persons who belong to the Church triumphant, to the Church suffering, and to the Church militant. It speaks of all these persons as being really gathered or assembled together, that is, as constituting a genuine definite social unity. Likewise it speaks of these persons as being brought into their social unity “by the grace of God’s calling.” Thus it insists upon the basic fact that the assembly or congregation itself is definitely a reality of the supernatural order, something concerned, ultimately, with the intimate understanding and possession of God as He is in Himself, with the clear knowledge of the Triune God in the Beatific Vision.

Since the unity of the social group is effected by the grace of God’s calling, the adherence of any individual member, and, for that matter, of all the members, to the assembly itself is something ultimately due to a freely given and supernatural favor granted by God. There is absolutely no created intellectual nature, actual or possible, which could give its possessor the right to belong to this social unit. In other words, membership in this blessed company is not something which necessarily goes with membership in the human race or with the condition of an intellectual creature. Those who are privileged to belong to this assembly owe their blessing to the direct, supernatural, and gratuitous favor of God.

The human beings who belong to this assembly have been called or summoned into it from out of another social entity, the fallen family of Adam. Analogously, the blessed angels who belong to the Church triumphant have been called to overcome the temptation to which they were subjected and thus to enter into the condition of eternal and supernatural glory.

The same definition states the objective towards which the divine call or invitation has summoned the members of the Church, taken as a whole. This invitation is to the corporate activity of this company, considered as living and operating both in its heavenly homeland and in the place of its exile or pilgrimage. This objective is summed up in the phrase “into the true worship of God and into the true and God-given knowledge of God.”

The worship of God is basically a spiritual act, something within the general classification of justice. It consists in the payment of the debt of acknowledgement, recognition, and gratitude, which all creatures really owe to God by reason of His infinite excellence. God Himself has prescribed the outward manifestation or expression of this spiritual act for the men and women of this world, and the Church is the society to which alone this ritual of divinely authorized and divinely ordered manifest worship actually belongs. Hence the people gathered together supernaturally by God’s call and by His grace are assembled for a life of worship, a life of devotion, prayer, sacrifice, and adoration in this world. This activity is meant by God to continue for all eternity in the affectionate, grateful, and ecstatic acknowledgement of God’s goodness in heaven.

We can only understand this part of the definition when we advert to the fact that this worship of God by those who belong to the entire Church, in heaven, in purgatory, and on earth, is a corporate act. Obviously the service of acknowledgement of God by each of the men and angels within the entire ecclesia is his own individual act also, but the assembly itself, as such, is likewise a unity which worships God. This community worship centers around the royal and eternal sacrifice of Our Lord. The work of the Church, in heaven, in purgatory, and on earth, is eminently His work, His operation. Ultimately, that is why He is its eternal King.

Finally, this definition offered by Gregory of Valencia speaks of the men and angels who belong to the Church as being called or summoned “into the true and God-given knowledge of God.” It is interesting to note that most of the great scholastic theologians of earlier days limited themselves to a mention of this cognitive activity when they set out to describe in their definitions the characteristic function of the Church in heaven and on earth. Thus, to cite only one example, the great fifteenth century Dominican Cardinal John of Torquemada, certainly one of the ablest and most influential ecclesiologists in all the history of Catholic theology, setting forth his own more extensive definition of the Church, designated it as “the entirety of all the faithful, both those in the status viae and the men and angels who enjoy the Beatific Vision.”[5] Here Torquemada uses the term “fidelis” to designate the Saints and the blessed angels in heaven for two reasons. First, the Beatific Vision is granted only to those who finish the status viae in possession of divine and supernatural faith. Again, the Beatific Vision is the clear and perfect understanding of those realities which, in the status viae, can be apprehended with certainty only in the light of divine faith. Gregory of Valencia brought out the same truth in a slightly different way when he spoke of “the true and God-given knowledge of God” as the objective towards which God has called His people, the members of His ecclesia, on earth and in heaven.

The most important fact to be garnered from this broadest type of definition of the true Church employed in the literature of Catholic theology is the truth that the blessed angels and the Saints in heaven, together with the souls in purgatory and the members of the Church militant on earth, actually constitute a single definite and genuine social unit, in and through Jesus Christ Our Lord. All of these people have been empowered to call God their Father, in a special and supernatural way. All of them are brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ and of each other. Thus the Church militant, in the final analysis, is not merely a society existent in this world. It is one section or part of a society which finds its true and eternal home only in the supernatural glory of heaven. Its activity is something which is meant to find everlasting and glorious continuation in heaven. It is that section of the great brotherhood which is still in the period of trial, of struggle, of suffering, and of preparation, awaiting the fulfillment which will come only in the Beatific Vision itself.

The second type of definition commonly employed in the literature of scholastic theology is that which considers the Church militant alone, as distinct from the Church triumphant and the Church suffering, but which takes in the Church militant as a whole, without explicitly adverting to the difference in status between the ecclesia Dei of the New Testament and that of the Old Dispensation. According to this type of definition, the Church is usually described as the congregatio fidelium, the convocation or assembly of the faithful. Such was the terminology commonly employed by some of the earliest and most distinguished of the scholastic ecclesiologists, men like Moneta of Cremona († 1235), St. Thomas Aquinas († 1274), and Alvaro Pelayo († 1349). The expression collectio catholicorum, which Thomas Netter of Walden and other early scholastic theologians took from the Decretum of Gratian and employed as a definition of the true Church, was used as something identical in meaning with the form congregatio fidelium. As a matter of fact, Torquemada used both expressions as a definition.[6] He likewise defined the Church militant as “the company (universitas) of the faithful, gathered together for the worship of the true God, in the profession of the one faith.”[7]

The one faith, in terms of which the Church was defined and its members designated as “the faithful,” was always faith in Our Lord. This aspect of the basic theological teaching about the Catholic Church is brought out very well in the definition offered by the Bishop of Avila, the famed Alfonso de Tostado de Madrigal († 1455). De Madrigal defined the Church as “the entire multitude of all the men believing in Christ.”[8]

The man who has studied the history of ecclesiology during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is well aware of the controversy among theologians of that period about the actual import of the term “faithful” as it entered into the definition of the true Church. There were some (and de Madrigal was of their number), who tended to define and describe the true Church in terms of the possession of the Catholic faith. There were others who, likewise setting out to define the Church in function of its membership, fashioned their definitions in such a way as to take cognizance of the fact that a man becomes and remains a member of the Church, not precisely by reason of his possession, but of his profession of the true divine faith. It is interesting to note that the definition of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, made and explained by Pope Pius XII, carries with it the definitive resolution of this extremely important debate.[9]

The central teaching brought out in the definitions of the Church militant in general, prescinding from the conditions of the Old Dispensation and the New, is the fact that the faith, in the profession of which a man is designated as one of the fideles, has been essentially the same since the grace of God was first offered to men after the sin of our first parents. As the theologians of the golden age never ceased to remind their readers, the faith which was requisite for all men after the fall of Adam was always a perfectly certain acceptance of God’s supernatural revelation about His Son. In the days prior to the Incarnation, the faith that was the beginning of salvation was an acceptance of the supernatural divine teaching about the Redeemer who was to come. After the manifestation of Christ Our Lord it has been, and it will remain until the end of time, the certain acceptance of the divine revelation about the Redeemer who has appeared.

During the period of the Old Alliance, new items of information were added from time to time to the revealed message itself. Since the death of the last of the Apostles, however, there have been, and until the end of time there will be, no further additions to the body of truth revealed to us by God about His Son. Nevertheless, it was true under the Old Dispensation that “Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.”[10]

The most important definitions of the Church, from the standpoint of theological controversy, have always been those which applied exclusively to the Church militant of the New Testament. Classical expressions of this type of definition are the formulae employed by Domingo Bañez and St. Robert Bellarmine. The former defined the Church militant of the New Dispensation as “the visible congregation of the baptized faithful, under one Head, Christ, in heaven, and under His Vicar on earth.”[11] St. Robert produced what has been by all means the most widely used formula for this sort of definition when he described the Church as “the assembly of men united in the profession of the same Christian faith and in the communion of the same sacraments, under the rule of legitimate pastors, and in particular, that of the one Vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman Pontiff.”[12]

Definitions of the type offered by Bañez and St. Robert have frequently been subject to adverse criticism by writers who have not taken the trouble to investigate the purpose of these formulae. It is sometimes objected against them that they failed to take cognizance of the really important and spiritual elements of the Church in their definitions of this society. It was this attitude towards the teachings of St. Robert Bellarmine which eventually resulted in the development of a notion of an “invisible Church” within the theological systems of otherwise acceptable Catholic writers. Consequently, it was precisely this tendency which rendered the writing of the encyclical Mystici Corporis imperative in our own day.

The main point which the student of sacred theology must bear in mind about definitions such as those of Bañez and St. Robert is the fact that these men were engaged in the absolutely necessary task of formulating what may be called an identifying definition of God’s supernatural kingdom on earth. The question which they wanted to answer most explicitly in their formulae was this: “what body of people here on earth now constitute this supernatural kingdom of God?” Their definitions answered that question with complete clarity and exactness. On the other hand, the entire theology of the Mystical Body is contained implicitly although still really and correctly in these definitions. Thus, when Bañez speaks of “the visible congregations of the baptized faithful,” he is acknowledging that the kingdom of God on earth is made up of people who have been incorporated into Christ through the sacrament of faith. He is taking cognizance of the fact that men enter the true Church by being associated with Our Lord, dying and being buried to the old life of sin, characteristic of the “world,” and rising to the new life of grace which alone should be lived in the company of Christ.

When he speaks of men being united or joined under Our Lord, he is adverting to the fact that the essential activity of the Church, directed and supported by Our Lord, is the integral work of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. And, when he mentions subjection to the Roman Pontiff as essential to membership in the Church, he is reminding his readers the mystery of the Church in this world is to be found precisely in the fact of its visibility.

These great theologians and apologists of another day never for a moment lost sight of the fact that the great and supernaturally merciful dispensations of God to man are to be found precisely along the line of this visibility. They never forgot that the world would never be particularly astonished or offended by the truth that an invisible God exists. What the world will not recognize is the truth that this individual man, one who worked, was tired, and was crucified, is actually the Incarnate Word of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Likewise the world would never take a great deal of umbrage at the fact that there is some association of men with God here on earth. What astonishes and displeases it is the divinely revealed truth that this association really is the visible society it knows, the religious society over which the Bishop of Rome presides as the visible head, in his capacity as the true and authorized Vicar of Jesus Christ. This was the truth men like Bañez, Stapleton, and St. Robert Bellarmine strove to bring out in their definitions.

The theologians of an older day knew well how to handle such definitions effectively. Thus the Dominican Vincent Contenson used what was in fact a twofold definition of the Church militant of the New Testament. He set out explicitly to prove that the definition of the Church as “the legitimate congregation of Christ’s faithful” was applied correctly only to “the Roman Church, or the congregation of Christians obedient to the Roman Pontiff.”[13] Nicholas Turlot, writing in catechetical form about the same time, towards the middle of the seventeenth century, made this procedure even more explicit.

Q. What is the only true and legitimate Church?

A. It is the congregation of all the baptized, professing the faith and the doctrine of Christ, which is governed by the one and supreme head and pastor after Christ on this earth, the Roman Pontiff.

Q. What congregation is this?

A. It is the congregation and assembly into a Church of those whom God, in His mercy and through the work of the preachers and doctors, has called together to worship Him and to possess an accurate knowledge of the eternal truths, by faith in this life, and in the next by the clear and Beatific Vision of God Himself.[14]

The function of these two definitions of the Church militant of the New Testament in the writings of Contenson and of Turlot was, in the last analysis, to bring out the objective identity of the concepts of “the Roman Catholic Church” and “the true Church of Jesus Christ.” The type of definition set forth by Bañez and St. Robert defined the true Church by pointing out the salient characteristics of the Roman Catholic Church. The type of definition offered by Turlot as the answer to the second of the questions cited immediately above illustrates the intimate nature of the Roman Catholic Church by indicating some of the characteristics of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, it would seem that this was the great contribution which Pope Pius XII has made to the field of sacred theology in our time by his issuance of the encyclical Mystici Corporis ten years ago this very month. Just as men have always been prone to close their eyes to the paramount fact that the same Christ who walked the roads of Judea, and Samaria and Galilee was the Incarnate Word of God, the God who created and who preserved all things in the universe, they have also been tempted to overlook the outstanding truth that this visible society, with its bad members mingled with the good, is actually the kingdom of the living God on this earth.

It is the glory of Pius XII that, in our days, he has combated this evil tendency most effectively, and has brought out in a uniquely effective way the characteristics which belong to the Catholic Church by reason of the fact that this visible society is definable as “the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.”

1.AAS, XXXV (July 20, 1943), 199. The text used here is that of the NCWC translation.

2.Greogry of Valencia, Commentaria theological, Vol. III (Ingolstadt, 1603), Disp. I, De fide, Q. 1, Punct. 7, § 14, col. 164.

3.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, q. 8, a. 4, ad secundum.

4.Cathechismus Concilii Tridentini, Pars I, a. 9, cap. 9.

5.John of Torquemada, Summa de ecclesia, Book I, chapter 2.

6.Cf. ibid., chapter 3.

7.Ibid., chapter 25.

8.Alfonso de Tostado de Madrigal, In Matthaeum, Liber V, in the Opera omnia (Cologne, 1613), XI, 93f.

9.According to the Mystici Corporis, “In Ecclesiae autem membris reapse iisoli annunmerandi sunt, qui regenerationis lavacrum receperunt veramque fidem profitentur, neque a Corporis compage semet ipsos misere spararunt, vel ob gravissima admissa a legitima auctoritate seiuncti sunt” (AAS, XXXV, 202).

10.Acts 4:12.

11.Domingo Bañez, Scholastica commentaria in secumdam secundae Angelici Doctoris D. Thomae (Venice, 1588), Commentary on q. 1, a. 10, col. 153.

12.Robert Bellarmine, De Ecclesia militante, c. 2.

13.Vincent Contenson, Theologia mentis et cordis (Lyons, 1687), I, 152.

14.Nicholas Turlot, Thesaurus doctrinae christianae, p. 165.

IV

Use of the Terms Body and Soul with Reference to the Catholic Church

In the Encyclical Mystici Corporis our Holy Father Pope Pius XII has acted energetically to end what had become a source of serious confusion in teaching about the Catholic Church.

We deplore and condemn the pernicious error of those who conjure up from their fancies an imaginary Church, a kind of Society that finds its origin and growth in charity, to which they somewhat contemptuously oppose another, which they call juridical. But this distinction, which they introduce is baseless.[1]

The funestus error reproved by the Sovereign Pontiff exists in Catholic theological literature under the guise of teaching on the body and soul of the Church. Some authors have described the soul of the Catholic Church as an invisible, spiritual society, and then designated the existing and visible Church as the body, the counterpart of that soul. The invisible or spiritual Church is presented as a society of good men and women in the state of grace, bound together by ties of faith and charity. According to those who have used the distinction rejected in the Mystici Corporis this soul of the Church is a society which exists even outside the membership of the visible Church. It is distinct from the Church of which the Roman Pontiff is the visible head, and yet it is in some way connected with it. The expression “members of the soul of the Church” which has unfortunately crept into the revised Baltimore Catechism[2] seems to involve some such teaching.

The distinction condemned by the Holy Father is used ordinarily to explain the connection between non-Catholics who are saved and the Catholic Church. Such a connection must exist, since the Church is necessary for the attainment of the beatific vision. To obviate what seemed to them a difficulty, some writers postulated the existence of a social organism of men and women who possess charity. This invisible Church or soul of the Church was depicted as wider in extent than the visible society, distinct from it, yet in some manner belonging with it. The body and the soul were presented as parts of that universal Church to which a person had to belong in order to be saved.

Once and for all, the Mystici Corporis has stigmatized such an hypothesis as erroneous. There is no Church of God in this world in any way distinct from the one visible society which Jesus Christ instituted during the days of His earthly sojourn, and which He placed under the supreme and visible direction, of St. Peter and his successors. Furthermore there is no society in this world composed only and entirely of persons in the state of grace. The just on earth are not organized into any society, made up exclusively of their own number.

The men who have applied the terms body and soul of the Church to the distinction condemned by the Holy Father have twisted metaphors found in Scripture and in the De Ecclesia Militante of St. Robert Bellarmine into meanings which they were never meant to convey. St. Paul called the Church the body of Christ, and the Mystici Corporis warns us against perverting his terminology.

For some there are who neglect the fact that the Apostle Paul has used metaphorical language in speaking of this doctrine, and failing to distinguish the physical from the social body of Christ as they should, out of their fancy drawn some deformed kind of unity.[3]

There is a tendency, however, to attribute every use of the terms body and soul of the Church in modern theological writing to St. Robert Bellarmine. Thus he is sometimes falsely represented as the source for the type of teaching condemned by Pope Plus XII. The truth of the matter is that paradoxically enough, the very terms which have been twisted to designate a distinction between a visible and an invisible Church appear in St. Robert’s De Ecclesia Mililante integrated into proofs that no such dichotomy exists.

The saintly Controversialist employed the terms body and soul with reference to the Catholic Church much more extensively than the other classical ecclesiologists. The terms are metaphors, and St. Robert used them effectively and scientifically as metaphors. He used the analogy of body and soul to explain various portions of his teaching on the nature of the Church. We find each term used in three distinct meanings in the De Ecclesia Militante.

(1) The body is used to designate the Catholic Church itself. “The Church is a living body.”[4] St. Robert speaks of God the Holy Ghost as the soul, the correlative of this body. “The Church is governed by Christ, as by its Head and its Spouse, and by the Holy Ghost as by its Soul.”[5]

(2) The external profession of faith and the communication of the sacraments are called the body within the Church, or of the Church. The internal gifts of the Holy Ghost, faith, hope, charity and the rest constitute the corresponding soul.[6]

(3) Good Catholics constitute the interior part, and as it were the soul of the Church, while the wicked persons within the Church are its exterior part, and as it were the body.[7]

While the other great ecclesiologists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries never used the terms body and soul as extensively as did St. Robert, they were perfectly familiar with the distinctions which he sought to illustrate by the use of this analogy. We would be doing St. Robert a grave injustice were we to imagine that he brought some new concept of the soul and body of the Church into Catholic theology. What he actually did was to employ the analogy of body and soul to illustrate distinctions for which other theologians had used other terms. It was only when later and lesser theologians in the eighteenth century mistook the metaphors of St. Robert for factors which had to be explained in their own right that the process towards confusion was begun. In the De Ecclesia Militante there are no two entities indicated exclusively as the body and the soul of the Catholic Church.

St. Robert employed these terms as instruments for effective teaching. There is a definite and easily understandable relationship between a body and a soul, and the great Controversialist used this analogy to designate factors between which a somewhat similar relationship exists. The Catholic Church has an essential reference to the Holy Ghost. The external profession of the Christian faith, and the communication of the sacraments under legitimate ecclesiastical authority are related to the three theological virtues. The wicked Catholics have a definite reference to their virtuous coreligionists. In each case the relationship could be explained to some extent by means of a comparison with the relationship existing between a body and a soul. The Mystici Corporis uses the analogy of body and soul in only one way. The body is a name of the Church, while the Holy Ghost is called the Soul of the Church.

If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ, which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church, we shall find no expression more noble, more sublime or more divine than the phrase which calls it “the mystical Body of Jesus Christ.”[8]

The Mystici Corporis cites Leo XIII in calling the Holy Ghost the Soul of the Church. “Let it suffice to say that, as Christ is the Head of the Church, so is the Holy Ghost her Soul.”[9]

There is good reason why the analogy of body and soul can help us to appreciate the relation of the Catholic Church to the Holy Ghost. The function of the Blessed Trinity, appropriated to the Holy Ghost as the Soul of the Church is quite distinct from that of our Lord, Who, as man, is the Head of this society. There is one, and only one invisible and temporal mission of the divine Persons. This takes place in and with the gift of sanctifying grace. God, Who is in all things by His presence, power and substance, has chosen to dwell in some intellectual creatures in yet another way, as an Object, to be known, loved and enjoyed as He is in Himself. Thus this mission, appropriated to God the Holy Ghost, renders a man competent to know and love God as He is in Himself, and not merely as He can be recognized as the first Cause of creatures.

In the fatherland of heaven, this knowledge is the beatific vision itself. In this world the supernatural awareness of God is to be found in faith, the preparation for the vision. The knowledge and the love of God resultant from the indwelling of the Holy Ghost and expressed in the acts of the theological virtues are social rather than merely individual. They tend to unite men within the Catholic Church, and together the acts of the supernatural virtues constitute the basic operation of that Church. Thus, since the Holy Ghost, dwelling within the Church, acts as the ultimate Principle of its corporate unity and life, His function within this society bears some resemblance to that of a soul within a living physical body. So it is that the metaphor soul is useful and effective in explaining His work in the Church of Jesus Christ.

It is of course impossible to conciliate this use of the term soul with the expression “members of the soul of the Church.” There are members of a body or of a society. There can be no members of the Holy Ghost. Furthermore the men and women in whom the Holy Ghost dwells through sanctifying grace do not constitute any social organization by themselves in this world.

Historically, the false use of the terms body and soul has come from a failure to understand St. Robert’s second application of this analogy. This time the terminology is St. Robert’s own. While the other classical ecclesiologists commonly used the terms body and soul to designate the Church and the Holy Ghost, they did not employ these metaphors to designate the external profession of the faith and the communication of the sacraments on the one hand, and the three theological virtues on the other. In order to understand St. Robert’s use of this analogy, we must see these terms in their proper context.

St. Robert used this analogy in the second chapter of his De Ecclesia Militante, the chapter in which he presents his famous definition of the Church. This chapter opens with the citation and the criticism of five formulae which the heretics had used to describe the true Church of Jesus Christ. Then follows the definition which has become classical in Catholic theology.

But it is our teaching that there is one Church, and not two, and that this one and true Church is the assembly of men gathered together in the profession of the same Christian faith and in the communion of the same sacraments under the rule of legitimate pastors, and particularly of the Roman Pontiff, the one Vicar of Christ on earth.[10]

The great Controversialist employs the terms body and soul in indicating the difference between his definition and the various formulae which had been offered by heretics.

Our teaching differs from all the others in this that all the others require internal virtues to constitute someone as within the Church, and therefore they make the true Church invisible. But although we believe that all the virtues, faith, hope, charity and the rest are found in the Church, still, in order that someone be said to be absolutely a part of the true Church spoken of in the Scriptures, we do not think that any internal virtue whatsoever is required, but only the external profession of faith and the sensibly perceived communion of the sacraments. For the Church is as visible, and palpable a society as the assembly of the Roman people or the kingdom of France or the Republic of the Venetians.

But we should remember from Augustine, in the Breviculus Collationis, in the third conference, that the Church is a living body, in which there is a soul and a body. The internal gifts of the Holy Ghost, faith, hope, charity and the rest are the soul. The external profession of the faith and the communication of the sacraments are the body.

Hence it is that some are of the soul and of the body of the Church de anima et de corpore Ecclesiae and thus both inwardly and outwardly united with Christ the Head. These are most perfectly of the Church, for they are like living members in a body, although, even among these some partake more of life and others less. And some even have only the beginning of life, and as it were sensation but not movement, as those who have faith alone without charity.

Again, some are of the soul and not of the body, as catechumens or excommunicated persons, if they possess faith and charity as they very well may.

Finally others are of the body but not of the soul, as those who have no internal virtue, but who still profess the faith and communicate in the sacraments under the rule of the pastors by reason of some temporal hope or fear. Such persons are like hairs or fingernails or diseased fluids in the human body.

Therefore our definition takes cognizance of only this last way of being in the Church, since this is required as a minimum in order that a person may be said to be a part of the visible Church.[11]

Such is the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine. Taken in their proper context, the terms body and soul of the Church prove to be instruments employed by St. Robert in establishing his contention ‘‘that there is one Church and not two,” and that this one Church of Jesus Christ is as visible an organization as any civil society. It was not St. Robert, but rather the followers of Luther and of Calvin, who distinguished between a visible and an invisible Church. This was the very error which the great Doctor of the Church set out to overthrow.

St. Robert speaks of the three theological virtues as the soul in or of the Church. Manifestly there can be no such thing as a “member of the soul of the Church” in this sense. Faith, hope and charity constitute neither a body nor a society.

The people whom St. Robert designated as “of the soul of the Church” are, in the light of his own teaching, those who possess the virtues which are found within the Catholic Church and which the heretics had claimed as requisite for membership in the Church. Those who are “of the soul and not of the body” are precisely the individuals who have these virtues without being actually members of the Church. Neither the soul nor the persons who are said to be “of” that soul could be considered as forming a society in any way distinct from the one visible Church of Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, the counterpart of this soul is not the Church itself. The external profession of faith and the communication of the sacraments constitute this correlative body. The theological virtues and the other factors which St. Robert designated as the corresponding body are forms or forces which tend to unite a man to Christ, the Head of the Church. Those who are “of” both the soul and the body of the Church are said to be “inwardly and outwardly united to Christ the Head.”

A man is inwardly united to Christ in so far as he elicits some supernatural activity stemming from the gratia capitalis of our Lord Himself. No man can have the supernatural life, or even the beginning of that life as found in faith without charity, unless it be communicated to him by Christ. Thus there is a necessary contact between our Lord and every man who falls within the category of those who are “of the soul of the Church.” But this union is invisible and inward, brought about in and through the communication of divine grace.

The outward union with Christ is the factor by which a man places himself in the ranks of the Church militant. The Church, as a society, is the body of Christ, and thus the man who is a part of this society is actually joined to our Lord. The persons who are “of the body of the Church” according to the terminology of St. Robert, are precisely those who fulfill the minimum and essential requisites for being parts of this society, and who thus are outwardly and visibly in content with Christ.

St. Robert offers catechumens and excommunicated persons as examples of those who are not of the body of the Church, but who may be of the soul. He teaches explicitly that such people are not members of the Catholic Church.[12] Yet, far from postulating the existence of some spiritual and invisible society or Church, in any manner distinct from the Catholic Church, to which such persons would belong and through which they could achieve their eternal salvation, St. Robert teaches distinctly that they can be saved by being of the Church by desire.[13]

Thus there is one, and only one necessary social vehicle of salvation. There is no society in any way distinct from, the visible Catholic Church through which men may attain to the beatific vision. The men who are saved must be either actually members of this Church or desire to enter this society as members. Such a desire must be sincere, even where, by reason of faulty instruction it is implicit rather than explicit.

St. Robert’s use of the metaphors body and soul aptly explains the relationship between the external profession of faith and the three theological virtues. The factors which constitute a man as a member of the Catholic Church are the external profession of the faith and the communication of the sacraments. The man who makes a profession of the Catholic faith should really believe. The person who receives the sacraments should receive them with the proper dispositions, and thus possess the life of charity. Without the factors which St. Robert indicated as the soul, the external profession of the faith and the communication of the sacraments would suffice to establish a man as a member of the Catholic Church. However they would not make him a living member. Apart from the elements which St. Robert named as the soul, the corresponding external acts would be meaningless and insincere. Since the three theological virtues, together with the other internal gifts of the Holy Ghost, act to vivify and inform the elements which St. Robert designated as the body, the analogy of body and soul is useful as a means for teaching about their relations with the factors which contribute to make a man a member of the Church.

In the ninth chapter of the De Ecclesia Militante, St. Robert drew the terms of his analogy of body and soul from the same source, but attached different meanings to the terms. Once again he mentions St. Augustine’s use of the analogy in the Breviculus, albeit St. Robert does not record the fact that the actual terms corpus et anima do not occur in the passage to which he refers. But, where before the soul of the Church was used to designate “the internal gifts of the Holy Ghost, faith, hope, charity and the like,” now the good Catholics are represented as constituting the interior part, and as it were the soul of the Church. Where, in the second chapter, the external profession of the faith and the communication of the sacraments constituted the body of the Church, here in the ninth chapter the quasi corpus is made up of wicked Catholics.

In the ninth chapter St. Robert deals with the thesis that a great and manifest sinner can be a part of the Catholic Church. Among the objections he considers is one based upon assertions of St. Augustine, to the effect that Christ cannot have members who have been damned. The terms quasi corpus and quasi anima Ecclesiae occur in the response to this objection.

I answer that, because of these statements, not only Brentius and Calvin, but also certain Catholics fancy that there are two Churches. However this is truly imagination, since neither the Scriptures nor Augustine ever speak of two Churches, but only of one Church. Certainly, in the Breviculus Collalionum, in the third conference, when the Donatists falsely charged the Catholics with holding two Churches, one of which would contain only the good while the other would hold both good and wicked persons, the Catholics answered that they never dreamed that there were two Churches, but that they had only distinguished parts or stages of the Church.

There were parts since the good belong to the Church in one way and the wicked in another. For the good are the inner part, and as it were the soul of the Church quasi anima Ecclesiae. The wicked are the outer part and as it were the body quasi corpus. And they gave the example of the inner and the outer man de nomine interiore et exteriore, who are not two men but two parts of the same man.[14]

Not by any means all of the men who are said to be “of the soul of the Church” in the second chapter, appear in the ninth chapter of the De Ecclesia Militante within the quasi anima Ecclesiae. Only good Catholics, members of the true Church who are in the state of grace are said to constitute the quasi anima. Not only these persons, but all those who have the true faith, whether they are in the state of grace or not, and whether they are members of the Church or not, are classed as “of the soul of the Church” according to the terminology of the second chapter.

Obviously there is nothing in this last use of the terms body and soul favoring the existence of an invisible Church. The terms quasi corpus and quasi anima actually appear within a passage devoted to the proof that no such organization exists. There is no such thing as a member of this “soul of the Church,” since the Catholics in the state of grace have no special social organization distinct from that of the Church itself. Only a body or a society can have a member.

Yet, at the same time, the fact remains that good Catholics and wicked Catholics do not belong to the Church in the same way. Those who are in the state of grace possess that supernatural activity which is the basic community life of the Catholic Church. The wicked within the Church do not contribute towards this activity. They are as it were carried along in an organization which lives a life of supernatural perfection. Thus they stand in somewhat the same relation to good Catholics as the body does to the soul within the human composite.

St. Robert himself is authority for the statement that even in his time certain Catholics had postulated the existence of a twofold Church. However it was not until the eighteenth century that men began to abuse his terminology to propound a thesis which was wholly distasteful to him. Charles du Plessis d’Argentré, Honoratus Tournely, and Louis Legrand who contributed towards the use of the terms body and soul to designate a twofold Church no longer considered these words as metaphors, but thought of them as names for some realities which demanded an explanation in their own right. Now that the Holy Father has reproved the doctrine of the twofold Church, we may look forward to a decided improvement in popular ecclesiology.

1.AAS, XXXV (1943), 224; The NCWC translation #64, p. 40.

2.The Number Two Catechism, Lesson 12, #168.

3.AAS, p. 234; NCWC translation, #84, p. 52.

4.Robert Bellarmine, De Controversiis Christianae Fidei adversus Huius Temporis Haereticos, Tom. I (Ingolstadt, 1586); Quartae Controversiae Generalis, Liber III, De Ecclesia Militantae, cap. 2, col. 1264.

5.Op. cit, cap. 14, col. 1315.

6.Op. cit., cap. 2, col. 1264.

7.Op. cit., cap. 9, col. 1294.

8.AAS, p. 199; NCWC translation, # 13, p. 11.

9.AAS, p. 220; NCWC translation, # 56, p. 35.

10.Op. cit., cap. 2, col. 1263

11.Op. cit., cap. 2, col. 1264

12.Op. cit., chapters 3 and 6; columns 1265–1266; 1274–1277.

13.Op. cit., cap. 3, col. 1266; cap. 6, col., 1276.

14.Op. cit., cap. 9, col, 1294.

V

The Communion of Saints and the Mystical Body

In the ninth article of the Apostles’ Creed we affirm our belief in the Communion of Saints. This formula, which did not enter the Creed until about the fifth century, has never been explained in any solemn declaration of the Catholic Church. As a result, we must rely upon the organs of the Church’s ordinary magisterium for a satisfactory statement of its meaning.

There are extant four distinct ways of interpreting the term Communio Sanctorum. The first method would make the word Sanctorum neuter, the genitive of Sancta. Thus the Communio Sanctorum would be the common possession of holy things, the corporate enjoyment within the Catholic Church of those agencies which our Lord has instituted to help men live the life of grace.

The other interpretations accept Sanctorum as masculine, the genitive of Sancti. The English formula “Communion of Saints” is fitted to express only these interpretations. In this way the Communio could be understood either as the fellowship or association within a definite society or as the society itself. When the word Communio is understood as designating a society, then this organization is either identical with or distinct from the Catholic Church.

The explanation according to which the Communio Sanctorum means the common possession of means for salvation was recognized and approved by the Catechism of the Council of Trent. The Catechism taught that the formula Communio Sanctorum was added as a kind of explanation to the preceding expression about the Holy Catholic Church, and it goes on to explain that “the unity of the Spirit by which it [the Church] is ruled makes whatever is granted in it common, for the fruits of all the Sacraments belong to all the faithful.”[1] According to the Catechism of the Council of Trent, not only the sacraments and the fruits of the sacraments are beneficial to all the members of the Church together, but also the charisms or the gratiae gratis datae are truly common possessions.[2]

Very few theologians, however, attempted to explain the Communio Sanctorum entirely as the common possession of instruments for salvation. Usually the proponents of Catholic teaching interpret this phrase to mean the fellowship or association with our Lord and with the blessed in heaven and the souls in purgatory enjoyed within the Catholic Church. Those in the state of grace in this world receive the full benefits accruing from this association. However, Catholics in the state of mortal sin are not wholly cut off from this communication. They receive some share from their fellowship with the Saints of God inasmuch as the blessings consequent upon the Communion of Saints tend to bring them to repentance and thus to eternal life.

No man can enjoy this fellowship apart from the Catholic Church. Those who enjoy the Communion of Saints either are actually members of the Catholic Church or really intend to become members. Thus those in the state of grace, the persons who derive the full benefit from their association with the Church triumphant and the Church suffering, possess that charity which demands the love of the brotherhood. Every person in the state of grace intends to live and to die within the unity of the Catholic Church, even though, for want of proper instruction, his intention should be merely implicit.

Some theologians have used the term Communio Sanctorum as a definition of the Catholic Church itself. In so far as the Catholic Church extends into heaven and purgatory, it may well be defined in the formula “the society of the saints who serve God under Christ.” Naturally, those who use such a definition are at pains to insist that the term sanctorum in the definition is not equivalent to iustourm. It is heretical to teach that the membership in the Church of Jesus Christ is restricted to those in the state of grace. It is theologically correct to state that the Church is the congregation of the saints, in the sense that all of those who are gathered within it either possess or profess holiness. Those in the Church triumphant and in the Church suffering actually possess holiness in the sense that they all possess the life of habitual grace. The members of the Church militant do not all possess charity, but they at least profess the holy faith of Jesus Christ, communicate in His holy sacraments and live under the holy rule He has placed within His Church.

Unfortunately, in our own day, certain writers have reacted against this last interpretation of the Communio Sanctorum in such a way as to sponsor another explanation, not in conformity with the Catholic traditions. In this group are certain of the finest theologians of our times. Father Dieckmann, S.J., teaches that the Communio Sanctorum is really distinct from the Corpus Mysticum, insisting that the Communion of Saints has a greater extension than the Church.[3] Father Gruden, accepting the teaching of Dieckmann, carries his conclusions still further, and holds that the Communion of Saints is really “an invisible society, a ‘church’ or ‘ecclesia’ in the broad sense.”[4] According to this theory, there are members of the Communion of Saints who are not members of the Church, and conversely there are members of the Church who do not belong to the Communion of Saints.

Radically, this view is based upon a misinterpretation of the threefold definition of the Catholic Church. The strictest definition of the Church designates it as a society visibly distinct from the other religious organizations operating in the world. According to this definition, the Church is the society of those who are united in the profession of the same Christian faith and in the communication of the same Sacraments under legitimate pastors, and in particular under the one Vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman Pontiff. The broader definition of the Church identifies it as the society which is the true Israel, the continuation in the world of the body of believers in Christ existent since the days of our first parents. According to this broader definition, the Church is the congregation of those who believe in Christ.

The broadest definition of the Church represents this organization as the assembly which extends into eternity. After all, the members of the Catholic Church on earth are really “fellow citizens with the saints and the domestics of God.”[5] St. John the Apostle preached that the faithful might have fellowship with him, “and that our fellowship may be with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ.”[6] The Church, considered in this light, is properly defined as “the society of the saints, serving God through Christ.”

The traditional theologians of the Catholic Church never intended to designate three separate organizations with these three types of definitions. The three kinds of formulae described one and the same society, but looked upon that society as it were from three distinct angles. They labored to prove that all three of these definitions applied to the Catholic Church alone among all the various religious societies existent in the world. Certainly they did not think of the Church in the broadest sense as in any way an “invisible society” distinct from the Catholic Church.

If we take the term Communion as meaning a society, then the Communion of Saints is nothing more or less than the reality described in the broadest definition of the Catholic Church. It is the convocation of the saints, serving God under Christ. There is certainly no theological warrant for supposing that this body constitutes a social unity distinct from that of the visible Catholic Church here on earth. A brief survey of the history of the formula Communion of Saints should serve to make this point clear.

One of the earliest mentions of the formula Communio Sanctorum with reference to a Creed is found in the Explanatio Symboli, attributed to Nicetas of Remesiana, and written around the beginning of the fifth century.

After the profession of the Blessed Trinity, you profess that you believe the holy Catholic Church. But what else is the Church but the congregation of all the saints? For from the beginning of the world the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs and the rest of the just who have been, who are, and who will be, constitute one Church because, sanctified in one faith and manner of life and signed with one Spirit, they are made into one body: of which body Christ is the head, as we have been taught and as it is written.

Again, I say more. Even the angels, even the powers and the heavenly virtues gathered together in this one Church, for the Apostle teaches us that all things, not only those which are on earth but also those which are in heaven are reconciled in Christ.

Therefore believe that you are going to achieve the communion of saints in this one Church. Know that this Catholic Church, the communion of which you ought firmly to retain, is established throughout the entire world. There are other Churches, which are false, but you should avoid these.[7]

As far as the author of this treatise is concerned, the Communion of Saints was certainly a fellowship to be found within the Catholic Church alone. He stresses the very concept of the Church which Fathers Dieckmann and Gruden have disliked, and which they have proposed as that of an “invisible society,” a Church merely in the broad sense of the term. But Nicetas identifies the Church, which is distinguished here on earth as a society distinct from the conventicles of the Marcionites and the Manicheans, as the organization which includes the saints and even the angels, and the society within which men may attain fellowship with the blessed in heaven.

Commenting on Psalm 149, St. Augustine too recognized the Church which he defended as existing both on earth and in heaven.

It has begotten us. It is the Church of the Saints. In part in pilgrimage, in great part dwelling in heaven, it has nourished us. In so far as it dwells in heaven, it is the blessedness of the angels. In so far as it is in pilgrimage in this world, it is the hope of the just.[8]

In his Enchiridion the great Father of the Church insists that the angels are not members of the Church in the same manner as the men who have been redeemed by our Lord. At the same time he states again that the Church on earth is a part of the organization in which the angels in heaven are included. It is interesting to compare the two passages. Speaking of the difference between the Church of the angels and the Church militant, St. Augustine stresses the visibility of this latter as contrasted with the comparative invisibility of the angelic choirs.

The Church among the holy angels and the powers of God will be apparent to us when we shall be joined to it in the end in possessing the same eternal happiness. But that which is in pilgrimage from it on earth is better known to us because we are in it and because it is made up of men like ourselves. This latter has been redeemed from every sin by the blood of a Mediator without sin…. For Christ did not die for the angels.[9]

At the same time St. Augustine adverts to the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, (without however using this term), when he teaches that the angels in heaven and the faithful on earth belong to the same organization.

Here [this Church] is considered as a whole, and not merely according to the part which is in pilgrimage on earth, praising the name of the Lord from the rising to the setting of the sun, and singing the new canticle after the ancient captivity. [It is considered also] in that [part] which has always, since it was established, been joined to God in heaven and which has never experienced any evil of loss. This latter stands blessed in the holy angels, and it helps, as it should, that portion of itself which is in pilgrimage. Both portions will be one in their lot for all eternity. Now they are one by the bond of charity, because the whole was established for the worship of the one God.[10]

The part of the Church which is in pilgrimage here on earth is of course the Church militant, the true Church of Jesus Christ, which Augustine defended so ably against the heretics of his own time. This true Church was the Catholic Church, the organization which will contain good and bad members until the day of the general judgment. The members of this one Church were in fellowship with the blessed and the angels in heaven. The Church, with its perfect and imperfect members was the recipient of aid from the angelic hosts. There was, according to St. Augustine, a real and dynamic association with the blessed in heaven in and through this visible Catholic Church. There is certainly no warrant for teaching that the Communion of Saints is a sort of invisible society, distinct from the Catholic Church, since social union with the blessed in heaven is to be found through the visible Body of Christ.

What St. Augustine proposes as invisible is simply the union of the angels within the Church of God. He preached that they are joined to us now, and that they will be united to us for all eternity in a common worship of the Triune God. In his writings the Church militant is represented as in pilgrimage, as temporarily absent from its true home in the courts of heaven. Yet, during the course of this pilgrimage the Church militant remains in communication with its associates in the eternal homeland. Certainly there is no reason to say that the Saints in heaven belong to any society distinct from the Church, and including in its membership all of those persons in the state of grace here on earth.

St. Thomas Aquinas, treating explicitly of the Communion of Saints, taught that the good of one member of the Church was communicated to all the other members.

The Communion of Saints. As in a natural body the operation of one member contributes to the good of the entire body, so it is in the spiritual body which is the Church. And because all the faithful are one body, the good of the one is communicated to the other. As it is said in the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 12, [v. 5]: Every one members one of another. Hence among the other matters which the Apostles have taught us that we must believe is the doctrine that there is a communion of goods in the Church, and this is the thing called the Communion of Saints. Among the other members of the Church, the principal member is Christ, because He is the Head, as it is written in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, [v. 22]: He hath made Him Head over all the Church. Therefore the good of Christ is communicated to all Christians as the power of the head to all its members, and this communication takes place through the Sacraments of the Church.[11]

Many of the great counter-Reformation theologians wrote about the Communion of Saints. None of them considered it as an invisible society in any way distinct from the Catholic Church. Thus Frederick Nausea, the famous Bishop of Vienna († 1552), interpreted the Communion of Saints as the common possession of spiritual goods by the members of the Church triumphant and the Church militant. At the same time, however, he designated the Church itself as the Communion of Saints.

So Christian piety believes that Church to be holy which is the Catholic Church and the Communion of Saints. Both still fighting here on earth and triumphing in heaven it shares universally one God, one Pastor, one faith and one baptism, the same merits and prayers, the same sacraments and especially the Eucharist which is the sacrament of all unity and concord.[12]

In his paraphrase of the ninth article of the Apostles’ Creed Nausea offers a still more complete statement of his belief.

I believe also the Communion of Saints. That is I believe that through the sacraments of this Church and also through the faith of this same Church I have been united in a certain communion with Christ our Head and with all the saints, and that I have been made one with them, in such a way that whatever good Christ and His saints either already dead or still living have ever merited, comes in its entirety to me as long as I believe sincerely and remain within the Church, and that it will avail unto my salvation so that I need never despair of attaining eternal life.[13]

The Catechism of the Council of Trent, which appeared twenty-two years after the Catholicus Catechismus of Nausea, followed the same line. Fellowship with the Father and with Christ is to be found in the Communion of Saints. There is a common possession of spiritual goods among the members of the Church. The Catechism of the Council of Trent insisted that the faithful in the state of mortal sin are not entirely cut off from this fellowship, even though the full benefit of the Communion of Saints comes only to those who live the life of habitual grace.[14] The Catechism makes no reference to the members of the Church triumphant or the Church suffering in its exposition of this article.

John Hessels († 1566), writing at Louvain four years before his death, identified the Church absolutely with the Communion of Saints.

The Church is said to be the Communion, or the society of saints because all the saints are gathered together in it, as one body united through one spirit, through the bond of peace and charity.[15]

The great Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius († 1579) was perfectly willing to accept the term Communion of Saints as a definition of the Church as long as the word saints was not considered as synonymous with those in possession of the state of grace. He adverted to the fact that St. Paul had saluted the members of the primitive Church as saints, regardless of the perfection of their spiritual lives. However, Hosius taught that the expression signified the community of spiritual goods within the Church and insisted that these goods were the common property of those within the Church militant and the Church triumphant.

This Communion of Saints must be understood in this manner. All the merits of the saints, both those who still fight at our side here on earth and those who now triumph in heaven after they have fought the good fight and have received the crown of glory, are communicated to us, plead for us, aid us.[16]

St. Peter Canisius († 1597) explained the Communion of Saints so effectively that most catechisms since his time have followed his method.

In the fourth place [we believe] that the Communion of Saints is in the same Church, in such a way that those who dwell within the Church as within the house or the family of God retain a certain fellowship and union among themselves and, as members of one body, aid each other by their mutual duties, merits and prayers. Among these there is unity of faith, agreement in doctrine and the same use of the sacraments. They are careful to retain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.[17]

In his smaller catechism he explicitly adverts to the fact that the Communion of Saints exists in such a way as to include not only the faithful on earth, (St. Peter Canisius does not limit this communion to those who enjoy the state of grace), but also the blessed in heaven and the souls in purgatory.[18]

The old Baltimore Catechism taught that “the Saints and we are members of the same Church, because the Church in heaven and the Church on earth are one and the same Church, and all its members are in communion with one another.”[19] It defined the Communion of Saints as “the union which exists between the members of the Church on earth with one another, and with the blessed in heaven and with the suffering souls in purgatory.”[20] The revised version teaches that the Communion of Saints means, “The union of the faithful on. Earth, the blessed in heaven, and the souls in purgatory, with Christ as their head.”[21]

Cardinal Gasparri’s Catechism repeats the teaching of the Catechism on the Council of Trent. “The second part of the Ninth Article of the Creed—‘the Communion of Saints’—is connected with the first part as in some sort explaining it, for it teaches us what benefit the members of the Church may gain from the holiness obtained in and through the Church.” Cardinal Gasparri asserts that “by this second part of the Ninth Article of the Creed we mean that between the members of the Church—in Heaven, in Purgatory, and on earth—there exists, by reason of their close union with one another under Christ their Head, a mutual communication in spiritual riches.”[22]

The Catechism Catholic Faith adverts explicitly to the fellowship which constitutes the Communion of Saints as existing within the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. “By the Communion of Saints we mean that the members of the Church in Heaven, in purgatory, and on earth, are all one family of God, loving and helping one another as members of the Mystical Body of Christ.”[23] Unfortunately, however, Catholic Faith speaks of “membership” in the Communion of Saints as something distinct from membership in the Church.[24] This terminology is not sanctioned by Cardinal Gasparri’s Catechism, on which Catholic Faith is based. The Cardinal spoke of the enjoyment of this fellowship. He did not consider the Communion of Saints as a society in any way distinct from the true Church.[25]

In the article “Communion of Saints” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Joseph Francis Sollier teaches that this communion is “the spiritual solidarity which binds together the faithful on earth, the souls in purgatory, and the saints in heaven in the organic unity of the same mystical body under Christ its head, and in a constant interchange of supernatural offices.”[26] In his book The Communion of Saints Charles McGinnis writes that, “In one word, the expression, Communion of Saints, comprises the Church Militant, Triumphant, and Suffering.”[27] His definition of the Communion of Saints as well as the definition set forth by Archbishop Ireland in the introduction to his work, accords fully with that of Sollier.[28] The same definition, for all intents and purposes, is to be found in the brilliant article on the Communion of Saints by Father Bernard in the Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique[29] and in the treatise on the Communion of Saints by the scholarly French Franciscan, Valentin Breton.[30]

In the light of the literature on the Communion of Saints, the following conclusions are amply justified.

I: If the term, Communion of Saints, be used to designate a society then this social unit is none other than the Church which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.

II: The term is ordinarily used to indicate a fellowship within a society. The society within which the fellowship exists is the Catholic Church. Thus the only persons who enjoy this fellowship are those who either are or intend to become members of the Catholic Church.

III: The members of the Church receive the benefit of their association with the blessed in heaven through the sacraments and the corporate and private acts of worship existent within the Church. Thus the common spiritual possessions of Catholics are at once the channels through which men receive favors from God, through which the souls in purgatory are benefited, and by which the saints in heaven are honored.

IV: There is no invisible Church, no religious society distinct from the Catholic Church, of which men in the state of grace are members. The only society which can rightly be denominated as the Communion of Saints is the true Church of Jesus Christ, the Mystical Body.

1.Catechismus Concilii Tridentini, Pii V Pontificis Maximi Jussu Promuljiatus, pars I, a. 9, cap. 25 (translation ours).

2.Cf. Loc. cit. Cap. 24–28.

3.Cf. De Ecclesia Tractatus Historico-Dogmatici, Tom. II (Friburgi Brisgoviae, 1925), No. 935, pp. 235–36.

4.The Mystical Christ (St. Louis and London: B. Herder Book Co., 1936), p. 161.

5.Eph. 2:19.

6.1 John 1:3,

7.MPL 52, col. 871. Migne ascribes this work to Niceta of Aquileia.

8.MPL 37, col. 1952.

9.Cap. 16. MPL 40, col. 260–61.

10.Ibid., cap. 15. col. 258–59.

11.Expositio super Symbolo Apostolorum. (This opusculum is numbered 33 in the Mandonnet edition and 6 in the traditional Roman collection.) The translation is ours.

12.Lib. II, p. 20v (translation ours). The dedication of this book was written in 1552 in Vienna. The time and place of publication are not mentioned.

13.Loc. cit. (translation ours).

14.Cf. Loc. cit. Cap. 24–28.

15.Brevis et Catholica Symboli Apostolici Explicatio, Louvain, 1562, cap. 70, p. 39r (translation ours).

16.Confessio Catholicae Fidei Christiana, cap. 31. In the Opera Omnia,Vol. I, Cologne, 1584, p. 71 (translation ours).

17.Summa Doctrinae Christianae, cap. 1, no. 17. In Father Streicher’s critical edition (Rome and Munich, 1933), Catechismi Latini, p. 89 (translation ours).

18.Institutiones et Exercitamenta Christianae Pietatis, cap. 1, no. 14. In op. cit., p. 241 (translation ours).

19.Lesson 31, q. 336.

20.Loc. cit., q. 170.

21.Lesson 13, q. 170.

22.The Catholic Catechism, drawn up by his Eminence Peter Cardinal Gasparri. Only authorized English translation, by Reverend Hugh Pope, O.P., third printing (New York, P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1932), q. 170, pp. 110–11.

23.Ibid., q. 14.3.

24.Cf. ibid., q. 144

25.Cf. ibid., q. 172.

26.Francis Sollier, Catholic Encyclopedia, 1st ed., “Communion of Saints” (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908), Vo1. 4, p. 171.

27.The Communion of Saints (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1912), p. 27,

28.McGinnis’ definition is found on page 26, that of Archbishop Ireland on page vi.

29.Cf. Vol. 3, col. 447.

30.The Communion of Saints (St. Louis, B. Herder Book Co., 1934), pp. 120–21.

VI

Christ the Teacher and the Stability of Catholic Dogma

Currently there is considerable interest in promoting the cause of a special liturgical feast of Christ the Teacher. Consequently it will be quite advantageous to study the doctrinal mission of Our Lord, especially as it is exercised in His Church of the New Testament. It is obvious, of course, that, during the course of His public life here on earth, Our Lord’s activities within the community of His disciples included the work of teaching, and that His teaching then was definitely teaching in the strictest sense of the term. It is no less obvious that, since the time of His glorious Ascension into heaven, Our Lord, as the Head of the Mystical Body which is His Church, has enlightened or illumined that society. He has enlightened the Church as a part of that very office by which the Holy Ghost, dwelling within the Church as the Source of its unity and life, has performed a function which has led the Catholic magisterium to speak of Him as the Soul of the Catholic Church. Two questions about this doctrinal activity of Our Lord in His Church are of special interest and importance today. First, is that doctrinal activity in the Church to be classified as teaching in the strict sense of the word, so that Our Lord is properly the Teacher of the Magister of the faithful living here and now in His Kingdom on earth? Second, how does this doctrinal activity of Our Lord in His Church serve to explain the inherent stability of Catholic dogma?

The Holy Father’s encyclical Mystici Corporis contains an excellent summary of the Catholic doctrine on Our Lord’s function as the Enlightener of His Church. This teaching is to be found in the portion of the encyclical dealing with Our Lord’s work as the Head of His Mystical Body. The document explains that, as the Head of the Body, Our Lord possesses a superiority in the line of excellence over all the members, and that He exercises his headship by His government of the Church, through His conformity with His members, by reason of the plentitude of supernatural life existent within Him, and finally by reason of the influxus of life which He communicates to the Body and its members. By way of this influxus, Our Lord gives enlightenment and sanctification to the Church and to its members. Here is the pertinent text of the encyclical.

In us the nerves reach from the head to all the parts of the body and give them the power to feel and move; in like manner Our Savior communicates power to His Church so that the things of God are understood more clearly and desired more eagerly by the faithful. From Him there is poured forth into the body of the Church all the light by which the believers are divinely illumined, and all of the grace by which they become holy as He is holy.

Christ enlightens His entire Church, as is evident from almost innumerable passages of the Sacred Scriptures and of the Holy Fathers. “No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he that declared him.”[1] Coming as a Teacher from God[2] to give testimony to the truth,[3] He shed such light upon the primitive apostolic Church that the prince of the apostles exclaimed: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”[4] From heaven He assisted the evangelists in such a way that as members of Christ they wrote what they had learned, as it were at the dictation of the Head.[5] And for us who still linger in this earthly exile, He is today the Author of the faith, as, in the fatherland of heaven, He will be the One who brings this faith to its final perfection. It is He who grants the light of the faith to believers. It is He who divinely bestows the supernatural gifts of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom to the pastors and teachers, and above all to His Vicar on earth, so that they may faithfully preserve the treasury of the faith, defend it energetically, and explain and support it in a devout and diligent manner. Finally it is He who, though unseen, presides over and guides the Councils of the Church.[6]

In the first place, the Mystici Corporis insists that the entirety of the light by which the faithful are illumined by God within His Church comes to them from Our Lord, the Head of the Mystical Body. As the same document goes on to explain, this “light” includes not only the interior graces required for the production of an act of faith, but the actual statement of the truths of faith themselves. Our Lord is described as “illumining” the Church insofar as He “has declared (enarravit)” the mysteries of the Godhead. Coming as a teacher (magister), He enlightened the primitive Church in such a way that the first Vicar of Christ told his Master that he and his companions would not desert Him because He had the words of eternal life. Another aspect of that enlightenment of the Church by Our Lord is to be found in Our Lord’s activity in the work of scriptural inspiration. Thus the human nature of Christ is represented as acting as an instrument in the process of inspiration itself.

The Mystici Corporis then goes on to describe the doctrinal activity of Our Lord in His Church today. He acts as the Auctor of the faith for the faithful here in this world, just as He acts as the Consummator of the faith for the souls in heaven. The last section of the citation is an explanation of Our Lord’s actual doctrinal work in the Church since the time of His Ascension into heaven, a statement of the manner according to which He works as the Auctor fidei within the Church of the faithful.

Here we must note a distinction between the manner of Our Lord’s activity in the primitive Church (within the society of His disciples during the course of His public life here on earth) and the way in which He acts with reference to His Church since that period. Both then and now, the lumen fidei, the inward supernatural intellectual power by which the creature is rendered capable of accepting the supernatural revealed truths of divine public revelation, must be considered as a gift of God through the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ Our Lord. Christ, as Man, as the Head of the Church has always been the cause of the inward power or grasp of faith in this sense. With respect to the primitive Church and the Church of the time since the Ascension, however, there is a definite difference in another line. Our Lord’s teaching function in the primitive Church was that of a direct Instructor. He taught His disciples and the apostles by expressing the divinely revealed truths to them directly in His own words and with His own voice. Since that time He has spoken to the Church through the voice of His ambassadors, men whom He has commissioned to teach with His authority and in His name. We can now briefly consider the function of Christ as the Teacher within the Church with reference to the lumen fidei itself throughout the history of the Church.

It is clear that the habitus of divine faith and the various actual graces by which man is moved and rendered competent to perform acts of belief in God come to the believer, not only from God but from the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ which acts as an instrument conjoined to the Godhead by the gratia unionis. Our Lord as Man is thus the Cause, both by way of efficient causality and by way of His sovereign merit, of the intellectual power or capacity by which each of the faithful is enabled to perform the supernatural cognitive act of theological faith in God. Insofar as this power is produced by the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity, it is attributed or appropriated to the Holy Ghost. The sacred humanity of Jesus Christ Our Lord co-operates in the production of this effect, in such a way that no act of belief is ever performed by any human being independently of Our Lord’s humanity, actually working for the effecting of this lumen fidei within the intellect of the person He has redeemed.

This, of course, is an effect beyond the power of any merely human teacher. All that the merely human teacher can do in any line, theological or otherwise, is to express the truth which he has grasped and which he wishes to have his pupil come to know, and to adapt that expression in such a way that it will be at once effectively intelligible to the student and an accurate pronouncement of the truth to be conveyed. The mental capacity of the student is something which he can never hope to increase. Yet it is precisely in the way of such an increase in the intellectual capacity of the disciple that Our Lord’s primary function as the Enlightener or Teacher within the Mystical Body is exercised.

As far as Our Lord’s expression or statement of the divine truths of the Catholic faith is concerned, there is one very special function to which Pius XII refers. As the Mystici Corporis reminds us, the divine public revelation which we accept with the assent of theological faith within the Catholic Church is primarily a body of truth which Jesus Christ expressed and set forth effectively to His apostles and disciples during the course of His public life on this earth. Some of that message, furthermore, is contained in the canonical books written by Our Lord’s disciples as the instruments inspired by God. Thus the books themselves, and the expression of the truth contained in them, must be attributed to God as the principal cause, and to the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ as the instrument conjoined to the Godhead. According to the doctrine of the Mystici Corporis, then, Our Lord acts as the teacher within His Church in the sense that He is truly the Author of the inspired books containing part of the divinely revealed message with which the magisterium of His Church is primarily and essentially concerned.

Even restricting ourselves to the consideration of Our Lord’s influence as the Cause or the Author of the inspired books by which the faithful are instructed in the way of eternal and supernatural salvation, His function is something quite different from that of other merely human authors who have labored within God’s kingdom in days gone by. St. Thomas Aquinas, to give one highly illustrious example, wrote many books which serve for the instruction of the faithful within the society of Our Lord’s disciples. Yet it would be impossible to say that St. Thomas acts now as a teacher, in the strict and proper sense of the term, within the Church. His influence is virtual, emanating from the power which he exercised when he actually taught during his life on earth.

Our Lord, on the other hand, lives now, precisely as Teacher, within His Church. The books of which He is the Author are expounded and explained by men whom He has commissioned, by men who act and teach in virtue of the power which He communicates to them here and now. Thus the work of expressing and of carrying the truth to the disciples within the Church, the function which is pre-eminently the task of the teacher, is something which He is actually performing within the Church at every moment, and which earns for Him, from this point of view, the title of the Church’s Teacher or Magister in the strict and proper sense of the term.

But, though this be true with reference to the part of divine Christian revelation which is contained in the inspired books, particularly those of the New Testament, we may well ask ourselves about Our Lord’s doctrinal function within the Church with reference to the revealed public message as a whole, or even with reference to that portion of it which is not contained in the Sacred Writings. The encyclical Mystici Corporis contains adequate instruction on this point also. In this document the Holy Father points to the fact that Our Lord Himself enriches the ecclesia docens and particularly the Bishop of Rome with the gifts of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, “so that they may faithfully preserve the treasury of the faith, defend it energetically, and explain and support it in a devout and diligent manner.”

Despite the fact that the expression “divinitus ditat” is employed in this passage, there is no doubt about the pertinence of this teaching to Our Lord, to the sacred humanity of Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body. As God, or by His divine nature, Our Lord most certainly is the ultimate Source of all the supernatural and natural benefits which come to His creatures. But it is not precisely as God that He is the Head of the Church, and that we are His members. Thus the functions which the Holy Father ascribes to Him in the Mystici Corporis are those which He accomplishes in and through His human nature. The granting of the gifts of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge to the members of the ecclesia docens is one of these functions. It is obviously something done “in a divine manner (divinitas),” since the granting of these spiritual gifts is something of which God alone could be the principal Cause. Here the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ once again acts as an instrument intimately conjoined to the divinity through the gratia unionis.

Our Lord’s sacred humanity thus performs a real though instrumental work in the granting of these necessary gifts to the leaders of that Church with which He promised to remain until the end of time. The gifts are described, not merely as empowering the ecclesia docens to teach and to guard the deposit of Catholic faith infallibly and effectively as long as the Church militant will endure: they are rather depicted as bringing about that actual infallible conservation and teaching. The message which the apostles heard from the lips of Christ, and which they handed over to the Church as divinely revealed doctrine to be preached in the Church militant accurately until the end of time, is taught and guarded infallibly precisely because of the supernatural gifts in the order of cognition which Our Lord in his human nature grants to the ecclesia docens.

The three gifts to which the encyclical refers explicitly are all to be found in the list of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. Obviously, however, the benefits named in the encyclical are not precisely those listed among the qualities which sacred theology knows as the dona Spiritus Sancti. The gifts of the Holy Ghost, as we know them in theology, are classed in the category of gratia gratum faciens. They are thus listed as supernatural gifts which have to do primarily with the spiritual perfection of the individuals who possess them. The benefits to which the encyclical refers are, on the contrary, gifts conferred upon the immediate possessors for the sake of the universal Church of God. Thus, ultimately at least, they are to be classified among the gratiae gratis datae. They are given to move the ecclesia docens to the accomplishment of the work for which Our Lord Himself commissioned it. Consequently they can only be understood in terms of that commission.

Our Lord gave His apostles, and thus their successors in the ecclesia docens, all the authority indicated by His statement that “He that listens to you listens to me: and he that rejects you rejects me: and he that rejects me rejects him that sent me.”[7] In other words, their teaching is presented as Our Lord’s own. Acceptance of their teaching constitutes belief in His message, and the rejection of their teaching involves a rejection of Our Lord and of God Himself. The members of the ecclesia docens and of course the ecclesia docens as a whole must be considered as an instrument of Christ the Teacher.

It is important to realize, however, in just what sense these men must be called the instruments of Jesus Christ. In the first place, it is at once obvious that they are not instruments in the full and complete sense that the inspired human authors of Sacred Scripture were the instruments of God in the production of those books of which God Himself is truly the Author. The end-product of the process of inspiration, in which these men were employed as God’s instruments, consisted of books of which God is the Author, and consequently of books which can be ascribed to God in every statement and expression. We can take any one of the statements contained in inspired Scriptures, and say that God teaches this definite truth, this definite statement. On the other hand, we do not say that some definite teaching of the ecclesia docens is a statement of God Himself. Thus, merely for the sake of example, when the present Holy Father defined the dogma of the Assumption, he did not say that the words of the definition were the actual words of God, as is the case with Holy Scripture. He stated that he made this definition “by the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by Our own authority.”[8] What was defined was a divinely revealed dogma of the Catholic faith, one of the truths which had been taught to the apostles and handed over to the Church to be taught accurately until the end of time.

In this way the Holy Father (and consequently the entire ecclesia docens) has what we may call an ambassodorial instrumentality. Thes message with which the ecclesia docens is charged to preach infallibly, the one body of truth with which it is primarily and essentially concerned, is the divine teaching given by Our Lord. With reference to the message itself, they are the instruments of Christ, in such a way that the teaching is attributed to Our Lord as a principal Cause. It is not their doctrine, but His. The effect is not attributed properly to the instrument but rather to the principal cause.

But, as far as the statement or expression of the doctrine is concerned, the members of the ecclesia docens act as principal causes rather than merely or exactly as instruments in the employ of Christ. Thus, for example, the doctrine of papal infallibility is Our Lord’s own teaching, but we do not say that Christ defined this teaching as a dogma of the Catholic faith. That definition we rightly call the work of the Vatican Council. In exactly the same way, the truth of Our Lady’s bodily Assumption into heaven is one of the truths which God Himself incorporated into the body of His Christian and public supernatural revelation. Yet the definition of this dogma is rightly ascribed to Pius XII. He issued that definition by the authority of Christ and by his own authority. His authority came from Our Lord through Peter, but it was and it remains the authority of Pius XII. His is the authority of the Vicar of the Ambassador of Christ. In this way there is justified within the Church the claim of the Apostle Paul that “For Christ, therefore, we are ambassadors, God as it were exhorting by us.”[9]

We can return now to the question of those gratiae gratis datae through which, according to the Mystici Corporis, the ambassadorial function of the ecclesia docens is aided by the doctrinal mission of Christ as the Head of His Church. Do the wisdom, understanding, and knowledge accorded by Our Lord to the members of His ecclesia docens, and particularly to the visible head of His Church, involve the actual possession by these men of the entire deposit of Christian teaching, in such a way that they are always competent to give an authoritative and correct statement of the Christian faith in the face of whatever difficulties or questions that might arise?

Obviously only an affirmative answer may be given to this question, always, however, in the light of the fact that the charism of infallibility is given only to the Holy Father as an individual Bishop, and is given to the rest of the ecclesia docens, either gathered together in Council or scattered throughout the world in their various individual local Churches of Christ, only insofar as they are united with the Sovereign Pontiff. In the light of this teaching it becomes clear that the Holy Father, and the rest of the ecclesia docens with him, are, through the triumphant power of Jesus Christ, in possession of the truth of divine revelation in such a way that he can always resolve any difficulty or respond to any question about divinely revealed truth by defining what is correct or by condemning what is heretical or erroneous.

This does not mean, of course, that the responses of the Holy Father or of the entire ecclesia docens in union with him are always and everywhere instantaneous. The ambassadors of Christ retain their human characteristics in their work for Our Lord in the doctrinal order. And, in the order of human affairs, serious matters are not treated with what might be termed a flippant speed. The teaching function of the apostolic collegiums is a matter of supreme moment. Consequently it is not only right and proper, but even necessary, that the answers of Our Lord’s ambassadors should be, above all, considered responses. Nevertheless, it remains true that the ecclesia docens is always competent to take care of the difficulties or questions that may arise on the subject of the message which has been entrusted to it.

A further question suggests itself at this point, a question prompted by the splendid paper read by Fr. Walter Burghardt, S.J., at last June’s meeting of The Catholic Theological Society of America in Detroit.[10] The question is this: can the ecclesia docens make new definitions or condemnations without looking towards the monuments of the past? In other words, can the ecclesia docens, by looking only into its own consciousness, by examining the content of its own awareness of the revealed message, and consequently without any necessary reference to the past or the monuments of the past, resolve all questions about the Catholic faith? Or, to put the question in still another way, in the most concrete fashion, could the Holy Father have defined the dogma of Our Lady’s bodily Assumption into heaven without referring to the teachings and the documents of the past as long as he ascertained the consciousness or the convictions of the ecclesia docens on this teaching?

The correct and adequate answer to these questions, or to be more exact, to this question, is far from being a simple matter. It would seem, however, that a realization of the position of the Holy Father and of the other members of the ecclesia docens as the ambassadors of Jesus Christ can be quite helpful in arriving at such an answer.

As the Head of His Mystical Body, Our Lord empowers, aids, and actually moves His ecclesia docens to the authoritative and accurate statements of His divine message to His disciples within His Church. His ambassadors are commissioned by Him to declare as divinely revealed truth what has been presented as such semper, ubìque and ab omnibus by the teaching authority of His Church. Since they are ambassadors, and consequently the principal causes of their own statements of God’s message, they are bound to act according to the designs of human prudence (or of the gift of counsel) in the correct performance of this work.

Absolutely speaking, once that it has been ascertained that a particular teaching is being proposed here and now as a dogma of the Catholic Church ubique et ab omnibus, it is perfectly certain that this has always been thus presented in the true and Catholic Church. But, by the same token, once it has been ascertained that the ecclesia docens has really declared such a teaching as Catholic dogma in the past, it is perfectly certain that it is being taught as Catholic dogma here and now everywhere and by all the members of the ecclesia docens. Yet the tremendous gravity of the matter involved would seem to make it morally impossible to have a definition issued without recourse to an examination of the belief of the Church at the present time and to the monuments of the past as well. And it would seem that the charismatic gifts granted by Our Lord to the ecclesia docens for the right and proper carrying out of its divine commission must include the availability of resources by which the teaching of the past in the Church may be examined in order to see clearly how the doctrine in question has actually been presented by the magisterium in times gone by.

The work of teaching in the Councils of the Church is presided over by Our Lord. He it is who guides these assemblies and moves them to the accurate and infallible declarations of Catholic truth. Here, however, as elsewhere, the Council acts as the principal cause, the one to which the effect is proportioned and ascribed, with reference to the statement of the divine truth. The truth itself, of course, remains the teaching of God through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Once we realize the implications of the truth that Christ teaches in His Church through the men whom He has commissioned as His ambassadors, we are in a position to gain an insight into the full meaning of the stability of Catholic dogma. We are, furthermore, enabled to see the source of some of the confusion which has gone into certain present-day statements about the development of doctrine.

The ecclesia docens, acting as the body of Christ’s doctrinal ambassadors, is the principal cause of its own statements of doctrine. Thus it must proceed modo humano, with tremendous effort, and with the use of all the available pertinent resources. Thus, that ecclesia docens has been compelled, over the course of the centuries, to state the body of truth which Our Lord taught in Aramaic to people of Hebrew background to people of every culture and language in history. First it had to express these very truths accurately and effectively to persons who spoke Greek, but whose cultural background was that of the Hebrews. Then it had to bring out this same body of truth, always accurately, to the people of the mentality of Greece, Syria, and Rome.

It is characteristic of the translation of a document from one language into another that this task involves far more than the mere replacement of each individual word by another in the other language. There are terms which can only be translated correctly by phrases in another language. Likewise there are sometimes rather complicated phrases which can be rendered correctly by a single word in another idiom.

The difficulties are enhanced in the case of the transmission of a spoken message. The accurate expression of one body of truth in two different languages and cultures must take cognizance of the mentalities of the peoples to whom the message itself is addressed. A statement which is perfectly clear to one age or one civilization will necessarily involve the explicit removal of some possible misunderstanding when it is brought accurately to another age or another culture.

Such has been the task of the ambassadors of Christ. Such has been the actual procedure of Christ the Teacher within His Church. What might seem at first sight to be an increase in the content of truth proposed as revealed, turns out to be, in the final analysis, the correct statement of the deposit originally confided to the Church. But it is a statement made to a generation that is the heir to all the cultures of the past. And the precisions which have had to be introduced, by the divinely aided labors of the ambassadors of Christ during the course of the centuries, to preclude the possibility of any misunderstanding of the divine message which might be attributable to the ecclesia docens itself, have come to us to aid us in our grasp of that message.

Thus that continual restatement of this same truth, this ever-accurate expression of Christ’s ambassadors as His agents in His Church, gives us a definite advance in the knowledge of divine revelations since, through the precisions or explanations (or, if you will, the drawing out of implications), it results necessarily in a lessening of the danger that we may misconstrue that teaching to our own spiritual downfall.

1.Cf. John 1:18.

2.Cf. John 3:2.

3.Cf. John 18.37.

4.Cf. John 6:68

5.Cf. Augustine, De Consensu evang. I, 35, 54. MPL, XXXIV, 1070.

6.The passage cited includes the last portion of the paragraph marked “49” and the whole of the paragraph marked “50” in the NCWC translation. The original text is found in AAS, XXXV, 215f.

7.Cf. Luke 10:16.

8.This section of the translation of the Munificentissimus Deus is to be found in AER, CXXIV, 1 (Jan., 1951) 1 7.

9.Cf. 2 Cor. 5:20.

10.The paper is to appear in the forthcoming issue of the Society’s Proceedings.

VII

The Requisites for an Infallible Pontifical Definition According to the Commission of Pope Pius IX

One hundred years ago, petitions for the definition of the doctrine of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception as divinely revealed Catholic dogma were pouring in upon the Holy See. The movement had become powerful during the reign of Pope Gregory XVI, who died on June 1, 1846. It continued and increased under the rule of Pope Pius IX, who succeeded to the papal throne on June 16 of that same year. Soon after his election, the new Pontiff asked twenty prominent theologians, taken from the ranks of both the diocesan and the regular clergy, to study the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and to submit to him in writing their individual judgments as to its definability. Then, on February 2, 1849, from Gaeta, where he had retired because of the sedition in Rome, he wrote to the bishops of the Catholic Church to ascertain their teaching and the belief of their flocks on the matter of the Immaculate Conception. When well over nine-tenths of the Catholic episcopate had signified their own belief and that of their flocks in this prerogative of Our Lady, Pope Pius IX appointed a special commission, chosen from among the theologians who had already been consulted on the matter of the Immaculate Conception, to investigate the question even more profoundly than had previously been done.

Cardinal Fornari was named president of this special commission. Serving under him were Prosper Caterini, himself destined soon to be called to the cardinalatial dignity, Canon Audisio, Fathers John Perrone, Charles Passaglia, and Clement Schrader, of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Mariano Spada, O.P., and Fr. John Baptist Tonini, O.F.M. Conv. Fr. Tonini died before the actual sessions began, and his place was taken by his fellow Conventual, Fr. Angelo Trullet.

This Commission met for the first time on May 8, 1852. This first session was given over to matters of organization and procedure. In its second and third sessions (May 19 and June 8, 1852), the commission devoted itself to the expression of the principles governing the definability of any doctrine as revealed Catholic dogma, stating first what is not necessary, and then what must be considered as sufficient for an infallible pontifical definition. In view of the fact that the Church’s position with regard to the doctrine of Our Lady’s Assumption into heaven is today almost exactly the same as its stand on the teaching of the Immaculate Conception was in 1852–53, these pronouncements on the nature of dogmatic progress should be of great interest to our priests and seminarians.

At its second session that of May 19, 1852, the commission agreed unanimously on the accuracy of four principles, stating the qualities with which a doctrine need not be endowed in order to be defined as revealed Catholic dogma.

(1) The fact that there have been conflicting teachings on this subject within the Catholic Church in the past, or, the fact that all have not heretofore agreed on this teaching, does not render a doctrine incapable of definition.[1] Bishop Augustine de Roskovány’s Latin rendering of the Italian summary of the commission’s Acta makes it clear that the members adduced the example of the rebaptism controversy in support of this thesis. They also pointed to the fact that controversialists on opposing sides of a theological dispute habitually express their willingness to abide by a decision of the Church, thus, in the eyes of the members, expressing their belief that the Catholic Church can pronounce and define even in a matter which has hitherto been discussed freely with in its own schools.

(2) The fact that even authoritative writers can be quoted in opposition to a teaching does not render that teaching incapable of definition. The members of the commission claimed that this principle is shown as valid through the examination of the history of almost any defined dogma. In particular, however, they pointed to the example of the Council of Trent, which proclaimed the Church’s belief in the absolute immunity of Our Lady from all actual sin and imperfection in the face of previous denial of this truth even on the part of Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

(3) In order that a doctrine be definable, it is not necessary that there should be explicit, or even implicit, testimony to this doctrine in Sacred Scripture, since it is certain and manifest that the scope of revelation is wider than that of Scripture. In support of this principle, the members of the commission appealed to the dogmas of infant baptism, of the real and complete presence of Our Lord under each of the Eucharistic Species, and of the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son as from one principle.

(4) In order to show that the doctrine to be defined belongs to Tradition, it is not necessary to adduce a series of Fathers and of other witnesses reaching back to apostolic times. The “Tradition” to which the members of Pope Pius’ commission referred was the divine Apostolic Tradition, which, together with the Sacred Scripture, is a source of supernatural public revelation. In formulating this fourth principle, the members of the commission took cognizance of the fact that the early monuments of tradition, among which the patristic writings are to be numbered, do not state the entire content of that divine teaching which was delivered to the Church by the apostles.

According to the commission, anyone who denies this fourth principle must logically reject one of the following five truths.

(1) Not all of the doctrine entrusted to the Church as the content of divine public revelation was immediately, at the very outset of the Church’s life, set down in writing by the Fathers.

(2) Not all of the ancient monuments of divine apostolic tradition (the writings and inscriptions of the early Christians) have survived until our time, even though the tradition itself has survived and is just as perfectly possessed, guarded, and taught by the infallible Church today as it was in apostolic times.

(3) Although the whole content of divine public revelation has always been guarded and presented infallibly by the Church, it has not always been, in its entirety, distinctly conceived and formally expressed.

(4) A doctrine proposed as a part of the divine apostolic tradition by the true Church of Jesus Christ at any one period in its history cannot possibly be in opposition to what has been taught as divinely revealed by the Church at an earlier time.

(5) A doctrine proposed at any time within the true Church of God as a part of divine public revelation must, by reason of the divine assistance promised and given to the Church, have been taught in the past at least in an implicit manner by the majority of the ecclesia docens. Moreover, such a teaching could never have been denied by a majority of the authentic teachers within the Church.

The commission appealed directly for verification of its fourth principle to the procedure of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, to the Lateran Council of 649, under St. Martin I, and to the dogmatic letters of Popes St. Leo I and St. Agatho. The commission found that all of these authorities appealed to the faith of the Fathers and of Tradition, while making no effort to cite sources from the first three Christian centuries. At the same time it noted that they all appealed to texts which, in relation to their teaching, were quite recent.

In formulating and explaining this fourth principle, the commission of Pope Pius IX took into careful account both the continuity and the progress of Catholic dogma. The entire content of divine public revelation was handed over to the Church by the apostolic college. This entire deposit of faith has been taught and guarded infallibly by the visible Catholic Church since its beginning, and will be so taught and guarded until the end of the world. At the same time, however, there has been, and, with God’s help, there will continue to be, a definite advance in the appreciation of this body of divine truth within the Church. Teachings which, in earlier ages, were proposed and taught in an inchoate and comparatively indistinct manner have been brought out and stated explicitly in later periods. Both analysis and synthesis have played their parts in this dogmatic progress, which, however, always has been, and ever will be, an advance in the understanding and appreciation of the same one body of truths revealed by God through Jesus Christ, and preached in and to His Church by His apostles.

Hitherto the commission had fixed its attention on marks not needed to show that a certain proposition is capable of receiving an infallible pontifical definition. Now it turned to the consideration of those characteristics which are sufficient to qualify a doctrine as definable. Five of these characteristics were indicated.

(1) There must be a certain number of solemn testimonies directly pertinent to the proposition in question. The commission asserted that no one could deny the principle other than by flying in the face of the constant procedure of the Ecumenical Councils, of the dogmatic letters of the Pontiffs, and, indeed, of the whole economy of the Church. There was a direct appeal to the action of the Council of Ephesus against Nestorius, of the Third Council of Constantinople against the Monothelites, and of the Second Council of Nicaea against the Iconoclasts.

(2) A proposition is capable of being defined if there can be found one or many revealed principles containing this proposition. At this point the commission observed that the placing of such “principles” served only to bring out virtual and immediate revelation. Thus, it asserted, from the revealed principle that Jesus Christ is perfect God and perfect man, it follows that the fact that He has two wills is revealed. In the same way, from the revealed principles that there is one God and that there are three divine persons, and that in God everything is one except for relations of origin, it follows that the doctrine to the effect that the Holy Ghost could not precede from the Father and the Son other than from one principle of spiration is revealed.

This statement, like the ones before it, represented the unanimous teaching of the members of the commission. It is distinctly worthy of note that the commission taught without reservations the definability of a proposition which had been known in previous times only through the light of virtual revelation. It did not, of course, go into the distinction upon which the stand of theologians like Schultes and Tanquerey is based. These writers claim that a properly theological conclusion, that is, one which has been known and has been knowable only by means of a real process of reasoning from revealed principles could never be defined as a dogma of divine Catholic faith. The commission of 1852 made no effort to determine whether or not the proposition contained in revealed principles might be inferred by a process of reasoning in the strict sense of the term.

(3) A proposition is capable of being defined if it shows a necessary connection with dogmas. In other words, a proposition ought to be accepted as revealed when from the denial of this proposition there follows by logical and immediate necessity the denial of one or more revealed principles. Such a connection, according to the unanimous teaching of the commission, is equivalent to immediate virtual revelation. As examples of the use of this principle, the members of the commission pointed to two Catholic dogmas, that which tells us of the existence of a real difference between mortal and venial sins, and that which expounds the truth that the effects of the sacraments do not depend upon the good or the bad character of their secondary ministers. Only by holding the distinction between venial and mortal sins as something revealed can a man assent to the fundamental Christian teachings which tell us that there actually are sins unto death, and that there are sins not incompatible with perseverance in the life of divine grace. Only by holding it to be revealed truth that the effects of the sacraments do not depend upon the good or the bad character of the secondary minister can a man logically believe that these sacraments produce their effects ex opere operato and that Jesus Christ is the primary minister of the sacraments.

Once again, it is of interest to see that the commission did not hesitate to ascribe the character of definability to a proposition which had hitherto been known in the light of immediate virtual revelation. The proposition judged as definable in the light of this third principle is just as truly a theological conclusion as is that which is explained in the previous statement. In both cases the proposition which is held to be definable is something known by a process of reasoning. In the one case, the reasoning is considered under the form of a syllogism, in the other, under the form of a dilemma.

(4) A proposition may be defined as Catholic dogma if it is preached as a part of divine public revelation in the concordant teaching of the actual episcopate. The members of the commission held unanimously that no one could deny this principle without calling into question the promises of Our Lord Himself, and without rejecting the standard constantly used by the Fathers in demonstrating the articles of faith. The commission pointed to the examples of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine, and Fulgentius, all of whom considered a theological question to have been settled once they had ascertained the teaching on this point of the various Sees of Christendom, and particularly that of the principal one among them.

In proposing this point, which, incidentally, played a great role in the definition of the Immaculate Conception, and which may play a similar part in a forthcoming definition of Our Lady’s Assumption, the commission took cognizance of the fact that the Catholic Church is infallible in its teaching always. The teaching of the Church over the centuries, and the teaching of the Church at any one period of its history, are both unerring statements of the divinely revealed teaching. Thus if the episcopal college, which is not the successor to but actually the continuation of the apostolic college, teaches that such and such a doctrine is a part of divine revelation at any one time in the Church’s history, we may be perfectly assured that, by reason of the divine protection and enlightenment given to the Church, that teaching is perfectly correct, and the doctrine in question is perfectly capable of definition as a dogma of divine Catholic faith.

(5) A proposition is capable of definition when it is shown to be a part of divine public revelation by the practice of the Church. The members of the commission agreed that, in this principle, the term “practice” referred to external acts of worship and of religion. They agreed that the only practice which could serve to show the revealed character of a theoretical proposition upon which the practice itself is based would have to be universal, solemn, and mandatory. It would have to be universal practice, belonging to the Church Catholic, and not simply to one See or group of Sees. It would have to be solemn, in the sense that this activity would have to be in some way joined to the actual worship of God in the Church. Finally, it would have to be mandatory rather than elective in the Church of God. Thus, according to the commission, a practice within the entire Church, joined to the public cultus within the Church, and imposed upon the faithful by the commands of their legitimate ecclesiastical superiors could be a sufficient sign that the theoretical proposition upon which this practice depended was actually revealed by God.

To explain this fifth and last of their principles, the members of the commission drew up and unanimously approved five theses. First they indicated the basic and obvious fact that every practice of the sort they had indicated is necessarily connected with some theoretical proposition which informs and directs this practice. Secondly they asserted that not every theoretical proposition which informs and governs Catholic practice is necessarily one which is contained in divine public revelation. In support of this contention they showed that the question of baptism or non-baptism of a monstrous foetus would be governed by the theoretical decision (from philosophical sources) as to whether or not this particular being could be considered as human. They likewise appealed to the existence of certain liturgical feasts. The feast of St. Michael depends, to a certain extent, upon the reality of an apparition of the Archangel: that of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, upon the triumph of Heraclius: that of the Rosary, upon a private revelation from Our Lady. Yet none of these facts can be attested in the content of divine public revelation.

In its third explanatory thesis, the commission asserts that there are unquestionably practices in the Catholic Church immediately connected with theoretical truths which form a part of the content of divine public revelation. In support of this thesis the commission pointed to the axiom: ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi. It also appealed to the procedure of the Second Council of Nicaea, condemning the Iconoclasts and approving the use and the veneration of images as conformed to the practice of the Church, to that of St. Basil, who used the doxology employed by the faithful to show the divinity of the Holy Ghost, to that of St. Jerome, who appealed to the practice of the Church in proving the legitimacy of the cult of relics against Vigilantius, and to that of St. Augustine, who established the doctrine on the propagation of original sin on a proof drawn from the existence of exorcism. The commission also mentioned the common procedure of theologians, who employ the practice of the Church as one of the loci theologici.

The fourth of the explanatory theses put forward by the commission asserts that there is a standard by which we can judge whether or not the theoretical proposition upon which a practice of the Church depends is a part of divine public revelation or not. Such a criterion, according to the fifth and last thesis, may be found either in the character of the proposition itself, or in the testimony of credible witnesses. The commission mentions the fact that certain propositions are such that, within the teaching of the Church, they could have come from no source other than that of divine revelation. An example of this type of proposition is the teaching that St. John the Baptist was sanctified in the womb of his mother. Others could be known naturally or by a process of revelation, and their presence in the teaching of the Church must be explained by some testimony outside of the existence of the propositions themselves.

These were the principles in the light of which the special commission appointed by Pope Pius IX proceeded to the consideration of the definability of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady. In the last analysis, they are the principles in the light of which the definability of the doctrine of the Assumption must also be considered. They take cognizance of the definability of a theological conclusion, but they do not limit themselves to the consideration of propositions which can be or which must be deduced from existent dogmatic formulae by way of syllogistic reasoning. Thus they give an extraordinarily complete and perfect picture of that dogmatic progress and continuity which is at once the characteristic and the glory of the Catholic Church.

1.In this article I have generally followed the Latin version of the Italian resumé of the Acta of this commission published in Bishop Augustine de Roskovány’s Beata Virgo Maria in Suo Conceptu Immaculata ex Monumentis Omnium Seculorun Demonstrata (Budapest, 1874), VI, 13–19. Brief summaries of these theses will also be found in Cardinal Manning’s The Vatican Council and Its Definitions: A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy (New York: D. and J. Sadlier, 1871), pp. 240ff., in Bishop Malou’s L’Immaculé Comeption de la Vierge Marie, considérée comme dogme de foi (Brussels, 1857), pp. 351ff. and in the brilliant article by Fr. Charles Balié, “De definibilitate assumptionis B. Virginis Mariae in caelum,” in Antonianum, XXI, 1 (Jan. 1946), 20ff.

VIII

Humani generis and the Holy Father’s Ordinary Magisterium

There is one section of the Holy Father’s encyclical Humani generis which has aroused a great deal of attention in our own country. It is the following paragraph, the one numbered “20” both in the NCWC translation and in the Latin text which was printed in last November’s issue of AER.

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their teaching authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: “He who listens to you, listens to me”; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents, purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.[1]

Each sentence of this paragraph contains an important theological truth. The first expresses a sometimes obscured fact about the Holy Father’s teaching activity. The second sentence brings out a truth which has not hitherto been set down very frequently in that section of theological writing dealing with the Holy Father’s teaching power. It constitutes a striking contribution to theological literature. The third stands as a necessary inference from the first and the second sentences. It has definite and intensely practical implications for present day theologians.

The first statement of this paragraph condemns any minimizing of the authority of papal encyclicals which might be based on the subterfuge that the Holy Father does not use the fullness of his doctrinal power in such documents. The teaching of the encyclicals postulates an assensum per se, an acceptance by Catholics precisely because it is the teaching of the supreme doctrinal authority within the universal Church of Jesus Christ on earth. It demands such acceptance even when the Holy Father does not use supremam sui Magisterii potestatem. In other words, Catholics are bound to tender, not merely a courteous acknowledgment, but a genuine and sincere inward acceptance, to teachings which the Holy Father sets forth with a note or qualification less than de fide or even doctrina certa.

It is impossible to see the full meaning of this teaching without having an accurate understanding of what constitutes the suprema magisterii potestas of the Roman Pontiff. Here two distinct misconceptions must be avoided. This suprema magisterii potestas is in no way limited to the solemn teaching activity of the Holy Father, to the exclusion of the doctrinal pronouncements he makes in the ordinary manner. Neither is it in any way restricted to the primary object of the Church’s doctrinal competence, to the exclusion of those truths which lie within what is known as the secondary object of the Church’s infallible teaching power. The Holy Father actually exercises his suprema magisterii potestas whenever he issues an infallible or irrevocable doctrinal decision or pronouncement binding upon the universal Church militant. The mode or manner of such a pronouncement may be either solemn and extraordinary or ordinary. He may speak within the field of the primary object of the Church’s infallible teaching power, or within that of the secondary object. In any case, where the decision is final and is addressed to and binding upon the universal Church militant, the utterance is an exercise of the suprema magisterii potestas. This holds true, we must remember, whether the statement be one of solemn judgment or an utterance of the ordinary magisterium.

The first declaration presupposes that documents or statements in which the Holy Father uses his suprema magisterii potestas demand acceptance by all Christians, and that such acceptance is due to these pronouncements by reason of the authority or weight of the pronouncements themselves. To this presupposition it adds the declaration that the papal encyclicals (and similar writings or oral statements addressed by the Holy Father directly or indirectly to the universal Church militant) demand a genuine acceptance on the part of Christians even where the suprema magisterii potestas is not employed.

In other words, the Humani generis here renews the Church’s teaching that the Holy Father is empowered, not only to obligate the disciples of Jesus Christ to accept, on faith or as certain, statements within the sphere of the Church’s doctrinal competence, but also to impose the duty of accepting other propositions within this same sphere as opinions. The Roman Pontiff ’s commission and responsibility in the doctrinal line within the true Church are such as to demand the power to command doctrinal assent from the faithful for propositions which he teaches as less than certain, or as less than de fide. It lies within the power, and sometimes within the duty of the Roman Pontiff to command his people to assent to propositions which he himself presents as statements which eventually could be abandoned.

Basically, there is nothing new in this concept. The Sovereign Pontiffs have frequently stigmatized statements with a doctrinal censure less severe than that of heresy, and less severe than that of error. It has always been recognized as a fact that Catholics are obliged in conscience to accept these condemnations, and to reject the proscribed propositions inwardly and sincerely. In the last analysis, this process involved the command to adopt an opinion, since the Church, in designating a proposition merely as something rash or ill-sounding (to mention only two of these doctrinal censures inferior to those of heresy and error), has not given a definition or completely definitive judgment on the matter in question. The irrevocable decision is to be found only in the definitions properly so called, the designation of some propositions as de fide or as certain. Where the declaration is not irrevocable, it is not a definition in the strict sense at all. Properly speaking, such declarations call for an assent which is at once obligatory and opinionative in nature.

The Humani generis thus reasserts the right of the Roman Pontiff to command such an opinionative assent. When, in his encyclicals, or in any other documents or utterances of his doctrinal office, he imposes a teaching upon the members of the universal Church militant with anything less than his suprema magisterii potestas, he is calling for such an opinionative judgment. The faithful must, if they are to be loyal in their following of Christ, accept this opinionative judgment as their own. The obligation imposed by the encyclicals is not satisfied when a man merely allows that the teaching set forth in a non-infallible papal pronouncement is a respectable opinion. The followers of Christ, guided by the teaching of Christ which comes to them in the declarations of His Vicar on earth, are bound to take that opinion as their own.

The day may come when that opinion will have to be modified. The Church allows for this possibility when it presents this teaching by other than an irrevocable pronouncement. When that day comes, the ecclesia docens within which Our Lord lives and teaches will realize that the holding of this opinion as it has hitherto been set forth is no longer requisite for the purity of the true faith in the actual circumstances then existent. Unquestionably the labors of the theologians and the other Catholic scholars throughout the world will have contributed to the formation of that judgment. But, when that judgment comes, it will inevitably be the work, not of separate scholars within the Church, but of the ecclesia docens itself. The voice of Christ the Teacher within His Church comes to us through the ecclesia docens, and never in opposition to it.

Actually, it is quite impossible to grasp the meaning of this first statement in the twentieth paragraph of the Humani generis unless we take direct cognizance of the fact that Our Lord remains always as the Supreme Teacher within His Church. The authoritative definitions and the declarations of the Catholic Church are not like the resolutions of some mere learned society or professional group. They are the continuing doctrinal directions given by Our Lord, through the instrumentality of the ecclesia docens, within His kingdom on earth. They serve to enlighten and guide the disciples of Christ during their period of pilgrimage on this earth in such a way that they may arrive safely in the Church’s patria of heaven. Frequently this process involves, and involves necessarily, the acceptance or rejection of some opinionative propositions. Frequently it would happen that, in an existent status of science or of culture, the acceptance of some opinion or the rejection of another opinion would endanger the integrity of the faith itself among the people of God. It is in such cases that Our Lord, through the instrumentality of His servants in the ecclesia docens, commands His followers to adopt one opinion or to reject another, precisely as an opinion. The modification of these declarations, when and if such modification ever comes, in no way violates the infallibility of the Church since the doctrine in question was never presented as irrevocable and infallible teaching.

The second sentence in this twentieth paragraph of the encyclical has great importance for modern students of sacred theology. It affirms that the encyclicals are organs of the Holy Father’s magisterium ordinarium, and that the promise Our Lord made to His apostles (and through them to their successors in the ecclesia docens) that “He who hears you, hears me,”[2] applies to the magisterium ordinarium just as truly as it applies to the solemn judgments issued by the Holy Father himself or by the ecclesia docens as a whole. This same sentence likewise adds the comment that most of the statements which the faithful are obligated to accept from the encyclicals have already been allocated within the field of Catholic doctrine on some other title. In other words, the Humani generis takes cognizance of the fact that no individual pontifical letter is composed entirely (or even in great part) of assertions which have never before been set forth authoritatively by the ecclesia docens.

In a general way, the theological literature dealing with the Church’s infallible and authoritative teaching power has tended to restrict the term “ordinary and universal magisterium” to the teachings of the residential bishops of the Catholic Church scattered throughout the world and united with the Roman Pontiff. The terminology of these volumes left little room for any study of the ordinary magisterium of the Roman Pontiff himself. Occasionally we encounter some theological writer careless enough to deny that the Holy Father can teach infallibly other than by solemn judgment or definition.[3] For the most part, however, there is very little comment at all about the Roman Pontiff ’s magisterium ordinarium. Hence the declaration of the Humani generis to the effect that teaching presented authoritatively (that is, in such a way that Catholics are obliged in conscience to accept it and to adopt it as their own) in the papal encyclicals comes to us by way of the magisterium ordinarium is definitely a contribution to modern theological thought.

The Vatican Council had taught that a dogma of the faith is a truth which the Church finds contained in either of the two sources of divine revelation and which it presents as divine revelation that men must accept as such. It specified that this presentation might be made either in a solemn judgment or by the Church’s ordinary and universal magisterium. Most of the manuals took this term “universal” to mean the teaching of the apostolic college of the Catholic Church as it is scattered throughout the world. In other words, they considered the word as applying to a magisterium that was universal in the sense that it was acting over the face of the entire earth at the same time. They acknowledged that such a magisterium universale et ordinarium could be the organ by which a dogma of the Catholic faith might be presented to the people of Jesus Christ, and they pointed to the dogma of the Church’s own infallibility as a teaching that is proposed to the members of the universal Church militant in exactly that fashion.

Now it is a dogma of the Church, presented as such by the Vatican Council itself, that the Holy Father enjoys the same infallibility in defining doctrines about faith and morals that the universal Church (or the entire ecclesia docens) possesses. Thus, since the entire ecclesia docens (the residential bishops of the Catholic Church united with their head, St. Peter’s successor in the See of Rome) can define a dogma either in a solemn judgment (when they are gathered together in an ecumenical council) or in an ordinary manner (when they are actually resident in their own dioceses throughout the world), it follows that the Holy Father himself can speak “ex cathedra” and define a dogma either in solemn judgment (as in the cases of the definitions of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception and her glorious bodily Assumption) or by some ordinary means, as, for example, in an encyclical letter.

In such a case, the Holy Father’s teaching is universal. He exercises, according to the divine constitution of the Church itself, a true and episcopal jurisdiction over every one of the faithful and over every one of the other pastors within the Church militant. Thus there is nothing whatsoever to prevent the magisterium ordinarium of the Holy Father from being considered precisely as a magisterium universale. It is de fide that the Church’s magisterium ordinarium et universale can be the vehicle for the definition and presentation of a Catholic dogma. It is perfectly certain that this same magisterium ordinarium et universale can also be the vehicle or the organ of a definition within the field of the Church’s secondary object of infallible teaching. The encyclicals of the Holy Father can be and actually are statements of this magisterium. Hence they may be documents in which a dogma is defined or a certain truth of Catholic doctrine (which, however, is not presented precisely as revealed) is brought to the people of God on earth. This is the truth upon which the Humani generis insists at this point. And, since the power to impose authoritatively what may be called an interpretatively conditional assent (an assent which is definitely below the order of real certitude and hence belongs within the field of the opinionative) necessarily accompanies the power to pronounce an infallible judgment, this statement of the Humani generis carries with it the necessary implication that the Holy Father can and does teach authoritatively in his encyclicals when he wishes to impose upon the faithful the obligation of accepting a proposition which he presents neither as de fide nor as theologically certain.

The Humani generis likewise adverts to the fact that, when a person hearkens to the authoritative teaching of the ecclesia docens, that person is actually hearkening to the voice of Our Lord Himself. Once again, it takes this means to remind us that the Church does not teach in this world other than as the instrument and the body of Jesus Christ. The man who quibbles about the Church’s doctrinal authority is finding fault, in the last analysis, with the means by which Our Lord brings His divine truth to the children of men. There can be no intelligent appreciation about the Church’s magisterium except where and insofar as this paramount fact is taken into consideration.

The last statement of the twentieth paragraph in the Humani generis contains one of the most valuable and important lessons of the entire encyclical. It answers a vitally basic question which must be considered before any practical appreciation of the Church’s teaching can be given. The question is this: how can we tell that any given statement in a papal encyclical (or in any other document of the Church’s magisterium) is one which Catholics are bound in conscience to accept by reason of the authority of the document itself?

The Humani generis does not try to offer anything like a complete answer to this query. It contents itself here with pointing out one instance in which Catholics are definitely and obviously bound in conscience to give an inward assent to the teachings of a papal document. Such an instance occurs, according to the Humani generis, when the Holy Father takes the trouble to issue a pronouncement on a subject which has, up until the issuance of this particular document in which the pronouncement is contained, been considered as open to controversy.

Clearly nothing can be considered as open to question among Catholics where there has been a definite and direct word of the authoritative ecclesiastical magisterium on this subject. Hence the res hactenus controversa to which the Humani generis refers must be a question not as yet decided by the authority of the Holy See or of the ecclesia docens as a whole. The point established in the encyclical is that when the Holy Father, data opera, issues a statement on this matter, it can no longer legitimately be considered as still open to debate among theologians. This remains true even where the sententia pronounced by the Roman Pontiff is not put forward as irrevocable, where, in other words, the contradictory of the teaching asserted is to be condemned with a theological censure less than de fide or erronea.

All that is required in this instance is that the pontifical document should put forward a judgment on a question which has hitherto been considered as undecided, that it should make a definite statement (sententiam ferre) which would be contradictory to or incompatible with some of the opinions previously expressed on this question by theologians. Nothing is said about the necessity of any particular formulae. The intention of the Pontiff to settle the question (either finally and irrevocably, by a declaration that this truth is de fide or at least that it is doctrina certa, or by an interpretatively conditional and opinionative judgment, according to which the contradictory of the teaching given would be qualified as temeraria), is established by the very fact that the Pontiff, in one of his official documents or declarations, takes the trouble to make a pronouncement on the subject. Nothing more is needed.

An example of this procedure is to be found in the treatment of the question about the immediate source of episcopal jurisdiction in the Holy Father’s encyclical Mystici corporis. Prior to the appearance of that document there had been many excellent theologians who had contended that the residential bishops of the Catholic Church receive their jurisdictional authority immediately from Our Lord. A greater number of theologians (and writers de iure publico ecclesiastico) held, on the contrary, that these men received their powers from Our Lord through the Roman Pontiff, in such a way that they came immediately from the Holy Father. In the Mystici corporis, the Pope spoke of the residential bishops’ ordinary power of jurisdiction as something “immediate sibi ab eodem Pontifice Summo impertita.” That phrase was rightly taken as an indication that the controversy had been settled, once and for all. Where before the teaching that the bishops received their power of jurisdiction immediately from the Roman Pontiff had been qualified as “communis,” it now became known as “doctrina certa.”[4] The fact that the Sovereign Pontiff had, as it were “gone out of his way,” or ‘‘taken the trouble,” to speak out on a question which had hitherto been regarded as controversial, was taken as an indication that he wished to put an end to the discussion.

In this particular case, the Holy Father expressed himself categorically. Speaking of the bishops’ ordinary power of jurisdiction, he qualified it unconditionally as something received immediately from the Sovereign Pontiff. Hence the resulting note was doctrina certa. It would also have been within his power to impose this same teaching precisely as an opinionative judgment, and in this case the censure attached to the contradictory of this teaching would have been ad minus temeraria.

The fact that a question is thus treated by the Roman Pontiff is, according to the Humani generis, an indication that the Holy Father intends that this subject should no longer be considered as a question open to free debate among theologians. The theologians of the Catholic Church have always recognized the fact that an intention on the part of the Holy Father is requisite if the faithful are to be bound by the teaching contained in his official acta. Hitherto, however, there has been too much of a tendency to consider that such an intention would have to be manifested by some sort of formula, as, for instance, by the use of such terms as “define” or “declare.” The Humani generis has put an end to this dangerous minimism. Henceforth Catholic theologians have no excuse for not recognizing the fact that a deliberate pontifical statement on a subject which has hitherto been rightly considered as open to debate, takes the matter treated out of this category and makes it a subject on which Catholic writers are bound to accept the judgment of Christ’s Vicar on earth.

If the decision of the Holy Father be not irrevocable, the fact that the matter is no longer open to debate does not in any way prevent individual theologians from investigating the subject with a view of working towards a modification of the present Catholic position. There is always at least the absolute possibility that such investigation may eventually result in a modification of the opinion incumbent upon Catholics by reason of the authority of the Roman Pontiff. It is wrong, however, to teach or to advocate the now reproved position. If the decision is irrevocable, but only in the sense that the Holy Father has placed this teaching within the category of doctrina certa (but not doctrina de fide), then the theologian is free to argue about the possibility of a de fide or dogmatic definition of this point, but he is definitely not free to teach or to hold that the doctrine set forth by the Holy Father can be rejected or modified at all. No teaching is set forth as certain unless it has been defined as true, unless there is no possibility, no fear or danger, that the opposite may turn out to be true.

1.This paragraph is found on p. 10 of the NCWC translation. The Latin original of this paragraph is printed in AER, CXXIII, S (Nov. 1950), 389.

2.Luke 10:16.

3.One writer on theological subjects who made this mistake is Antoine Chevasse, in his essay, “La véritable conception de l’infaillibilité pontificale,” in the symposium Église et unité (Lille, 1948), pp. 80ff.

4.Cf. Alfredo Ottaviani, Institutiones iuris publici ecclesiastici, 3rd edition (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1947), I, 413; and also the discussion on this point in AER, CXXI, 3 (Sept. 1949), 210.

IX

The Doctrinal Function of the Ecumenical Council

Three documents connected with the Vatican Council bring out with matchless clarity the basic function, not only of that assembly, but of every ecumenical council that has been or will be celebrated within the Church militant of the New Testament until the end of time. These documents are the Aeterni Patris, the apostolic letter in which Pope Pius IX convoked the Vatican Council, the Iam vos omnes, a letter sent by the same Sovereign Pontiff “to all Protestants and other non-Catholics” who professed to accept Christ as Lord and as Redeemer, and the opening decree of the Council itself.

The Aeterni Patris, issued June 29, 1868, contains the following statement:

Nor have the Pontiffs themselves neglected when they judged it opportune, and especially in times of the most serious disturbances and calamities for our most holy religion and for civil society, to convoke general councils, so that, by taking counsel with the bishops of the entire Catholic world, whom the Holy Ghost has placed to rule the Church of God, and joining forces with them, they might providently and wisely decree what might be most conducive especially to the definition of dogmas of the faith, to the condemnation of aggressive errors, to the propagation, the explanation, and the more complete statement of Catholic doctrine, to the protection and the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline, and to the correction of corrupt morals among the people.[1]

The Iam vos omnes was sent out Sept. 13, 1868. It explains the functions of the forthcoming Vatican Council in its opening sentences.

By this time you know well that We, who all undeserving, have been placed upon this chair of Peter, and thus divinely put in charge of the supreme government of and the care for the entire Catholic Church, over which We have been set by Christ Our Lord Himself, have judged it opportune to summon to Ourselves the Venerable Brother Bishops of the entire world, and to gather them into an ecumenical council which is to be held next year. We have done this so that We may be able to take counsel with these same Venerable Brethren who have been called to share in Our solicitude, as to what may be opportune and necessary, both to dissipate the darkness of so many pestiferous errors, which, to the greatest damage to souls, rule and rage everywhere daily, and to build up and increase in the Christian people confided to Our care the kingdom of the true faith, of justice, and of God’s true peace.[2]

The third among these statements was the act by which the Vatican Council, at its first session, on Wednesday, Dec. 8, 1869, officially declared itself opened. At this opening session, Antonio Maria Valenziani, the Bishop of Fabriano and Matelica, read the following decree from the pulpit.

The Bishop Pius, Servant of the Servants of God, with the Sacred Council approving, for everlasting memory. Most Reverend Fathers, does it please you, for the praise and the glory of the holy and undivided Trinity, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for the increase and the exaltation of the Catholic faith and religion, for the extirpation of aggressive errors, for the reformation of the clergy and the Christian people, for the common peace and agreement of all, that the Sacred Ecumenical Vatican Council should begin, and should now be declared to be in session?[3]

All of the Fathers of the Council who were present voted placet. This was the first official act of the Vatican Council.[4]

All three of these documents speak of the condemnation of doctrinal errors which are harmful to the faith and which are actually current in the Church as an essential concern, not only of the Vatican Council, but of every ecumenical council within the Catholic Church. The Aeterni Patris speaks also of dogmatic definitions, and of the propagation, the explanation, and the development of Catholic doctrine. The opening act of the Vatican Council describes this assembly as directed towards “the increase and the exaltation of the Catholic faith and religion.” The Iam vos omnes states that the council has been called also “to build up and increase in the people confided to Our care the kingdom of the true faith, of justice, and of God’s true peace.”

What these three documents have to say about the doctrinal function of the ecumenical council is illustrated and explained magnificently by a fourth, the introduction to the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius, which was issued by the Vatican Council and approved and confirmed by Pope Pius IX during the third session of the Council. The opening paragraph of that introduction shows how the purpose of the ecumenical council was gloriously achieved by the Council of Trent.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Redeemer of the human race, when He was about to return to His heavenly Father, promised that He Himself was going to be with His Church militant here on earth all days, even to the consummation of the world. Hence He has never at any time ceased to be present to His beloved Spouse, to assist it in its teaching, to bless its work, and to aid it when it is in danger. And although this salutary providence of His has always been evident from innumerable other favors, it is especially manifest in those most abundant fruits which have come to the Christian world from the ecumenical councils, and specifically from Trent, despite the fact that this council was held in evil times. For by this [council] the most holy dogmas of religion were more firmly defined and more richly explained. Errors were condemned and repressed. By this ecclesiastical discipline was restored and more firmly sanctioned. Zeal among the clergy for knowledge and for piety was promoted. Colleges were prepared for the young men who were to be educated for the sacred ministry. The morals of the people were restored by a more accurate instruction of the faithful and the more frequent use of the sacraments. From this came a closer union of the members with the visible head and added force for the entire Mystical Body of Christ. From this came a great increase in the number of religious communities and other institutes of Christian piety. From this likewise came an ardor for the propagation of the kingdom of Christ throughout the world which was continuous and constant even to the point of the shedding of blood.[5]

This statement of the benefits actually brought about by or at least on the occasion of the Council of Trent is, in the last analysis, simply a more detailed and complete recounting of the blessings which, according to Pope Pius IX, the Church considers as the basic function of the ecumenical council as such. Here, as in the other three documents, the purpose or function of the ecumenical council is described in such a way as to imply that such a gathering is designed primarily for the authoritative instruction of the Church.

In the Aeterni Patris, the Iam vos omnes, the opening statement of the Vatican Council, and in the introduction to the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius, the most immediate purpose of the ecumenical council is always described in doctrinal terms. The Aeterni Patris states the doctrinal function of the council as concerned with “what might be most conducive to the definition of the dogmas of the faith, to the condemnation of aggressive errors, to the propagation, the explanation, and the more complete statement of Catholic doctrine.” The Iam vos omnes inform those to whom it is addressed that the Vatican Council itself is meant to work “to dissipate the darkness of so many pestiferous errors, which, to the greatest damage of souls, rule and rage everywhere daily.” The Vatican Council described itself as in session “for the increase and the exaltation of the Catholic faith and religion [and] for the extirpation of aggressive errors.” The dogmatic constitution Dei Filius listed as the first two accomplishments of the Council of Trent that “the most holy dogmas of religion were more firmly defined and more richly explained,” and that “errors were condemned and repressed.”

In the light of the teaching contained in all these sources, it is apparent that the immediate doctrinal function of the ecumenical council is the clear, adequate, and accurate statement of the divinely revealed truth which the Catholic Church has been commissioned to teach infallibly and to guard faithfully until the end of time. This statement is made in one of two different ways. The Church, in its ecumenical councils, presents this revealed teaching either positively, by an unequivocal assertion of the doctrine itself, or negatively, by the condemnation of an error which contradicts it.

This is brought out with special force in the final words of the introduction to the Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution Dei Filius.

And so We, following in the footsteps of Our predecessors, and in line with Our supreme apostolic office, have never ceased to teach and to guard Catholic truth and to condemn perverse doctrines. And now, with the bishops of the entire world sitting and judging with Us, gathered in this ecumenical council, in the Holy Ghost, by Our authority, basing Ourselves on the written word of God and on tradition, as We have received it guarded in a holy way and truthfully proposed by the Catholic Church, We have decided, from this Chair of Peter in the sight of all men, to profess and to set forth the salutary doctrine of Christ, the errors opposed to it being proscribed and condemned by the power which God has granted to Us.[6]

It is essential that we remember that the positive statement of a doctrine as a truth revealed by God through Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the condemnation of a statement as an error opposed to such a revealed truth, are two distinct means of performing exactly the same function. What is accomplished in both of these two ways is the presentation of a truth precisely as something contained in the body of revelation which God has given to us in His Son. When a statement is anathematized or condemned as heretical, the teaching it contradicts is thereby proposed as Catholic dogma. And, on the other hand, when a teaching is proposed as a dogma of the faith, any contradiction of that teaching is manifested as heretical.

The Aeterni Patris, the Iam vos omnes, and the introduction to the Dei Filius all bring out the fact that this immediate doctrinal function of the ecumenical council also carries with it an enrichment of our knowledge of revealed truth. The Aeterni Patris speaks of the ecumenical councils as having been summoned by the Sovereign Pontiffs to issue decrees on what might be conducive “to the propagation, the explanation, and the most complete statement of Catholic doctrine.” The Iam vos omnes describes the condemnation of errors by the ecumenical council as ordered “to build up and increase in the Christian people confided to Our care the kingdom of the true faith, of justice, and of God’s true peace.” The opening paragraph of the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius states that the Council of Trent had labored to the end that “the most holy dogmas of religion were more firmly defined and more richly explained.”

Thus we see that, according to the teaching brought out in these documents, the immediate doctrinal function of the ecumenical council may be considered as one act with three distinct effects. Basically it is, in the words of the Dei Filius, an action in which the council moves “to profess and to set forth the salutary doctrine of Christ, the errors opposed to it being proscribed and condemned by the power which God has granted to Us (salutarem Christi doctrinam profiteri et declarare…adversis erroribus potestate Nobis a Deo tradita proscriptis atque damnatis).”[7] The immediate doctrinal work of the ecumenical council is, then, the statement of the teaching given by Our Lord Himself as divinely revealed truth. It is definitely not an assertion of truths which have merely developed out of Our Lord’s own teaching.

This profession and declaration of Our Lord’s teaching by the ecumenical council constitutes, first of all, a dogmatic definition. This most solemn statement by the Church’s magisterium definitely puts an end to any further legitimate discussion within the Church as to the accuracy of the statements proposed by the council as an expression of Our Lord’s own supernatural and revealed teaching. The teaching of the council, like that of the Holy Father speaking ex cathedra, is irreformable and irrevocable, not by reason of any subsequent acceptance by the Church itself, but by the authority of the council, confirmed and approved by the Roman Pontiff.

Next, whether it be couched in positive or in negative form, any definition of dogma issued by an ecumenical council is automatically and necessarily a condemnation of errors opposed to this dogma. The negative proposition of a dogma is essentially and explicitly the condemnation of some doctrinal aberration. The positive statement of a dogma, the statement of a truth as part of the salutary doctrine of Jesus Christ, definitely and obviously calls for the rejection and the condemnation of any statement contradictory to or at variance with the teaching set forth as a dogma.

Finally, the definition with its concomitant condemnation of error is also a clarification and an explanation of Our Lord’s teaching. As a result of the profession and the declaration of the salutary doctrine of Christ, the people who accept His teaching are benefited by being freed from the danger of failing to appreciate as a part of His message, some truth He had actually taught as God and as God’s Messenger. This action, in the light of Our Lord’s teaching, is seen as an unmitigated blessing to the people of God.

The consideration of this threefold effect of the single act which is the immediate doctrinal function of the ecumenical council leads us to the knowledge of the central doctrinal function of this assembly. This central effect, according to the teaching of the documents themselves, can be nothing other than the preservation of the integrity and the vitality of the Catholic faith.

In order to realize this truth, we must take cognizance of the fact that, according to the Dei Filius, one of the basic purposes of the existence of the visible Church itself is its function in aiding us to accept and to persevere in the true faith.

But since without faith it is impossible to please God and to attain to the fellowship of His children, it follows that justification never comes to any man without it, nor will any man attain to eternal life unless he shall have persevered in it until the end. But in order that we may be able to satisfy our obligation of accepting the true faith and of persevering in it constantly, God, through His only-begotten Son, has established the Church, and has equipped it with manifest signs of the fact that He established it, so that it might be acknowledged by all men as the guardian and the teacher of the revealed word.[8]

The Vatican Council has left us a clear and enlightening definition of the true faith. “The Catholic Church,” it tells us, “declares that this faith, which is the beginning of human salvation, is the supernatural virtue by which, with the aid and the help of God’s grace, we believe those things revealed by Him to be true, not because of the intrinsic truth of the things seen in the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself revealing, who can neither be deceived nor deceive.”[9]

For our study the key words in the above declaration are those which state that the true faith is that by which we believe as true the things which have actually been revealed by God. If we give full acceptance to this teaching, we are bound to realize that any misinterpretation of God’s revealed message, even on the part of one of the fideles, is a serious, although not necessarily a moral, evil. It is lamentably incongruous when, even though no fault of his own, the man who possesses and professes the true Catholic faith is in doubt or in error about any truth contained in the deposit of divine public revelation.

The dogmatic teaching of the ecumenical council, with its statement of the salutary doctrine of Jesus Christ, is calculated to overcome this evil, and to permit the faithful to enjoy the blessing of an accurate and unclouded perception of God’s revealed truth. God intends His revealed message to be accepted entirely and as a whole. Only when it is accepted as a whole, in all of its integrity, can it function properly as the guide of the supernatural life which we have through the passion and the death of Jesus Christ. Any factor which tends to obscure one of the truths actually contained in God’s revealed message is always objectively an evil. It is something regrettable in itself. Furthermore it is something which is bound to dim the true luster of the Christian supernatural life, for which the divine faith itself is the God-given source of enlightenment. In defining the true content of the deposit of faith, in condemning errors which militate against the integrity of that faith, and in explaining the teaching of Jesus Christ, the dogmatic teaching of the ecumenical council is of the greatest spiritual profit to the people of the living God.

The council in its doctrinal function also works as we have seen for the proper propagation of the Christian faith. And in this line too the integrity of the revealed message is of paramount importance. The ecumenical council works doctrinally for the proper propagation of the Catholic faith by its insistence on the revealed character of truths which, although they actually have been communicated to us supernaturally by God, are least in line with the prejudices and the fashions of the non-Christian world.

In one of the most important and far-reaching doctrinal pronouncements of the nineteenth century, Pope Leo XIII explicitly reproved the error of those who contended “that, in order to attract the wills of the dissidents, it is opportune to pass over certain points of doctrine as of lesser moment, or to soften them so that they no longer retain the meaning which the Church has constantly held.”[10] This was the fundamental misconception denounced in the Testem benevolentiae. It was the basis of the system known in theology as Americanism. It was likewise at the root of the modernist theory.

Our Lord commanded His apostles to bring to the attention of all nations all the truths which He had imposed upon them. The propagation and the diffusion of the Christian message is an integral part of the doctrinal activity of His Church. Objectively, it is the most ridiculous presumption to imagine that any man has been authorized by God to curtail or to modify His message in order that this teaching may be made more acceptable or more pleasing to the people for whom Christ died and to whom that message is addressed. Our Lord wills that His message be preached. He does not countenance the diffusion of some body of teaching which is a partial or an erroneous counterfeit of His own.

The ecumenical council, in its doctrinal activity, works against this tendency. The assembled Fathers of the council, gathered under the leadership and the direction of the head of the apostolic college, set forth in the sight of all men the salutary doctrine of Christ. They reprove and condemn, not any theoretical errors, but those which are aggressive and menacing at the very time of their convocation. Thus they function to realize the integrity of the Christian faith in the members of the Church and the integrity of the Christian message which is preached to those who are outside the fold.

The ultimate and crowning purpose of the council’s doctrinal activity is thus the glory of the Triune God.

It must be emphasized that this is true in much more than a merely general sense. Glory is clear recognition with praise. The glory of God consists in the recognition of His infinite excellence, and the acceptance and praise of that perfection. The inward glory of God is to be found in the infinitely comprehensive act of His own understanding, which is absolutely identified in reality with His own being and essence, and in the infinitely perfect act of His love for Himself. Obviously nothing that any creature can do in any way contributes to this essential and inward glory of the divine Creator.

The external glory of God, however, consists in the perception of His own supreme and sovereign goodness by an intellectual creature, and in the love or praise which the intellectual creature gives to God whom he knows. Thus the most perfect act in which God receives His external glory is the act of the Beatific Vision, the act in which the creature, elevated by the power of God’s grace, understands God directly and immediately in the Trinity of His Persons and in the Unity of His Nature.

This act, in which the external glory of God is ultimately achieved, is the final objective of the entire supernatural life and of the entire supernatural order. And, as a matter of fact, all of the created universe exists precisely in order that it may contribute to the external glory of God, which is thus to be attained in the clarity and the perfection of the Beatific Vision. Even inanimate objects have being in order that they may be used by rational creatures, strengthened and elevated by the power of God’s supernatural grace, for the attainment of that act in which God’s external glory is ultimately realized. In the last analysis, all the most recent and the most astounding of the scientific discoveries go to show something of the intrinsic perfection and the complexity of what is in itself an instrument meant to serve God by aiding men to attain Him, to possess Him, and to glorify Him, in the Beatific Vision.

The act of faith, and thus the presentation of those truths which are accepted on God’s own authority in the act of faith, have a definite and unique place with reference to God’s external glory. In the first place, God is glorified in a perfect, supernatural, and yet preparatory, way in the act of divine faith and in the act of charity which is meant to accompany it. In the act of faith there is a real awareness of God. The man who actually believes the divinely revealed message is certain in his possession of genuine truths about God, as He is known in the Trinity of His Persons and in the Unity of His Nature. The awareness of faith itself constitutes what may be called the groundwork of God’s glory. When that faith is accompanied, as it should be accompanied, by divine charity, the man who possesses these virtues and performs these acts really glorifies God.

This point is brought out even more clearly when we consider the reason for the moral necessity of the act of divine faith. The Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution Dei Filius tells us that: “Since the entire man depends upon God as upon his Creator and Lord, and since created reason is completely subject to uncreated Truth, we are obligated to give to God revealing the full obedience of intellect and of will by faith.”[11] In terms of this teaching, it is easy to realize that the obedience of faith itself constitutes an act in which the rational creature, strengthened and raised up by God’s supernatural grace, definitely glorifies God. He gives God the obedience of his faith because he recognizes the fact that he would be failing in his duty as a man were he to refuse this obedience. That service is strictly due to God because we are absolutely dependent upon Him for our very existence and our life. It is likewise due to Him because the truth which God sends to men and which He orders them to accept with the assent of divine faith is the very truth which the human mind has been created to perceive and to possess.

The immediate doctrinal function of the Catholic Church, and thus of the ecumenical council within the Catholic Church, is to present this body of teaching which God has revealed and which He wills and commands that men should accept as certain with the assent of divine faith. Any laxity in the presentation of that message is obviously and most seriously derogatory to God’s external glory. God is insulted rather than reverenced when men are influenced to accept on His authority some doctrines other than those which He has revealed through His divine Son and which the Catholic Church has been constituted and commissioned to teach and to guard. Likewise the cause of God’s glory is adversely affected when men are left in doubt about the status of some truth which God has actually revealed, and which actually forms a part of the Christian message. And finally the cause of God’s glory is hurt when the faithful are led to believe that some revealed doctrine can be treated as a question open to discussion within the Church.

The ecumenical council works definitely and directly for the cause of God’s glory when it teaches Christ’s salutary doctrine in such a way as definitively to settle questions about its meaning and content, and to condemn the current and prevalent errors opposed to that teaching. It works definitely for God’s glory when it furthers the cause of the integrity and the vitality of the Catholic faith. The certain and definite teaching of what God has revealed through Jesus Christ is always a good thing, and is always something that contributes to that divine glory for which the created universe has been brought into being.

Especially now, when we are faced with the prospect of another ecumenical council in the very near future, it is well for us to remember these basic truths. During the period of the Vatican Council the faithful were troubled by suggestions that the definition of one dogma of the Catholic faith might be inopportune. They were influenced to imagine that there could be world interests important enough and influential enough to render the full and uncompromising statement of God’s revealed message other than fully desirable.

Furthermore, there flourished in those days a kind of doctrinal minimism which encouraged the faithful to look upon definitions of dogma and upon authoritative doctrinal pronouncements by the ecclesiastical magisterium as in some way burdensome and as acts to be avoided as much as possible. Fortunately, that particular way of thinking is no longer explicitly upheld in our own times. But there is always the possibility that its influence may revive.

The clear and certain assertion of the truths revealed by God is not a burden imposed upon the believer. The condemnation of errors opposed to the teachings of the faith is not to be considered in any way as a restriction placed upon human liberty. It is, in the last analysis, the act which the Church, and incidentally the ecumenical council, has been constituted to perform. It is an act conducive to and requisite for the attainment of God’s glory.

1.In the Acta et Decreta Socrosancti Concilii Vaticani, edited by the Jesuit Fathers of Maria Laach and published by Herder, in Freiburg-im-Breisgau, in 1892, col. 2.

2.Ibid., columns 8f.

3.Ibid., col.32.

4.Cf. ibid., col.33.

5.Ibid., columns 248f.

6.Ibid.. col. 250. DH 3000/1781.

7.Ibid.

8.Acta et Decreta, col. 252. DH 3012 /1793.

9.Acta et Decreta, col. 251. DH 3008/1789.

10.DH 3340/1967.

11.Acta et Decreta, col. 251. DH 3008/1789.

X

The Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Catholic Church: Part I

It is a commonplace among teachers of scholastic theology that the thesis on the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation is one of the most difficult to impart accurately and effectively. Part of this difficulty is inherent in the subject itself, since the necessity of the Church is one of the basic aspects of its character as God’s supernatural kingdom on earth. Thus this truth properly belongs to the central mystery of God’s dispensation to His adopted children. In some measure, however, this difficulty stems from the fact that students are affected by certain fairly widespread but utterly untheological presentations of the doctrine on the Catholic Church’s necessity for salvation. Unfortunately, some presentations of this dogma are obviously attempts to explain it away, rather than objectively to explain its meaning.

The intolerably bad effects of this untheological teaching can best be obviated by the use of the genuine theological demonstration of the Church’s necessity for salvation. The true theology of the “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” must not and cannot detract from the mystery of the Church itself. Yet it is certainly capable of showing up as unfounded a kind of tepid and unrealistic attitude towards Christian life which neglect or misinterpretation of the dogma about the Church’s necessity is wont to generate. And, because the complete theological demonstration of this thesis is very seldom set forth in the modern literature of scholastic theology, the present article will attempt to outline what is manifestly one of the most urgently needed sections of the sacred doctrine.

Any theological demonstration is the certain and complete proof that a given statement or thesis actually forms a part of the deposit of divine public revelation which Our Lord committed to the Church in which He dwells and which the Church guards and teaches infallibly until the end of time by the power of the Holy Ghost. It begins with an accurate statement of the thesis or conclusion, drawn from the pertinent datum of positive theology. It then analyzes this statement, and situates the component concepts against their proper background in the field of revealed truth. Thus, in one and the same process, the pertinence of the thesis to the original deposit of divine revelation is manifested and the full meaning of this thesis as an expression of Christian truth is set forth. Such actually is and must be the proper theological treatment of the proposition that the Catholic Church is really necessary for eternal salvation.

The first and in some ways the most important step in the fashioning of this theological proof must be the accurate statement of the proposition with which we are concerned. The immediate norm of divine faith is the teaching of the Catholic Church itself. Hence, any theological demonstration should begin with an examination of the various authentic declarations of the Church on the subject under discussion. Only thus can we arrive at an accurate presentation of the truth which the theological demonstration is meant to prove and to elucidate.

As a prelude to the work of consulting and listing the authentic ecclesiastical pronouncements on the necessity of the Church for salvation, however, we should notice the various forms which modern theologians and writers on theological subjects have given to their theses on this subject. Basically modern teaching on this point can be reduced to six formulae. The correctness and the adequacy of each one of these six formulae can, of course, only be determined by a process of comparison with the official statements of the Church itself.

(1) The visible Catholic Church is sometimes said to be necessary for salvation with the necessity of precept alone.

(2) Occasionally the visible Catholic Church is described as necessary for salvation with the necessity of means, but only as the ordinary means of salvation.

(3) One method of explaining the Church’s necessity for salvation is to hold that all this teaching involves is an affirmation of the fact that the various divine gifts which prepare for and constitute salvation actually belong to the visible Catholic Church.

(4) Another and a hitherto rather popular method of explaining this teaching has been to hold that no man can enter heaven without having been at least a member of the soul of the Church on earth at the time of death.

(5) Some writers have held that, in order to be saved, a man must actually be a member of the visible Church.

(6) The traditional scholastic expression of the thesis on the Church’s necessity for salvation is the statement that, in order to be saved, a man must, at the moment of his death, either be a member of the visible Catholic Church or sincerely desire to become a member.

These six basic formulae frequently appear in combination with one another. Thus Edward Hugon’s explanation of the Church’s necessity for salvation employs the first, the fourth, and the sixth among them. The great Dominican professor of the Angelico distinguished between the necessity of belonging to the soul of the Church and the obligation of belonging to its body. He taught that the axiom “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” signifies that there is a “necessity of means to belong to the soul of the Church, not merely by desire but actually, and to belong at least by desire to the body of the Church, and to belong to the body of the Church in reality in the measure in which one knows it and is able to perform this duty.”[1] Rejecting as inadequate any explanations based on “good faith,” on a soul of the Church, on an invisible Church, or on a mere necessity of precept, the illustrious French Jesuit Jean Vincent Bainvel combines the second, the fifth, and the sixth of our formulae in his teaching. He holds that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation, and that all of those who are saved are members of the Church, even though they enter it only by desire.[2]

The German writer, Dr. Karl Adam, employs the second, the third, and the fourth of our formulae in the following passage from his The Spirit of Catholicism.

True there is only one Church of Christ. She alone is the Body of Christ and without her there is no salvation. Objectively and practically considered she is the ordinary way of salvation, the single and exclusive channel by which the truth and grace of Christ enter our world of space and time. But those also who know her not receive these gifts from her; yes, even those who misjudge and fight against her, provided they are in good faith, and are simply and loyally seeking the truth without self-righteous obstinacy. Though it be not the Catholic Church itself which hands them the bread of truth and grace, yet it is Catholic bread that they eat. And, while they eat of it, they are, without knowing it or willing it, incorporated in the supernatural substance of the Church. Though they be outwardly separated from the Church, they belong to its soul.[3]

There are numerous doctrinal pronouncements on the Church’s necessity for salvation, as we can readily see from an examination of the text of Cavallera’s Thesaurus doctrinae catholicae or the index of Denzinger’s Enchiridion symbolorum. If we examine a selected five of these texts, however, we shall find in them all of the basic truths which the Church has proclaimed about its own necessity. The first of these five passages is to be found in the first chapter of the Fourth Council of the Lateran. The second occurs in the Bull, Unam sanctam, written by Pope Boniface VIII. The third is in the Decree for the Jacobites, issued by the Ecumenical Council of Florence. The fourth is in the allocution Singulari quadam, given by Pope Pius IX, while the fifth and last is to be found in that same Pontiff ’s encyclical Quanta conficiamur moerore.

The Fourth Lateran Council teaches that “there is one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved.”[4] It is important to note that the expression “fidelium universalis Ecclesia” employed by this Ecumenical Council, is exactly the equivalent of the formula “catholicorum collectio,” which Gratian’s Decretum attributed to Pope Nicholas.[5] In the language of the Church the fidelis is and has always been the Catholic, the full-fledged member of the true Church of Jesus Christ. An ecclesiastical document like the so-called seventh canon of the second Ecumenical Council could qualify the catechumen as a Christian.[6] The title of fidelis, however, was always reserved for the baptized person fully joined to Our Lord’s society by its external bonds of unity.

It is thus the visible Catholic Church, the society formed by the Catholics or the fideles throughout the world, which the Council describes as so requisite for salvation that outside of it no one at all is saved (extra quam nullus omnino salvatur). In consequence, the teaching which holds the Church to be the “ordinary” means of salvation can never be accepted as an explanation of the truth proposed in this statement. If the Church were actually and merely the “ordinary” means of salvation, the Council would have been decidedly in error in stating that outside of that Church “no one at all (nullus omnino)” would be saved. Moreover the teaching that the visible Church is requisite for salvation only with the necessity of precept must also be rejected in the light of the Lateran Council’s pronouncement. A thing which is necessary only by the necessity of precept is incumbent only upon those to whom the promulgation of the precept has come. The fact that the Fourth Lateran declared the visible Catholic and Roman Church to be necessary in such a way that outside of it no one at all would be saved is clear indication that this assembly did not consider the Church as requisite merely with the necessity of precept.

In his Bull, the Unam sanctam, issued Nov. 18, 1302, Pope Boniface VIII taught that “at the bidding of faith, we are compelled to believe and to hold the one holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. We firmly believe and unfeignedly proclaim this [Church], outside of which there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins.”[7] This document ends with the statement: “Therefore we declare, say, define, and pronounce that for every human creature, to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is absolutely necessary for salvation (omnino de necessitate salutis).”[8]

The Unam sanctam speaks in such a way as to reject the notion that the Catholic Church is requisite for salvation merely with the necessity of precept or merely as an ordinary means. Its main importance in this section of sacred theology, however, is to be found in the fact that it also excludes any serious attempt to explain the Church’s necessity by saying that the axiom “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” means only that the graces leading to salvation belong to the Church or that a kind of pertinence to “the soul of the Church” in this world is sufficient for eternal salvation. According to this pronouncement of Pope Boniface VIII, a man must be subject in some way to the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth and the visible head of the Catholic Church, in order to enjoy everlasting life. Unequivocally, then, the Unam sanctam holds that a man must be in some manner attached to the visible Catholic Church in this world if he is to be in the number of the blessed in heaven. Thus not only is it true that the salus belongs to the Church Catholic, but that the man who will attain it must also be counted among those who have in some way joined its company.

It is, of course, impossible to make any rational or accurate use of the term “soul of the Church” in explaining the necessity of the Catholic Church for eternal salvation. Current theological literature tells us of three ways of explaining the meaning of this expression. First of all there is the perfectly acceptable doctrine which expresses the function of the indwelling Holy Ghost in the Catholic Church by speaking of Him as the Soul of this society. If, utilizing this terminology, we state that, in order to be saved, a man has to belong to the Soul of the Church or be a member of the Soul of the Church we either fail to attempt an explanation of the very thesis under discussion or we indulge in mere gibberish. If the formula means that a man must have the Holy Ghost dwelling within him in the life of sanctifying grace in order that he may attain to the beatific vision, then this teaching is perfectly correct, but it fails to explain the function of the visible Catholic Church with reference to salvation. If, on the other hand, it means that in some way we are to become “members” of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in order to be saved, then it is reduced to mere unintelligibility.

Secondly there is the teaching which identifies the soul of the Church with sanctifying grace and with the various infused graces, both theological and moral, that belong with it. When this doctrine is employed in teaching that pertinence to the soul of the Church is requisite for salvation, there is not even an attempt to account for the teaching contained in the Unam sanctam. There is no question whatsoever about the fact that grace and the various infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost are requisite for salvation. The thing that theology is bound to explain is the function of the Church with reference to salvation and to the acquisition of these other supernatural gifts, since, according to Pope Boniface, there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins (to be found only in justification, or the infusion of sanctifying grace together with its attendant supernatural habits) outside of the Church.

Thirdly there was the notion that the soul of the Church was some kind of an invisible society of the just, a company of those in the state of grace even outside the confines of the visible Catholic Church. Prior to the appearance of the encyclical Mystici corporis there were a good many Catholic writers and lecturers who attempted to explain the necessity of the Church in terms of this fictitious assembly, asserting that, in order to be saved, a man had at least to be a member of this invisible society. The appearance of the Mystici corporis, officially denying the existence of such an invisible society or Church, has been an unquestionable blessing for the Church of God in our times.

The central truth or mystery of Christ’s dealings with the children of men consists in the fact that His company is actually the visible Catholic Church, an organization within which good members and bad members will be mingled together until the end of time. The divine teaching on the necessity of the ecclesia for man’s salvation has reference to the fact that, in order to obtain the Beatific Vision, a man must be connected in some way or other with this definite and visible organization. The Unam sanctam shows that it is impossible to explain the divine doctrine about the Church’s necessity by teaching merely that the gifts of God which prepare for and constitute salvation belong to the visible Church. It insists that, in order to be saved, each man must in some manner be subject to the Roman Pontiff, the vicar of Christ on earth and the visible head of His Church.

Furthermore, in his Unam sanctam, Pope Boniface VIII taught that the Church is requisite not only for salvation but for the remission of sins. Now the remission of sins takes place only in and through the process of justification. As a matter of fact, it is what might be called the negative aspect of this process. The state of sin is a condition of aversion from God. It is the voluntary privation of the life of sanctifying grace in an intellectual creature meant by God to possess that supernatural life.

Hence the removal or remission of sin (original or actual) consists in the conversion of the man to God. In this process the sin is remitted in and through the supernatural conversion of the man to God in the life of sanctifying grace. For every man who comes into the world as a member of the family of Adam, the infusion of gratia prima involves the remission of sin. Furthermore sin can be remitted only in the process of conversion to God. Since the only conversion towards God possible for man is the supernatural life of sanctifying grace, there is no remission of original or mortal sin without the infusion of this supernatural life. According to the Catholic dogma, brought out in the Unam sanctam, the Church is requisite for eternal salvation in exactly the same measure that it is necessary for this infusion of the gratia prima or for the remission of sin.

The Decree for the Jacobites, issued by the Ecumenical Council of Florence, enlarges upon this concept. Insisting that the visible Church is necessary for all men, in so far as those who are not attached to it at the end of their lives will never attain to the Beatific Vision, the Decree teaches also that those works which would be highly meritorious if performed under the direction of Christian charity will be of no value when performed by a person who is outside the Church in such a way as to be turned away from his salvation. The man who is not “within the Church” as he must be in order to be eligible for the Beatific Vision will not find the works of Christian piety or even the reception of the Christian sacraments profitable for him unto salvation. The Council’s teaching on the necessity of the Catholic Church is found in the following paragraph.

It [the sacrosanct Roman Church, established by the voice of Our Lord and Savior] firmly believes, professes, and teaches that none of those who do not exist within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but Jews, heretics, and schismatics, can become partakers of eternal life; but that they are going to the everlasting fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they become attached to it (nisi…eidem fuerint aggregati) before they die. And [it firmly believes, professes and teaches] that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is of such value that the ecclesiastical sacraments are profitable unto salvation, and that fastings, almsgivings, and the other duties of piety and exercises of the Christian combat bring forth eternal rewards only for those who remain within it: and that, however great his almsgiving, and even though he might shed his blood for the name of Christ, no one can be saved unless he remains in the embrace and in the unity of the Catholic Church.[9]

During the earlier history of Christianity there was never anything like a concerted effort to explain away the necessity of the Church for salvation. Hence the Pontifical and Conciliar documents to which we have referred thus far dealt with what was, for the men of the times during which these documents were written, a truth that entered into the very center of the Catholic dogmatic message and which they had never seen seriously contradicted. So unquestionable did this truth appear to the men of Christian civilization that the very heretics who broke away from and launched themselves against the Catholic communion never dreamed of denying the dogma of the Church’s necessity for salvation. The teaching occurs in the heresiarch Calvin’s Institutio christianae religionis[10] and in several Protestant statements of belief. Among these latter are the Belgic Confession of 1561,[11] the Scotch Confession of 1560,[12] the Irish Articles of Religion of 1615,[13] and the Westminster Confession of 1647.[14] The last-named document, incidentally, speaks of the visible Church as something outside of which there is ordinarily no salvation. This manner of speaking was and remains quite in harmony with the peculiar ecclesiology manifest in the Westminster Confession, although it is quite inadequate as an expression of the divinely revealed truth about the true Church of Jesus Christ.

During the nineteenth century, however, the traditional Catholic teaching on the necessity of the Church had become obscured or confused in some Catholic circles. Hence Pope Pius IX found it necessary to insist upon this dogma and to take measures to overcome the misunderstanding generated by a somewhat naive “Catholic liberalism.” His most extensive treatment of the dogma on the Church’s necessity is to be found in his Allocution, the Singulari quadam, pronounced on Dec. 9, 1854.

In this Allocution the Holy Father dealt with two distinct errors then troubling the minds of European Catholics. Having completed his teaching on rationalism, the first of these errors, he proceeded to deal with the other.

Not without sorrow have we seen that another error, and one not less ruinous, has taken possession of certain portions of the Catholic world, and has entered into the souls of the many Catholics who think that they can well hope for the eternal salvation of all those who have in no way entered into the true Church of Christ. For that reason they are wont to inquire time and time again as to what is going to be the fate and the condition after death of those who have never yielded themselves to the Catholic faith and, convinced by completely inadequate arguments, they expect a response that will favor this evil teaching. Far be it from Us, Venerable Brethren, to presume to establish limits to the divine mercy, which is infinite. Far be it from us to wish to scrutinize the hidden counsels and judgments of God, which are “a great deep,” and which human thought can never penetrate. In accordance with our apostolic duty, we desire to stir up your episcopal solicitude and vigilance to drive out of the mind of men, to the extent to which you are able to use all of your energies, that equally impious and deadly opinion that the way of eternal salvation can certainly be found in any religion. With all the skill and learning at your command, you should prove to the people committed to your care that this dogma of Catholic faith is in no way opposed to the divine mercy and justice.[15]

The basic approach of Pope Pius IX to the dogma of the Church’s necessity was such as to show very clearly that the great Pontiff regarded this particular truth as one about which the faithful should be particularly well informed. The contradiction, or even the weakening of this dogma must be regarded as an evil which the Bishops of the Catholic Church are bound to oppose with all the intellectual forces at their disposal. And, we must remember that the Holy Father was not dealing with any crass denial of the axiom “extra ecclesiam nulla salus.” He was faced with a situation in which it was taken for granted that non-Catholics would be saved through the use of those spiritual resources available to them as non-members of the Church of Christ, apart from any real acceptance of the Catholic faith or of the Catholic Church. It was precisely this attitude or opinion which Pius IX characterized as impious and deadly.

The Singulari quadam then goes on to give the fundamental explanation of that teaching which the Holy Father had commanded the Catholic Bishops to expound to their own flocks. They had been told to show those over whom they were placed that the Catholic dogma on the necessity of the Church for salvation was in no way opposed to the truths about the divine justice and mercy. They were to proceed in this fashion.

Certainly we must hold it as of faith that no one can he saved outside of the apostolic Roman Church, that this is the only Ark of Salvation, that the one who does not enter this is going to perish in the deluge. But nevertheless we must likewise hold it as certain that those who labor in ignorance of the true religion, if that [ignorance] be invincible, will never be charged with any guilt on this account before the eyes of the Lord. Now who is there who would arrogate to himself the power to point out the extent of such ignorance according to the nature and the variety of peoples, regions, talents and so many other things? For really when, loosed from these bodily bonds, we see God as He is, we shall certainly understand with what intimate and beautiful a bond the divine mercy and justice are joined together. But, while we live on earth, weighed down by this mortal body that darkens the mind, let us hold most firmly out of Catholic doctrine that there is one God, one faith, one baptism. It is wicked to go on inquiring beyond this.[16]

In this allocution the statement that no one can be saved outside of the Catholic Church is presented definitely as a matter of divine faith, as one of those truths which God has revealed to the world through Jesus Christ and which Our Lord teaches infallibly within the company of His disciples. Hence any attempt at explanation of this teaching which involves exceptions to or a denial of this absolute truth must be rejected as contrary to the divine teaching itself. Thus the statements which follow upon this basic pronouncement in the Singulari quadam definitely must not be interpreted as involving anything like a weakening of the dogma itself.

The second statement in the foregoing paragraph, the one to the effect that invincible ignorance of the true religion will not be accounted as an offense by God, was requisite for a proper explanation of the dogma in the time of Pope Pius IX, and it remains no less necessary in our own day. Acting upon a distinctively Protestant notion of God’s kingdom on earth, some of the enemies of the Catholic Church had mis-interpreted the dogma of the Church’s necessity to mean that men would be considered blameworthy for invincible ignorance of the true Church. Such, of course, is not the true and traditional meaning of this dogma. Unfortunately, however, a certain number of Catholics had been uncritical enough to imagine that a straightforward explanation of this dogma would involve the blasphemous doctrine that men are blameworthy precisely by reason of their invincible ignorance. Pope Pius IX demanded that the Bishops of the Catholic Church exert themselves to drive this deadly misconception from the minds of their subjects. He attacked it, consequently, in his own Allocution.

The fact of the matter is, of course, that the possibility and existence of a genuine invincible ignorance about the true Church of God has nothing whatsoever to do with the Church’s real necessity of means for eternal salvation. If the Church were requisite merely in terms of the necessity of precept, then the existence of a really inculpable ignorance with reference to it-would automatically excuse all of those held in the ties of that ignorance. But it so happens that the Church is necessary for salvation with the necessity of means. Hence, those who have hitherto remained in ignorance of the true Church through no fault of their own still need this society in order to attain to the Beatific Vision.

In order to understand this portion of the Singulari quadam it is absolutely essential to keep in mind the truth which forms the essential background to all of the Catholic teaching about the necessity of the Church for salvation, the divinely revealed doctrine that the salvation of mankind is something intrinsically supernatural and something of which the family of Adam is rightly deprived because of original sin. For this twofold reason, then, eternal salvation must not be considered as something naturally due to man. Salvation, as the term itself indicates, implies a transfer from an undesirable status to a condition of blessedness. Concretely, the salvation of any human being involves a transfer from the fallen family of Adam to that company which is known as the Body of Jesus Christ. The man who is not thus brought or transferred into the Body of Jesus Christ, but who remains merely a member of the fallen family of Adam, will not attain to the Beatific Vision. Even though such a man has had no means of knowing the existence of the true Church of Jesus Christ, and consequently is in no way to blame for not entering this society or not even desiring to enter it, he will still remain deprived of the Beatific Vision if he departs from this life in such a condition. The mortal sins which he may have committed in this life, together with original sin itself, would suffice to constitute him as unworthy of heaven. The fact that he had not been incorporated into the one supernatural society within which the divine fellowship is to be found in this world would render him ineligible for the essentially supernatural beatitude of the Church triumphant.

As the Singulari quadam reminds us quite forcibly, it remains true that no one can judge accurately about the extent and the location of truly invincible ignorance with reference to the true Church of Christ in this world. Thus, to state the matter concretely, it is quite impossible for us to say whether or not some individual Protestant, living in a region where the Catholic Church flourishes, is invincibly ignorant of that Church by reason of his upbringing and his prejudices. As a matter of fact, such a judgment does not fall within our competence as preachers of Catholic truth. Actually we are and we remain the ambassadors of Christ, charged with the entirety of that message, but only with that message, which Jesus Christ teaches within our communion. The truth that the Catholic Church is actually requisite for eternal salvation forms an integral part of that message. The truth about the culpability or the lack of it in any outsider’s ignorance of the true Church is definitely not a part of the teaching with which we are entrusted. Consequently, as Pope Pius IX warns us, we are only abusing our commission when we attempt to form a judgment on such matters.

Actually the truth which God has in fact revealed on the subject of the Church’s necessity for salvation clearly implies the tremendous need for genuine apostolic activity on the part of all Catholics and especially on the part of priests. It is the will of God that no man should be lost or deprived of eternal salvation. Yet, in the providence of God, no man will be saved outside of the Body of Christ which is the Catholic Church. It is within our power to bring the Church and its divine message to the peoples of the earth. Hence, if we should be lax in our apostolic endeavors, we must be considered as recreant in our love for and gratitude to Christ.

As a matter of fact the lax or “liberal” interpretation of the dogma concerning the Church’s necessity for salvation is essentially a screen for a tepid or non-existent missionary spirit. If the way of salvation were really open to men in all religions or in all religious societies, then there would certainly be no valid reason for pouring out the best blood of the Catholic Church in the never-ending effort to plant the company of Christ among the peoples of the world. The missionary labors of the Catholic Church are expended, not to bring about a mere improvement in the condition of people who would have been in a position to be saved in any event, but actually to carry the message and the means of salvation to those who sit in darkness. The work of converting men to the Church of Christ aims not at bringing an easier way of salvation but at bringing the very hope of salvation to the beneficiaries of Catholic preaching.

Those in whom God has implanted a sincere desire and prayer for the means of salvation will receive them: but they will receive them from the Church itself. Hence it is the duty of all those who have been favored by God with membership in the Church to do whatever is in their power to forward the apostolic work of Christ. Such is the teaching of the Singulari quadam.

For the rest, as the cause of charity demands, let us pour out continual prayers to God that all nations everywhere may he converted to Christ. And let us do all in our power to bring about the common salvation of men, for the hand of the Lord is not shortened and the gifts of heavenly grace will never lie lacking to those who sincerely wish and pray to be comforted in this light. Truths of this kind must be most deeply implanted in the minds of the faithful so that they may not be corrupted by the false doctrines which tend to encourage the indifference of religion which we see slowly being spread abroad and strengthened to the ruin of souls.[17]

Any doctrine which, even under the pretense of explaining the axiom “extra ecclesiam nulla salus,” actually presents the Catholic Church as an agency not really requisite for salvation is rightly designated by the Singulari quadam as fostering or inculcating religious indifferentism. For it is by no means characteristic of this indifferentism to say that one religion is as good as another. What is essential to it is the mistaken notion that man can achieve his ultimate end outside of and apart from the true Church of Jesus Christ.

1.Edward Hugon, Hors de l’Èglise point de salut (Paris: Pierre Tequj, 1927), p. 364.

2.Cf. Jean Vincent Bainvel, Is There Salvation Outside the Catholic Church? translated by Fr. Weidenhan (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1920), pp. 25ff.

3.Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, translated by Dom Justin McCannn O.S.B. (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1931), p. 175.

4.Cf. Cap. I, DB 430/DH 802.

5.Gratian, C. 8, D. I, “de cons.”

6.Cf. Karl Joseph Hefele and Henri Leclerq, Histoire des conciles (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1908), II, 38ff.

7.DB 468/DH 870.

8.DB 469/DH 875.

9.DB 714/DH 1351. The teaching on the necessity of the Church for the remission of sins is that of St. Augustine, in his Enchiridion, cap. 65, and in Sermone LXXI. The second sentence in the citation from the Council expresses one of the central truths in the ecclesiology of St. Augustine. Cf. De Baptismo contra Donatistas, Lib. 4, cap. 24; Sermo ad Caesariensis Ecclesiae plebem n. 6; Epist. CXLI, n. 5.

10.Cf. John Calvin, Institute of Christian Religion, Book IV, chapter 1, n. 4. In Tholuck’s edition (Edinburgh, 1874), II, 230.

11.Cf. Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1882), III, 418.

12.Cf. ibid., III, 458.

13.Cf. ibid., III, 538.

14.Cf. ibid., III, 657.

15.DB 1646. Editor’s note: this text was omitted from Hünermann’s edition.

16.DB 1647. Editor’s note: this text was omitted from Hünermann’s edition.

17.DB 1648. Editor’s note: this text was omitted from Hünermann’s edition.

XI

The Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Catholic Church: Part II

In his encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore, dated Aug. 10, 1863, Pope Pius IX brought out one aspect of the Church’s necessity which had not been stressed in the other pontifical documents to which we have referred. The other pronouncements were formulated in such a way as to show that the theological axiom “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” could not be explained by saying that the Church was merely the ordinary means of salvation, or that it was necessary only with the necessity of precept, or that some nebulous membership in or appurtenance to the “soul of the Church” was sufficient for salvation, or that it meant simply that the divine gifts in line with salvation belonged to and with the visible Church itself.

The Quanto conficiamur moerore made it clear that the axiom could not be interpreted to mean that salvation is restricted to actual members of the Catholic Church. Furthermore it set forth authoritatively the truth that the desire to enter the Church, apart from which salvation is not achieved, need not be the explicit desire of the actual catechumen.

In taking up the teaching on the necessity of the Church, the Quanto conficiamur moerore begins with a perfectly clear and uncompromising condemnation of indifferentism, reminiscent of that which Pope Gregory XVI had written into his Mirari vos arbitramur more than thirty years before.[1] Like his predecessor, Pope Pius IX spoke out strongly against the error of indifferentism, the error which held that those who live by false teachings and are strangers to the true faith and to Catholic unity can attain to eternal life. The salvation which is not to be found outside the Catholic Church is presented here in the Quanto conficiamur moerore as the obtaining of this vita aeterna.

And here I must mention and reprove a most serious error into which some Catholics have fallen, imagining that men living in errors and apart (alienos) from the true faith and from the Catholic unity can attain to eternal life. This, of course, is completely opposed to Catholic doctrine.[2]

The sentence which follows upon this passage in the encyclical is long and extremely complicated. It cannot be understood except in terms of the traditional theology of the Church.

It is known to us and to you that those who labor in invincible ignorance of our most holy religion, and who, carefully observing the natural law and its precepts which God has inscribed in the hearts of all, and being ready to obey God, live an honest and upright life can, through the working of the divine light and grace, attain eternal life, since God, who clearly sees, inspects, and knows the minds, the intentions, the thoughts and the habits of all, will, by reason of His supreme goodness and kindness, never allow anyone who has not the guilt of wilful sin to be punished by eternal sufferings.[3]

Now we would tragically misconstrue the meaning of this sentence if we were to interpret it as a kind of weakening of or an exception to the Catholic dogma that the Church itself is necessary for salvation. As a matter of fact, all that Pope Pius IX did in this sentence was to bring forward certain pertinent theological truths which had always been taught in the Catholic schools and which must be considered if we are to understand the teaching about the necessity of the Church. In so doing the great Pontiff brought out the fact that the Catholic teaching on this point had never meant and had never even appeared to mean that actual membership in the Church was requisite, with the necessity of means, for eternal salvation.

None of the official ecclesiastical documents which we have cited for their teaching on the necessity of the Church for salvation have mentioned actual membership in the Church. It is true of course that the text of these documents to which we have appealed does not in any case directly state or even imply by itself that membership is not necessary. If they were the only sources of information about the Church’s teaching on this subject, then there might be some excuse for imagining that the authors of these documents were of the opinion that a man could not be saved without actually being a member of the true and visible Church of Jesus Christ. We really have at our disposition, however highly important dogmatic sources which show us very clearly that the Pontiffs and the Fathers who issued the documents with which we are concerned were fully aware of the fact that a man can be saved even though he is not a member of the Church although, in truth, no one is saved outside of that Church.

From the very beginnings of Christian history, the Church of God has been wont to reverence and honor as its own and as the glorious recipients of eternal salvation those martyrs who suffered death for the faith, even when these martyrs were not baptized. The Pontiffs and the conciliar Fathers who have given us our official teachings on the necessity of the Church for salvation were all fully aware of the truth St. Augustine set down in his De civitate Dei, that the eternal glory of a man who died for Christ before he could receive the baptismal initiation into the Church of God was far greater than that of the person who departs this life immediately after receiving the sacrament of baptism. St. Augustine had written that:

Those who have been baptized when they no longer could escape death, and have departed this life with all their sins forgiven, have not so great merit as those who did not defer death, even though they were able to defer it, because they chose rather to end their life by professing Christ than to come to His baptism by denying Him.[4]

Furthermore, the men who formulated and expressed those statements about the necessity of the Church for salvation were cognizant of the fact that a person who died while intending to receive baptism, but before he had the opportunity actually to be baptized, could be saved by reason of that very desire. The constant teaching of the Church on this point is summed up by St. Ambrose in his De obitu Valentiniani.

But I hear that you are sad because he [Valentinian II] did not receive the sacraments of baptism. Tell me, what else is there in us, apart from will, apart from petition? But for a long time, and even before he came into Italy, it was his desire that he should he initiated [into the Church by baptism]. Recently he made it known that he wished to be baptized by me and it was for this reason, rather than for any other causes, that he decided to summon me. Does he not have, therefore, the grace he has desired? Does he not have what he prayed for? Certainly he has received it because he prayed.[5]

Thus, when the ecclesia docens has taught that the true and visible Church of Jesus Christ is so constituted that outside of it “no one at all can be saved,” it has obviously understood that men like the martyrs of whom St. Augustine spoke, and like the catechumen about whom St. Ambrose spoke, were, like the actual fideles or members of the Church, not “outside” it. When the Popes and the Bishops who pronounced the various dogmatic formulae dealing with the Church’s necessity used the expression “outside the Church,” they obviously meant to imply that the unbaptized martyr and the catechumen dying in the state of grace were, with reference to this point at least, “inside the Church,” together with all the Catholics or fideles who are joined to Our Lord by the outward bonds of ecclesiastical unity.

The doctrine that a man can be “inside the Church,” in the sense of being in a position to receive eternal salvation, while he is not actually a member of that Church, which is a visible and highly organized society, is obviously something quite difficult to teach accurately and adequately. Yet this doctrine is nothing more or less than the truth manifestly revealed by God to His Church. Many a scholastic theologian has tried his hand at what seemed at the time to be a workable and pedagogically apt formula for explaining the catechumen’s status “inside the Church.” Alphonsus a Castro and Francis Suarez simply cut the Gordian knot and taught that the catechumen should be considered as a member of the Church.[6] Both appealed to well-known papal decisions. In one of these rescripts Pope Innocent II taught that a local Church could and ought to offer its prayers and Masses for a man who had lived and died as a holy presbyter of that Church but who, it developed after his death, had never been validly baptized.[7] In the other, Pope Innocent III dealt with the case of a Jew who wished to enter the Church but who could find no one to baptize him when he was at the point of death. This man had immersed himself in water and had pronounced the baptismal formula for himself. The Holy Father informed the Bishop of Metz that if the man were still living, he ought to be properly baptized, since the act he had performed was invalid. If, on the other hand, the man were already dead, the Bishop and his flock could be certain that he had gone to heaven “propter sacramenti fidem, etsi non propter fidei sacramentum.”[8]

Despite the manifest brilliance of these theologians, the theory of Alphonsus a Castro and of Francis Suarez never achieved any real success in the field of Catholic theology. The evidence that catechumens were not actually members or parts of the visible Church militant was far too strong. Today, of course, their position is entirely untenable. John Lens and Francis Sylvius, however, essayed another and a less radical simplification.[9] Both of these distinguished writers taught that the baptism of water is only the ordinary means for entrance into the Church militant (quite a different position, it must be remarked, from that which pretends that the Church itself is only the ordinary means of salvation), and held that a catechumen in the state of grace is invisibly integrated into the visible Church prior to his death, if he should die without having the opportunity to receive the sacrament of baptism. There was something fantastic about this explanation, and it never attracted any important number of adherents in the theological world.

What seems to have been the best explanation of all was offered by John Wiggers, like Lens a member of the faculty of sacred theology in the University of Louvain. According to Wiggers:

No one can be saved outside of the Church, that is, without being in it either actually and in reality or by desire and intent (desiderio et affectu). For when any person, in the light of the true faith, is converted to God with all his heart and wishes to be incorporated into the Church, in such way that it is not his fault that he is not externally and really incorporated into it, then he can be saved by reason of that desire (mediante illo volo). In the same way, under similar circumstances, he can be saved by the intention of baptism. In like manner a man could be saved from shipwreck even if he did not actually go aboard another and an undamaged craft so as to be within it. But if he holds on to it with his hands, he will be brought with it to the shore and safety. These desires and wishes are like hands, which people of this sort use to grasp and to hold on to the ship which is the Church, although they never enter it absolutely, really, and in a bodily manner.[10]

Now it is important to note that the encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore not only takes it for granted that a person who is not a member of the Church can be saved, but also teaches that salvation is possible even for one who is (and who presumably remains) in invincible ignorance of this Church. According to this document, the people who observe the precepts of the natural law, and who are prepared to obey God, and who lead an honest and upright life can attain eternal life through the working of the divine light and of the divine grace, even while they remain in invincible ignorance of the true Church of Jesus Christ. Yet this teaching is by no means a novelty in the Catholic doctrine and in the Catholic Church. It is manifestly implied in the teaching of the Council of Trent on justification and the preparation for justification in adults.

After explaining, in the fifth chapter of its Decretum de justificatione that the reception of sanctifying grace by an adult who has hitherto been in a state of sin or aversion from God involves the work of grace and our own real co-operation, the Council, in the subsequent chapter, goes on to explain the acts by which adults are disposed to receive the supernatural life from God.

Now they are disposed to justice itself when, aroused and aided by divine grace, receiving faith from hearing, they are freely moved towards God, believing those things to be true which have been divinely revealed and promised, and especially that the sinner has been justified by God through His grace and through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; and when, understanding themselves to be sinners, they, by turning themselves from the fear of divine justice, by which they are beneficially terrified, to consider God’s mercy, they are raised up to hope, trusting that God will be kind to them for the sake of Christ. And then they begin to love Him as the font of all justice, and therefore they are moved against sin by a certain hatred and detestation, that is, by the sort of penance which should be performed before baptism. And finally [they are disposed to justice] when they propose to receive baptism, to begin a new life, and to keep the divine commandments.[11]

Thus, according to the Council of Trent, there are six distinct steps which enter into the preparation for the reception of the life of sanctifying grace, or, in other words, for the forgiveness of sin, According to Pope Boniface VIII, in his Unam sanctam, the Church is requisite for the forgiveness of sin, or for justificatio, in the same way that it is necessary for eternal salvation.[12] Hence, from the consideration of these six factors of the disposition for justification, we can see the kind of knowledge of the Church which is requisite for the reception of grace and for salvation itself.

The six factors are, (1) faith, (2) salutary fear of God’s justice, (3) hope, (4) amor initialis, (5) penance, and (6) the proposal to receive baptism, to begin a new life, and to keep God’s commandments. Obviously the key to the understanding of our problem is faith itself. From the Catholic teaching about what explicit belief a man must have in order to be saved, we can see the perennial Catholic truth that a man may be in a certain measure inside the Church and may be saved without having any explicit knowledge of the Church as such.

Now the faith by which men are saved, the faith which necessarily enters into the preparation for justification on the part of an adult, is proposed by the Council of Trent as fides ex auditu. It involves the acceptance of the message actually revealed by God Himself. Thus a mere expression of willingness to believe what God has revealed if He has really given any message to the human race would not constitute the requisite faith. This faith is the actual and unquestioning acceptance of the doctrine which we know as the divine public revelation.

There has always been, however, some question as to the amount of this divine public revelation which a man must believe explicitly in order to be saved, or in order to receive the life of sanctifying grace. It is absolutely certain that there is no possibility of salvation for an adult unless he believes explicitly at least the two truths that God exists and that He rewards those who seek Him. Furthermore it is also certain that this salutary belief must consider God as the Author of the supernatural order, that is, as giving His creatures a reward or remuneration far greater than their status as creatures would demand. What has divided the theologians over the centuries has been the question about the need of explicit belief in other propositions of faith for eternal salvation.

As far as the actual documentation of the Church is concerned, it would seem that explicit belief in the redemptive work of Christ is required. In the chapter of the Decretum de justiftcatione from which we have just cited, the Council of Trent speaks of the adult preparing himself for justification as “believing those things to be true which have been divinely revealed and promised, and especially that the sinner has been justified by God through His grace and through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”[13] It is certainly difficult to interpret this statement as other than an indication that the Council was convinced that there would be no justification apart from explicit belief in these truths.

Nevertheless, there have been divergent teachings on this point in Catholic theological literature. Thus Billuart teaches that since the gospel has been sufficiently promulgated, explicit belief in both the Trinity and the Incarnation must be considered as necessary for all, with the necessity of means, for eternal salvation. Billuart regards the time when the gospel of Christ could be said to have been sufficiently promulgated as something about which we have no certain information. He hazards the opinion, however, that the gospel could be said to have been sufficiently promulgated about forty years after Our Lord’s ascension into heaven.[14]

Melchior Cano offers an interesting variation of this opinion. He holds that explicit faith in Christ is necessary for eternal and final salvation, while an implicit faith suffices for the remission of sins and thus for justification.[15] Suarez and the Salmanticenses, were of the opinion that, since the promulgation of the gospel, an explicit faith in Christ is per se a necessary means for salvation, but that, as a matter of fact, some people are saved apart from this means per accidens. This opinion, for all practical purposes, is equivalent to the teaching of Blasio Beraza in our own times. Beraza holds that explicit faith in Our Lord as a mediator is not absolutely requisite for salvation even in New Testament times.[16]

These are highly interesting opinions, and they serve to throw light on the problem of the Church’s necessity for salvation in so far as they show that no theologian demands as absolutely requisite for eternal salvation any explicit belief in the Catholic Church itself. Hence it is obvious that the very schola theologorum which has insisted most strongly upon the validity of the doctrine that the Church is requisite for salvation never intended to teach and cannot legitimately be interpreted as teaching that a man had to be an actual member of the Church, or, absolutely speaking, even had to possess explicit knowledge of the Church as God’s kingdom on earth in order to attain eternal salvation. The men who expounded the Church’s teaching about its own necessity have always explained that teaching against the background of a theology which states that a man can be saved by a desire of the Church even when that desire was merely implicit.

Thus, even from this point of view, it would be absurd to qualify the teaching of the Quanto conficiamur moerore, telling of the possibility of salvation for a man who lives in invincible ignorance of the Church, as in any way an attenuation or a partial abandonment of the dogma on the Church’s real and absolute necessity for salvation. The statement we have seen was nothing more or less than an official pronouncement of a doctrine which had long been taught as an integral part of the same science of sacred theology in which the teaching on the Church’s necessity is expounded and developed. It forms one of the many truths which must be taken into consideration when we study and teach that no one can be saved outside of the Catholic Church.

There is, however, still another aspect to this statement in the Quanto conficiamur moerore to which the theologian must advert if he is to formulate the teaching on the necessity of the Church accurately and adequately. The encyclical of Pope Pius IX speaks of the possibility of salvation for those who sedulously (the Latin “sedulo” conveys the idea of continued action) obey the natural law and who live an honest life. It speaks of this possibility as available to such people “through the working of the divine light and grace.”

Now a person “sedulously” observing the natural law is manifestly one who is living for a long time without committing a mortal sin. It is, however, the common teaching of Catholic theology that, in the status of fallen nature, no one can remain for any considerable time without committing mortal sin apart from the aid of supernatural grace.[17] Furthermore, it is most probable that the grace, apart from which a man will not actually observe all the natural precepts taken collectively over any considerable period of time, is sanctifying grace itself.[18]

Thus, far from implying that a man can merit eternal salvation by purely natural acts, performed outside of the Catholic Church, the encyclical letter of Pope Pius IX really teaches that the man who observes all the natural law can attain eternal salvation through that life of grace which he already possesses. And, if he has the life of grace, he has already gone through that process by which he was disposed to or prepared for justification, which, according to the Council of Trent is “not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renovation of the inward man through the voluntary reception of grace and the gifts, whence man is changed from an unjust person into a just person and from an enemy into a friend, in order that he may be an heir according to the hope of life eternal.”[19]

In other words, the man who is sedulously observing the natural law in such a way as to avoid mortal sin for a considerable period of time is one who has already made an explicit act of supernatural faith, in which the belief in the Church was at least implicitly contained. With this faith, and with the real hope in God which followed upon it, he made his act of love for God, the act of the theological virtue of charity, inseparable from the life of sanctifying grace in adults. In this act of charity, the man who sedulously observes the natural law formulates the real intention to do whatever God has commanded, and to associate himself with God, even in this life. The association or fellowship with God in this world demanded by Christ as a necessary means to salvation is the reality or communion which we know as the visible Catholic Church. Hence, by and in his act of theological charity, the man who has avoided mortal sin for a long time has already desired to enter the Catholic Church, even though he is not explicitly aware of the actual existence or status of that Church.

This, then, is one aspect of the meaning of the dogma on the Church’s necessity for eternal salvation. Even a person who is invincibly ignorant of the true Church can, through an act of explicit faith in God as the head of the supernatural order, and through an act of charity for God known in this supernatural way, be in the state of sanctifying grace and friendship for God which is the beginning of eternal life in this world. Such a person, through his supernatural faith and charity, implicitly but sincerely wills to be within the community of fellowship with God and Christ. This community of fellowship, in the merciful designs of God’s providence, is the visible Catholic Church, the visible Church of the Roman communion.

Such is the lesson brought home in the subsequent sentence of the Quanto conficiamur moerore.

But it is a perfectly well known Catholic dogma that no one can be saved outside of the Catholic Church, and that those who are contumacious against the authority of that same Church, and who are pertinaciously divided from the unity of that Church and from Peter’s successor, the Roman Pontiff, to whom the custody of the vineyard has been committed by the Savior, cannot obtain eternal salvation.[20]

In this lesson two distinct truths are enunciated. In the first place the encyclical assures us absolutely that no one can be saved outside the Church. The second tells us that no one of those who remain separated from the Church through their own fault are in a position to attain eternal life as long as they remain in that status. It is tremendously important, however, to realize that the first statement is in no way restricted to the extent of the second. The first informs us absolutely that no one can be saved outside the Church. The second tells us that those who pertinaciously remain separated from the unity and from the leadership of the Church in this world are most certainly in the category of those “outside the Church,” and have placed themselves in a position such that, while they remain in this status, they cannot attain eternal life. Thus it would be an obvious misinterpretation of the encyclical’s teaching to imagine that it meant to say that no person could be judged “outside the Church” except those who pertinaciously and thus voluntarily refuse to enter its communion even after they are aware of the validity of its claims. Actually any human being who is not really a member of the Church and who has not at least an implicit real desire to dwell within it is “outside the Church,” and is thus one of those in whose favor the missionary charity of Catholics must be exercised.

We must not lose sight of this fact. Separation from the Church always is objectively an evil, even in the case where the person in this status is not blameworthy in the sight of God precisely for being “outside the Church.” The man who is “outside the Church,” in the sense in which this expression is employed in the dogmatic formulae about the Church’s necessity for salvation, is definitely turned away from God, his ultimate end, by original sin, or by mortal sin, or by both. No one, however, is guilty in the sight of God precisely by reason of his separation from the Church except those who remain outside of it pertinaciously, knowing that God wills that they should enter it.

Hence it would be quite erroneous to interpret the teaching of the Quanto conficiamur moerore to mean that all of those who are outside the Church and thus in need of Catholic missionary charity have sinned against God in not coming in to the Church. It is quite possible to be “outside the Church,” without, to use Newman’s old phrase, “having sinned against the light.”

Actually, according to the divine constitution of the Church itself, the responsibility for bringing those outside the fold into the company of Christ rests, not upon the outsiders, but upon the Church itself. Broadly speaking, the Church is not simply a goal towards which the people of the world are supposed to run of their own accord. It is the living society of the disciples, commissioned and commanded to bring itself and its message to the children of men. If contact is not made with those outside the fold, the fault lies, not with these people, but with the Catholics who have been recreant to their missionary vocation.

This, after all, is the final conclusion of the Quanto conficiamur moerore.

God forbid that the children of the Catholic Church should ever in any way be the enemies of those who are in no way joined to us in the same bonds of faith and of charity. But let them [the Catholics] rather strive always to attend these people when they [the non-Catholics] are poor or sick or afflicted with any other ills, and help them by all the services of Christian charity. Primarily, let them strive to take them out of the darkness of error in which they unfortunately live and bring them back to Catholic truth and to the loving Mother Church which never ceases to hold out its maternal hands to them affectionately and to call them back to its embrace in order that, founded and strengthened in faith, hope, and charity, and bringing forth fruit in every good work, they may attain eternal salvation.[21]

In the final analysis, the teaching on the necessity of the Catholic Church thus appears as the dominant motive force in the charity of Catholic missionary endeavor. The Church itself, the society or community within which alone in this world the fellowship of God and Christ is to be found, is absolutely necessary for salvation with the necessity of means. According to the divine revelation, infallibly proposed in the dogma of the Church, both the members of this society and those who sincerely, even though only implicitly, desire to live within it, are “inside the Church” in such a way as to be able to live the life of sanctifying grace which is the beginning of eternal salvation.

All of those who are not members of the Church, however, whether they desire to enter it or not, stand in real need of this society. If they long to be in God’s household on this earth, they actually will to live as members of this visible society. If they do not, and consequently they are unfortunately averted from God and deprived of the supernatural life Christ died to procure for them, they ought to have the benefit of the Church, through which they may be brought to life everlasting.

The fact of the matter is, as Pope Pius IX pointed out so effectively, that the responsibility for bringing this needed benefit to the persons for whom Christ died on the Cross devolves directly upon the members of the Catholic Church. Primarily, of course, it is the duty of the Catholic hierarchy, of the apostolic college as it now exists in the company of Christ. We should not forget, in this instance, the terrifying words of St. John Chrysostom with reference to the responsibility of the individual Catholic bishop.

To pass over everything else: if one soul depart unbaptized, does not this subvert all his own prospect of salvation? The loss of one soul carries with it a penalty which no language can represent. For if the salvation of that soul was of such value that the Son of God became man and suffered so much, think how terrible a punishment the losing of it must bring.[22]

In this passage St. John Chrysostom speaks directly of the Bishops of the Catholic Church. The primary responsibility for the work of bringing the means of salvation to those souls for whom Our Lord died devolves upon them. They constitute the apostolic college, the band of men commissioned by Our Lord to carry His message and His Church to those for whom He offered the sacrifice of Calvary. Hence it is primarily their business and their obligation, as a group gathered under the presidency of Peter, to expend every effort and to utilize every resource at their command to bring the means of salvation to those who are not members of the true Church.

We must not forget, however, that the obligation to work effectively and sincerely to bring non-Catholics into the Church is in no way limited to the apostolic college. It is true that this obligation devolves upon them primarily. Yet it is an obligation to a work in which the Catholic people themselves are bound to co-operate. All the doctrine of Catholic Action constitutes a warning to the people of the Church that they are expected to aid their hierarchy in the apostolic work and that they are recreant to their Christian vocation if they fail to enter into this activity.

Thus, in the last analysis, the teaching on the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation does not seek to blame non-Catholics as a group for failing to enter the Church. It is inclined, on the other hand, to militate against what might be a certain complacency on the part of the Catholics themselves. It insists upon the obligation which God has laid upon the members of His Church to do all in their power to bring the necessary means of salvation to the souls for whom Our Lord died. Its practical effect must be, not to irritate and insult those who are unfortunate enough to be non-members of Our Lord’s Church, but to stimulate the members of that Church to expend every effort to bring the fellowship of Christ in God’s kingdom on earth to people who need it so badly, and who are so unfavorably placed with reference to eternal salvation by the fact that they are not members of the Church.

This, the essential and manifestly charitable practical attitude of the Catholic Church towards those who are not its members, is brought out most effectively in the present Holy Father’s encyclical, the Mystici Corporis.

Most affectionately we invite all of them individually that, yielding of their own accord and freely to the inner impulses of divine grace, they should take care to remove themselves from that status in which they cannot be secure about their own eternal salvation, seeing that even though they may be disposed towards the Mystical Body of the Redeemer by a certain kind of desire and longing (desiderio ac voto) which they do not understand, they still lack so many and such great heavenly favors and helps which they may enjoy only in the Catholic Church. May they all therefore enter the Catholic unity and, joined with us in the one structure of the Body of Jesus Christ, may they come together unto the Head in the society of the most glorious love. With never ceasing prayers to the Spirit of love and truth, with hands upraised and outstretched, we await their coming, not to the house of a stranger, but to the house which is their own and their Father’s.[23]

It is important for us to realize that, when we speak of the theological proof for the proposition that the Catholic Church is necessary for eternal salvation with the necessity of means, the proposition must be understood as expressing all of this truth brought out in the various official pronouncements of the ecclesia docens. The Church as a society, as a thing, is presented to us in the divine public revelation as a necessary means for salvation. Those who are fortunate enough to have the grace of membership in this Church have satisfied this one of the conditions for salvation in an unmistakable way. Non-members of the Church may possibly be “inside the Church” as the community of fellowship with God by reason of a real, though perhaps only an implicit, desire to live within it. Their status, however, is distinctly unfavorable and unfortunate from the spiritual point of view. Thus it is the business of the Church, which as a society is animated and motivated by the charity of Christ Himself, to bring this means of salvation certainly and effective to all of those for whom Our Lord offered the sacrifice of His life.

The theological proof of this teaching must be based upon the consideration of the revealed teaching about salvation, and on the concept of the Church itself as God’s kingdom on earth.

1.The Mirari vos arbitramur condemned the teachings of Lamennais and others in the periodical L’Avenir. This encyclical’s condemnation of indifferentism is found in DB 1613/DH 2730–2732.

2.DB 1677/DH 2865.

3.Ibid.

4.Augustine, De civitate Dei, Lib. XIII, cap. 7. CSEL, XL, ii. 622; MPL, XLI, 381

5.Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani, n. 51. MPL, XVI, 1374.

6.Cf. Alphonsus a Castro, in the De iusta haereticorum punitione, Lib. I, cap. 8, in the Opera Alphonsi a Castro (Paris, 1571), col. 1096f. and Suarez, in the Tractatus de fide, Disp. IX, sectio 1, in the Opus de triplici virtute theologica (Lyons, 1621), p. 160.

7.Cf. DB 388/DH 741.

8.Cf. DB 413/DH 788.

9.Cf. Sylvius, in the work entitled Libri sex de praecipuis fidei nostrae controversiis cum nostris haereticis, Lib. III, q. 1, a. 3, in the Opera Francisci Sylvii (Antwerp, 1698), V, 238. John Lens, a Louvain theologian, who died in 1593, is the only authority cited by Sylvius in support of his theory. I have not been able to find a copy of Lens’ De una Christi in terris Ecclesia libri sex (Louvain, 1588).

10.John Wiggers, in his Commentaria de virtutibus theologicis (Louvain, 1689), p. 109.

11.Sessio VI, cap. 6. DB 798/DH 1526.

12.Cf. DB 468/DH 870–875.

13.Sessio VI, cap. 6. DB 798/DH 1526.

14.Cf. Billuart’s Tractatus de fide, Dissertatio III, a. 1, in the Cursus theologiae (Paris: Lecoffre, 1904), V, 29f.

15.Cf. Carlo’s Relectio de sacramentis in genere, Pars II, conclusio 3, in the Melchioris Cani opera theologica (Rome: Filiziani, 1900), III, 230ff.

16.Cf. Beraza’s Tractatus de virtutibus infusis (Bilbao: El Mensajero del Corazon de Jesus, 1929), pp. 448ff.

17.Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 109, a. 8.

18.Cf. The Salmanticenses, Tractatus de gratia Dei, Disputatio II, dubium, 6, in their Cursus theologicus (Paris and Brussels, 1378), IX, 249 If, and Billot, De gratia Christi (Rome: The Gregorian University, 1928), pp. 70ff.

19.Sessio VI, cap. 7. DB 799/DH 1528.

20.DB 1677/DH 2867.

21.DB 1678. Editor’s note, this text was omitted from Hünermann’s edition.

22.John Chrysostom, In Actus Apostolorum homilia tertia, n, 4. MPG, LX, 40.

23.Pope Pius XII, AAS, XXXV, 7 (July, 1943), 243.

XII

The Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Catholic Church: Part III

The theological proof for the necessity of the Catholic Church is a strict demonstration of the fact that what the Church actually teaches on this subject in its official documents is manifestly contained in the sources of divine revelation. In its Pontifical and conciliar pronouncements, the ecclesia docens teaches as a part of God’s own message the truth that the Church is necessary for salvation, in the very real sense that outside of it no one at all can be saved. Furthermore, from these same ecclesiastical pronouncements, we learn that a person may be said to be “outside” the Church when he has neither membership in this visible society nor any intention of entering it. Finally, the doctrinal utterances of the ecclesia docens inform us that even an implicit desire to enter the Church may be effective unto salvation in a person who is invincibly ignorant of the one true fold of Jesus Christ, although they also point to the highly important fact that the spiritual position of any person who is not a member of the Catholic Church is disadvantageous to himself and objectively contrary to God’s will.

This complex truth, set in its proper background of the Catholic dogma about the Church of Christ, and seen as one of the basic theses in the Catholic theology of the missions, stands out in the deposit of divine public revelation. The theological proof is the process whereby we indicate the way in which this thesis is contained in Scripture and in divine apostolic tradition, the two sources of divine public revelation. Furthermore, precisely because it manifests the thesis or conclusion in its place in the deposit of faith, the theological proof offers an invaluable understanding of this truth. When the Vatican Council taught that reason, enlightened by faith, could gain a most fruitful understanding of the divinely revealed mysteries by way of analogy of these mysteries with the natural objects of human intelligence and through the connection of the mysteries among themselves and with the last end of man, it was referring to the theological demonstration.[1]

What the Vatican Council had to say on this subject is perfectly exemplified in the theological proof of the thesis on the Church’s necessity for salvation. The analogy between the mystery and the natural objects of human intelligence has been used to produce the various technical terms that enter into the thesis and its explanation. The words appearing in a modern presentation of this thesis by authors like Zapelena and Parente did not occur in the scriptural or in the earliest patristic enunciation of the same doctrine. Terms like “the necessity of means” and “visible society,” to mention only two of them, were introduced into this section of theology because the theologians as a group, and ultimately the ecclesia docens itself, found that the meanings these expressions conveyed in the world of nature could be of service in the formation of an absolutely correct and unequivocal statement about the mystery of God’s kingdom on earth.

The process of analogy with things of the natural order serves the science of sacred theology chiefly in the development of an acceptable terminology. The theological demonstration as such, however, is effected primarily through the observation of the connection and interrelation of the revealed mysteries among themselves. Such is manifestly the case in the proof of the Church’s necessity for eternal salvation, as that proof is elaborated by the foremost theologians of our age. In their writings they cite the connection of the Church with Our Lord, with the true and necessary worship of God, and with the sacrament of baptism as factors in the theological evidence that the teaching on the Church’s real necessity for salvation is contained in the deposit of faith delivered to the Church by the apostles as the divine message of Christ.

Taken as a group, modern theologians have presented a valid and effective proof of the Church’s necessity. They have used these arguments from the necessity of union with Our Lord, of the true religion, and of Christian baptism, along with many other factors, to produce a demonstration of the fact that men really need the visible Catholic Church in order to attain the life of heaven. Unfortunately, however, they have not taken what would appear to be anything like sufficient cognizance of one “connection” which, of itself, is capable of giving that proof an apodictic perfection and an enlightening power far beyond what that proof contains in its present state of development. They have not integrated the basic scriptural theology of salvation itself into their demonstration, and thereby they have overlooked what can and should be a decisively effective factor in this proof. Scripture itself shows salvation as essentially involving a social concept. It is the divine gift by which a man is transferred, by the beneficent power of God, from one social entity to another.

The primary purpose of this series of articles is to show how the proof of the Church’s necessity for salvation attains a genuinely new perfection when it includes an analysis of the New Testament teaching about that salvation which comes to men through the sacrificial death of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The greatest benefit which this hitherto somewhat neglected element in the theological proof of the Church’s necessity brings to sacred doctrine is a manifestation of the fact that the Catholic Church is something essential to and inhering in the process of salvation itself. As it stands in too many of the modern manuals of sacred theology, the proof of the Church’s necessity is constructed in such a way as to leave room for the suspicion that the visible society of Our Lord’s disciples is not essentially and connaturally a factor in the process of salvation at all, but that it enters this process solely by reason of a positive divine ordinance. The man who is deceived into adopting this view as an opinion has lost sight of one of the most important truths in all the deposit of sacred teaching. Actually the Catholic Church, by reason of its nature as God’s kingdom on earth, enters into the very concept of salvation, in such a way that the salvation described in the divine public revelation cannot be understood at all adequately except in terms of this visible society.

In order to understand how an exposition of the New Testament theology of salvation can perfect the demonstration of the Church’s necessity, we must know something about the status of this proof in modern writings. In their treatment of this particular proof, the more recent theologians exhibit an amazing diversity of presentation. Indeed, those individuals who habitually deplore what they believe to be drab uniformity of modern theological writing would be hard pressed to explain or justify their attitude if they took the trouble to examine even a few twentieth-century presentations of this proof.

Much of this diversity can be attributed to the fact that some of the authors have tried to show that the Church itself is only necessary as the ordinary means of salvation or by reason of a divine precept. Others have confused the issue by intruding into their proofs certain elements which go to show that appurtenance to or membership in the “soul of the Church” must be considered as requisite for salvation. Such tentatives have had the inevitable effect of beclouding the issue, and of obscuring the meaning of the documents which they must adduce. The ecclesiastical documents are such as to support only the basic contention, that the visible Catholic Church, the kingdom of God on earth, is actually necessary for all men.

Despite this diversity of treatment, however, the modern theologians as a group have worked very effectively to demonstrate their thesis. Most of them tend to list separately the pertinent documents of the ecclesia docens, the texts from Holy Scripture, passages from the Fathers, and a certain number of rationes theologicae. Billot and Herrmann[2] have been especially successful in utilizing the biblical texts in the elaboration of a genuine theological proof. They have thus integrated their demonstration much more effectively than have some of their confreres.

Most of the texts employed in the ‘‘proof from Scripture” by modern theologians deal directly with the necessity of union with Our Lord or with the Church itself. The strictly ecclesiological texts are again divided into two classes, those which deal with the commission and the power of the Church, and those which treat of the evil of voluntary separation from it.

The texts that refer to the necessity of union with Our Lord for the attainment of salvation are employed as the prerequisite for a demonstration of the fact that the Catholic Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, is itself necessary. Three texts are used quite frequently for this purpose. The first is the passage in St. John’s Gospel containing Our Lord’s statement: “I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved...”[3] The second, also from the fourth Gospel, records Our Lord’s words to St. Thomas the Apostle: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by me.”[4] The third is a doctrine taught by St. Peter in his discourse to the Sanhedrin after he and St. John had been taken into custody because of the miraculous cure of the lame man in the temple. It is the statement that “Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.”[5]

The principal texts pertinent to the divine commission of the Church are found in the final chapters of the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Mark. The first of these contains the words Our Lord spoke to the eleven disciples just before His ascension.

All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.[6]

The citation from the second Gospel is even more directly and perfectly demonstrative.

And he said to them: Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.[7]

The theologians also point to the texts in which the evangelists speak of the instructions Our Lord gave to the twelve apostles and to the seventy-two disciples when they were being sent to preach the kingdom of God in His name. The first of these passages is found in St. Matthew’s Gospel.

And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words: going forth out of that house or city shake off the dust from your feet. Amen I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.[8]

The first Gospel also records that Our Lord’s discourse included the statement: “He that receiveth you receiveth me: and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.”[9] St. Luke’s account of the sending of the seventy-two contains a negative version of this same doctrine. “He that heareth you, heareth me: and he that despiseth you, despiseth me. And he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.”[10] Both of these texts are widely used in the proof from scripture for the thesis that the Catholic Church is necessary for eternal salvation.

Taken simply by themselves, these last two texts serve primarily and directly to prove only that the Church is necessary with the necessity of precept. They show that a man or a community sins against God in rejecting the message which Our Lord preached and which the apostles and their fellow-workers proposed in His name. The passage from the last chapter in St. Mark’s Gospel has a far greater probative force even when taken individually. It indicates that men can achieve salvation through the doctrinal mission of the Church as well as that they will be condemned if they reject its teachings. The parallel text from St. Matthew implicitly teaches the necessity of the Church when it states His promise to be with the Church while it fulfils the mission He has entrusted to it.

Another group of texts employed in the scholastic presentation of our proof, deals directly with the evil of leaving the Church. Several of the theologians quote from St. Matthew’s Gospel the warning “And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican.”[11] Others point to the words of St. Paul’s epistle to Titus:

A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: Knowing that he that is such an one is subverted and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment.[12]

The theologians also point to another text which deals with this same truth, and which has a more effective probative value for their thesis than the others. It is found in the Second Epistle of St. John.

Whosoever revolteth and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God. He that continueth in the doctrine, the same hath both the Father and the Son. If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house not say to him: God speed you. For he that saith unto him: God speed you, communicateth with his wicked works.[13]

The immediate implication of these texts is the lesson that it is an evil thing to abandon the Church and the faith of Jesus Christ. The last citation also brings out the truth that the continuation in the doctrine as one of the faithful, as a member of the society of the disciples, carries with it fellowship with God. It does not, by itself, prove that there is no other way to gain this fellowship with God, and hence, taken individually, this final series of texts does not constitute an apodictic proof of the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation.

Far more important than the proof from scripture alone is the ratio theologica properly so-called, which most of the writers unfortunately separate from the scriptural and patristic evidence in favor of their thesis. In by far the greater number of modern theological works, the ratio theologica is composed of several elements, in such a way that the thesis is established, not by any one integrated proof, but by a series of arguments. In almost every case the cumulative effect of these various demonstrations is amply sufficient, although various individual elements of the argument in a few theological works are not completely satisfactory.

In modern manuals one of the most popular individual arguments in the strictly theological proof of the Church’s necessity for salvation is the one based upon the necessity of baptism. The numerous modern authors who employ this argument reason that the Church is manifestly necessary for salvation because it is so intimately connected with baptism, which is itself requisite for the attainment of eternal blessedness. The sacrament which God has instituted as the means for obtaining the beginning of the life of grace and the remission of original sin is the rite of initiation into the society of Our Lord’s disciples.

Another tremendously popular theological argument for the Church’s necessity is that based upon the necessity of that faith which the Church alone preaches infallibly and authoritatively. It follows that because acceptance of the divine message preached by Our Lord is incumbent upon men if they are to obtain salvation, that men stand in obvious need of the society which divine revelation indicates as the one divinely commissioned and inerrant guardian and teacher of that revelation. Akin to the demonstrations based upon the necessity of baptism and that of faith are those demonstrations which manifest the Church’s necessity in terms of man’s need for the means of salvation and for the ecclesiastical ministry, to be found properly only within the Catholic society. Several of the theologians make special mention of the power of the keys, which obviously belongs to the true Church alone.

Each one of these demonstrations taken individually is valid as a proof that the Catholic Church is really necessary for salvation with the necessity of means. Taken together, their force is unquestioned. Unfortunately, however, proofs of this sort have a tendency to make the Church look like something which is in itself an extrinsic factor in the economy of salvation, and as necessary for eternal life only by reason of a positive enactment by God. To a lesser extent this shortcoming is shared by the proof from the necessity for a true religion, or an authorized worship of God, which is to be found only in the Church of His Son.

Another class of proofs centers around the concept of the Church as the institution so intimately united with Our Lord that it is called His Mystical Body. The theologians reason correctly that, because union with Our Lord is necessary for the attainment of those blessings which come to us only through Him, the Church itself must be considered as manifestly necessary in terms of its identity as the fellowship of Christ. The Church is not merely a society within which a man can find association with the Savior. Objectively it is the company of Christ, the supernatural family or household of God within which He dwells. Hence the proof based upon this characteristic manifests the Church, not as a merely acceptable society, but as a fellowship within which a man must live in order to achieve the Beatific Vision.

Most of the modern theologians who employ this argument make no effort to restrict themselves to any one of the many designations of the Church. They speak of this society, not only as the Mystical Body of Christ, but also as the kingdom of God on earth, as the New Israel, and particularly as the Church of the promises. They realize that the efficacy of their proof depends entirely upon their success in bringing out the truth that the deposit of divine revelation represents the Catholic Church precisely as the recipient of the various and ineffably glorious promises which Our Lord made to the company of His followers. They point to the fact that when Our Lord said “I am with you all days,” He was promising to be present in the visible Catholic Church, and that when He declared that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church, He was speaking of a prerogative of this same visible society.

Several modern theologians integrate into their proof the doctrine that man stands in real need of the ecclesiastical ministry. This ministry exists only in the Catholic Church. In short, they teach that the visible Catholic Church and its divinely instituted resources are requisite for union with Our Lord, apart from whom there is no possibility of eternal salvation.

In this tremendously complicated process of proof, modern theology presents irrefutable evidence that the salvation which Our Lord merited for men by His sacrificial death is not to be obtained outside of His Church. Nevertheless, the effectiveness and the clarity of this demonstration would be greatly improved by an integration into it of the basic theology of salvation itself. The fundamental truths which God has revealed to us about the process of salvation stand out clearly in the New Testament, especially in the Epistles of St. Paul. This particular section of sacred teaching is considered in the theological treatise on grace, and particularly in the treatise on the effects of Our Lord’s passion and death. The Summa theologica contains a magnificent exposition of this truth in the 49th question of its third part.

Salvation itself is something which God has procured for man through the passion of Christ. As its very name implies, salvation involves a transfer from one status to another, from an unfavorable and even fatal condition to a position of security and perfection. In the supernatural order, salvation consists in the process of bringing a man from a condition of aversion from God through sin into the status of one who lives the life of grace.

Now the inspired word of God clearly teaches, and the science of sacred theology rightly explains, that this process of supernatural salvation is intrinsically a social as well as an individual reality. A man is said to be saved by the meritorious power of Jesus Christ when he has been freed from the bonds of sin and constituted as an adopted child of God and as a brother of Our Lord through the life of sanctifying grace. This passage from the state of sin to the state of grace is what we may call the individual aspect of salvation. There is, however, a social or corporate aspect of this same divine gift, just as essentially pertinent to it as its individual connotation. The corporate aspect of salvation is to be found in the transfer of a person from the kingdom of Satan into that social entity which we know as the kingdom of God or the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.

The dominion of God’s chief spiritual enemy over unregenerate and sinful mankind is clearly asserted in sacred doctrine. Satan’s rule over the multitude subject to him is, of course, in no way completely parallel to Our Lord’s sway over the company of His associates. Nevertheless he actually exercises a certain kind of dominance, and is so placed that Our Lord Himself could speak of His principal foe as “the prince of this world.”[14] In his Summa theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that Satan actually may be said to govern those in the state of aversion from God and that thus he may be termed the head of these individuals.[15] It follows, then, that the people subject to Satan in this way constitute a sort of loosely organized community, united by the one evil will of their chief.

This community is the thing which the early theologians called the ecclesia malignantium.[16] Its work is directed by Satan against God and against God’s supernatural kingdom in this world. Primarily the process of salvation involves a transfer from this ecclesia malignantium into the kingdom of God on earth, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the true ecclesia sanctorum.

These two companies are intermingled on earth. Every man on earth belongs to one or to the other of these social units. An individual who is held by the bonds of original sin, together with mortal sin or even apart from it, is definitely under the power and the direction of Satan, and thus forms part of his kingdom. The great mystery of God’s economy with His followers is the fact that God’s kingdom on earth in this, its final status before the end of the world, is a visible and fully organized society. The work of Satan’s realm is directed against this visible community, the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ.

Because God’s kingdom on earth is a visible society, it is possible to be one of its members and at the same time to be subject to Satan through the aversion from God inherent in the status of mortal sin. Thus the Catholic who lives in the state of sin constitutes himself as a traitor to Our Lord. He lives, by God’s mercy, as a citizen within the City of God, and at the same time, by reason of his own malignity, he places himself under the control of the enemy of God. In any event, the salvation of an individual involves a passage from the dominion of Satan into the kingdom of God. In the case of a person who has not been baptized, this means a transfer from a community ruled over by the spiritual enemy of God to the community or family which is truly and supernaturally God’s kingdom. In the case of a Catholic who has fallen into sin, it means the abandonment of the ties which have bound this hitherto unworthy and disloyal member of Christ to the enemy of Christ, and the completion within this person of the bonds of unity which attach him to his Savior within the company of the disciples. In other words, it means that he acquires charity and grace, which belong to the internal bond of unity. In this latter case the process of salvation is essentially a return to loyalty within the kingdom of God.

St. Paul’s Epistles show us very clearly this intrinsically social connotation of salvation. Thus the letter to the Colossians entreats the Christians to remain:

Giving thanks to God the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light; Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.[17]

To be under the power of darkness was not to be a neutral with reference to God and His supernatural kingdom. According to St. Paul, the condition of these people was that of enemies.

And you, whereas you were sometime alienated and enemies in mind in evil works: Yet now he hath reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unspotted and blameless before him.[18]

The Epistle to the Galatians insists upon the social or corporate character of salvation. It speaks of Our Lord Jesus Christ “Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present wicked world, according to the will of God and our Father.”[19] The same lesson is brought out in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Therefore because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner hath been partaker of the same: that, through death, he might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil: And might deliver them who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject of servitude.[20]

St. Peter’s words at the conclusion of his missionary sermon on the first Christian Pentecost stress the corporate or social aspect of salvation.

And with many other words did he testify and exhort them, saying: Save yourselves from this perverse generation. They therefore that received his word were baptized: and there were added in that day about three thousand souls.[21]

He brought out the fact that the salvation with which Christian teaching is concerned involves a removal from the perverse or crooked generation, from a social unit turned away from God. The attainment of this salvation, however, was understood to involve affiliation with the company of Christ, the visible religious organization over which Peter himself presided. The people who accepted the Christian teaching of Peter acted to save themselves from the society of Satan by incorporating themselves into the company of Christ.

Throughout this inspired teaching we find the salvation which God has decreed to give to men represented as a passage from one empire to another, from the company of Satan to the kingdom of Christ. We could not understand the process of salvation at all if we were to forget the fact that sin or aversion from God necessarily carries with it a real subjection to the devil, and that grace or the sharing of the divine life necessarily involves affiliation with the company of Jesus Christ. A man is either a friend or an enemy of his God. He is either possessed of the life of grace or turned away from his ultimate and supernatural end. And he can be neither a saint nor a sinner alone. He stands either with the Church militant, the army of the living God, or with the cohorts of Satan.

Thus the kingdom of God on earth is presented in divine revelation as something inherently and necessarily requisite for the process of salvation. Just as opposition to God in original or mortal sin necessarily and intrinsically involves participation in the kingdom of Satan, conversion to God in the life of grace involves an entrance into the company of Christ, the ecclesia sanctorum. The concept of a man who would live the life of grace or salvation outside of Christ’s kingdom is, according to God’s own revealed teaching, something like the idea of a square circle, a mere combination of utterly incompatible elements.

Thus we see that the ultimate and all-important link in the chain of proof that the visible Catholic Church is necessary for salvation with the necessity of means is the basic Christian truth that this visible Catholic Church is absolutely identified with the kingdom of God, the Mystical Body of Christ, on this earth. It is precisely because and only because the visible religious society over which the Roman Pontiff presides as Christ’s Vicar is God’s kingdom and city and household in this world that this visible organization is proposed to us in the divinely revealed message as really necessary for the life of grace on earth and for the final flowering of that life in heaven. As the kingdom of God on earth, the Catholic Church is the company into which a man is brought by the process of salvation itself.

And, because it is the kingdom of God on earth, the Catholic Church is the organization against which the cohorts of Satan direct their attack. The army of the living God, the company that struggles against the enemies of Christ on earth, is not some amorphous group of persons who have what the world calls “faith,” but the visible Catholic Church. When, by God’s mercy, a man is changed from a sinner into a possessor of the life of grace, he is thereby transferred from the empire of Satan into the brotherhood of Christ. He comes within the Catholic Church either as a member or as one who wills to become a member. If he has not at least this latter sort of association with the company of Christ, be cannot have the life of grace which men hold only through contact with the Savior.

Hence the force of the theological proof that the Church is truly necessary for salvation will inevitably be destroyed in any exposition which plays down or confuses the teaching that the visible Catholic Church is actually the reality designated in the Scriptures as the kingdom or the city or the household of God. The central point of the doctrine of the English-speaking Modernist was obviously a denial of the necessity of the Church. Hence we are not at all astonished to find a typical Modernist like Von Huegel distinguishing the Church from the kingdom.[22] It is unfortunate, however, to see a recent publication otherwise quite accurate bring forward the assertion that “the Church is not the City of God.”[23]

Fortunately we have a passage from one of the encyclical letters of Pope Leo which presents this basic teaching clearly and accurately.

The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, “through the envy of the devil,” separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God.

This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects…[24]

A recognition of the existence of these two kingdoms, and a realization of their position with reference to the process of eternal life and salvation, together with an awareness of the fact that the visible Catholic Church is truly the kingdom and the city of God on this earth: these are the elements which can give complete force and meaning to the theological proof of the axiom “extra ecclesiam nulla salus.”

1.Cf. Session III, chapter 4. DB 1796/DH 3015–3020.

2.Cf. Billot, Tractatus de ecclesia Christi (Rome: Gregorian University, 1927), I, 117ff; Herrmann, Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae (Paris: Vitte, 1937), I, 373ff.

3.John 10:9.

4.John 14:6.

5.Acts 4:12.

6.Matt. 28:18–20.

7.Mark 16; 15–16.

8.Matt. 10:14–15.

9.Matt. 10:40.

10.Luke 10:16.

11.Matt. 18:17.

12.Titus 3:10–11.

13.2 John 9–11.

14.John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11.

15.Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, q. 8, a. 7.

16.The expression is taken from Psalm 25:5. The new translation has “conventum male agentium.” For a discussion of the use of this expression in the early post-Reformation Catholic writings, see the article “Scholastic Definitions of the Catholic Church,” Part I, in AER, CXI, 1 (July, 1944), 59ff.

17.Col. 1:12–13.

18.Col. 1:21–22.

19.Gal. 1:4.

20.Heb. 2:14–15.

21.Acts 2:40–41.

22.Cf. Von Huegel, Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1921), I, 127.

23.Cf. Dom Aelred Graham, The Christ of Catholicism (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1947), p. 306.

24.Pope Leo XIII, Humanum genus, issued April 20, 1884. The translation is that of The Great Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1903), p. 83.

XIII

The True Church and the Notes of the Church

How do we know that the Catholic Church is the one true Church established by Christ?” Thus reads question 153 in the Revised Baltimore Catechism. Upon our ability to answer this question effectively and accurately depend the spiritual welfare of our own people and the progress of our missionary effort. As Catholics we know that the scientifically assured and demonstrated answer to that question exists in the teaching of our Church. As teachers, however (and every priest is necessarily and preeminently a teacher), it must be our business to know how to give that answer. Moreover, we must be able to give it in such a way that those to whom our teaching is addressed will be able to profit from it, and may be able to see the God-given evidence that ours is the true Church of Christ.

The Revised Baltimore Catechism answers its own question with an appeal to the four marks or notes of the Church. It states that “We know that the Catholic Church is the one true Church established by Christ because it alone has the marks of the true Church.” In answering the two subsequent questions it defines the marks of the Church as “certain clear signs by which all men can recognize it as the true Church founded by Jesus Christ,” and informs us that “The chief marks of the Church are four: It is one, holy, catholic or universal, and apostolic.” After explaining why each of these qualities can be predicated of the Catholic Church, the Catechism terminates this section of Christian Doctrine with the answer to question 160: “We know that no other church but the Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ because no other church has these four marks.”

Thus the Revised Baltimore Catechism expresses itself as fully confident that the proof from the four marks or notes of the Church can show “all men” that the Catholic Church is the one true Church instituted by our Lord. It considers the via notarum as an effective demonstration, even apart from the via historica, which shows the identity of the Catholic Church with the organized religious society to which our Lord’s immediate disciples belonged, and apart from the via empirica, which deals with the existent Catholic Church as a manifest miracle of the social order, and thus as a “great and perpetual motive of credibility and an unshakeable evidence of its own divine messengership.”[1]

A great number of distinguished and highly competent modern theologians have treated the via notarum as a fully and independently effective argument for the Catholic Church’s position as our Lord’s own society. In this group we find such authors as Hurter, Mazzella, Herrmann, Egger, Billot, D’Herbigny, Pesch, Michelitsch, Felder, Bainvel, Van Noort, Zubizarreta, Bartmann, Berry, Brunsmann, Tepe, MacGuiness, Paris, and Schultes.[2] There is, of course, no such thing as any one uniform method of treating the notes of the Church to be found in the writings of these modern theologians. These men handle their material in different ways and they manage to achieve strikingly different degrees of effectiveness. Yet, amidst this diversity of treatment, they all manifest their confidence in the via notarum as a correct and efficacious apologetical process.

Still other competent theologians, however, have placed no such reliance on the proof from the notes of the Church. Speaking of this demonstration, Tanquerey-Bord says brusquely: “Hodie vero Protestantes minime convincit.”[3] In a similar vein, Martin Jugie, the greatest modern Catholic authority on the doctrines of the dissident Orientals, insists that the via notarum is of little use in explaining the Roman Church’s prerogatives to the members of the dissident assemblies.[4] Dieckmann[5] and Lercher[6] give the demonstration from the notes of the Church but show themselves quite diffident about its efficacy. Cotter does not employ it at all.[7] Schouppe,[8] Dorsch,[9] Straub,[10] and Hervé[11] use the notes of the Church together with the argument from the Petrine primacy, the strongest element in the via historica. Yelle and Fournier use the three methods very effectively.[12]

Strangely enough, the sharpest attack on the validity of the proof from the notes of the Church comes from Dr. Gustave Thils, the theologian who has done the most towards explaining the history and the various forms of this demonstration. Dr. Thils holds that, even granting the efficacy of the proof from the notes of the Church, such a proof is neither simple nor easy, and certainly not adapted to all the faithful.[13] Moreover, he shows a serious lack of confidence in the force of the demonstration itself.

The learned professor from Malines reduces the proof from the notes of the Church to syllogistic form. The major of this syllogism is the assertion that our Lord endowed His Church with certain characteristics which should permit us to recognize it amidst all the Christian groups. The minor tells us that these characteristics are found in the Roman Catholic Church. Dr. Thils holds that, during the course of recent theological history, ecclesiologists have presented the minor premise in three different ways. Sometimes they have made an absolute assertion, affirming without any restriction that these notes belong to the Church of Rome. At other times they have given the minor premise in comparative form, holding that the four notes exist in the Roman Church more perfectly than they do in non-Roman communions. Dr. Thils holds that our theologians present the minor premise in the proof from the notes of the Church in a negative manner when they content themselves with showing that the four qualities employed by the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople do not exist in religious societies other than the Catholic Church.[14]

Dr. Thils passes a very severe judgment on the via notarum. He claims that its major premise has never been rigorously demonstrated, and that it fails to justify completely its declarations on the existence, the number, and the nature of the notes themselves. He believes that the minor premise, in whatever form it may be found, has serious and easily ascertainable shortcomings. As he sees it, the demonstration from the notes of the Church, taken as a unit, is a sadly ineffective instrument for bringing people to realize the status of the Catholic Church as the true Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is obviously important for us to know whether or not Dr. Thils has adequately and accurately evaluated the via notarum. In order to have this knowledge, we must understand something about the way in which and the purpose for which the proof from the notes of the Church was originally conceived. With this historical information once gained, we should have little difficulty in seeing in what way and to what end the demonstration from the four notes of the Church is manifestly and fully effective.

Catholic theologians began to use the via notarum, in its existent form, during the course of the sixteenth century. Such is the constant teaching of Dr. Thils, and such is the evidence from the history of sacred theology. The precise point of this beginning in the sixteenth century, however, is unfortunately not too well set forth in many explanations of the history of the notes.

In the first place, the men of the sixteenth century were by no means the first to appeal to qualities visible in the true Church of Jesus Christ as evidence justifying their attachment to that Church. As a matter of fact, some of the earliest and most effective of the Counter-Reformation ecclesiologists incorporated into their own works passages taken bodily from the writings of the Fathers, indicating visible characteristics of the Catholic Church which manifested that Church as the society within which every man who seeks to live as a follower of Christ should dwell. Passages of this kind were to be found in the writings of Saints Irenaeus, Augustine, Jerome, Optatus, and Vincent of Lerins.

St. Irenaeus had taught that the true faith, the veritable message of our Lord, was to be found in the apostolic Churches, and especially in the apostolic Roman Church, with which, because of its “potior principalitas,” every Church which preserved the apostolic tradition was to be united.[15] Listing the factors which held him as a member of the Catholic Church and kept him from association in the conventicles of heretics, St. Augustine had spoken of a “most sincere wisdom” existent within the true Church, an “agreement of peoples and of nations,” an “authority, begun by miracles, nourished by hope, increased by charity, confirmed by age,” a “succession of priests from the very see of Peter the Apostle...to the present episcopate,” and finally “the Catholic name itself.”[16] The “wisdom” found within the Church, in other words the flowering of the divine life of grace within the Catholic society, was presented as something which should influence Catholics to remain within the Church. St. Augustine seems to admit that it has no probative value in manifesting the truth of the Church to non-Catholics, since these do not believe that it exists in the Church. The other four factors, however, by their very nature, are such that they can be seen and appreciated even by those outside the fold.

St. Jerome had used the name and the origin of the Church as signs of its truth.

We ought to remain in that Church which was founded by the apostles and which continues to this day. If you ever hear of any that are called Christians taking their name not from the Lord Jesus Christ but from some other, as for instance Marcionites, Valentinians, men of the mountains or of the plain, you may be sure that you have there not the Church of Christ but the synagogue of Antichrist. For the fact that they took their origin after the foundation of the Church is proof that they are those whose coming the Apostle foretold.[17]

St. Vincent of Lerins had taught that a man would hold the orthodox faith within the Catholic Church when he held to entirety, antiquity, and agreement.[18] St. Optatus of Milevis had appealed to the catholicity of the Church in showing “which is the one Church called by Christ His Dove and His Bride.” Furthermore he makes use of five endowments (dotes) of the Church in arguing against the Donatists. These five endowments, which the Donatists themselves admitted as adornments of the Church, were the Cathedra, Angelus, Spiritus, Fons Signatus, and the Sigillum. The Cathedra is the See of Peter, and the true Church is the one in communion with the legitimate successor of the Prince of the Apostles.[19]

Furthermore, when we say that the scholastic argument from the notes of the Church originated during the sixteenth century, we by no means imply that the theologians of the sixteenth century were the first to teach that the four qualities enumerated by the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople are to be found in the Catholic society and in no other. This doctrine had been a commonplace in Catholic ecclesiology since the thirteenth century. St. Thomas Aquinas had listed four conditiones of the Church, unity, holiness, catholicity, and a firmness due to its divine foundation and to its apostolicity.[20] He insisted that these conditiones belonged to the Catholic Church alone. The fourteenth century ecclesiologist James of Viterbo had indicated no less than ten factors contributing to the “glory” of the true Church.[21] These ten qualities, he said, could be reduced to the four conditiones set forth in the Creed of Constantinople. The fifteenth century Cardinal John of Torquemada had designated these same four qualities, not only as conditiones but as proprietates, as pertaining to the Catholic Church and to no other religious society.[22] Thomas Netter of Walden had appealed to these four qualities in his arguments against the Wycliffites, but had relied mainly on demonstrations from the Church’s unity, catholicity, and apostolicity.[23]

Despite the fact that the Catholic ecclesiologists of the sixteenth century were not the first to appeal to visible qualities inherent in the Catholic Church in defending her status as the true Church of Jesus Christ, and despite the fact that they were not the first to teach that the four qualities enumerated in the Creed of Constantinople are actually properties of the Catholic Church, they were the originators of the via notarum. The demonstration from the notes of the Church is something far more radical and specialized than a mere appeal to the Church’s visible qualities. It is a triumphant refutation of one specific attack on the Church, an attack which began with the Protestant Reformation.

What distinguished the Protestant groups from the various heretical societies which had preceded them, and what fashioned them into the most formidable adversaries that have ever been ranged against the Church of God, was one ingenious thesis in the field of ecclesiology. Earlier heretical societies had gone their own individual ways and held their own individual tenets, separating themselves, theoretically at least, as thoroughly from other erroneous assemblies as from the true Church. It remained for the Lutherans, and for Calvin, and for their followers, to concoct and to adopt a scheme which would give plausibility and consistency to the spectacle of doctrinal variety itself. That scheme was the hypothesis of a twofold church, the one visible and the other in-visible. The Protestant theory of the notes of the church was an essential part of this scheme. The Catholic demonstration from the notes of the Church, the via notarum, provided the evidence which showed the error of this basic Protestant contention.

Both the Lutherans and the Calvinists insisted that the true Church of Christ was basically an invisible society. By the term “the true Church of Jesus Christ” both these men and their Catholic opponents understood the group which was the recipient of our Lord’s promises, the assembly which He and His disciples called the Ecclesia. The true Church was the body of men against which the gates of hell would not prevail. It was the Kingdom of God, within which our Lord was to remain forever. It was the Church of Christ, and the men who did not belong to it were to constitute a loosely organized church of Satan, the “world,” gathered under “the prince of this world,” to fight against our Lord and His followers.

It was the contention of the Lutherans that this true Church consisted of men and women in the state of grace.[24] The Calvinists held that only the predestined belonged to it.[25] Both parties, in other words, taught that in order to be a Christian, in the sense in which this term is used in the Acts of the Apostles, in order to be a true disciple or follower of Christ and to be in His company, it was not primarily requisite to live in any organized religious society at all.

There was nothing particularly new about these contentions. They had been the stock in trade of various heretics from the time of Montanus down to the days of Wycliffe and Huss. What made the Reformation heresiarchs’ attack on the true Church more dangerous than previous onslaughts had been was that none of them attempted to identify his own organization with this imaginary invisible Church. The Reformers were anxious to put up a concerted fight against the Catholic Church, and they found the instrument for this campaign in their own theory on the notes of the Church.

That theory, as elaborated by the Lutherans and adopted by the Calvinists, was embodied in the assertion that the true Church existed wherever the Gospel was preached sincerely and the sacraments were properly administered.[26] The just and the predestined were depicted as being free to enter into any visible religious society wherein these two characteristics could be found. Such societies were presented as being fit assemblies for Christians, organizations within which the followers of Christ could unite to work for their common interests. The sincere preaching of the Gospel and the proper administration of the sacraments were thus the Protestant notes of the Church.

The sincere preaching of the Gospel, according to Reformation theory, demanded accuracy only in the statement of essential or primary doctrines of Christianity, and allowed error and disagreement on accidentals. The determination was made by a sort of “greatest common factor” method. The teachings on which Protestant religious groups agreed were, ipso facto, elevated to the status of primary Christian doctrines. Matters on which they differed automatically became designated as accidentals.

The Protestant notes of the Church thus became the foundation of a kind of religious “tolerance.” No individual Protestant assembly could claim to constitute the Church of God in its own right. Each one claimed for itself and recognized in others only the pretension to be an apt and fitting dwelling for men and women who were Christians by virtue of the life of grace or by predestination. Thus, the Protestant notes of the Church do not claim the prerogatives of the visible Catholic Church for any heretical religious organization. Rather they are part of a system which claims these gifts for an unorganized body of men and women, for those in the state of grace or for the predestined.

In opposing this error through the use of the real via notarum the Catholic theologians of the sixteenth century took cognizance of those religious truths which their Protestant opponents accepted. The Reformers recognized the early Saints, the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church as true disciples of Christ. They claimed to follow the teaching of the early Church. Most important of all, they accepted the Bible as God’s word. With this in mind the Catholic controversialists worked to draw from the Scriptures, and from ancient patristic and conciliar writings all that they could find to show that being a Christian in the proper sense of the term, being a true disciple or follower of Christ, being in the company of Christ, meant belonging to the visible society which our Lord had organized around Himself, the society within which He still lives and rules and which we know as the Roman Catholic Church. John Driedo stated the central issue of the sixteenth century religious controversy clearly and accurately. Echoing the words of St. Augustine he says that “there is an ancient controversy between the heretics and the true Christians about where the true Church of Christ is and with whom it dwells.”[27] He notes that there are two different Churches opposing one another, each one claiming that it wishes to remain in the faith of our Savior, to abide by the evangelical and apostolic teachings and to possess the Christian religion. The issue is between two Churches. If the claim of one of these groups is justified, that of the other is not. If one of these really is the Church of Christ, and actually possesses the qualifications it claims to have, then the other is the body, or at least belongs to the body which is set against the Church of Christ, and which fights in some way under the direction of the prince of this world.

Driedo sets out to prove that “the true Church of Christ is with those who remain in that Church which was founded by the apostles, which began to grow out of Jerusalem, spreading to all nations, and which endures to this day.”[28] He advances ten sententiae to demonstrate this proposition. The ten sententiae center around the evidence that the true Church of Christ is an organized body, containing both good and bad men in this world, that it is apostolic, and necessarily connected with the See of Peter, that it is united in one sacrament of faith, and that its status as the group within which our Lord dwells can be demonstrated through an appeal to the scriptures. Driedo’s proof, as stated and explained under the heading of his ten sententiae, is perfectly cogent. It is capable of showing a man who acknowledges the existence of a group which has the right to the name of Christian that this group is nothing more or less than the visible Catholic Church. Driedo organized his demonstration well, but made no attempt to hinge his teachings on any definite number of characteristics existent within the Catholic Church.

Ruard Tapper, on the other hand, appeals explicitly to the classical passages from St. Augustine and St. Vincent of Lerins in demonstrating that “the Church in which we have been born again to Christ, in which we have received the sacraments, and in which we have been instructed from our earliest years is that true Catholic Church outside of which there is no salvation.”[29] Like Driedo, Tapper teaches that this claim can be verified through an examination of the scriptures. For Peter Soto, unity is the great sign of the true Church. Soto insisted that the true Church of the Christians is indubitably the one which existed long ago “in the apostles and disciples, to the number of about a hundred, who were gathered in Jerusalem after the ascension, and who there received the Holy Ghost.” The ones who remain in that unity constitute the body of the Christians. The others, those who have left it, are joined with the antichrist described in the First Epistle of St. John.[30]

John Hessels appeals to the authority of St. Irenaeus, and uses the Catholicity of the Church, and its apostolicity, as signs showing that the visible Catholic Church is the Church of the Christians.[31] In his Demonstratio methodica, the great Thomas Stapleton uses universality, perpetuity, and conspicuous clarity as notes of the true Church.[32] In the later book, the Relectio scholastica, he offers a somewhat different listing. Here the notes are antiquity, succession, universality and unity.[33]

Christopher Holywood taught that the Catholic Church could be shown to be the true Church of Jesus Christ by the fact of its status as the historically demonstrable continuation of the apostolic society.[34] In a later edition of his book he indicated five signs or marks which rendered the exclusive claim of the Church evident. These five marks were faith, morals, extension in place, extension in time, and glorious works.[35] Nicholas Sander had listed six notes, the Church’s depth and sublimity, its splendor and clarity, its extension, its duration, its unity, and its constancy.[36]

Suarez named ten properties of the Church by which a man could demonstrate its status as the true Church of Jesus Christ, even apart from those other arguments which certify the correctness of its faith. These ten notes were the Church’s catholicity, its duration, the agreement of peoples and nations, its unity, its holiness, its apostolicity, the gift of prophecy and of miracles, the ordered government of the Church, its legitimate use of the sacraments, and its legitimate use of Scripture.[37] Gregory of Valencia[38] and Adam Tanner[39] considered as notes of the true Church the four properties attributed to the Church in the Creed of Constantinople and two others, the order existent in the Church, and its visibility. St. Robert Bellarmine, reminding his reader that the note of the Church leads to a conclusion “evidently credible” rather than “evidently true” for those who do not accept the Scriptures as God’s word, employs no less than fifteen of these marks.[40] These are the Catholic name, the Church’s antiquity, its uninterrupted duration, the number and variety of its adherents, the succession of its bishops from the apostles, its agreement with the faith of the apostles, the union of its members, the holiness of its teaching, the efficacy of its teaching, the holy lives of its great teachers, its miracles, its prophecies, the admissions of its enemies, the dreadful fate of those who oppose it, and finally the temporal felicity of its protectors. St. Robert, however, taught that these demonstrations might be arranged around the four marks of unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. Thus he lent the pressure of his influence towards the tendency to limit the number of notes to these four.

Earlier in the sixteenth century both Michael Vehe [41] and Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius[42] had designated these four properties as notes of the Church. This manner of listing the notes soon triumphed over the more complicated methods. John Wiggers took pains to show that the various elements in St. Augustine’s celebrated argument for the Church could all be explained in terms of the four properties set forth at Constantinople,[43] and Francis Sylvius argued that all arrangements of the notes could be reduced to this one.[44] Later in the seventeenth century the brothers Adrian and Peter van Walenburch used another set of four notes, unity, miracles, the diffusion of the Church and the perpetual succession of teachers within it,[45] but after their time the demonstration from the notes of the Church was, for all practical purposes, restricted to the arrangement sponsored by Vehe and Hosius.

The via notarum as these men employed it was a perfectly effective demonstration. It was addressed to men who professed themselves willing to follow the teaching of Scripture and of the Fathers, and who wanted to be associated with our Lord in the same way that the primitive Christians were joined to Him. Throughout all of its various individual arrangements, the demonstration from the notes of the true Church gave these men ample evidence that the Church of the promises, the company of the Christians, was, on the authority of Scripture and of the Fathers, essentially an organized and visible society, the visible society which they knew as the Catholic Church. Men like St. Robert and Francis Sylvius did not waste their time in using this comparatively complex process to prove something self-evident, the fact that as individual societies the various Protestant religious assemblies had not been established by our Lord during the course of His public life in this world. This fact was taken in as one element of their demonstration. They were engaged in polemic, not against one individual religions group nor against a mere union of societies. They were trying, in the interests of divine truth, to overcome an erroneous system, the system in which the Protestant teaching on the notes of the Church formed the key position. In showing that the Fathers of Constantinople had declared the visible Church over which they ruled as the Church of the faith, in presenting the formulae of St. Augustine and of the other patristic writers, the Counter-Reformation theologians were offering ample proof that, to be in the company of Christ, or to be a Christian, a disciple in the strict sense of the term, a man had to belong to the visible Church.

The weakness which Dr. Thils and other modern theologians have remarked in the modern use of the via notarum arises, not from any defect in the process itself, but rather from a faulty use of this process. In certain modern works there is a tendency to depict the Catholic Church and dissident religious organizations as claiming the same dignity, and to treat the via notarum as a kind of magic instrument for deciding the contest in favor of the Catholic Church. Thus the notes of the Church are considered as standards awarding the prerogatives of our Lord’s true Church to the Catholic Church rather than, let us say, to the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Actually, of course, there is no such contest. The Catholic Church’s prerogatives as the true Church of Christ are not claimed in the name of any non-Catholic religious society, or even for the sum-total of these societies. They are claimed for an invisible church of the just or of the predestined. All that the modern Protestant bodies claim, and all that any such visible organization ever claimed, is the status of a society organized for the furtherance of the common interests of persons who seek their salvation as members of this invisible church. The Catholic via notarum shows that the Church of salvation is actually the visible society, the Catholic Church,

Furthermore, in recent years there has also been a tendency on the part of some authors to rely too much on a mere enumeration of the notes and an indication that they are found within the Church. After all, the essential work of the via notarum is to indicate that the visible Catholic Church is the true Church of Jesus Christ. The process is devoid of purpose and of meaning when the person to whom it is addressed is not aware of what the expression “true Church of Jesus Christ” really means. The classical masterpieces of ecclesiology all insisted upon the “names” of the Church, the various designations given to the Church by our Lord and by the Fathers. When they set out to prove that the Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ, they were demonstrating that it is the Kingdom of God, the City of God, the House and Temple of God, and our Lord’s Mystical Body. They were showing that the Catholic Church is the Church of the faithful and that, in order to have the designation of disciple of Christ or of Christian, in the sense in which these terms appear in Scripture, a man must belong to the Catholic Church.

In the religious and secular literature of our own time, a tremendous amount of the force and meaning contained in the notion of the Church or the Ecclesia has been lost. We have become so prone to apply the name “church” to every religious organization that we forget that it was and is the pre-eminent title of the company within which our Lord dwells. We are so accustomed to hearing expressions like “the union of the Churches” that we are apt to forget that this manner of speech would have sounded like blasphemy to the men who first elaborated the argument from the notes of the Church. For them, and for their opponents in religious debate, there was manifestly only one Church of Christ, and one church of Satan. We can expect little good from the via notarum when it is advanced by the type of Catholic writer who will use the inherently contradictory expression, “orthodox Christians, both Protestant and Catholic.”

It is encouraging to find a distinguished non-Catholic scholar like H. Burn-Murdoch protesting against the attenuated meaning attached to the word “church” in modern times.[46] Only when men come to realize the content and the implications of this word can they be in a position to profit from the via notarum.[47] Unless they have an idea of what the notion of the true Church of Jesus Christ really is, they will not appreciate what this process of proof has to show them. Once they come to learn that meaning, however, they will find in the proof from the notes of the Church one of the most fruitful portions of Catholic theology.

1.Vatican Council, Sess. III, chap. 3. DB 1794/DH 3013–3014.

2.Cf. Hugo Hurter, Theologiae dogmaticae compendium (Innsbruck, 1878), I, 262ff. Cf. Camillo Mazella, De religione et Ecclesia praelectiones scholastico-dogmaticae (Prato, 1905), pp. 639ff. Cf. Jean Hermann, Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae (Lyons and Paris: E. Vitte, 1937), I, 427ff. Cf. Franz Egger, Enchiridion theologiae dogmaticae generalis (Brixen, 1932), pp. 526ff. Cf. Louis Billot, Tractatus de Ecclesia Christi sive continuatio theologiae de Verbo Incarnato (Rome: Gregorian University, 1921), pp. 135ff. Cf. Michel D’Herbigny, Theologica de Ecclesia (Paris: Beauchesne, 1928), II, 29ff. Cf. Christian Pesch, Praelectiones dogmaticae (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1924), I, 285ff. Cf. Anton Michelitsch, Elementa apologeticae sive theologiae fundamentalis (Graz and Vienna, 1925), pp. 285ff. Cf. Hilarin Felder, Apologetica sive theologia fundamentalis (Paderborn, 1923), II, 154ff. Cf. Jean Vincent Bainvel, De Ecclesia Christi (Paris: Beauchesne, 1925), pp. 49f. Cf. Gerard C. Van Noort, Tractatus de Ecclesia Christi (Amsterdam, 1913), pp. 130ff. Cf. Valentino Zubizarreta, Theologia dogmatico-scholastica ad mentem S. Thomae Aquinatis (Bilbao, 1937), I, 338ff. Cf. Bernhard Bartmann, Précis de théologie dogmatique, traduit par I’Abbé Marcel Gautier (Mulhouse, France, 1936), II, 204ff. Cf. E. Sylvester Berry, The Church of Christ. An Apologetic and Dogmatic Treatise (St. Louis and London: B. Herder Book Co., 1927), pp. 146ff. Cf. Johann Brunsmann, A Handbook of Fundamental Theology, freely adapted and edited by Arthur Preuss (St. Louis and London: B. Herder Book Co., 1931), III, 409f. Cf. Bernhard Tepe, Institutiones theologicae in usum scholarum (Paris: Lethielleux, 1894), pp. 317ff. Cf. John MacGuiness, Commentarii theologici (Paris: Lethielleux, 1930), I, 263ff. Cf. Gerard M. Paris, Ad mentem S. Thomae Aquinatis tractatus de Ecclesia Christi ad usum studentium theologiae fundamentalis (Turin: Marietti, 1929), pp, 74ff. Cf. Reginald M. Schultes, De Ecclesia catholica praelectiones apologeticae (Paris: Lethielleux, 1931), pp. 160ff. The same author showed himself quite critical of the via notarum in an article in Divus Thomas, I (1,914), pp. 57ff.

3.Adolphe Tanquerey-Bord, Synopsis theologiae dogmaticae (Paris, Tournai, and Rome: Desclée, 1937), I, 516.

4.Martin Jugie, Theologia dogmatica christianorum orientalium ab ecclesia catholica Dissidentium (Paris: Letouzey and Ané, 1931), IV, 591.

5.Cf. Hermann Dieckmann, De Ecclesia tractatus historico-dogmatici (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1925), I, 511.

6.Cf. Ludwig Lercher, Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1934), I, 449f.

7.Cf. A.C. Cotter, Theologia fundamentalis (Weston, Massachusetts: Weston College, 1940), p. 391.

8.Cf. Francis Xavier Schouppe, Elementa theologiae dogmaticae (Lyons and Paris, 1861), I, 186ff.

9.Cf. Emil Dorsch, Institutiones theologiae fundamentalis (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1928), II, 637ff.

10.Cf. Anthony Straub, De ecclesia Christi (Innsbruck, 1894), pp. 743ff.

11.Cf. Jean-Marie Hervé, Manuale theologiae dogmaticae (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Bookshop, 1943), I, 374ff. Hervé also employs the hierarchical nature of the Church as a quasi note.

12.Cf. Gérard Yelle and Roland Fournier, Apologetica (Montreal: Grand Séminaire, 1945), pp. 191ff.

13.Cf. Gustave Thils, Les notes de l’Église dans I’Apologétique Catholique depuis la Reforme (Gembloux, Belgium: J. Duculot, 1937), p. 342; cf. also the article by the same author “La ‘via notarum’ et l’apologétique contemporaine” (Angelicum, XVI, 1 [Jan. 1939], pp. 24ff.).

14.Cf. Gustave Thils, Les notes de l’église, p. 81.

15.Cf. Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus haereses, 3, 3. MPG, VII, 848f.

16.Cf. Augustine, Contra epistulam Manichaci quam vacant fundamenti, 4. CSEL, XXV, 196; MPL, XI.II, 175.

17.Jerome, Dialogus contra Luciferianos. MPL, XXIII, 181f.

18.Cf. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium 2. MPL, L, 640.

19.Cf. Optatus of Milevis, Contra Parmenianum Donatistam, 2. CSEL, XXVI, 32ff., MPL, XI, 941ff.

20.Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super symbolum apostolorum (Mandonnet’s edition of the Opuscula omnia [Paris: Lethielleux, 1927]) IV, 378ff.

21.Cf. James of Viterbo, De regimine Christiano (Arquilliére’s critical edition [Paris: Beauchesne, 1926]) pp. 100ff.

22.Cf. John of Torquemada, Summa de Ecclesia (Venice, 1560), chapters 6–19, pp. 7v ff.

23.Cf. Thomas Netter, Doctrinale antiquitaliim fide Ecclesiae Catholicae (Venice, 1571), I, 190ff.

24.Cf. The Confession of Augsburg, “They [The Lutherans] teach that the one Holy Church will remain forever. Now this Church is the congregation of the saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly administered.” Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church (Oxford University Press, 1943), p. 295.

25.Cf. The Westminster Confession of Faith, “The Catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect…The visible Church which is also Catholic or universal under the Gospel, consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children. (Bettenson, op. cit., p. 348).

26.Cf. John Calvin, Institutio Christianae religionis, Lib. IV, cap. 1, n. 9 (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1874), II, 207.

27.Cf. John Driedo, De ecclesiasticis scripturis et dogmatibus, Lib. IV, cap. 2 (Louvain, 1533), p. 503. Driedo uses an adaptation of the words of St. Augustine’s De unitate Ecclesiae, cap. 2.

28.Cf. Driedo, op. cit., p. 527.

29.Cf. Ruard Tapper, Oratio secunda, De Ecclesiae unitate, et quod vera Christi Ecclesia est apud nos Catholicos, in the Opera omnia (Cologne, 1582), pp. 332ff. Tapper calls the “notes” taken from Vincent of Lerins “signa certissima.”

30.Cf. Pedro de Soto, Assertio Calholicae fidei circa articulos confessionis no-mine illustrissimi Ducis Wirtenbergensis oblatae per legatos eius Concilio Tridentino (Cologne, 1555), sectio de Ecclesia. The sections and the pages of this edition are not numbered.

31.Cf. John Hessels, Brevis et Catholica symboli apostolici explicatio (Louvain, 1562), pp. 30v ff.

32.Cf. Thomas Stapleton, Principiorum fidei doctrinalium demonstratio methodica (Paris, 1579), pp. 104ff.

33.Cf. Thomas Stapleton, Principiorum fidei doctrinalium relectio scholastica et compendiaria (Antwerp, 1596), pp. 70ff.

34.Cf. Christopher Sacrobosco, De investiganda vera ac visibili Christi Ecclesia tractatus, (Antwerp, 1619), p. 25. Holywood used the Latinized form of his name, Christophorus a Sacrobosco, as a signature for his book.

35.Cf. Op. cit., pp. 75ff.

36.Cf. Nicholas Sander, De visibili monarchia Ecclesiae (Louvain, 1571), p. 793.

37.Cf. Francisco Suárez, Opus de triplici virtute theologica, fide, spe, el charitate (Lyous, 1621), p. 177.

38.Cf. Gregory of Valencia, Commentarii theologici (Ingolstadt, 1603), III, col, 184ff.

39.Cf. Adam Tanner, Theologia scholastica (Ingolstadt, 1627), III, col. 156.

40.Cf. Robert Bellarmine, De controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos (Ingolstadt, 1586), I, col. 1338ff.

41.Cf. Michael Vehe, Assertio sacrorum quorundam axiomatum, quae a non-nullis nostri seculi pseudo prophetis in periculosam rapiuntur controversiam (Leipzig, 1535), Tract. I, cap. 2. The pages of this edition are not numbered.

42.Cf. Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius, Confessio Catholicae fidei Christiana, in the Opera omnia (Cologne, 1584), pp. 29ff.

43.Cf. John Wiggers, Commentaria de virtutibus theologicis, fide, spe, et charitate (Louvain, 1689), pp. 120ff.

44.Cf. Francis Sylvius, De praecipuis fidei nostrae orthodoxae controversiis cum nostris haereticis, in the Opera Omnia (Antwerp, 1698), pp. 256ff.

45.Cf. Adrian van Walenburch and Peter Walenburch, Professio fidei Catholicae, in Migue’s Theologiae cursus completus I, col. 1004ff. This Professio is sometimes ascribed to Francis Veronius, S.J.

46.Cf. H. Burn-Murdoch, Church, Continuity and Unity (Cambridge, England: At the University Press, 1945), p. 8.

47.Dr. Thils’ diffidence towards the via notarum may, perhaps, be ascribed to his belief that modern theologians see only a contest between the Catholic Church and three rival religious organizations where their counter-Reformation predecessors described one great conflict between the Catholic Church and the ecclesia sathanae (cf. op. cit., p. 5).

XIV

Factors in Church Unity

The recent and eminently well-publicized Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam has attracted a great deal of attention to the problems of ecclesiastical unity. According to one of its leaders, this Assembly was meant to “draw together into fuller understanding and co-operation the divided groupings of the servants of Christ in the world.”[1] The magazine, Time, with the somewhat drooling enthusiasm it ordinarily manifests for certain favored movements and persons, asserted that “Amsterdam set up a better human means toward the blessed end of Christian unity than the world had known since the first great schism, between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches, in the year 1054.”[2] There is reason to believe that a great many people share this naive notion.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that the Amsterdam assembly took a long and important step in the direction of some sort of religious unity. Unfortunately, however, the emergence from Amsterdam as one of the leaders of the World Council of an individual whose previous claims to prominence had been based almost exclusively on an interminable series of wearisome and spectacularly unscientific tirades against the Catholic Church and its hierarchy has given rise to questions about the type of unity envisioned by the World Council. In the past there have been calls to Protestant religious unity which, behind the facade of sonorous and pious pronouncements, have actually centered around the idea of united opposition to the true Church of Jesus Christ. It is to be hoped that no such primary motive lies behind the organization formed at Amsterdam.

From the theological point of view, the procedure and the mentality of the Amsterdam assembly are quite interesting. The groups taking part in this conference set out to co-operate with each other, regardless of their doctrinal differences. Thus, in one way or another, all of them acted on the supposition that the common work they hope to accomplish must be considered as something of greater import than and objectively superior to the accurate presentation of divine revelation.

Each one of the religious bodies entering into the new federation holds some kind of teaching as its creed, as its concept of what God has revealed to mankind. By allying itself with other organizations, each holding a distinct profession of religious belief, the individual communion in a general assembly of the Amsterdam type seems to imply that doctrinal divergence is not a matter of essential importance at all.

Furthermore, the unity desired and achieved at Amsterdam consists in an association of already existent religious societies, each with its individual beliefs and customs. The federation itself is not regarded as God’s kingdom on earth, but simply as a means for the advancement of this objective. Although religious communities which profess to believe in the existence of a visible Church as God’s kingdom in this world took part in the meeting, the mentality behind the association itself is obviously that of the invisible Church, the doctrine that the company of Christ on this earth consists, not in any one society, but in the unorganized mass of people who sympathize with the teachings or the work of Our Lord. Objectively the Amsterdam conference simply seeks to bring these people together for more complete and efficacious common religious activity. Out of this communal labor, the participants hope to achieve more effectively, through social and perhaps political channels, their common purpose. In a federation composed of groups whose professions of faith differ rather sharply from one another, that ultimate purpose will be largely humanitarian.

It is unfortunate that, at a time when the interest of the world at large is centered about the concept of ecclesiastical unity, our own scholastic text-books deal with the oneness of the true Church of Jesus Christ almost exclusively in terms of a visible note of the Church. Thus Hervé speaks of the unity of the Church as “the property by which it is undivided in itself and distinct from every other society in the profession of the faith, in government, and in cult.”[3] Dorsch[4] deals with the Church’s unity under its symbolical, liturgical, and social functions. Zapelena explains that the true Church is one in its faith, in its rule, and in its communion.[5]

In every instance these modern ecclesiologists confine their teaching on the unity of the Church to something which the older scholastic doctors considered only one element or aspect of that unity. They deal with what the classical ecclesiologists called the “outward” or the “bodily” bond of unity within Our Lord’s society. This particular factor is one of the realities which St. Robert Bellarmine designated by the metaphor, “the body of the Church.”[6] It consists of three elements, the profession of the same divine faith, the partaking of the same sacraments, and subjection to legitimate ecclesiastical rulers, and ultimately to the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, the Bishop of Rome.

This “outward” bond of unity owes its importance in modern theology to the fact that the great classical ecclesiologists showed that actual membership in the true Church of Christ on earth is definable in terms of this element, and of no other. A man is really a member of the true Church only when he has not publicly recanted his baptismal profession of the divine faith, when he has not been completely excluded from participation in the sacraments, and when he retains his subjection to the legitimate authority within this visible society. The immediate purpose of St. Robert Bellarmine’s De ecclesia militante was to prove that, according to the clear teachings of divine revelation, no other characteristics are requisite to constitute a man as a member of God’s kingdom on earth. All and only the men united with Our Lord by the outward or visible bonds of unity are members of the true Church.

St. Robert and the other classical ecclesiologists were, however, well aware of the fact that this outward bond of unity was by no means the only factor uniting men to Our Lord within His kingdom on earth. What they called the spiritual or inward bond of unity (and what St. Robert referred to on one famous occasion as “the soul of the Church”) included the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.[7] As components of this same bond of unity, St. Robert also mentioned “other gifts of the Holy Ghost.” Here the expression obviously refers, not exclusively to the seven gifts as distinct from the virtues, but to any and all benefits other than the three theological virtues, infused into the soul by God to bring man to Himself in the unity of His Church.

This spiritual or inward bond of unity works quite differently from the other. The outward bond of unity, that in function of which a man is constituted as a member of the Church militant, is something which does not admit of degrees, in the proper sense of the term. A man either is or is not a member of the true Church. Strictly speaking, one man cannot be any more a member than another. All of those who possess the threefold qualification that makes up this outward bond of unity are members of God’s household.

Faith, hope, and charity, on the other hand, actually admit of degrees of intensity and perfection. One man’s faith may be stronger than another’s. The man with the stronger faith is no more truly a member of the Church than his fellow Catholic, but he is more perfectly united to Our Lord in the Church in this way. The same thing holds true of hope, and, most completely, of charity. The man with a more perfect charity is more fully joined within the actual unity of the Church than the man with a less intensive love for God and his neighbor.

Hence, according to the teachings of Catholic theology, every member of the true Church of Jesus Christ should work for and accomplish a definite advance in ecclesiastical unity within the framework of his own life. By the power of God’s grace, every man is able to make his belief in God more resolute, his hope in God more firm, and his love for God more intense and effective. In progressing thus, a man unites himself more perfectly to God and integrates himself more completely within God’s kingdom. The apostolic work which strives to increase the intensity of the spiritual life within the Church is, therefore, essentially a labor for the increase of Church unity. That co-operation of the laity in the work of the hierarchy which the men of our day know as Catholic Action has precisely the same effect.

Another way of working for the advance of ecclesiastical unity is, of course, the missionary effort itself. The true Church of Christ does not become any more perfectly unified by the accession of new converts. Still it remains true that a man works for the unity of the Church by laboring to bring the ineffable benefits of that unity to souls for whom Christ died.

That, for all practical purposes, marks the difference between the concept of ecclesiastical unity which guided the conference at Amsterdam and the true notion of Church unity, enshrined in the teaching of Catholic theology. The men gathered at Amsterdam worked on the assumption that Church unity in itself is something which has yet to be achieved. They sought some new form of association among the followers of Christ.

Catholic theology, on the other hand, knows that the essential unity of the Church itself is something which has been constituted, once and for all, by Our Lord. The true Church as such will never become any more perfectly or completely one than it is at this moment, even though its individual members may and should become ever more completely integrated into it. The visible or outward bond of unity admits of no degrees. The Church is, and ever will be, as completely and perfectly organized a society as it has been since the day of its inception.

Even on the plane of the invisible or spiritual bond of unity, the oneness of the Church in itself is something which does not change from age to age. We must not forget the paramount fact that Our Lord is, according to His own promise, within the Church militant always. The faith of the members of the Church militant is essentially an effect produced by the truth and the understanding of Christ. The charity of the Church is basically and essentially His charity.

Thus, work for Church unity must be judged according to the standards of work for God Himself. Work for God does not seek to increase and to perfect His happiness. It strives simply to bring God’s creatures to share and to enjoy His eternal goodness. Similarly, work for Church unity, according to the true teaching of divine public revelation, does not seek to make the kingdom of God on earth in any way more perfectly or completely one. It seeks simply to bring within the company of Christ men who have not as yet enjoyed the blessings of that unity, and to increase the fullness of integration into the unity of Christ’s body in those men who already possess the grace of association with Him in His Church.

The ultimate cause of the Church’s unity, along the lines of both the visible and the invisible bonds, is to be found in the presence of Christ as the Head of the Church and in the indwelling of the Holy Ghost within this society. The divine Head of the Church preserves and protects it, maintaining it indefectibly in the face of manifest forces which, apart from His influence, would quickly destroy or modify it. Thus, in continuing to exist and to act as one society according to the constitution which Our Lord originally gave it, the Church itself is a true miracle of the social order, and a real motive of credibility in favor of the message it presents to the world as divine revelation. The sacred humanity of Christ is the supreme instrument of this ecclesiastical unity.

The real indwelling of the Holy Ghost within the Catholic Church is also a cause, a principal cause, of the Church’s unity. The Holy Ghost is said to reside within His creatures in a new and supernatural way, that is, in a manner distinct from that in which God dwells in all the things He has brought into being, when He is present as the principle and as the object of the life of sanctifying grace. According to the divine dispensation itself, the life of sanctifying or habitual grace finds its corporate expression in this world in and through the activity of the Catholic Church. The essential work of the Church, manifested in its liturgy, is that of charity, motivating Christian hope, and enlightened by divine faith. Hence the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, to whom as the divine principle these activities are attributed, must be designated as the cause of that ecclesiastical unity which results from faith, hope, and charity.

The sacraments of the Church, especially Baptism and the Eucharist, also figure as instrumental causes of the true unity of Our Lord’s Church. Objectively, Baptism constitutes an act of incorporation into the one body of Christ. It is the profession of faith in God, the manifestation of acceptance of the one teaching Our Lord presented to His followers. Thus it stands as a factor in the unity of these disciples of Christ, organized into one visible society by the divine Master Himself.

The Blessed Eucharist is an outstanding principle in the unity of the Church. St. Thomas Aquinas described it as “the sacrament of ecclesiastical unity,”[8] and taught that, in the case of the Eucharist, the res sacramenti is “the unity of the Mystical Body.”[9] In the final analysis, the effectiveness of the Eucharist as a principle of the Church’s unity stems from the fact that this sacrament is ultimately ordered to manifest charity itself, and to bring about an increase in grace through the exercise of charity in the person who receives it. Charity stands as the ultimate and perfective element in the spiritual bond of unity within the Church. It is the force, produced by Our Lord, and by the Holy Ghost dwelling within this society, which gathers the disciples of Christ into that oneness He procured for them by His prayer and sacrifice.

We must not lose sight of the fact that the so-called outward bond of ecclesiastical unity, comprising the profession of divine faith, the communication of the sacraments, and subjection to legitimate ecclesiastical authority, has traditionally been termed the “bodily” bond, while the inward factor, including faith, hope, charity, and the other gifts of the Holy Ghost, has been designated as “spiritual.” The theologians who employed this terminology meant to teach that these two groups of forces were related to one another in something like the manner in which the human body is referred to the soul.

The human body exists and acts for the sake of the soul. The soul is the perfective and active element. In much the same way, the profession of the faith, the communication of the sacraments, and the subjection to divinely instituted ecclesiastical authority exist for the sake of the faith, hope, and charity that compose the inward bond of union within the Church of Jesus Christ.

The human body is a dead thing apart from the soul. In somewhat the same manner, the elements which go to make up the outward bond of unity have no meaning or purpose apart from the faith, hope, and charity they are meant to manifest and aid. It was perfectly proper, then, for the greatest of all the scholastic ecclesiologists, St. Robert Bellarmine, to indicate faith, hope, and charity as constituting in a certain fashion “the soul of the Church.”[10] Subsequent theological writers were to abuse that terminology, and to employ it in propounding a conclusion quite opposed to St. Robert’s basic teaching. The abuse of the term was unfortunate, but the reason for the expression in the De ecclesia militante is tremendously important to the modern student of sacred theology. Practically speaking, it means that a treatment of ecclesiastical unity which omits or neglects an element of it which can be compared to the outward bond of unity as the soul is compared to the body is hopelessly inadequate.

It is interesting to note that when St. Thomas taught about the unity of the Church in his Expositio super symbolo apostolorum, he spoke only in terms of the unity of faith, of hope, and of charity.[11] After the conciliar disputes of the fifteenth century, the Cardinal John of Torquemada offered a much more complete explanation, mentioning that the Church is one in terms also of one supreme pastor, the vicar of Christ on earth.

It was Torquemada’s contention that there are no less than eight factors which must be taken into consideration in any explanation of the Church’s unity. He pointed first to the unity of the Prince or Head of the Church, Our Lord Himself. The Church is one reality because it is an association gathered together and held together by Our Lord.

The second element mentioned in Torquemada’s teaching on the unity of the Church is the oneness of the faith. Under this heading the old Cardinal expressly adverted to the fact that Our Lord’s true followers believe and profess one body of teaching. The third factor is the unity of the sacrament of Baptism, and of the other sacraments, particularly of the Blessed Eucharist. The fourth element is the unity of hope, and the fifth, the unity of charity.

The sixth factor in this unity is the oneness of the Holy Ghost, residing within the Church and animating this society in its salvific function. The seventh is the unity of purpose, the oneness of the end for which the Church militant labors on this earth. The eighth and final element to be considered in explaining the oneness of God’s kingdom in this world is the unity of government within the visible society instituted and maintained by Our Lord.[12]

It is unfortunate that a somewhat misguided effort to explain the note of unity has induced many of our modern theological writers to neglect what is objectively the most important portion of the traditional teaching about the oneness of Our Lord’s Church. It is imperative, especially in view of the conditions prevailing in our own times, that the members of the true Church be made to realize that faith, hope, and charity in themselves are factors tending to unite Catholics with each other and with Our Lord in His Church. The all-too-prevalent notion that our faith joins us indifferently to all of those who employ the name of faith to designate their opinions on matters religious, and that charity joins us primarily to some amorphous group of “men of good will” can only be countered and rectified by the true teaching that faith and charity are ties which unite us to Our Lord and with each other within His kingdom on earth.

An adequate exposition of the doctrine on the unity of the Church should manifest the dangerous and unwarranted attitude of those Catholic publicists who are ever ready to defend “religion in general,” or the broad religious truths which we are supposed to hold in common with the members of other religious communities, but who seem somewhat reluctant to deal with specifically Catholic doctrines and attitudes. These men, many of whom obviously mean well, have lost sight of the fact that the realities of faith and charity, far from being opposed to the “juridical” bonds of unity within the visible Catholic Church, are actually the factors to which these outward bonds are themselves ordained. They have forgotten that the unity of faith and of charity, no less than the unity brought about by the Christian’s submission to Christ’s vicar on earth, is something effected within that visible society which we know as the Catholic Church. Moreover, any attempt at the Christian unity of faith and charity outside of this visible society is objectively something which runs counter to the intention and teaching of Jesus Christ.

1.Time, LII, 5 (Aug. 2, 1948), 37.

2.Time, LII, 11 (Sept. 13, 1948), 55.

3.Cf. J.M. Hervé, Manuale theologiae dogmaticae (Paris: Berche et Pagis, 1929), I, 357.

4.Cf. Emil Dorsch, Institutiones theologiae fundamentalis (Innsbruck, 1928), II, 562ff.

5.Cf. Timothy Zapelena, De ecclesia Christi (Rome: Gregorian University, 1946), I, 384ff.

6.Cf. Robert Bellarmine, De ecclesia militante, cap. 2.

7.Cf. ibid.

8.Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 73, a. 2.

9.Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 73, a. 3.

10.Cf. Robert Bellarmine, De ecclesia militante, cap. 2.

11.This opusculum is numbered 33 in the Mandonuet edition and 6 in the old Roman collection.

12.Cf. John of Torquemada, Summa de ecclesia (Venice, 1561), pp. 7v ff.

XV

Holiness as a Note of the Church

The notion that the holiness of the Church has comparatively little probative value in demonstrating that the religious society over which the Bishop of Rome presides as the visible head is actually God’s kingdom on earth has acquired an unfortunate but undeniably widespread popularity among theological writers during the past few years. The scholarly monograph, Les notes de l’église dans l’apologétique catholique depuis la réforme, has contributed a great deal to the diffusion of this teaching. The author of this monograph, the distinguished Dr. Gustave Thils, of the Malines Major Seminary and of the University of Louvain, is under the impression that the notes of the Church as a group do not form the basis of any completely valid argument for the authenticity of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, he believes that each one of the notes, taken individually, is quite ineffective in the form in which it appears in scholastic ecclesiology.

Dr. Thils examines the various descriptions of the Church’s sanctity given by the great theologians since the time of the Cardinal John of Torquemada. He observes that the earliest writers under consideration contented themselves, for the most part, with a listing of many different factors which go to constitute the Church’s holiness. Then he notes that, in their anxiety to limit themselves strictly to those elements which might serve in the visible note of holiness, the later theologians tended to restrict their discussions to the possession of indubitable means of sanctity by the Church, to the holiness of the members of the Church, and, finally, to the attestation of that holiness, at least in the cases of the Saints, by authentic miracles. According to Dr. Thils, the literature of Catholic theology itself has come, for all practical purposes at least, to minimize or even to reject the probative value of these elements as factors in a genuine note of the Church.

It would seem, however, that Dr. Thils’ conclusions are motivated by a certain basically unscientific prejudice of his own more powerfully than by the evidence he has gathered, from the writings of the classical apologists and ecclesiologists. In describing the way in which an author of the twentieth century would deal with the writings on the nota sanctitatis in sixteenth-century theological works, the distinguished Louvain writer states that the modern author would reject a great deal of the material to which his predecessors appealed.

He would suppress the holiness, in the sense of consecration to God, because it is not visible. That [holiness] which comes from the presence of the Spirit in Catholics [would be rejected] because heretics of good faith share it with the Catholics. That [holiness] which the Church possesses by reason of its founders, Christ and the Apostles [would not be considered] since the Protestants are counted as Christians. Finally, that [holiness] produced by the sacraments, the laws, and even the morality [would not be considered] since these elements are common to the Orthodox Church and to the Catholic Church.[1]

It is, moreover, Dr. Thils’ idea that “the adage extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, interpreted strictly in the sixteenth century, slowly takes on the more tolerant meaning of extra Ecclesiam nulla sanctitas” in the writings of subsequent theologians.[2] He is also convinced that, after the writings of Perrone a century ago, the meaning of this axiom was revised so as to deny merely the existence of “eminent, permanent, and wide-spread holiness” outside the limits of the true Church of Jesus Christ.[3]

In other words, Dr. Thils’ difficulties about the note of holiness stem, in some measure, from a failure to realize the essential truth in the writings of the classical ecclesiologists, the truth that the visible Catholic society is actually the kingdom of God on earth, the one social reality really necessary for salvation with the necessity both of means and of precept. This is the conclusion to which the argument from the notes of the Church leads directly. A man who has lost sight of the fact that this conclusion is literally true will certainly not be in a position to evaluate the various theological demonstrations which lead only to it. A man who can persuade himself that tolerance or any factor other than truth itself can have any function in the interpretation of a Catholic dogma can hardly be expected to appreciate the theological proofs which show that this statement or dogma is really contained in the deposit of Christian revelation.

One of the most brilliant modern apologies for the Catholic Church, Dr. Martin Jugie’s Oú se trouve le christianisme intégral, is affected and somewhat lessened in value by the author’s adoption of the position previously taken by Dr. Thils with reference to the notes of the Church, and particularly with reference to the note of holiness. Dr. Jugie agrees that real sanctity, or the sanctity of means, personal sanctity, or the holiness of its members, and charismatic sanctity, or the witness of miracles, observable in the life of the Catholic Church as it exists in our own time, conspire to manifest this society as the religious organization founded and maintained by Christ Our Lord. He makes, however, the very significant and valuable observation that a “dynamic sanctity, or zeal in utilizing the means of sanctification confided to the Church, resulting in a fruitfulness in all kinds of good works,”[4] should be added to the other aspects of the Church’s holiness in order to make this note of the true Church function properly. Unfortunately, Dr. Jugie will not ascribe any practical probative force to the argument from the note of holiness, even after he has shown the existence of an aspect of that holiness too often neglected in contemporary writing.[5]

In reality, it is quite unscientic for a theologian to deny the effectiveness of the Church’s holiness precisely in its function as a note or mark of God’s kingdom on earth. Indeed, from the scriptural point of view, the claims of holiness in this respect are superior to those of the other properties of Our Lord’s society which are commonly employed as notes. In the New Testament itself there is ample evidence that the company of Christ’s disciples was established as an organization manifestly catholic and apostolic. Nevertheless we do not find any assertion in the New Testament directly and immediately announcing that the city of God in this world is recognizable as such in function of its catholicity and apostolicity. In the New Testament there is direct and explicit teaching to the effect that the Church’s unity is a true sign, but it is presented directly as a motive of credibility, rather than as a genuine note.

Our Lord prayed to His Father that His disciples might be one “that the world may believe (πιστεύση) that thou hast sent me,”[6] and also “that the world may know (γινώσκη) that thou hast sent me and hast loved them, as thou hast also loved me.”[7] It is true, of course, that the Christian revelation itself patently recognizes unity, catholicity, and apostolicity as true marks of the Church of Jesus Christ on earth. The monuments of Christian tradition offer ample and unassailable evidence in this direction. Yet the New Testament itself gives no direct and explicit testimony on this particular point.

In the case of the Church’s holiness, however, the situation is quite different. Our Lord explicitly admonished His followers that “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.”[8] This mutual affection within the true Church of Jesus Christ is the mandate Our Lord made incumbent upon the society as a whole. “A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”[9] Thus the affection of supernatural charity within the company of the disciples, the affection of which the love of Christ for His followers is at once the cause and the exemplar, stands in the divine teaching as a sign whereby the disciples of Our Lord are to be recognized as such by the work at large.

Now it is quite obvious that the possession of charity was never meant to be either the sign or the condition of an individual’s membership in the company of the disciples. The whole tenor of the parables of the kingdom is to the effect that God’s household in this world, the society of the disciples of Christ on earth, will contain a certain number of sinners, people devoid of charity, until the end of time. Hence, according to divine revelation itself, a man can be and can remain a member of the Church militant without having the affection of charity for his fellow-Christians which Our Lord commanded him to possess and to exercise. Such a person is an unworthy member of the ecclesia Christi. He cuts himself off from the supernatural life of charity, the perfective element in the spiritual bond of unity of the Church. Nevertheless, until the final purification at the time of the last judgment, such persons can and must be counted among the real members of the Church.

The affection of mutual charity, then, is manifested in the Gospel according to St. John as a sign marking, not the individual member of the Christian community, but the community itself. All men are to realize that these men are the true disciples of Jesus Christ because of the evident existence, within the activity of the company as a whole, of a strong mutual charity. In other words, the corporate conduct of the group, clearly manifested before the world, is to be such that right-thinking men can recognize this society as the true company of Our Lord’s disciples.

Now sanctity, by its very definition, constitutes an abiding attachment to God and a stable aversion to all that is opposed to Him. We must not allow ourselves to forget that, as the human race has actually been disposed or ordered by God Himself, there is no firm and abiding attachment to God and opposition to sin other than that which is connected with the virtue of supernatural charity. Furthermore, charity is distinctly one virtue. Hence it is one and the same virtue which brings about a supernatural love of friendship for God and a genuine supernatural affection for our fellow men, and primarily for those who are most effectively our “neighbors,” our brothers and sisters within the household of God which is the true Church of Jesus Christ. Thus, in teaching that His disciples would be recognizable as such by reason of their mutual charity, Our Lord brought out the basic truth that holiness would serve as a note of His company on earth.

It is most important to note, however, that in the statement by Our Lord and in the teachings of classical ecclesiology, it is the corporate charity, the communal holiness, of the Church which is held up as an indication of this society’s identity. Unfortunately, perhaps in an attempt to reply most directly to heretical objections, this central and essential aspect of the kingdom of God’s holiness has been somewhat neglected among recent theologians. In modern times the scholastic treatment of the Church’s holiness or charity has tended to center around the spiritual status of individual members of the Church. The Church is described as manifestly holy because of the existence within its membership of innumerable persons who lead holy lives, and of an ever-present but less numerous group remarkable for extraordinary or heroic sanctity. These theologians have worked to show that the Church possesses in itself authentic and recognizable principles of holiness, which make it evident that the spiritual perfection of its members flows from causes existent within the company itself. And, to further or to complete their argument, they point to the fact that the existence of heroic charity, in the cases of the canonized Saints at least, is attested by the existence of true and undeniable miracles.

All of this, of course, is perfectly true. Nevertheless, the sanctity of the individual, or even of many individuals, is not the central element in the Church’s note of holiness, and it should not be treated as such. The reality, the charity or holiness of which is meant primarily to function as an indication of the identity of the true company of Our Lord’s disciples, is the society itself, not simply a group of its members. The Church exists and acts as a holy society, and its corporate sanctity is readily observable. It is precisely this corporate holiness which is directly and primarily meant to show the character of this society as the true company of Christ on earth.

The company of Christ’s disciples is, according to Our Lord’s own teaching, endowed with a manifest and dynamic corporate holiness. This sanctity is quite evident in the social activity of the Catholic Church, and in the activity of the Catholic Church alone. The basic communal activity of the Church is the Eucharistic Sacrifice, around which all its sacramental system revolves. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the effective expression of the Church’s prayer, or petition to God. The central prayer of the Church is to be found in the petitions of the Mass and of the other liturgical hooks. These petitions, in their turn, are expressions of the intentions or desires of the Church in this world. The recognized and authentic teaching of the Church, through the statements of its hierarchy, constitute the interpretations of these petitions. Hence we can seek, in the petitions of the Mass and in the official teaching of the Church, the expression of the charity or holiness which, according to the explicit statement of Christ, was to constitute, an indication of this society’s status as the true company of His disciples.

Despite the fact that many liturgies are in use throughout the religious society presided over by the Bishop of Rome, the rite of the Roman Missal can be accepted as typical of all of them, as far as the quality and the direction of the Church’s petitions and intentions are concerned. The complete holiness of the petitions embodied in this ceremony is immediately apparent. In the canon of the Mass, the Church begs God that its sacrifice should be acceptable to Him, and that God may grant it, with its universal visible ruler and the bishop of the individual congregation for which the sacrifice is being offered, the divine peace, protection, and guidance. It begs that these blessings may be given to all the faithful throughout the world, and especially to the members of the individual congregation gathered together for the sacrificial offering. The prayer of the Mass describes the Eucharistic act as something offered for the redeeming of the souls of the faithful and for the hope of their safety and salvation.

The Church is mindful that it offers the sacrifice together with the blessed in heaven, with the hope and desire that the people co-operating in this act may be the associates of the elect forever. In the act of consecration itself, the priest makes the words of Christ his own, and professes that his offering is made in commemoration of Christ, as He has Himself commanded. Thus, begging that the souls of the faithful departed may enter into, their eternal rest, the Church on earth pleads that its members may enter into the Church triumphant, and may ever be joined in union with Our Lord.

The basic intention or desire of the Church, manifested in the basic prayer of the Mass, is manifestly the motivating intention of sanctity or charity itself. The Church seeks the ultimate good of its children, the attainment of eternal and supernatural life. The members of the Church, participating in the offering of the Church’s sacrifice, express the most perfect, and effective mutual charity by desiring and working for this greatest of benefits in one another’s favor. Thus, the Church manifests an efficacious desire for God’s supernatural glory. It presents itself as an agency sincerely loving God with a supernatural love of friendship. Thus, from this fundamental point of view, it stands before the observer as uniquely a holy institution or company, endowed with the sanctity of Christ Himself.

It may be objected, of course, that there are other religious societies in which the Christian Mass is offered validly, and that thus the testimony of the Mass in favor of the Catholic Church is of no demonstrative value. Such an objection, however, misses the essential point of the matter under consideration. The Church is manifestly a holy society precisely because its corporate activity is clearly in line with the intention expressed in the Mass. The other religious organizations, in which the Mass is offered validly though illicitly, show no such harmony with the basic desire of the Eucharistic prayers in their corporate activity.

We must not lose sight of the fact that it is the corporate activity of the Church, and this alone, which is under consideration at this juncture. It is precisely this official and corporate activity which the world can recognize and compare with the official and corporate activity of other religious groups. No one can pretend to have any clear and perfectly certain knowledge about the intimate spiritual status of an individual. Anyone, however, can readily see and evaluate the intentions and the activity of a society, once the authentic documents and history of that society have been made available to him.

The official corporate activity of the Catholic Church is evidently a work of charity and holiness. Primarily the Church is a teaching organization. In its doctrinal mission, the Church manifests to anyone willing to examine the matter a clear and perfect teaching about God and about the redemption of the human race. It uncompromisingly sets itself against sins, even those which appeal most to the perverted taste of a generation or a nation. It holds this position despite the fact that many of its own members take umbrage at its teaching. It resists the temptation to overlook some offences, on the grounds that an insistence upon the right would bring it into difficulties it can ill afford to meet.

The Church preaches a love for all men, and commands its own children to regard one another as brothers, even in times when such a doctrine runs manifestly counter to the popular tendencies of the day. As a social unit, it evidently acts as the agent of Christ on earth. The corporate activity of the Church is in line with both its prayer and its teaching. Its charity is manifest over the whole world through its practice of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

This social sanctity of the Church is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that, during all the time of its earthly sojourn, it is composed of both good and evil members. The corporate work of the Church is violently opposed always by the tendencies and even the activities of some of its members, sometimes by the activities of those placed in authority within the Church itself. The Church preaches and insists upon charity, justice, and gratitude even when the contrary vices are manifest in the lives of many of its own children. It is precisely this manifestation of holiness in a society composed partially of evil men that makes the Church a miracle of the social order and thus an incontrovertible witness to the authenticity of its own message as divine revelation.

The corporate holiness of the Catholic Church stands out in still greater relief when we compare the conduct of this society with that of rival religious bodies in the world today. It would be blasphemous to designate as holy the activity of an organization or set of organizations slavishly subservient to the atheistic policy of communist governments. It would likewise be ridiculous to designate as holy or charitable the corporate conduct of religious societies which have, for all intents and purposes, abandoned all concern for the accurate teaching of divine revelation, and which have degenerated into merely semi-political social groups whose only common concern is that of unrelenting and malicious opposition to everything Catholic.

The note of holiness, in function of which the Church is recognizable as the true company of Our Lord’s disciples, is, then, to be found from an examination of the corporate activity of the Church, viewed in itself and then considered in the light of the corporate activity of rival religious bodies. From this consideration and from no other can the argument from the note of holiness be effectively and accurately treated. Obviously, if we restrict ourselves to an examination which centers around the holiness of individual members, we are in a realm in which scientific demonstration is quite ineffective. It is, in the last analysis, impossible to say with absolute certainty whether or not any individual man, Catholic or non-Catholic, is actually in the friendship of God here and now. Indeed, try as we will, we cannot be absolutely sure of even our own spiritual status. The goodness or the evil of a corporate activity, however, is something which we can readily recognize. And it is precisely this manifest sanctity of the Catholic Church in its communal activity which must be used as a basis for an effective proof from the note of holiness.

This concept of the Church’s holiness as an evident argument in its own favor is at once more difficult and more traditional than that notion which centers around the holiness of individual members within the Church. It is more difficult because the very extension and perfection of the Church’s corporate activity along liturgical, doctrinal, and charitable lines demand a painstaking and detailed description if the demonstration is to stand out in all of its effectiveness. It is, however, more traditional because this manner of treating the holiness of the Church is more in conformity with the approach of the classical ecclesiologists. A few examples will serve to show how the earlier scholastics dealt with the teaching on the holiness of the Church.

St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Expositio super symbolo apostolorum, limited himself to a brief discussion of the principles of the Church’s sanctity. He mentions the fact that the faithful are washed with the blood of Christ, anointed with the spiritual anointing which is the grace of the Holy Ghost, and recipients of the Blessed Trinity, dwelling within them as in a temple.[10]

The fourteenth-century ecclesiologist, James of Viterbo, offers a much more complete treatment of this quality of the Church. In his De regimine christiano he teaches that the Church is holy because it is preserved immaculate from sin by the grace of the sacraments, preserved from the uncleanness of ignorance and error by the sacred teaching, and because it is most securely dedicated to the worship and service of God. He refers always to the Church as a social unit, rather than merely to some of its members.[11]

The same tendency is observable in the teaching of the Cardinal John of Torquemada. In his Summa de ecclesia Torquemada, like James of Viterbo before him, made use of the definitions of sanctity offered in the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius and St. Isidore of Seville. Both insisted that the Catholic Church conforms entirely to both of these definitions. Torquemada teaches, furthermore, that the Catholic Church must be recognized as holy by reason of the worship it offers to God, because it is endowed with all the supernatural virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost, because it is ruled by what are obviously the most holy laws, because of its doctrine, abounding in sanctity, because of its sacraments and other means of salvation, and, finally, by reason of its relation to the Church triumphant in heaven.[12] All of this teaching refers directly to the corporate activity of the Church rather than merely to the conduct and status of certain individual members. And, it is interesting to note that while no one of the three authors we have named uses the expression “note of the Church,” all treat of the Church’s holiness in the manner of a note, since they all insist that the true Church can be distinguished from the ecclesia malignantium precisely by reason of that holiness.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent, on the other hand, makes no effort to utilize the holiness of the Church directly as a note. It teaches that the Church is holy because of the fact that it is something consecrated to God, because it has Our Lord as its Head, and because it has the true sacrifice and the sacraments.[13] St. Robert Bellarmine appeals directly to the sanctity of the Church’s doctrine in his demonstration per viam notarum.[14]

Incidentally, Dr. Thils is gravely in error when he speaks of this particular section of St. Robert’s De notis ecclesiae. He writes that the prince of the ecclesiologists eliminated the sanctity of doctrine from consideration, as a factor in a proof from the notes of the Church, and he explains it by the statement that “in refuting the first note of the Protestants,—the possession of the pure doctrine—the Roman professor categorically refused to recognize this as a criterion of truth, since, he assures us, it can also be found in false churches.”[15] Thils neglected to add St. Robert’s highly interesting comment, to the effect that the pure doctrine is found in all dissident groups “at least according to their own account.”[16] He rightly rejected the probative force of any argument taken from the purity of the faith as a note of the Church. Indeed, the possession of the faith in all of its purity by the Church is something which the proof from the notes seeks to establish.

The sanctity of the teaching in the actually existent Catholic Church is another matter altogether. Far from repudiating or eliminating this argument, St. Robert actually appeals to it as the eighth note of the true Church of Jesus Christ.

In his Controversies, Francis Sylvius speaks of six aspects of the Church’s sanctity. The Church is a holy society because it is consecrated to God, because it is pure and free from any crime (obviously not in each one of its individual members, but only in its corporate reality and activity), because it has a holy worship and laws, because it has the Source of sanctity within itself, because it has Christ as its Head, and, finally, because it persists firmly in this attachment to God.[17] In proving that this sanctity is a real note of the Church, Sylvius, like St. Robert Bellarmine before him, appeals primarily to the evident holiness of doctrine within the Catholic Church.[18]

The holiness of the Church in its corporate activity is thus a doctrine based upon the best traditional teaching in scholastic ecclesiology. Through the use of this factor, it is possible to construct an adequate demonstration of the Church’s authenticity per viam notarum. The sight of less effective methods employed in certain contemporary text-books should not bring our theologians to reject the validity of the proof as such, but should motivate them to reconstruct this demonstration along traditional and effective lines.

1.Gustave Thils, Les notes de l’église dans l’apologétique catholique depuis la réforme (Paris: Desclée, De Brouwer, 1937), p. 126.

2.Cf. ibid. p. 138.

3.Cf. ibid. p. 149.

4.Martin Jugie, Oú se trouve le christianisme intégral? Essai de démonstration catholique (Paris: Lethielleux, 1947), p. 261.

5.Cf. ibid. pp. 261f.

6.John 17:21.

7.John 17:23.

8.John 13:35.

9.John 13:34.

10.Cf. Thomas Aquinas, the Opuscala omnia, edited by for Peter Mandonnet, O.P. (Paris: Lethielleux, 1927), IV, 379ff.

11.Cf. James of Viterbo, Le plus anicen traité de l’église: Jacques de Viterbe, De regimine christiano. Étude des sources et édition critique par H.-X. Arquilliére (Paris: Beauchesne, 1926), pp. 129ff.

12.Cf. John of Torquemada, Summa de ecclesia (Venice, 1561), pp. 11vff.

13.Cf. Catechism of the Council of Trent, Pars I, a. 9, XVII.

14.Cf. Robert Bellarmine, De notis ecclesiae, cap. 11.

15.Cf. Gustave Thils, op. cit., p. 131.

16.Cf. Gustave Thils, De notis ecclesiae, cap. 1.

17.Cf. Francis Sylvius, Controversiae, Lib. III, q. 2, aft. 6.

18.Cf. ibid. a. 7.

XVI

St. Augustine’s Use of the Note of Catholicity

Long before St. Augustine began to teach and to defend the divinely revealed doctrine of Our Lord’s true Church, the great mass of mankind, both members and non-members of the Church, had come to use the term Catholic as the distinctive designation of this society. The expression first appears in patristic literature during the opening decade of the second century. Employed somewhat sparingly at the outset it became the usual and ordinary title of Christ’s true Church by the middle of the third century. Yet, despite the fact that there had been certain more or less rhetorical expositions of the Church’s catholicity prior to his time, it remained for St. Augustine to formulate what was to be the definitive theological explanation of this characteristic of God’s kingdom on earth.

The tendency of some modern theological writers to shy away from what may be called the geographical implications of the Church’s catholicity find little support in the teachings of St. Augustine. Thus, to mention only a few examples, in his second book Contra litteras Petiliani Donatistae Cirtensis Episcopi, in the second book of his work Contra Gaudentium Donatistarum Episcopum, and in his Ad Catholicos epistola contra Donatistus (better known as the De unitate ecclesiae), the greatest of the Latin Fathers of the Church insists upon the derivation of the term “catholic” from the Greek καθ᾽ őλον, and gives a definitely geographical explanation of that catholicity. St. Augustine insisted that the true ecclesia, the actual kingdom of God on earth, was a society commissioned by Our Lord Himself to establish itself throughout the world. Furthermore, he contended that, by virtue of the divine aid actually promised and given to this society, it had been founded in territories scattered over the face of the earth. Hence, he concluded, it could be distinguished readily from other societies falsely claiming the Christian name by the very fact that the accomplishment of the divine prophecies and the divine promises could thus be recognized in it.

By far the greater portion of St. Augustine’s teaching about the catholicity of the Church was evolved and expressed in works directed against the errors of the African Donatists. Hence it is quite impossible to appreciate his meaning unless we realize the common ground he was able to use in his attempts to bring into the glory of Christian unity those unfortunates who had been misled by the propaganda of Donatism. The holy Bishop Augustine, it must be understood, offered shining example of enthusiastic devotion to the “home missions” of his own time and of his own country. In order that men for whom Our Lord had sacrificed Himself on Calvary might not perish forever, St. Augustine devoted every ounce of his energy to the task of persuading the Donatists of his district to enter and to dwell within the true and only Church of Jesus Christ. Meekly accepting insult and calumny, he made use of every available opportunity to show the urgency of the divine command to come into the true Church as well as the horrible spiritual disadvantages attendant upon their present condition of heresy and schism. Furthermore, he utilized every intellectual resource at his disposition to bring out the evidence that the Church for which he labored is, and is alone, the Body of Jesus Christ.

St. Augustine was dealing, however, with a group of men manifestly capable of talking his own language on his own plane. They were men who said that they wanted to be, and actually claimed to be, followers or disciples of Jesus Christ Our Lord. They were perfectly aware of the fact that there is such a thing as the one true ecclesia. They realized that in order to be truly a disciple of Christ, a man had to belong to the society of the disciples, the true ecclesia which is actually God’s kingdom in this world. Finally, like some of the heretics of our own time, they were willing to admit that this true ecclesia of Jesus Christ was properly designated as the Catholic Church. As a matter of fact they could hardly help making this admission. By the latter part of the fourth century the baptismal formula in use in most of the Churches professed belief in “the holy Catholic Church.” Thus, if men were to make any serious claim to the Christian name and the Christian status, they had to identify themselves in one way or another as “Catholics,” and to look for some way, however far-fetched in which their own company could be identified as “the Catholic Church.”

The method adopted by the particular Donatist writers and debaters whose arguments were taken up by St. Augustine was, basically at least, identical with the procedure later followed by the Protestant heretics. The Donatist claimed, first of all, that the true Church’s title of “Catholic” bespoke and implied a fullness of truth within the Church and the possession of all the sacramental means of salvation within this society. They claimed the complete possession of Christian truth and the enjoyment of all the ecclesiastical sacraments for their own assembly, and denied that the magna ecclesia had any right to the title of “Catholic” on these grounds.

The Donatist camp paid comparatively little attention to the geographical concept of catholicity. They refused to concede that the Church of Christ could be called Catholic by reason of any extension throughout the nations and the localities of the earth. Yet, oddly enough, they disputed even the obvious evidence of the spatial or geographical universality of the Church of their opponents. Those whom the world called Catholic had, they said, no real claim to this glorious title even on the grounds of regional, national, or numerical extension, since these people were not in religious communion with all those who claimed the Christian name throughout the world, and because all the nations of the world had not yet received the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thus they managed to convince themselves that the society for which St. Augustine labored was only a partial thing, and consequently a Church which had no real claim to the title of the ecclesia catholica.

Thus, in working for the conversion of the Donatists, the saintly Bishop of Hippo Regius did not need to show the beneficiaries of his missionary charity and zeal that they were obligated to enter into the true ecclesia of Christ. Neither did he have to exert himself to show that this true ecclesia was actually the ecclesia catholica of the creed. Instead he conceived it to be his business to use every device of theological acumen within his power to bring these unfortunate dissidents to realize that the God-given catholicity of the true ecclesia was essentially a geographical thing and that the note of geographical or, as some of the modern writers would have it, “spatial,” catholicity marked the communion within which he worked as the Church within which God commands all men to live.

St. Augustine’s explanations and demonstrations of the Church’s catholicity are always couched in language of apostolic meekness and charity rather than in terms of merely scholastic method. He was using all of the tremendous intellectual and persuasive forces with which God had endowed him to make men look at the truth to which their own passions and prejudices had blinded them. The Donatistic system, like a great many dissident doctrines since that day, was essentially an afterthought. The frenzied objections and claims of the Donatistic leaders were intended primarily to justify a position which the Donatists of a previous generation had taken for entirely different motives. The original Donatist faction had been composed of certain African malcontents supported in their opposition to Mensurius the Bishop of Carthage and Cecilian his successor by certain bishops from Numidia. The definitive schism came in 313, when an assembly of these rebels declared Cecilian invalidly elected and chose Majorinus in his place.

The original dissidents had justified their stand by the contention that Bishop Felix of Aptonga, the consecrator of Cecilian, had surrendered the sacred books to the pagans during the persecution of Diocletian, and that consequently he had no power to administer episcopal consecration. Despite the fact that the innocence of Felix was established and recognized by several investigating committees, the Donatists persisted in their stand, and anathematized the Catholics as men polluted by their contact with the traditor Felix. The Roman See, and with it all the rest of the Church of Jesus Christ on earth quickly entered into communion with Cecilian and his followers. Hence the Donatists found themselves impelled to explain their position by twisting and perverting the regularly taught doctrine about the Catholica.

A considerable portion of St. Augustine’s campaign against the Donatist errors had to be devoted to the task of explaining that the moral worth of Cecilian and of Felix had nothing whatsoever to do with the question of the identity of the true Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the main body of his polemic was given over to the task of showing that the geographical extension of the Church to which he belonged was sufficient to designate that Church to the Donatists as the real kingdom of God on earth.

St. Augustine thus described the question at issue between the Catholics and the Donatists.

The question at issue between us is certainly about where the ecclesia is; whether it is in our company or in theirs. This is surely the one [Church] which our forefathers have called the Catholica in order that they might manifest it for what it is by its very name, because it is throughout the whole [world] (per totum). For the Greek expression for “according to the whole (secundum totum),” is καθ᾽ őλον. But this Church is the Body of Christ, as the Apostle says: “For his body which is the Church.” Hence it is certainly manifest that the person who is not among the members of Christ cannot have Christian salvation. But the members of Christ are bound one to another through the charity of unity, and through this same charity they are joined to their Head, which is Christ Jesus. Therefore everything revealed about Christ concerns the Head and the Body. The Head is Jesus Christ Himself, the only-begotten Son of the living God, Himself the Savior of the Body, who has died for our sins and who has risen from the dead for our justification. The Body is the Church, about which it is said: “That he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” The question between us and the Donatists is about where this Body is, that is, where the Church is.[1]

St. Augustine’s missionary and apostolic patience wore somewhat thin when he came into all-too-frequent contact with the obstinate refusal of the Donatist leaders to take cognizance of the manifest Catholicity of the society to which he belonged. So, when Petilianus asserted that the Catholics had “gone aside into the part,” and had thus forfeited their right to the Catholic name, he made this reply.

I also have gained a very slight knowledge of the Greek tongue, hardly to be called knowledge at all. Yet I am not at all ashamed to say that I realize that őλον means, not “one,” but “the whole”; and that καθ᾽ őλον means “according to the whole.” From this the Catholic Church received its name, according to the saying of the Lord: “It is not for you to know the times which the Father hath put in his own power: but you shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth.” Know that the Catholica receives its name from this. But you are so intent on running with your eyes shut against the mountain which, according to the prophecy of Daniel, grew out of a small stone and filled the whole earth, that you actually tell us that we have gone aside into a part, and that we are not in the whole, among those whose communion is spread abroad over the entire earth. But, just as, if you were to say that I am Petilianus, I would not be able to find any way to refute you other than to laugh at you as speaking in jest or to mourn for you as being mad, so now, I see that I have no choice other than this. Since I do not believe that you are joking, you see what alternative remains.[2]

The saintly Bishop of Hippo Regius also protested vehemently against the attempt on the part of Gaudentius the Donatist to use the testimony of St. Cyprian as an indication that his faction deserved the Catholic name. St. Augustine deplored the blindness that motivated men to speak against the manifest evidence of the Cyprianic writings.

Why, then, do you deceive yourselves and wish to deceive others by these impudent lies? If yours is the Catholic Church according to the testimony of this martyr, then show that it spreads its rays over the entire world: show that it extends is branches, in the abundance of its fruitfulness, over the whole earth. For the Catholica has received its name in the Greek tongue from this. For, what is called őλον in Greek is called totum or universum in Latin. “Through the whole” or “according to the whole” is καθ᾽ őλον, from which the Catholica receives its name.[3]

As far as their positive teaching was concerned, the Donatists held that the Catholic name of the true Church of Jesus Christ referred to some universality of truth, of the sacraments, of the means of salvation, or of obedience to the divine commandments, rather than to any geographical matter. Thus the Breviculus collationis informs us that at the famous debate between the Catholics and the Donatists at Carthage, the Catholics asserted that they, and not their opponents, “were in communion with the Church spread over the entire world, which is the Church to which the scriptures bear witness, and that hence they were, and were rightly called, the Catholics.” The Donatists, on the other hand, claimed that “the Catholic name owes its origin, not to any universality of nations, but rather to the fullness of the sacraments.” And, when the Donatists petitioned “that the Catholics should prove that all nations were in communion with them,” the Catholics announced that they would be very pleased to offer that proof.[4]

Although the geographical origin and meaning of the term “Catholic” were clear enough, St. Augustine refused to let what was essentially an apostolic quest for souls degenerate into a mere exercise in historical philology. The Catholic Church, after all, based its contentions, not on the development of a theological expression, but on the manifest predictions and promises of Jesus Christ Our Lord. St. Augustine brought out this aspect of his teaching in a letter to Vincentius, a bishop of the Rogatist party.

You believe that you have made a very subtle statement when you assert that the name “Catholic” means universal, not with reference to the communion as embracing the entire world, but with reference to obedience to all the divine commandments and to all the sacraments. It is as if we (even granting that perhaps the Catholica may have derived its name from the fact that it truly holds the entirety of that truth of which some particles are found in different heresies), based our defense of the Church throughout all the nations upon the testimony of this word rather than upon the promises of God and the many and manifest declarations of the Truth itself.[5]

Those who would hold, then, that the Catholic name of the true Church was derived from the fact that this society has all the truth contained in public revelation, or all the sacraments, or that it obeys all the commandments, could expect no explicit opposition from St. Augustine against such contentions. To him it was clear enough that the Catholic name originated from and signified the geographical extension of Our Lord’s society. Those who would quibble about the meaning of a word, without adverting to the normal use of that term among men, could be left to their own imaginings, as far as St. Augustine was concerned. He was interested in showing that his Church, the Church of the universal communion, was actually the Body of Christ, the Church of the promises. To accomplish this purpose he had recourse to the divine promises themselves. He brought out the evidence that the benefits which Our Lord had, according to the scriptures, promised to the society of His disciples, were to be found in the Church of the Catholic communion, and in that company alone. Thus, for St. Augustine, the fact of Catholicism rather than the mere name was to be considered as a note of Our Lord’s society. Or, to speak the truth more completely, the Catholic name was efficacious as a mark of the true Church only to the extent that it was recognized as the accomplishment of the divine promises made to God’s kingdom on earth.

The central promise of Christ which St. Augustine saw as manifestly fulfilled in the visible Catholicity of the true Church was the one set down in the last chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke. Our Lord spoke thus to His disciples prior to His ascension into Heaven.

And he said to them: “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise again from the dead, the third day: And that penance and remission of sins should be preached in his name, unto all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”[6]

With this text St. Augustine associated the parallel passage from the Acts of the Apostles, in which Our Lord told the disciples that “you shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth.”[7] Thus, for St. Augustine, the true Church of Jesus Christ was manifestly that which “starting out from Jerusalem, was spread abroad over the whole world.” The use of this formula is exemplified in a section of the Breviculus collalionis which tells of certain letters written by the Donatists in response to a mandatum of the Catholics. The Donatists were unable to give a satisfactory answer.

[F]irst, because they did not wish to treat adequately or even to touch upon the evidences (testimonia) taken from the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, and the Apostolic and Evangelical writings, [testimonies] by which it is shown that the Catholic Church is spread abroad through the entire world beginning from Jerusalem, whence, extending into lands both near and far away, it came finally to Africa. And there are throughout the other localities and cities, throughout which it was previously established, many Churches founded by apostolic labor and belonging to this unica, with which it is manifest that the Donatists are not in communion.[8]

In this same chapter there is mention of the evidences “which the Catholics brought forward in favor of the Church in which they communicate, that which, beginning from Jerusalem, is spread throughout the world.” The expression occurs dozens of times in the anti-Donatist writings and sermons of St. Augustine. Naturally enough, the Catholic theologians who were first called upon to fight against the errors of Protestantism appealed to the writings of St. Augustine. They employed his terminology as well as his conclusions. Particularly at the hands of the Louvain theologians, the “ecclesia incipiens a Hierusalem” became one of the favorite titles of the true Church of the promises.

Thus John Driedo employed this concept of the true Church frequently in his work De ecclesiasticis scripturis et dogmatibus.[9] Francis Sonnius incorporated St. Augustine’s own words into his Demonstrationes religionis christianae ex verbo Dei.[10] Thomas Stapleton, the greatest of all the Louvain theologians, employed the expression both in his Principiorum fidei doctrinalium demonstratio methodica[11] and in the revision and digest of that work, the Principiorum fidei doctrinalium relectio scholastica et compendiaria.[12]

St. Augustine used the original promise made by God to Abraham to explain and to prove the true and geographical catholicity of Christ’s kingdom on earth. Turning some of the raillery of the Donatists against their own cause, the great Bishop of Hippo Regius explained that membership in Christ involved membership in the world-wide organization.

…I may say with perfect justice that he who has not delivered himself up to Christ in company with the whole world should be considered a partner of the man who betrayed Christ. The Apostle says that “then are you the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise.” And again he says: “heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ.” And he shows that the same seed of Abraham belongs to all nations, according to the promise given to Abraham: “in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”[13]

St. Augustine also used the words of Psalm 2 in showing that, according to the scriptures, the company or the kingdom of Jesus Christ was predicted as a world-wide society. In this Psalm the Lord is represented as saying to the divine Messias: “Ask of me, and I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.”[14]

St. Augustine interpreted the Scriptures (which, incidentally, he considered to be the sole source of an efficacious demonstration of the true Church against the Donatist errors),[15] as promising the kingdom of God on earth a moral rather than a physical catholicity. The Donatists were prone to disregard the true Church’s claim of real and geographical catholicity on the grounds that the Catholics of Africa were not in ecclesiastical communion with all of the races of the earth, considered absolutely. Thus the Donatist Cresconius denied the Church’s claim to catholicity on the pretext that there were at that time many barbarous nations which had not as yet been won for Christ, and with which, in consequence, the Catholics were not in communion. He furthermore alleged the somewhat silly reason that the Church could not properly be termed “Catholic” because it was manifestly not in communion with the various heretical conventicles scattered throughout the world.[16]

St. Augustine answered that particular observation with the statement that many of the nations which Cresconius mentioned as not having been evangelized had actually heard the message of Christ since the appearance of his writing. Here, in a passage freighted with meaning for the theology of the Catholic missions, St. Augustine assured his Donatist opponent that that Church continued to increase among the nations, and that, after it had been given to all of them, the end itself would come.[17] Thus, for the greatest of the Latin Fathers, the catholicity of the true Church of Jesus Christ was essentially a dynamic rather than a static thing. The Church was in existence throughout the world, and furthermore it was necessarily, in virtue of the divine commission and of the divine grace by which it operates, growing and increasing throughout the world, in the sense of bringing new peoples to the fellowship of Jesus Christ.

In the writing of St. Augustine the notion of a merely successive catholicity for the true Church is firmly rejected. The Donatists maintained that their own Church had a right to the Catholic name by reason of what they considered the backsliding of the rest of Christendom. The world-wide Church of Jesus Christ had fallen away from the truth by reason of its fellowship with Cecilian. The nations that thus perished (according to the Donatist scheme of things), were supposed to have had their chance for salvation. The assembly to which they belonged was thus, in their eyes, the faithful remnant of a company which, at one time or another had been in existence throughout the world, but which was, in their time, restricted to a portion of Africa and to a couple of scattered groups of Africans resident outside of their own country.[18]

In opposing this contention, St. Augustine pointed to the fact that the divine prophecies and promises indicate an actually catholic kingdom of Jesus Christ on earth. To attempt to restrict the true ecclesia of Jesus Christ to members of a dissident conventicle limited to a couple of Roman provinces would be, in any event, a try at limiting the salvific will of God Himself. The people of the other parts of the Empire, and those outside of the Roman dominions a fortiori, had hardly heard of the Donatists and their arguments at all. If their salvation depended upon union with such a society, then, indeed, they would be unfortunate.

St. Augustine was firmly convinced that the divine promises, through the visible accomplishment of which the ecclesia is manifestly a Catholic society, never meant to imply that absolutely all of the races of the earth will be evangelized until the end; nor that, in the nations evangelized, every member of these political or ethnical groups will become a member of the true Church.[19] On the other hand he believed that the Church will always be a visible organization, and that it will remain visibly catholic by reason of a great number of adherents scattered throughout the world. Answering the objection of Cresconius to the effect that the paucity of those saved, according to Our Lord’s word, would seem to imply that the true Church could not be actually catholic, the Saint answered that the Church would always be large enough to be visible, and that it would always be small enough to be the subject of persecution on the part of its enemies.[20] There will always be a “mixed multitude” of these enemies of the true Church. Through the efforts of these foes, the piety of the Church can be at once exercised and manifested. The catholicity of the Church was, in the teaching of St. Augustine, bound up closely with the communion of the apostolic Churches, and in particular with that of the apostolic Church of Rome. Catholicity was not by any means the only note or mark of the Church. In writing against the Manicheans St. Augustine drew up a list of the factors which kept him within the membership of the Church. The first of these factors is the wisdom of the Church, a wisdom which cannot be grasped by those outside its fold. There are, however, four other factors.

…not to speak of this wisdom, which you do not believe to be in the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me within its bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me within the Church. So does its authority, begun by miracles, nourished in hope, enlarged by love, established in age. The succession of priests keeps me [in the Church], beginning from the very See of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave the commission to feed His sheep, down to the present episcopate. And so, finally, does the name “Catholic” itself.[21]

Despite the fact that the catholicity of the true Church of Jesus Christ is not by any means its only note, that catholicity is, in the hands of St. Augustine, a truly effective instrument for pointing out to a group which professes to accept the scripture as God’s inspired word, that the Church which exists throughout the world is in reality the Body of Christ. He used this characteristic of the Church with success in demonstrating that the society which was in communion with the Roman See was, by the evidence of Our Lord’s own promises, the one true Church, necessary for man’s salvation.

1.Augustine, De unitate ecclesiae, cap. 2. CSEL, LII, 232.

2.Augustine, Contra litteras Petiliani, II, 91. CSEL, LII, 75.

3.Augustine, Contra Gaudentium, II, 2. III, 3. CSEL, LIII, 53.

4.Augustine, Breviculus collationis. CSEL, XXXIV, 468.

5.Augustine, Ep. XCIII, 23. CSEL, XXXIV, 468.

6.Luke 24:46–47.

7.Acts 1:7–8.

8.Augustine, Breviculus collationis, cap. 10. III, 10. CSEL, LIII, 59.

9.John Driedo, in the 1530 edition of Louvain, pp. 505, 510, 512.

10.Francis Sonnius, Tract. VIII, cap. 2; in the 1556 Louvain edition, p. 464.

11.Thomas Stapleton, in the Paris edition of 1579, pp. 114, 143.

12.Thomas Stapleton, in the Antwerp edition of 1596, pp. 125, 464.

13.Augustine, Contra litteras Petiliam, 11, 20. CSEL. LII, 32.

14.Psalm 2:8.

15.Cf. Augustine, Ep. XCIII, 28; De unitate ecclesiae, cap. 5. CSEL, XXXIV, 472f.: LII, 236.

16.Augustine, Contra Cresconium, III, 70. CSEL, LII, 476.

17.Ibid. III, 71. CSEL, LII, 476f.

18.Cf. Augustine, De unitate ecclesiae, cap. 37. CSEL, LII, 279.

19.Augustine, Ep. CXCIX, 48. CSEL, LVII, 237.

20.Augustine, Contra Cresconium, III, 75. CSEL, LII, 480f.

21.Augustine, Contra epistolam Manichaei quam vacant fundamenti, cap. 4. CSEL, XXV, 196.

XVII

Apostolicity of the Roman See

The kingdom of God upon earth speaks of the episcopate of the Christian community at Rome as the Apostolic See. This title is familiar to all Catholics. Yet it has a meaning and a background that are not at all adequately presented by most of the theological manuals in common use today. It is unfortunate that this title is not generally explained at greater length because it involves certain revealed truths of which our Catholic people should be explicitly aware during these troubled times.

The Sedes Apostolica originally signifies a sedes or cathedra, a chair in which a teacher and ruler, commissioned as such by Jesus Christ Our Lord, sat to govern and instruct a Christian congregation. The great Basilica of St. Peter in Rome still preserves and honors the chair which, according to tradition, the Prince of the apostolic college used when he presided over the Christian congregation of the Eternal City. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, the chair used by St. James was still kept and venerated in Jerusalem in the fourth century.[1]

By a perfectly natural process of metonymy, however, the Sedes Apostolica came to mean even in the earliest days of Christianity actual jurisdictional and doctrinal authority in the Church of God. The same sort of phenomenon is visible in our own day when one of the Holy Father’s pronouncements is called a statement of the Vatican, and when the power of the White House means the authority of the President of the United States. It is, of course, in this secondary or transferred sense that the Church militant of Jesus Christ speaks of the Apostolic See of Rome.

In this metonymical sense, the term “Apostolic See” is capable of being interpreted in three ways. In its widest and least proper interpretation, the title “Apostolic See” can be applied to the office of any Catholic bishop. Because the bishop rules and teaches the particular portion of the Lord’s vineyard entrusted to his care as a successor of the apostles and as a man endowed with their basic doctrinal and jurisdictional commission, he can truly be said to command and teach his people from an apostolic cathedra. In a more restricted sense, however, the term sedes or cathedra apostolica was commonly used by ancient Christian writers to designate the bishopric of an individual Christian community which had been founded or ruled by one of the original apostolic college. In its most proper sense and, incidentally, in the only way in which it has been employed regularly in modern times, the title is given only to the visible head of the Christian community in Rome. There are definite and highly important reasons, both in the constitution of the apostolic college and in the nature of the Church itself, why this designation applies most perfectly to Christ’s vicar on earth.

In the famous thirty-second chapter of his De praescriptione haereticorum, Tertullian spoke of “those Churches which, because they are of a much later date, for as a matter of fact they are being founded daily, do not claim apostles or apostolic men as their founders” as being “accounted not less apostolic [than the local Churches which had been established by apostles] since they are akin in doctrine.”[2] Thus, according to his teaching all of the local communities within the Catholic Church as well as the Catholic Church as a whole must be considered as apostolic because the teachings they propose and accept with the assent of divine faith are precisely those which the apostles themselves taught and believed as the divine revelation communicated through Jesus Christ Our Lord. The apostolic doctrine in function of which each individual local Church in the kingdom of God on earth is qualified as apostolic is the thing designated by St. Irenaeus as “the tradition which originates from the apostles, which is preserved in the Churches by means of the successions of the presbyters.”[3]

St. Irenaeus mentions the successions of the presbyters in the local Churches as the means by which the apostolic tradition is preserved. The presbyters of each individual local Church constitute a sacerdotal brotherhood, the presbyterium, and are organized according to the divine nature of the Church itself for the exclusive purpose of aiding the bishop, the head of the presbyterium, in the direction and government of the flock entrusted to his care. Consequently both the successions and the authority of the presbyterium are measured only in terms of the episcopate itself. The presbyters of the Church are instruments in the teaching of Our Lord’s message precisely because they constitute the brotherhood inseparably united with the bishop and available to him as the primary and divinely instituted instrument for aiding him in his jurisdictional and doctrinal labors.

It is the contention of St. Irenaeus that all Catholics throughout the world lived in individual Christian communities, subject to men whom the apostles had made successors to themselves in the apostolic ministry.

The apostles instituted bishops in the Churches [and]…they were desirous that these men should be very perfect and blameless in all things, whom also they were leaving behind as their own successors, delivering up their own place of government to these men…[4]

The truth that the bishops of the genuine Catholic Church are actually successors to the apostles is to be found in that first monument of primitive Christian literature, the letter “from the Church of God which is in pilgrimage at Rome to the Church of God which is in pilgrimage at Corinth.”[5] Acting on this doctrine, St. Irenaeus taught that the testimony of the bishops in the true Church could and ought to be taken as the standard of Christian belief. According to St. Irenaeus, a man who accepts what the bishops of the Catholic Church teach as the divine message is actually giving his assent to the message which Our Lord Himself commanded all men to believe.

St. Irenaeus wrote against the Gnostic heretics. Various groups classified as Gnostics contended that their own teachings were really those of Christ, and that they had to come down to the second-century world through certain esoteric channels quite distinct from the apostolic magisterium of the Catholic Church itself. They imagined that Our Lord had reserved a highly secret teaching for certain more perfect disciples, that this secret teaching was quite distinct from and superior to the doctrine proposed as divine Christian revelation by the bishops in the Churches, and that the person who desired to become a perfect disciple of Christ would have to accept this secret teaching.

The prince of the Catholic controversialists countered their teaching by proposing the truth about the apostolicity of the Church. He insisted that the apostles were the chosen confidants of Christ and that the Catholic bishops were the men whom the apostles had constituted as their own successors in the government and the instruction of Our Lord’s disciples. He saw that any reasonable man must regard it as axiomatic that those to whom Christ had committed His teaching would in their turn have entrusted this doctrine to the very men they had placed in charge of the disciples. The concept of a privileged group, entrusted with the fullness of Our Lord’s teaching, but yet not entrusted with the care of His sheep, appeared to St. Irenaeus as a violation of logic as well as an historical absurdity.

Hence St. Irenaeus taught that the succession of a bishop to an apostle and the succession of one bishop to another in any Catholic see must be considered as the passing on of the deposit of revealed doctrine within the company of the disciples. Thus any Catholic bishop is a man commissioned and empowered to preach the Christian message by reason of his position as a successor of the apostles. In the last analysis, the process by which he is shown to be commissioned in this way centers around the proof that each bishop can trace his mandate, through his predecessors, to one of the members of the original apostolic college.

Writing during the last quarter of the second century, St. Irenaeus was convinced that such a procedure was quite possible for all of the episcopal sees then existent. He admitted, however, that the work would be long and irksome. He believed that the tracing of the succession of bishops for each individual see in Christendom was not at all necessary. Every local congregation within the Catholic Church must be in agreement with the Church of Rome, because of the pre-eminent authority of Rome. Consequently, for his purpose, it was enough to show that the then existent bishop of Rome held an office which he had inherited from an apostle and, as a matter of fact, from the prince of the apostles. Since no individual congregation could belong to the Catholic Church without being in communion with the Bishop of Rome, and since no one could be in communion with him without agreeing with the Roman Church in matters of faith, it followed that the entire Catholic Church’s faith could be shown as apostolic in provenance through the succession of the Roman Church itself.[6]

St. Irenaeus was well aware of the primacy of the Roman Church. He depicted this Church as apostolic in a special way, in a manner much more perfect than that according to which the other individual communities within the Catholic Church could be designated as apostolic. He recognized, however, a certain class of Churches within the Catholic society as possessing a degree of apostolicity inferior to that of Rome, but, at the same time, definitely superior to that of the other Christian congregations. He speaks of Polycarp as “appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna by apostles in Asia,” and says that the orthodox teaching is something to which “all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time.” Again, he tells us that “the Church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently until the times of Trajan, is a true witness of the tradition of the apostles.”[7]

St. Irenaeus considered all of these apostolic Churches as competent to aid in the resolution of questions about the content of divine Christian revelation. “Suppose,” he wrote, “that there should arise among us a dispute about a question of some importance. Should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles constantly conversed, and learn from them what is certain and clear with regard to that question?”[8] Thus, long after the death of the last apostle, the individual Christian communities which had been instructed by the apostles themselves were considered to have a dignity and a doctrinal force greater than those of the other local Churches.

Like St. Irenaeus, Tertullian based his argument in favor of the Catholic Church on a demonstration of the apostolic commission given to that Church alone. The heretics can trace neither their teachings nor their communities to the apostolic college. On the other hand there exist within the Catholic Church certain local congregations whose records show that their bishops are successors to men who were placed in office directly by some of the apostolic college.

For this is the manner in which the apostolic Churches present their registers: as the Church of Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed therein by John; as also the Church of Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained in like manner by Peter. In exactly the same way the other Churches likewise point to those whom they regard as the transmitters of the apostolic seed since they have been assigned to their episcopal positions by apostles.[9]

It is quite evident that Tertullian regarded these original apostolic Churches as useful and highly effective witnesses of the divine apostolic tradition. He appeals to them directly in the De praescriptione haereticorum.

…Consider the apostolic Churches in which the very cathedrae of the apostles are still pre-eminent in their places, in which their own authentic writings are read, bringing the voice and representing the countenance of each one of them individually. Achaia is quite near to you. You find Corinth. Since you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have the Thessalonians. Since you can cross over into Asia, you have Ephesus. Since, moreover, you are close to Italy, you have Rome, from which the authority comes even into our hands.[10]

To the mind of the Catholic Tertullian, Rome was an apostolic Church in a much more perfect way than were Ephesus, Thessalonica, Philippi, and Corinth. Such is the lesson we gather from the continuation of this passage.

How happy is its Church, upon which apostles poured forth all of their doctrine, along with their blood, where Peter endures a passion like unto his Lord’s, where Paul wins a crown, in a death like John’s, where the apostle John was first plunged unhurt into boiling oil and whence he was sent to his island exile. See what she has learned, what she has taught, what fellowship she has had even with the Churches in Africa.[11]

Tertullian considered as apostolic Churches, not only the Catholic communities which had been founded by the apostles, but also those to whom they wrote. Even here, Rome occupies a place of pre-eminence.

…What comes down from the apostles is that which has been kept as a sacred deposit in the Churches of the apostles. Let us see what milk the Corinthians drank from Paul; to what rule the Galatians were brought for correction; what the Philippians, the Thessalonians, the Ephesians read; what utterance the Romans make especially, to whom Peter and Paul conjointly bequeathed the gospel, even sealed with their own blood. We have also the Churches nourished by John.[12]

In his masterly monograph, Les normes de l’enseignement chrétien dans la littérature patristique des trois premiers siécles, Damien Van den Eynde turns his attention to the famous passage from Tertullian’s De pudicitia in which the African, now fallen into the heresy of Montanus, reproached Pope St. Callistus for “presuming” to believe that Our Lord’s promises to St. Peter gave him (St. Callistus) the power to forgive sins.[13] Tertullian had written: idcirco praesumis et ad te derivasse solvendi et alligandi potestatem, id est ad omnem ecclesiam Petri propinquam. Van den Eynde justifies an interpretation of the omnem ecclesiam Petri propinquam[14] as the Church of the bishops, the Catholic Church, in contradistinction to the conventicle of the false charismatics, the community of the Montanists. If this interpretation be correct, then the apostolic authority of the Catholic Church is, in Tertullian’s mind at least, the authority of Peter alone. The orthodox Churches are propinquae to St. Peter through their own bishops. Thus, according to this interpretation, it was the teaching of Tertullian that the individual Catholic bishops are successors, not only of the apostles in general, but of St. Peter in particular. And, when we consider the prominence Tertullian gives to the Church of the city of Rome in his writings, it is obvious that his teaching at least implies that the bishop of the Roman Church must hold a position of genuine pre-eminence in the society of the disciples.

In the Scorpiace, however, Tertullian brings out this teaching on the Petrine primacy still more sharply. He insists that “the Lord has left the keys to Peter, and through him, to the Church.”[15] It is the first important statement of what was to become the basis for the standard Catholic teaching about the unique and sovereign apostolicity of the Roman See.

The teaching on the pre-eminent apostolicity of the Roman Church, expounded somewhat sketchily in the works of Tertullian, stands out in considerably sharper relief in the writings of St. Cyprian. The Cyprianic teaching on this section of divine revelation is brought out quite forcefully in the Saint’s De catholicae ecclesiae unitate. The manuscript evidence shows very clearly that there were two editions of this work, and patristic scholars have proved that both editions emanated from St. Cyprian himself. The first edition, the one containing the so-called “primacy text,” was written in the year 251. It seems to have been occasioned by the schism of Novatian in Rome. The second edition was produced shortly afterwards, and the fourth chapter of the book was recast in order to stress the unity of the Catholic episcopate, a thesis dear to the heart of St. Cyprian.

The two editions of this work resulted in a multitude and a variety of conflated texts and thus in what was long considered to be a hopeless confusion in manuscripts and in printed editions. For a time the peculiarities of the “primacy text” were thought to be a Roman interpolation. The Anglican Benson and the apostate German priest Koch proposed this theory. What is accepted today as the proper resolution of the problem, a recognition of the fact that there were really two genuine Cyprianic editions, of which that of the “primacy text” came first, was propounded by Msgr. Pierre Batiffol, aided tremendously by the studies of Dom John Chapman and Fr. Adhémar D’Alés, and finally established by Fr. Maurice Bévenot.[16]

St. Cyprian held that all bishops of the Catholic Church possess what amounts to an equal authority. The episcopate itself is, according to his theory, one and undivided. The individual bishops hold this one episcopate in solidum. Episcopatus unus est, wrote the great martyr-bishop of Carthage, cuius a singulis in solidum pars tenetur.[17]

Against the background of this concept of the unity of the episcopate, St. Cyprian’s teaching on the pre-eminent apostolicity of St. Peter and the logical consequence of a pre-eminent apostolicity of the Roman See stands out clearly. Thus, in the “primacy text” of the fourth chapter of the De catholicae ecclesiae unitate, he formulates this teaching.

He [Our Lord] builds the Church upon that one [St. Peter] and He entrusts to him the sheep that must be fed. And, although He gave like power (parem potestatem) to all the apostles, He nevertheless established one cathedra and, by His own authority, He disposed the origin and the nature of the unity. Certainly the rest of the apostles were what Peter was, but the primatus is given to Peter and there is shown to be one Church and one cathedra. And all are pastors, but the flock that is tended by all the apostles in unanimous agreement is shown to be one. Can the person who does not hold the unity of that Church believe that he holds the faith? Can the person who deserts the cathedra of Peter, upon which the Church is founded, be confident that he is in the Church?[18]

The text of the second edition of this same fourth chapter brings out the lesson that the apostolic dignity and authority began with and from the prince of the apostles. In this edition there is no explicit mention of a primatus of Peter or of the cathedra Petri. Yet, despite the fact that these terms do not appear, the basic idea is quite similar.

He builds the Church upon one. And, although after His resurrection He grants like power to all the apostles, and says: As the Father has sent me, I also send you. Receive the Holy Ghost; if you shall remit anyone’s sins, they shall be remitted unto him, if you shall retain anyone’s [sins], they shall be retained, nevertheless, in order to manifest unity, He disposed, by His own authority, that unity’s origin as proceeding from one. Certainly the rest of the apostles were what Peter was, endowed with like fellowship of honor and of power. But its beginning comes from unity so that the Church of Christ may be shown as one.[19]

Elsewhere in his writings St. Cyprian speaks of “one Church and one cathedra, founded upon Peter by the voice of the Lord.”[20] He describes “one Church, founded upon Peter in origin and nature of unity.”[21] And, in the famous passage of the 59th Epistle, he speaks of “the cathedra of Peter and the ecclesia principalis, whence the sacerdotal unity derives its origin.”[22]

Thus, in the teaching of St. Cyprian, the conclusion which had been foreshadowed by Tertullian received an important elaboration. The saintly Carthaginian insisted upon the essential and inherent unity of the apostolic and episcopal office. That commission had been given to the Church primarily in St. Peter and it was in virtue of this function that Peter stands as the rock upon whom the Church of God is established.

St. Cyprian’s theology about the Roman See is not completely perfected and developed. Moreover, on the matter of the rebaptism of heretics, he persevered in a stand directly at variance with that of the Roman Pontiff. Yet, precisely in the light of this attitude, what he has to say about the Church of Rome is of particular importance. The Bishop of Carthage, so jealous of the independence of the African Churches, and so vitally interested in setting forth the rights of the Catholic episcopate, speaks of Pope St. Fabian as having been “in the place of Peter.”[23] He speaks of the Roman Church as the Cathedra Petri and as the ecclesia principalis.[24] Obviously, according to St. Cyprian’s point of view, every Catholic bishop is to a certain extent in the place of Peter. Every Catholic bishop holds an apostolic authority which the apostolic college held and holds from the prince of the apostles. Yet Fabian, as the head of the ecclesia principalis, is in an unequalled way the occupant of Peter’s see and thus in Peter’s place.

It would be a complete perversion of St. Cyprian’s thought to imagine that he believed St. Peter to have held the primatus in merely a chronological sense, that he was merely the original possessor of the power which all the rest of the apostolic college came later to hold. The apostolic see of Peter is represented in St. Cyprian’s teaching as both the source and the manifestation of ecclesiastical unity. The oneness of the episcopate itself is said to be derived from the authority of Peter. Hence the doctrine of St. Cyprian may be said to contain, in its first and undeveloped form, the basis of that teaching which the twentieth-century theology sets forth in the theses about the jurisdiction of bishops which comes to them from God through the Roman Pontiff as the successor of Peter in the Apostolic See.

It remained, however, for St. Optatus of Milevis to gather together the elements found in a comparatively undeveloped stage in the writings of Saints Irenaeus and Cyprian and to formulate a much more complete theology of the Apostolic See. St. Optatus wrote against the Donatist bishop Parmenianus. The Donatists, it seems, realized that no religious community could hope to obtain recognition as the true Church of Jesus Christ unless it was in communion with the Bishop of Rome. They hoped to avoid this difficulty by the somewhat naive process of sending one of their own bishops from Africa to the Eternal City to preside over the religious gatherings of any of his associates who might happen to find themselves there. St. Optatus seized eagerly on this inept procedure, and went about the task of contrasting the prerogatives of the genuine Roman Bishop with the creature sent by the Donatists. In the course of his exposition he gave the following explanation of the Roman See’s apostolicity.

Therefore you cannot deny that you know that the episcopal cathedra was originally brought by Peter into the city of Rome, [the episcopal cathedra] in which Peter, the head of all the apostles sat, whence he was called Cephas: in which one cathedra the unity would be preserved by all, lest the other apostles should each defend his own [cathedra]: so that now anyone would be a schismatic and a sinner if he were to set up another cathedra against this one.[25]

Thus, according to St. Optatus, the Roman See is essentially not merely an apostolic cathedra, but pre-eminently and perfectly the apostolic See. It is the one teaching authority against which not even the other apostles themselves could ever be permitted by God to set up a rival. It is the position from which the Church as a whole is meant to hear the definitive judgment of the apostolic teaching.

St. Optatus also considered communion with the seven Churches mentioned in the Apocalypse of St. John as a note of the genuine Church of Jesus Christ. He speaks of “our comrades in Asia, to whose Churches John the Apostle writes, with which Churches you are proved to have no fellowship of communion.”[26] He states that “outside the seven Churches, whatever is without, is foreign [to the Church of God].”[27]

In the fifth century the secondary type of apostolic Church, that of any Christian community founded by an apostle, entered into the controversy against the claims of the upstart Church of Constantinople. Anatolius, the Bishop of Constantinople, was reminded by Pope St. Leo that he ought to content himself with his position as the head of the Church in the imperial city, and that he could never hope to make it an apostolic see.[28] St. Leo also insisted that Alexandria and Antioch had certain privileges in virtue of their connection with St. Peter, privileges which Constantinople was powerless to change or to remove.[29] The attempt on the part of later Byzantine prelates to claim an apostolic origin for the Church in the eastern capital through St. Andrew the apostle is an evidence that even this politically minded community was not entirely unmindful of the dignity of an apostolic cathedra.

We must not allow ourselves to forget that in the early Christian times the lesser apostolic Churches exercised from time to time a kind of directive influence over other local communities within the kingdom of God on earth. St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote in tones of authority to five Churches of Asia.[30] One of his successors in the Antiochian see, the great Bishop Serapion, addressed the Church of Rhossos in the same manner.[31] From Smyrna St. Polycarp gave directions to another apostolic Christian community, that of Philippi.[32] Dionysius of Corinth wrote “catholic epistles,” and was revered by all the Churches.[33] Melito, Bishop of Sardis, was venerated by all Christendom.[34] In the third century, Dionysius of Alexandria also exercised tremendous influence.[35]

Yet the literary remains of even these earliest times are sufficient to show that these lesser apostolic Churches, as a group, were cognizant of Rome’s apostolic supremacy. St. Ignatius spoke firmly to the Asiatic Churches, but he showed deference and reverence for the Church of Rome.[36] Dionysius of Alexandria virtuously submitted his teaching to the judgment of the Roman see.[37] The lesser apostolic sees were never independent of Peter’s cathedra at Rome.

The lesser apostolic sees have, however, long since ceased to have any particular function in the Church of God. In olden times they were valuable aids for the universal Church because of a particular proximity to apostolic teaching in these communities. The bishop and the people of a local Church which had been founded by one of the apostles might reasonably have been expected to possess certain memories of their apostle which would not exist in other places. For a time, during the early days of the Church, such local memories and traditions were of great service to other communities. The time came, however, when the particular remembrances of these lesser apostolic Churches faded. These communities and their episcopal sees were not the divinely constituted centers of the Catholic Church.

The See of Rome, however, was and is apostolic in quite another way. In this Church Peter had labored, not merely as the apostolic founder, but as the bishop. He, the Rock upon whom the Church of Jesus Christ is founded, held and exercised in the city of Rome that fundamental episcopal power and authority which Christ had granted to him. All of the subsequent bishops in God’s Church received and still receive their episcopal authority from Our Lord through Peter and his successors in the See of Rome. The unbroken apostolic power of the episcopate in the Catholic Church derives its unity from the supremely apostolic Church of Rome.

Furthermore, the Church’s dogmatic teaching about the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff centers around the concept of the apostolic cathedra of the Eternal City. The Vatican Council defined that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, “exercises, through the divine assistance promised to him in the blessed Peter, the infallibility with which the divine Redeemer wished His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine on faith or morals.”[38] The Holy Father is said to speak ex cathedra when, “acting in his capacity as the pastor and teacher of all Christians, with his supreme apostolic authority he defines doctrine about faith or morals to be held by the universal Church.”[39]

The visible head of Christ’s Church on earth is competent to speak infallibly from his Roman cathedra because that cathedra is the sedes Petri, and thus in a complete and unique manner the cathedra apostolica of the Church universal. From the apostolic See of Rome, St. Peter, speaking through his successor, teaches infallibly the divine message delivered to God’s kingdom on earth by the apostolic college.

1.Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, VII, 19. MPG, XX, 682.

2.Tertullian, MPL, II, 44.

3.Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus haereses, III, 2. In Harvey’s edition (Cambridge, 1857), II, 7f.

4.Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus haereses, III, 3. Harvey, II, 8f.

5.Prima Clementis, Int. In Funk’s edition of the Patres apostolici (Tubingen, 1901), I, 98.

6.Cf. Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus haereses, III, 3. Harvey, II, 8.

7.Ibid., Harvey, II, 12, 15.

8.Ibid., III, 4. Harvey, II, 15f.

9.Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum, cap. 32. MPL, II, 44.

10.Ibid., cap. 49. MPL, II, 49.

11.Ibid.

12.Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, IV, 5. MPL, II, 366.

13.The work was published in Gembloux, Belgium, by Duculot, in 1933. The discussion of the passage from the De pudicitiais found on pp. 203ff.

14.Tertullian, De pudicitia, cap. 21. MPL, II, 1024.

15.Tertullian, Adversus gnosticos scorpiace, cap, 10, MPL, II, 142.

16.Cf. Batiffol, L’église naissante et le catholicisme (Paris: Gabalda, 1927), pp. 440ff; Chapman, “Les interpolations dans le traité de S. Cyprien sur l’unité de l’église,” Revue bénédictine, XIX (1902), 246ff.; 357ff.; XX (1903), 26ff.; D’Alés, La théologie de Saint Cyprien (Paris: Beauchesne, 1922), pp. 91ff.; Bévenot, St. Cyprian’s De Unitate, Chap. 4, in the Light of the Manuscripts (Rome: The Gregorian University, 1937).

17.Cyprian of Carthage, De catholicae ecclesiae unitate, cap. 5. MPL, IV, 501.

18.Ibid., cap. 4. I have used the texts in D’Alés, op. cit., p. 106.

19.Ibid.

20.Cyprian of Carthage, Ep. XLIII, cap. 5., in CSEL, III, 594.

21.Cyprian of Carthage, Ep. LXX, cap. 3, CSEL, III, 769.

22.Cyprian of Carthage, cap. 14. CSEL, III, 683.

23.Cyprian of Carthage, Ep. LV, cap. 8. CSEL, III, 630.

24.Cyprian of Carthage, Ep. LIX, cap. 14. CSEL, III, 683.

25.Optatus of Milevis, Contra Parmenianum Donatistam, II, 2, 3. MPL, XI, 947.

26.Ibid., II, 6. MPL, XI, 959.

27.Ibid.

28.Cf. Pope Leo I, Ep. CIV, cap. 3. MPL, LIV, 995.

29.Cf. Pope Leo I, Ep. CVI, cap. 5. MPL, LIV, 1007.

30.They were the Churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Philadelphia, and Smyrna.

31.Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, VI, 12. MPG, XX, 545.

32.Eusebius (Op. cit., IV, 14), speaks of it as “most powerful.” The document has come down to us, and is published in the various collections of the Apostolic Fathers.

33.Cf. Eusebius, op. cit., IV, 23. MPG, XX, 384.

34.Cf. ibid., IV, 26. MPG, XX, 392.

35.The sixth and seventh books of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History tell of his activity and influence. St. Athanasius called him the “teacher of the Catholic Church.”

36.Cf. Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Romanos, Int. Funk, op. cit., I, 252.

37.Cf. Batiffol, op. cit., p. 394.

38.DB 1839/DH 3074.

39.Ibid.

XVIII

Principles Underlying Traditional Church-State Doctrine

During the past few years several articles have been published in The American Ecclesiastical Review and elsewhere in support of what the authors of these articles and many other Catholics consider to be the traditional Catholic teaching on the proper relations between the Catholic Church and civil societies. The doctrine set forth and defended in these papers is that summed up in the letter Longinqua oceani, written by Pope Leo XIII to the Archbishops and Bishops of the United States, and dated Jan. 6, 1895.

For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced.[1]

In the Longinqua oceani Pope Leo XIII described our American system of relations between the civil society and religion as one in which the “rei civilis reique sacrae…rationes” are “separated and dissociated.” This condition is said to be 1) not objectively the best status for the Church, 2) illicit in some countries and under some circumstances, and 3) sometimes and in some countries inexpedient. By clear implication the Longinqua oceani reminds us that this condition is both licit and expedient as it stands in the United States.

The men who have written in support of this position have always maintained that, since this is the authoritative teaching of a Roman Pontiff, it is something which all Catholics should accept with a true and sincere internal assent. They are likewise convinced that there is ample and manifest theological evidence in support of this position. Unfortunately, however, there are certain portions of that evidence which they have not had the opportunity to explain at any length during the course of their discussions on this subject.

The reason why some sections of the theological background of their own position have not been brought out at any length during the course of the contemporary discussions on Church and state by the theologians who have defended the traditional theses is to be found in the predominantly polemic function of their writings. They were almost always engaged in trying to show that certain propositions presented, on the one hand by enemies of the Catholic Church, and on the other by theologians whose views on this subject differed from their own, were not acceptable. Hence their writings have, in great measure, been geared to positions other than that which they themselves accepted and defended. As a result, in the minds of some at least among their readers, their position has appeared to be more negative than positive, more a rejection of teachings which they have deemed unwarranted than a presentation of a definite and positive teaching consonant with and made imperative by some of the fundamental truths in the body of Catholic doctrine.

So it was that, in 1946, the article entitled “Time and Pope Leo”[2] centered around a protest against the news magazine Time’s contention that Pope Leo XIII had condemned “the U.S. principle of separation of Church and State,” and its assertion that, “Though Leo’s views are still repeated by a few academic theologians, they are largely ignored by the U.S. hierarchy.” In this case the inaccuracy of the first claim could be shown by an appeal to the words of Pope Leo, and the second assertion is manifestly self-contradictory. The “academic theologians” who, according to Time itself, upheld the great Pontiff ’s teachings are the very men who teach as the Bishops’ representatives in the Bishops’ schools.

Later that same year AER carried still another controversial article on Church and state. It was entitled “The Catholic Church and Freedom of Religion,”[3] and it commented upon the inaccurate and misleading use made of Dr. Connell’s brochure, Freedom of Worship, by the bitterly anti-Catholic Christian Herald and by the religious editors of Time. A paper, “The Theology of the Church and of the State,” read to the second annual meeting of the Catholic Theological Society of America in Boston, and published in the 1946 volume of that Society’s Proceedings, commented on the pertinent pontifical teachings during the reigns of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and Leo XIII.[4]

All of the more recent AER articles which have upheld the literal accuracy and the authoritative character of the Leonine teachings on Church and state must be classified as parts of a debate which has been carried on within the ranks of the American theologians themselves. Within this group we must list Dr. Connell’s brilliant paper on “Christ the King of Civil rulers,”[5] and his two direct replies to Fr. Murray,[6] as well as the two well-known articles by Dr. Shea,[7] and my own attempt to summarize and to evaluate the first part of the discussion between Dr. Shea and Fr. Murray. Dr. Martin’s explanation of the nature of the state, and of the various erroneous theories which have been offered on this subject belongs similarly to this same field of discussion.[8]

Directly pertinent to this same controversy have been the various papers published in AER on the doctrinal authority of papal encyclicals and on the nature and the authoritative force of the Holy Father’s ordinary magisterium.[9] Dr. Benard’s critique of certain aspects of the “Springfield plan,” with its magnificent explanation of the Catholic principles of tolerance, was not written with direct reference to this or to any controversy among Catholic theologians.[10] It has, nevertheless, been of immense value in the course of this discussion.

Neither in the individual nor in the aggregate have these papers attempted to offer even a sketch of the basic theological principles upon which the traditional position on the interrelations between the Catholic Church and civil societies is founded. Yet these are principles which must be known and understood if this traditional teaching is to be appreciated for what it is, and recognized as a genuine, and positive theological doctrine, rather than as a mere point from which attacks on other theories can originate.

The first of these principles is an expression of the nature of religion itself. It is a statement of the fact that objectively religion is nothing more or less than the payment of the debt of acknowledgement which all rational creatures owe to God.

Thus, by its very nature, the work of religion is something which every rational creature must perform if that creature is objectively to be morally good. It is a moral evil to withhold from a fellow creature the good which is really due to him. It is a much more serious moral evil to fail to pay to God the debt of acknowledgement actually due to Him because of His supreme goodness and because of our absolute and entire dependence upon Him.

The next principle has to do with the extent of the obligation of religion or worship. Since man is totally dependent upon God, there is no realm or section of human life which can be exempted from this obligation of acknowledging God’s supreme goodness. Thus, not only individual men, but also all societies or groups of men are bound to pay that debt of acknowledgement. If they fail to make that acknowledgement, their conduct is objectively lacking a good which it should include.

One factor which can and does obscure this principle in the minds of some men is a confused and imperfect notion of religion itself. When they fail to see the virtue of religion for what it really is, a potential part of justice, they are inclined to look upon the field of its exercise as in some way circumscribed. They do not come to realize that the work of religion is, in the last analysis, the payment of the real debt or obligation of acknowledgement on the part of the creature of his complete dependence upon God, and of God’s sovereign excellence. Thus, if they come to imagine that religion has no more meaning than that contained in the basic concept of this reality ordinarily set forth in manuals of comparative religion or history of religion, they will never be able to appreciate the genuine obligation incumbent upon all individuals and upon all groups of men to worship God.

Now it is perfectly obvious that under certain circumstances, some groups, states, families, and other societies, are not in a position to perform corporate or social acts of worship. Such a case occurs, of course, when the membership of the group is sharply divided in religious belief. Where different members of a family have different religions, the family as such cannot have its own act of worship. Likewise, where the various citizens of a state have different religious persuasions, it is evident that the state itself is not in a position to exercise its own act of religion, and to pay its own debt of acknowledgement to God.

In such cases the non-performance of the religious act by the group or community may well be morally excusable. After all, the obligation of the society to pay its debt of acknowledgement or worship is definitely consequent upon the obligations of the individual human beings that compose the group. But, even under such circumstances, it is utterly incorrect to say that the condition of the community or group which does not offer social worship to God is, in the strictest sense of the term, a good thing. A state or any other community may not be in a position to pay this debt of acknowledgement or religion to God, but that failure to worship, despite its practical necessity, remains something objectively deplorable.

Hence, even on these grounds, the failure or the inability of a civil society to concern itself with the acts of religion must not be considered as a good or desirable thing. The condition of such a state, even though it be the only one possible under a given set of circumstances, cannot be thought of as ultimately and completely fitting or proper for any group or organization of men. It is never simpliciter a good thing to have any individual or any group of individuals withhold the payment of the debt of acknowledgement and gratitude due to the living God.

Still another principle which must be kept in mind for a proper grasp of the theology of Church and state is the truth that God wills that the debt of religion should be paid to Him in a definite and supernatural way. It is His right to prescribe the method according to which He is to be worshipped, and He has seen fit to exercise that right. His message, the divine public and supernatural revelation which comes to us in the Catholic Church, carries with it manifest signs of its own authenticity.

According to that message, the one acceptable and authorized social worship of God is to be found summed up in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Catholic Church. It is God’s will that men should pay the debt of acknowledgement and gratitude they owe to Him in the worship and according to the rite of His own Church.

Hence it follows that religion and the Church are not in the best or the most desirable position in a land where, even for perfectly valid and acceptable reasons, the civil society itself does not worship God according to the rites of the Church. This holds true even where the Church shows a freedom and vitality greater than those it manifests in some of the countries where the civil society has offered the true and Catholic worship to God.

This is precisely the point which Pope Leo XIII brought out so forcefully in his letter to the hierarchy of the United States. The great Pontiff never lost sight of the fact that the Catholic Church is actually the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ Our Lord. It is His instrument for the sanctification and the enlightenment of the people for whom He died on the Cross. It judges the world and its affairs in the light of His standards, not in the light of the norms used by the world itself. Hence it cannot and will not describe some condition as fully desirable in which the benefits that accrue to it and to its members come precisely from the inability of the civil society to worship God in the Church’s Eucharistic sacrifice. Despite the undoubted fact that the material and even the spiritual prosperity of the Church were greater here than in lands where the Catholic religion was recognized and accepted by the civil society, Pope Leo was bound to insist that the non-recognition of the Church and the non-acceptance of its worship by the state could not enter as factors into the best and most desirable condition of the Catholic Church.

Zeal for God as well as charity for our neighbor and for our own country stand behind this teaching of Pope Leo’s. It would seem difficult in the extreme for a person who really loves God and who wills and works to have His name glorified to consider as ultimately and absolutely satisfactory a situation in which the civil society does not pay its debt of religion to Him. The intention that God’s name be glorified, the intention which we beg God to fulfill every time we repeat the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, involves a desire that the acknowledgement due to God should actually be given to Him. Obviously the man who would consider the situation of the Church as ultimately and absolutely satisfactory in a nation or country which as such does not worship God according to the rite of the Catholic Church does not consider this worship by a civil society or nation as completely desirable.

Furthermore, the affection which, by God’s command, we owe to our own fellow-citizens and to our own country itself must militate against the acceptance of a separation of Church from state or of religion from the state as ultimately satisfactory. The love we owe our neighbors is a love of charity, a love of benevolence, through which we will, seriously and sincerely, that these people may have the benefits of which they stand in need. The one absolutely necessary goal which God has set for all men is the supernatural possession of Himself in the Beatific Vision, a possession which God wills that they should enjoy in the unity of the Church triumphant in heaven. As the Holy Father has brought out forcefully and sharply in his encyclical Humani generis, this eternal salvation is a goal which men cannot attain apart from the Catholic Church itself.[11] When we consider as ultimately and absolutely satisfactory a situation in which the state, by reason of the diversity of religious tenets among its own citizens, does not actually worship God according to the rites of the Catholic Church, we are thereby branding as ultimately satisfactory a situation in which great numbers of our own neighbors remain apart from that Church which is truly requisite for eternal salvation. Such an attitude is clearly incompatible with the true charity or love of benevolence according to which we sincerely will and intend to bring these neighbors of ours, to the extent of our ability, the good things which are helpful and necessary to them.

The affection of charity demands that we should rejoice in and be grateful for the good things which the beneficiaries of our charity possess. Thus we must thank God for the freedom and the intellectual and material prosperity of our own nation. That same affection of charity, however, forbids us to be complacent about the wants and the ills of those about us. We have no right, as the members of the household of the faith, to remain satisfied that many of our own fellow-citizens stay deprived of the fruits of both the temporal and the internal missions of the Holy Ghost. That these individuals are not joined to Our Lord by either the inward or the outward bonds of unity with Him is their misfortune.

Our own beloved nation is not in a position to offer its official and corporate worship to God according to the rite of the true and Catholic Church only because of the fact that many of our fellow-citizens have and profess either a false religion or no religion at all. Obviously, if we are to think and to speak according to the dictates of true faith and charity, we cannot, in any way whatsoever, believe that this situation is absolutely the best and ultimately satisfactory for our fellow-Americans, for our country itself, or for the Church.

Under the definite circumstances in which we live, with the various religious beliefs and the lack of belief existent among Americans, it is obviously best that all religions should be treated alike according to our American law. After all, we constitute a nation. The law and the government of a nation are definitely meant to aid us in our essential civil task of living together peacefully and of bringing about our own corporate and individual temporal welfare. Our laws and government, as they stand, contribute admirably towards the accomplishment of this essential civil task. They protect the freedom we need and cherish.

The anti-Catholic agitators of our time are obviously plotting against the very essence of our peaceful life as a nation. Their reckless and vulgar diatribes against Catholic Americans and the Catholic Church as well as their spurious philosophy of freedom are aimed to incite the non-Catholics of the United States to dislike and distrust, and if possible to persecute, their Catholic fellow-Americans. It is distinctly to the credit of the majority of American non-Catholics that they instinctively recognize the seditious nature of this anti-Catholic ranting. They see that, if the agitators were successful, there would be internal discord and strife within our nation, and the very purpose of our civil society would be frustrated.

It would seem that the most serious and damaging effect produced by these agitators has been within the realm of our American Catholic literature. The anti-Catholic agitators are continually charging that Catholics are striving to do away with freedom of religion in the United States. In answering these men, some of our less skillful apologists become so confused that they actually give the impression that Catholics are completely and absolutely satisfied with the situation here in America today, that we believe it to be best that many of our fellow-citizens should remain as they are, apart from Our Lord, from His Church, and from His true religion. Unmindful of the constant and devoutly sincere prayer of the Church that all of those who wander apart from ecclesiastical union and fellowship with Christ should be brought by God’s grace into that fellowship, these writers describe as ultimately good and satisfactory a situation in which the nation itself takes no more cognizance of the true religion than it does of false systems of worship.

It is the divinely infused virtue of charity that dictates the prayers of the Church that all men may be brought into union with Christ within the ecclesiastical fellowship. According to the order of that charity, our prayers in this direction should be most intense in favor of those who are closest to us, our own fellow-citizens. We would be denying the force of that missionary charity within the Church, or misjudging the nature of the Church itself, were we in any way to give the impression that we do not care whether our fellow-Americans enter the true Church or not. The true religion is the great good which we desire for our fellow-citizens and for our country. The true Church, outside of which there is no salvation, is likewise a great and necessary good we seek for the men and the nation we love in the affection of charity.

There is one more principle which must be taken into consideration for any proper understanding of the traditional Catholic position on Church-state relations. In the passage from the Longinqua oceani, quoted on the first page of this article, Pope Leo XIII taught that “it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion…that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced.” The clear inference of this passage is that this situation is allowable and expedient in America, as the only means by which the civil society can operate properly in the situation in which Americans profess many different religions or none at all. There is, however, likewise the clear inference that in some cases the non-profession of the Catholic religion by the civil society was a definite moral wrong.

The significance of that statement becomes apparent from a study of the Catholic dogma set forth in the Vatican Council’s first dogmatic constitution, the Dei Filius. This document declares that “If anyone should say that the faithful and those who have never arrived at the only true faith are in a like situation, so that Catholics can have a legitimate reason for withholding their assent from and doubting, until they shall have completed the scientific proof of the credibility and the truth of their own faith, that faith which they have already received under the Church’s magisterium, let him be anathema.”[12] The text of the third chapter of this constitution declares that “those who have received the faith under the Church’s magisterium can never have any legitimate cause for changing that faith or doubting it.”[13]

The active separation of the Church from the state in countries which previously were Catholic and which had previously, as civil societies, paid their real debt of religion to God according to the true worship of the Catholic Church was manifestly the work of individuals who had ceased to profess the Catholic faith. It was a part of the mechanics of that changing or rejection of the true faith which the Church has always recognized as inherently an evil thing. In such countries, the condition could be called neither legitimate nor expedient.

The thesis that the state or the civil society is objectively obligated to worship God according to the rite of the Catholic religion thus stems basically from a realization of the fact that the debt of religion is a real obligation incumbent upon every human being and every social unit, and from a recognition of the truth that there is only one objectively acceptable religious worship, that which is paid to God within the framework of Our Lord’s Mystical Body. This thesis is likewise in line with the fundamental principle of Catholic missiology, the truth that God wills that all men should enter His one true Church. Thus it refuses to see as genuinely and ultimately desirable and good a situation in which some men, even though through no fault of their own, are not citizens of God’s supernatural kingdom on earth.

1.The original Latin text reads as follows. “Hoc enim Ecclesiae apud vos concessum est, non repugnante temperatíone civitatis, ut nullis legum praepedita vinclis, contra vim defensa iure communi iustitiaeque iudiciorum, tutam obtineat vivendi agendique sine offensione facultatem. Sed quamquam haec vera sunt, tamen error tolendus, ne quis hinc sequi existimet, petendum ab America exemplum optimi Ecclesiae status: aut universe licere vel expedire, rei civilis reique sacrae distractas dissociatasque, more americano, rationes.” This text is found in Codicis iucis canonici fontes, edited by Cardinal Gasparri (Polyglot Vatican Press, 1933), III, 461f. The translation is found in The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1903), p. 323.

2.AER, 114, 5 (May, 1946), 369–75.

3.AER, 115, 4 (Oct. 1946), 286–301. Dr. Connell’s pamphlet was published in 1944 by the Paulist Press in New York. It was the reprint of an article in Columbia, 23, 3 (Dec. 1943), 6ff. The offending articles appeared in the Christian Herald, 69, 8 (Aug. 1946), 51, and in Time, 48, 5 (July 29, 1946), 56.

4.Proceedings of The Catholic Theological Society of America, 2 (1946), 15–46.

5.Dr. Connell, AER, 119, 4 (Oct. 1948), 244–53.

6.Dr. Connell, “The Theory of the ‘Lay State,’” AER, 125, 1 (July, 1951), 7–18, and “Reply to Father Murray,” AER, 126, 1 (Jan. 1952), 49–59.

7.Dr. Shea, “Catholic Doctrine and ‘The Religion of the State,’” AER, 123, 3 (Sept. 1950), 161–74, and “Catholic Orientations on Church and State,” AER, 125, 6 (Dec. 1951), 405–16.

8.Dr. Martin, “The State: Its Elements,” AER, 125, 3 (Sept. 1951), 177–95.

9.“The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals,” AER, 121, 2, 3 (Aug., Sept. 1949), 136–50; 210–20; “The Religious Assent Due to the Teachings of Papal Encyclicals,” AER, 123, 1 (July, 1950), 59–67; “The Lesson of the Humani Generis,” AER, 123, 5 (Nov. 1950), 359–78; “The Humani Generis and Its Predecessors,” AER, 123, 6 (Dec. 1950), 452–58; “The Humani Generis and the Holy Father’s Ordinary Magisterium,” AER, 125, 1 (July, 1951), 53–62; “Christ the Teacher and the Stability of Catholic Dogma,” AER, 125, 3 (Sept. 1951), 208–19. Also pertinent to the discussion were “The Relation of the Christian State to the Catholic Church according to the Pontificate Romanum,” AER, 123, 3 (Sept. 1950), 214–18, and “The Status of a Controversy,” AER, 124, 6 (June, 1951), 451–58.

10.Dr. Benard, AER, 114, 1 (Jan. 1946), 1–12.

11.Pope Pius XII, “Aliqui necessitatem pertinendi ad veram Ecclesiam, ut sempiterna attingatur salus, ad vanam formulam reducunt” (L’Osservatore Romano, Aug. 21–22, 1950).

12.DB 1815/DH 3036.

13.DB 1794/DH 3014.

Bibliography of Msgr. Fenton’s Works

Books

The Theology of Prayer. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1939.

The Concept of Sacred Theology. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1941.

We Stand with Christ: An Essay in Catholic Apologetics. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1943.

The Calling of a Diocesan Priest. Westminster, MD: Newman Book Shop, 1944.

The Concept of the Diocesan Priesthood. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1951. (This work was translated in Spanish as Concepto del Sacerdocio diocesano. Barcelona: Editorial Herder, 1956.)

The Catholic Church and Salvation in the Light of Recent Announcements by the Holy See. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1958.

Articles

“Latin and Culture.” Commonweal, March 9, 1934, pp. 513–515.

“Modern Thomists.” Commonweal, July 13, 1934, pp. 279–280.

“The Centenary of Cajetan.” Commonweal, January 25, 1935, pp. 369–370.

“Popular Thomism.” Commonweal, October 9, 1936, pp. 554–555.

“Apologetics, an Art and a Science.” American Ecclesiastical Review 94 (1936): 483–491.

“Help from the Holy Souls.” American Ecclesiastical Review 95 (1936): 447–459.

“The Act of the Mystical Body.” American Ecclesiastical Review 100 (1939): 397–408.

“Use of the Terms Body and Soul with Reference to the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 110 (1944): 48–57.

“Extension of Christ’s Mystical Body.” American Ecclesiastical Review 110 (1944): 124–130.

“Accusation Against School Theology.” American Ecclesiastical Review 110 (1944): 213–222.

“Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.” American Ecclesiastical Review 110 (1944): 300–306.

“Communion of Saints and the Mystical Body.” American Ecclesiastical Review 110 (1944): 378–388.

“Vicarius Christi.” American Ecclesiastical Review 110 (1944): 459–470.

“Scholastic Definitions of the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 111 (1944): 59–69, 131–145, 212–228.

“Twofold Origin of the Church Militant.” American Ecclesiastical Review 111 (1944): 291–304.

“Effective Demonstration from the Marks of the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 111 (1944): 380–390.

“Reason for Catholic Missions.” American Ecclesiastical Review 111 (1944): 459–466.

“Church and the State of Siege.” American Ecclesiastical Review 112 (1945): 54–63.

“Apologetics and Preaching.” American Ecclesiastical Review 112 (1945): 130–138.

“Catholic Mission and Communist Tactics.” American Ecclesiastical Review 112 (1945): 215–219.

“Membership in the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 112 (1945): 287–305.

“New Weapon for Catholic Apologetics.” American Ecclesiastical Review 112 (1945): 375–388.

“The Proof of the Church’s Divine Origin.” American Ecclesiastical Review 113 (1945): 203–219.

“John Henry Newman and the Vatican Definition of Papal Infallibility.” American Ecclesiastical Review 113 (1945): 300–320.

“Catholic and the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 113 (1945): 377–384.

“Nature and the Supernatural Life.” American Ecclesiastical Review 114 (1946): 54–68.

“True Church and the Notes of the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 114 (1946): 282–297.

“Time and Pope Leo.” American Ecclesiastical Review 114 (1946): 369–375.

“Our Lady and the Extirpation of Heresy.” American Ecclesiastical Review 114 (1946): 442–454.

“Our Lord’s Presence in the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 115 (1946): 50–61.

“Sources of Modern Attacks Against the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 115 (1946): 204–218.

“Catholic Church and Freedom of Religion.” American Ecclesiastical Review 115 (1946): 286–301.

“The Requisites for an Infallible Pontifical Definition According to the Commission of Pope Pius IX.” American Ecclesiastical Review 115 (1946): 376–384.

“The Necessity for the Definition of Papal Infallibility by the Vatican Council.” American Ecclesiastical Review 115 (1946): 439–457.

“Anti-clericalism and Catholic Unity.” American Ecclesiastical Review 116 (1947): 51–67.

“The Spirituality of the Diocesan Priesthood.” American Ecclesiastical Review 116 (1947): 126–140.

“Diocesan Priesthood in the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 116 (1947): 212–225.

“The Bishop and the Diocesan Priesthood.” American Ecclesiastical Review 116 (1947): 295–304.

“Fellowship of the Diocesan Priesthood.” American Ecclesiastical Review 116 (1947): 377–386.

“Spiritual Perfection of the Diocesan Priesthood.” American Ecclesiastical Review 116 (1947): 456–467.

“Learning in the Diocesan Priesthood.” American Ecclesiastical Review 117 (1947): 43–58.

“Objective of the Diocesan Priesthood.” American Ecclesiastical Review 117 (1947): 131–146, 196–215.

“Catholicity of the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 117 (1947): 291–302, 375–386, 452–464.

“St. Augustine’s Use of the Note of Catholicity.” American Ecclesiastical Review 118 (1948): 47–58.

“Note of Catholicity in Scholastic Theology.” American Ecclesiastical Review 118 (1948): 127–142.

“Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Catholic Church: Part 1.” American Ecclesiastical Review 118 (1948): 214–228.

“Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Catholic Church: Part 2.” American Ecclesiastical Review 118 (1948): 290–305.

“Theological Proof for the Necessity of the Catholic Church: Part 3.” American Ecclesiastical Review 118 (1948): 361–375.

“Apostolicity of the Roman See.” American Ecclesiastical Review 118 (1948): 444–457.

“New Concepts in Theology.” American Ecclesiastical Review 119 (1948): 56–62.

“The Church and the World.” American Ecclesiastical Review 119 (1948): 202–214.

“Two Currents in Contemporary Catholic Thought.” American Ecclesiastical Review 119 (1948): 293–301.

“Factors in Church Unity.” American Ecclesiastical Review 119 (1948): 375–383.

“Holiness as a Note of the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 119 (1948): 452–464.

“Faith and the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 120 (1949): 57–68.

“Church and Catholic Dogma.” American Ecclesiastical Review 120 (1949): 123–134.

“The Holy Father’s Discourse to the Parish Priests and the Lenten Preachers of Rome.” American Ecclesiastical Review 120 (1949): 277–288.

“Episcopal Jurisdiction and the Roman See.” American Ecclesiastical Review 120 (1949): 337–342.

“St. Peter and Apostolic Jurisdiction.” American Ecclesiastical Review 120 (1949): 500–508.

“Local Church and Christ’s Poor.” American Ecclesiastical Review 121 (1949): 45–60.

“The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals.” American Ecclesiastical Review 121 (1949): 136–150, 210–220.

“A Statement of Policy.” American Ecclesiastical Review 121 (1949): 332–340.

“Mass of the Diocesan Priest.” American Ecclesiastical Review 121 (1949): 411–417.

“Devotion to the Holy Ghost and its American Advocates.” American Ecclesiastical Review 121 (1949): 486–501.

“Regina Patriarcharum.” American Ecclesiastical Review 122 (1950): 146–149.

“The Parish Census List and Membership in the True Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 122 (1950): 300–311.

“The Baptismal Character and Membership in the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 122 (1950): 373–381.

“The Local Church of Rome.” American Ecclesiastical Review 122 (1950): 454–464.

“The Religious Assent Due to the Teaching of Papal Encyclicals.” American Ecclesiastical Review 123 (1950): 59–67.

“The Relation of the Christian State to the Catholic Church According to the Pontificale Romanum.” American Ecclesiastical Review 123 (1950): 214–218.

“The Church and God’s Promises.” American Ecclesiastical Review 123 (1950): 295–308.

“The Lesson of the Humani generis.” American Ecclesiastical Review 123 (1950): 359–378.

“The Humani generis and its Predecessors.” American Ecclesiastical Review 123 (1950): 452–458.

“Two Solemn Pontifical Definitions.” American Ecclesiastical Review 124 (1951): 52–61.

“The Meaning the Church’s Necessity for Salvation.” American Ecclesiastical Review 124 (1951): 124–143, 203–221, 290–302.

“Our Lady, Queen of Prophets.” American Ecclesiastical Review 124 (1951): 381–386.

“The Status of a Controversy.” American Ecclesiastical Review 124 (1951): 451–458.

“The Humani generis and the Holy Father’s Ordinary Magisterium.” American Ecclesiastical Review 125 (1951): 53–62.

“Christ the Teacher and the Stability of Catholic Dogma.” American Ecclesiastical Review 125 (1951): 208–219.

“The Pontifical Work of Priestly Vocations.” American Ecclesiastical Review 125 (1951): 381–384.

“America’s Two Theological Associations.” American Ecclesiastical Review 125 (1951): 449–458.

“Reform and Integralism.” American Ecclesiastical Review 126 (1952): 126–139.

“Recent Works in Fundamental Dogmatic Theology.” American Ecclesiastical Review 126 (1952): 374–380.

“Principles Underlying Traditional Church-State Doctrine.” American Ecclesiastical Review 126 (1952): 452–462.

“The Aims and Methods of the Spiritual Director in a Major Seminary.” Bulletin of the National Catholic Educational Association’s Proceedings and Addresses, Forty-ninth Annual Meeting, August 1952. 83–89.

“Answers to Questions: Papal Infallibility before 1870.” American Ecclesiastical Review 127 (1952): 134–135.

“A Reply to Father Hartnett.” American Ecclesiastical Review 127 (1952): 286–299.

“Father Journet’s Concept of the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 127 (1952): 370–380.

“The Holy Office Letter on the Necessity of the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 127 (1952): 450–461.

“Priestly Perfection and the Status Perfectionis.” American Ecclesiastical Review 128 (1953): 49–52.

“A Protestant Discussion of a Catholic Dogma.” American Ecclesiastical Review 128 (1953): 136–142.

“Infallibility in the Encyclicals.” American Ecclesiastical Review 128 (1953): 177–198.

“The Question of Ecclesiastical Faith.” American Ecclesiastical Review 128 (1953): 287–301.

“The Mystici Corporis and the Definitions of the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 128 (1953): 448–459.

“Bishop McCormick.” American Ecclesiastical Review 129 (1953): 1–2.

“The Teaching of Testem Benevolentiae.” American Ecclesiastical Review 129 (1953): 124–133.

“Theology and Nationality.” American Ecclesiastical Review 129 (1953): 192–195.

“The Title ‘Spiritual Vessel’ in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” American Ecclesiastical Review 129 (1953): 265–270.

“The Invocation of the Holy Name and the Basic Concept of the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 129 (1953): 343–349.

“Our Lady’s Year.” American Ecclesiastical Review 129 (1953): 388–393.

“Our Lady’s Virginity In Partu.” American Ecclesiastical Review 130 (1954): 46–53.

“The Lesson of Ci Riesce.” American Ecclesiastical Review 130 (1954): 114–123.

“Magisterium and Jurisdiction in the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 130 (1954): 194–201.

“Two Recent Explanations of the Church’s Necessity for Salvation.” American Ecclesiastical Review 130 (1954): 259–269.

“Toleration and the Church-State Controversy.” American Ecclesiastical Review 130 (1954): 330–343.

“The Papal Allocution Si Diligis.” American Ecclesiastical Review 131 (1954): 186–198.

“The Meaning of the Name ‘Church’.” American Ecclesiastical Review 131 (1954): 268–276.

“Answers to Questions: Error and Rights.” American Ecclesiastical Review 131 (1954): 277–278.

“Answers to Questions: Catholic Church and Sectarianism.” American Ecclesiastical Review 131 (1954): 278–279.

“Father Denzinger’s Enchiridion and Its First Hundred Years.” American Ecclesiastical Review 131 (1954): 287–305.

“A Recent Appraisal and Its Background.” American Ecclesiastical Review 131 (1954): 328–342.

“Answers to Questions: ‘Separation’ or ‘Too Close a Union.’” American Ecclesiastical Review 131 (1954): 343–344.

“Catholic Polemic and Doctrinal Accuracy.” American Ecclesiastical Review 132 (1955): 107–117.

“Brotherhood in Catholic Theology.” American Ecclesiastical Review 132 (1955): 191–203.

“Answers to Questions: The Church and Salvation.” American Ecclesiastical Review 132 (1955): 204–205.

“The Necessity of the Catholic Church and the Efficacy of Prayer.” American Ecclesiastical Review 132 (1955): 336–349.

“The Rectory as a Teaching Institution.” American Ecclesiastical Review 132 (1955): 385–395.

“Von Hügel and Ecclesiastical Authority.” American Ecclesiastical Review 133 (1955): 35–52.

“Von Hügel and His Spiritual Direction.” American Ecclesiastical Review 133 (1955): 109–127.

“The Young Priest’s Reading.” American Ecclesiastical Review 133 (1955): 194–204.

“The Church in Adequate Perspective.” American Ecclesiastical Review 133 (1955): 258–274.

“The Holy Father’s Statement on Relations Between the Church and the State.” American Ecclesiastical Review 133 (1955): 323–331.

“Appraisal in Sacred Theology.” American Ecclesiastical Review 134 (1956): 24–36.

“The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Allocutions.” American Ecclesiastical Review 134 (1956): 109–117.

“Some Recent Writings in the Field of Fundamental Dogmatic Theology.” American Ecclesiastical Review 134 (1956): 255–272, 328–345.

“Pope Benedict XV and the Rules of Theological Discussion.” American Ecclesiastical Review 135 (1956): 39–53.

“Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.” American Ecclesiastical Review 135 (1956): 125–133.

“Towards an Adequate Theological Treatise De Ecclesia.” American Ecclesiastical Review 135 (1956): 183–197.

“Intellectual Standards Among American Catholics.” American Ecclesiastical Review 135 (1956): 323–336.

“Censorship and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction.” American Ecclesiastical Review 135 (1956): 398–410.

“Our Lady’s Queenship and Her Immaculate Conception.” Virgo Immaculata: acta Congressus Mariologici-Mariani Romae anno MCMLIV celebrati. Rome: Academia Mariana Internationalis, 1955. 71–84.

“The Semicentennial of the Lamentabili and the Pascendi.” American Ecclesiastical Review 136 (1957): 42–54.

“The Councils of Baltimore and the Catholic Press.” American Ecclesiastical Review 136 (1957): 120–131.

“Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Twentieth-Century Exhortations to the Catholic Priests.” American Ecclesiastical Review 136 (1957): 328–337.

“Answers to Questions: The Church Is Our Lord’s Mystical Body.” American Ecclesiastical Review 136 (1957): 338–340.

“Some Newman Autobiographical Sketches and the Newman Legend.” American Ecclesiastical Review 136 (1957): 394–410.

“An Ecumenist Viewpoint on the Church’s Magisterium.” American Ecclesiastical Review 137 (1957): 113–126.

“Answers to Questions: A Chaplain and His Critic.” American Ecclesiastical Review 137 (1957): 127–129.

“The Encyclical Pascendi and the Modernist Frame of Mind.” American Ecclesiastical Review 137 (1957): 176–191.

“Fraternal Charity Among Priests.” American Ecclesiastical Review 137 (1957): 239–255.

“Answers to Questions: The Catholic Church and Monotheism.” American Ecclesiastical Review 137 (1957): 256–257.

“Newman’s Complaints Examined in the Light of Priestly Spirituality.” American Ecclesiastical Review 138 (1958): 49–65.

“St. Pius X and Catholic Periodical Literature.” American Ecclesiastical Review 138 (1958): 112–127.

“Father Connell and The American Ecclesiastical Review.” American Ecclesiastical Review 138 (1958): 424–430.

“The Components of Liberal Catholicism.” American Ecclesiastical Review 139 (1958): 36–53.

“The Newman Legend and Newman’s Complaints.” American Ecclesiastical Review 139 (1958): 101–121.

“The Priest’s Devotion to Christ.” American Ecclesiastical Review 139 (1958): 184–195.

“Religion and Charity in Our Lady’s Contribution to the Apostolate.” American Ecclesiastical Review 139 (1958): 261–275.

“Tu est Petrus.” American Ecclesiastical Review 139 (1958): 289–290.

“Pope Pius XII and the Theological Treatise on the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 139 (1958): 407–419.

“The New Testament Designation of the True Church as God’s Temple.” American Ecclesiastical Review 140 (1959): 103–117.

“Unity and Peace.” American Ecclesiastical Review 140 (1959): 192–194.

“The Study of the Ecumenical Council.” American Ecclesiastical Review 140 (1959): 260–272.

“Technical Excellence in the Teaching of Catholic Doctrine.” American Ecclesiastical Review 140 (1959): 333–342.

“Holy Mother of God.” American Ecclesiastical Review 140 (1959): 412–415.

“The Ecumenical Council and Christian Reunion.” American Ecclesiastical Review 141 (1959): 45–57.

“The Doctrinal Function of the Ecumenical Council.” American Ecclesiastical Review 141 (1959): 117–128.

“The Status of the Vatican Council.” American Ecclesiastical Review 141 (1959): 252–262.

“Pope John’s Encyclical on the Priesthood.” American Ecclesiastical Review 141 (1959): 301–314.

“The Case for Traditional Apologetics.” American Ecclesiastical Review 141 (1959): 406–416.

“Tower of David.” American Ecclesiastical Review 142 (1960): 41–49.

“The Basis for Conciliar Action in the Catholic Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 142 (1960): 116–125.

“The Priest and the Ascetical Cultivation of the Faith.” American Ecclesiastical Review 142 (1960): 189–198.

“The Vatican Council’s Unfinished Business.” American Ecclesiastical Review 142 (1960): 217–224.

“The Sacrorum Antistitum and the Background of the Oath Against Modernism.” American Ecclesiastical Review 143 (1960): 239–260.

“Rome and the Status of Catholic Theology.” American Ecclesiastical Review 143 (1960): 395–417.

“Father Edmond Darvil Benard.” American Ecclesiastical Review 144 (1961): 344–346.

“Priestly Mediation and Theology.” American Ecclesiastical Review 144 (1961): 406–417.

“Contemporary Questions About Membership in the Church.” American Ecclesiastical Review 145 (1961): 39–57.

“Revolutions in Catholic Attitudes.” American Ecclesiastical Review 145 (1961): 120–129.

“Doctrine and Tactic in Catholic Pronouncements on Church and State.” American Ecclesiastical Review 145 (1961): 266–276.

“Father Moran’s Prediction.” American Ecclesiastical Review 146 (1962): 192–201.

“Two Statements about the Necessity of the Catholic Church for the Attainment of Eternal Salvation.” American Ecclesiastical Review 146 (1962): 401–417.

“The Influence of the Holy Ghost in the Ecumenical Council.” American Ecclesiastical Review 147 (1962): 116–127.

“The Council and Father Küng.” American Ecclesiastical Review 147 (1962): 178–200.

“The Virtue of Prudence and the Success of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council.” American Ecclesiastical Review 147 (1962): 255–265.

“Cardinal Ottaviani and the Council.” American Ecclesiastical Review 148 (1963): 44–53.

“The Roman Curia and the Ecumenical Council.” American Ecclesiastical Review 148 (1963): 185–198.

“The Teaching of the Theological Manuals.” American Ecclesiastical Review 148 (1963): 254–270.

“The New Denzinger.” American Ecclesiastical Review 148 (1963): 337–344.

“A Letter from Rome.” American Ecclesiastical Review 149 (1963): 392–430.